Lonely Crossing by Elena Markova

Certified Music Practitioner® and Music-Thanatologist

Music for Healing & Transition Program™
The Music for Healing & Transition Program (MHTP) is a course of study that prepares a musician to create, with live, acoustic music, a healing environment that serves the ill, the dying and birthing, and for those who care for them. MHTP recognizes the benefits that music can bring to people encompassing all ages and disabilities.





Chalice of Repose Project ®
Music-Thanatology is a sub-specialty of palliative medicine for those patients who are on hospice care or actively dying. The goals of Music-Thanatologists are to provide relief of acute and physiological pain, interior suffering and support the patient, their family and loved ones.

“The prescriptive music reflects the constantly changing, dynamic physiological condition of the particular patient as evidenced by continually monitored vital signs and a body systems phenomenology”

~ Therese Schroeder-Sheker, Transitus-A Blessed Death in the Modern World, (St. Dunstan’s Press 2001)

Here at Maryknoll Sisters, the exquisite harp music of Mona Peck has reached out to our dying women, filling their hearts and spirits with joy. So often at the end, one is tired of talking and the music allows one to relax and be at peace. I further believe that it has helped reduce pain and anxiety of the spirit as one worries about those left behind. The music transcends this and helps each person reach the next phase while letting go of this one.

~ Susie Fearon-Giannoni, Director of Social Service — Maryknoll Residential Care, New York