By Lily O’Brien
Many people intuitively feel that music has a healing effect, but singer, composer, harpist and bodyworker Christine Tulis has no doubt about it—she felt a calling from a very early age to channel healing and spirituality through music. “I’m a healer at my core and the harp and my voice are an expression of the healing arts for me,” she says.
Tulis’ music combines the celestial sounds of the harp with her beautiful voice, and recordings include an array of other instruments, many of which are played by her partner, Kem Stone. Tulis, who has long blond hair, teal blue eyes and a warm smile, composes her own music and writes lyrics for some of it; she also uses sacred text by mystical poets including Rumi. The results are ethereal, peaceful and mesmerizing. “I want the music to take them on an inner journey that is beautiful,” she says of listeners.
Tulis grew up in Massachusetts, but always yearned for California; at 21, she crossed the country and settled in Arcata. It was there that she experienced her first massage, which was life-changing. When she got off the table, she knew that she wanted to “put people in this state of supreme peace.”
Tulis’ second “epiphany” came a year later when she heard someone playing the Celtic harp while she was walking in a grassy meadow at a Harmonic Convergence gathering in southern Oregon. “I had a really profound emotional reaction, where I felt like my heart just broke open into a million pieces,” Tulis recalls.
She returned to Massachusetts to study both harp and bodywork, and after attending a 2007 sound healing conference in San Francisco, established and ran a healing circle in New England that explored the healing nature of sound and music.
In 2011, Tulis and Stone settled in Marin, which Tulis calls a “magical” and “deeply spiritual” place. She has recently officially launched her own bodywork practice—Sound Temple Healing Arts—where she uses techniques that include sound-healing tuning forks and anointing with holy oils.
Tulis has recorded two CDs, Sea of Dreams, and Portal, which won a spiritual music award from the Moondance International Film Festival in Boulder. She has performed all over the world, including at two United Nations events and at Chartres Cathedral in France.
“I have a profound spiritual calling to help people awaken to the beauty of who they are,” Tulis says. “We are spiritual beings of love. It’s our destiny to awaken to that.”
Tulis will be performing on May 15 as a guest artist for the worship service at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco at 11am, 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco; 415/776-4580. To learn more, visit christinetulis.com.
