Her petite figure and delicate features would hardly convince strangers that such a frame could hold an 85-pound instrument powerful enough to help treat the sick and uninspired.
And yet third-year psychology student Anahita Navab, whose stage name is Ana Caravelle, holds her harp at the bedsides of children several times a week in an effort to provide what she deems to be an effective healing tool: music therapy.
Navab, daughter of celebrated cardiologist, Mohammad Navab, and the sister to a current UCLA medical student has no intention of following her family into the field of medicine, but admits that she is enamored of the possibilities that music can be a supplement to the medical field.
“(Music therapy) really works. It takes someone away from their current state of distress or sometimes it helps them address their feelings directly,” Navab said. “Combining music and medicine stimulates your brain in a way unlike any other and its healing capacity is great.”
Navab is not alone in her belief in the power of music therapy.
The National Institute of Health recognized a recent study that concluded “exposure to music therapy can dramatically improve the mental and physical condition of patients.”
The research team said that “this is the first large study to gauge and substantiate the potential of music therapy as a physical and psychological aid to patients coping with advanced illness.”
Similarly, Vanya Green, a music therapist at the Mattel Children’s Hospital, provided the services Navab provides on a full-time basis since the program began two years ago.
“Music serves as a container for emotions, which appear or feel to be without limit. Music helps create a boundary for feelings and gives meaning to them,” Green said in an earlier interview with The Bruin.
And while connecting with the patients of UCLA can be an overwhelming task on its own, Navab still manages to commute to Manhattan Beach a few times a week to teach music to children attending Wondernation, an early childhood enrichment and discovery studio that serves 200 children on a weekly basis.
There, Navab tries to connect sign language and music in an attempt to teach effective communication for preverbal developing children.
The National Institute of Health-supported research team also showed that music is an “universal language” that can have a positive impact on all patients.
So while the aim is not to provide a healing path for the healthy children at Wondernation, they are still reaping the benefits of communication through the music channel.
Of the different mediums available, music is the best communication tool because it is entertaining and ageless, said Nazmina Kheraj, president of Wondernation.
“It helps brain development and serves to nurture growth,” she added.
While Navab’s immediate family associates more directly with medicine, she decided early on to beat to her own drum or harp.
Navab has played the guitar and piano but prefers the harp.
“The harp can have a very powerful, fierce quality if played correctly. It takes an amazing amount of strength to play and my teacher Marcia Dickstein has taught me to evoke that primal ferocity,” Navab said.
Her passion for music and her familial ties to medicine have birthed a desire to combine fields that are not often mixed.
And while her silhouette still shows a young woman holding an instrument, to some, her active role in healing is instrumental.