Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Change of my Location

Some of you already know that our lease in the current office will expire at the end of the June. It means that I need to find a new office close to Ballantyne as soon as possible. I have 3 choices to choose from: 1) Stay with Dr. Snipes (most probably at Carmel) 2) find a place of my own (everything is pretty expensive around here, but I have done some research and there might be something interesting) or 3) work at my house for awhile.

Well, like you all know, we have to think these big changes from several different perspectives one of them being a financial situation. It's simple to think that working at my house would save me the rent (my biggest monthly expense for sure), but we would also lose some privacy even if I would restrict my hours between 9 and 5. I also like going out of my house for work, so working at my home would cost me more money spent in coffee houses...

One really important part for me in this decision is who to work with. My goal still is to be surrounded by people whom I can learn from, and working by myself would keep me at the current level of skills (well, I do need to take some continuing education classes, but everyday learning in a contact with other professionals is a completely different thing). On the other hand, my treatment is so special and different, that maybe I should actually be teaching others. Another big decision for the future to make.

The third, and the most important thing in my life at the moment, is to work the way I really want and am able to handle. To help others in their healing process is pretty demanding job, and although I have already done changes in my schedule, I will need to monitor my own capability to work even more carefully. I do have aches and pains, and sometimes 3 day weekend is not enough to compensate my work load and recover physically. No, I'm not getting old, I'm just giving more thought to the important aspects of life and, I really love what I do, so I want to keep doing this for years to come!

After all this being said, I really hope to find a perfect office space for next fall! Meanwhile, I will work at Ballantyne Village until the end of May and enjoy a bit longer  summer mainly in Finland (from  June 13th until July 9th). I know that it's a long time (5 weeks altogether) to be away, and the rest of the July I might still have restricted hours. But I do have some new ideas for the fall to serve you better in facilitating your health. What is manageable depend also a bit about the size and location of the new office.

I am so excited about this vacation and new possibilities to explore next fall! I will be back with a burst of energy and new things, so stay tuned. Kata's Way will be stronger, because Kata will be more balanced and as you already know: Balanced is Painless and that is Kata's Way!



Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Love for Languages

Some of you might not know that I am also a qualified Finnish Teacher, and worked as so for 17 years. Well, I actually still do, but I can't make my living out of it living in the States, so I am more than happy that I decided to learn a new profession in my late thirties. But if you ever need someone to teach you this special, interesting and a bit challenging language, I can, and will,  definitely help you! Currently I am giving private lessons through Skype and it works really well.

All this also means that I am a Master of Arts in Finnish Language and I have minors in Pedagogy, Adult Education, Psychology and Russian language. If I can count right, I have studied basics of 12 languages in my life. Don't get excited, I only can speak 4 at the moment, and most of my studies were introductory courses that you need to take when you study languages at the university.

I do love my own tongue and am doing all I can to keep both my oral and written skills in perfect level (I read most of my books in Finnish) and suffer that my English will never be as good as my Finnish. I know that most of you don't see this as a problem, but it is for me. I'm too good a writer in my language to accept bad English... but there's no classes in Charlotte to help me with this! I don't want to take a written English class because I know how to structure texts and the courses wouldn't serve me well. I'm also too lazy to take advanced English grammar courses (my basic grammar is probably just fine and I don't want to read Shakespeare) because I don't think that grammatically perfect text is necessarily the most interesting. So what can I do?

I think I have learned the most of my vocabulary by listening and speaking to you. A big  part of  learning is to be okay with making a lods of mistakes and challenging yourself. By this I mean that sometimes you need to use phrases and vocabulary that you're not 100 percent sure that are correct in that situation. You need to trust your brains to make the connections and the expression in your friends face will show how did it go! I'm also lucky to have close friends from who I can ask specifications and try my homemade vocabulary and expressions with. I also listen to a bunch of books by Audible, so I really read and listen  in separate languages. At the moment I understand my novels and short stories perfectly, the trouble comes with political language and legal and 'governmental' terms.



For me living is learning and at the moment I'm learning, surprise suprise: a new language! I started to study Spanish in CPCC just for fun and it's amazing how your brains process new vocabulary to a low understanding level in a short time. I started from zero (I really didn't know the difference between tortilla and quesadilla), but the most interesting and fun part starts when you can truly start putting understandable sentences together. Understandable doesn't mean at all correct, but collecting the structure of the language bit by bit. How cool is that!? Well, don't expect me to understand what you speak to me in Spanish quite yet.. it'll come a bit later. Hopefully. After one and half semester of studying I still can't tolerate to watch Spanish speaking tv shows because it's just too annoying not to understand anything!

I'm making my living at studying the languages of a human body's functioning  and well, that's sometimes pretty unknown territory. In balancing bodies you also need to trust your guts: sometimes your brains take the control but sometimes you need to trust your thumbs and let the sensation lead the way. I'm constantly searching the connection  between my hands and brains to find the Balance. Because this is Kata's Way in searching Balance and Painless! 

If you're new to this: you're warmly welcome to my treatment and my life.