biography

Nancy Beal

Nancy’s beginnings with Bedside Harp had that magical mixture of being in the right place, at the right time, with just a slight push from the forces that sometimes move us beyond our comfort level to take a chance. In the spring of 2003, the Bucks County Community College non-credit course catalog arrived in the mail. Thinking she might take a course or two, she discovered the section on instructional harp classes with Bedside Harp. By the end of that afternoon, she had spent an hour on the phone with Edie, registered for her first set of courses and rented a harp. Music was a fairly unfamiliar area for Nancy, having only taken piano lessons for a time as a child, but that day, the path was clear to her. She presented her plans to her rather stunned husband that evening, and has not stopped since.

After taking two years of instructional harp lessons, she entered the certification program and received her Harp Therapist Certification in August, 2006 and became a Certified Master Harp Therapist in August, 2007. She received a certification in Thanatology from Bucks County Community College in May, 2006 and her Reiki Level 2 certification in October, 2006. She continues to take instructional harp lessons periodically, always wanting to continue her own growth in playing this amazing instrument.

Nancy has always had an interest in the health care field and did her undergraduate work in health administration. She worked in the field for a few years, feeling that health care was where she belonged, but that the ‘fit’ in administration was not quite right. She began her graduate work in the late 70's, just as opportunities exploded in the computer industry and after pursuing her degree part-time while working full-time, ultimately earned an MBA in Computer Science. As she began to consider her options in her new career, she found she was pregnant and gave birth to a perfectly healthy, but very small, 3 ½ pound baby girl. Not willing to leave her baby, she trained as medical transcriptionist and became self-employed, in addition to starting several other businesses, working from a home office while raising her daughter. As that baby girl grew and reached high school, Nancy considered going back to her primary interest of health care and began taking courses toward a degree in nutrition for the opportunities that field offered in direct patient care until she found Bedside Harp.

She began teaching instructional harp at Bucks County Community College in Fall, 2007 and at Abington Hospital in Winter, 2008. In addition, she continues mentoring certification students for Bedside Harp and playing rounds at various Bedside Harp hospitals, while still running her own business from her home office.