Wednesday, December 20, 2017

BIG NEWS!

Happy Holidays for everyone!

As you have noticed, I have been slowing down for a past couple of months. I am so grateful for all my wonderful and patient clients, who have been following me at my house - not so perfect setting, but doable for awhile. Now you can guess my big news, right?

I have found a new office and will be moving sometime in January! 

I am pleased to announce, that I will be working in very cozy setting with my dear mentor, Effie Spurlin (http://effiespurlin.com). She has been a massage therapist for a long time and I have already learned so much from her, and the best thing is that learning will continue on a daily basis. I am so happy to be surrounded by other professionals again. We will be sharing a condo with 3-4 therapists with different specialities in bodywork with some adds on (Pilates instruction as aa addition to Kata's Way therapy, Infra Red Sauna Sessions, Chi Machine, Essentian oils etc.).

All this means some changes, so please be mindful and double check with me if you don't get any notification about your appointment (I have been manually sending a text message one day before). I will be gradually joining in Acuity Scheduling System, which will send you a confirmation via email and/or text, and this system also allows you to book or reschedule on-line. I'm doing my best in the transition process.

The new office is at Renaissance Gardens with entrance from JONHSTON ROAD between Carmel Road and Highway 51 (Pineville-Matthews). GPS will probably take you to Devince Circle, so DO NOT turn to Carmel, but straight from Johnston. Our building is first on the left and there is 3 parking spots right in fromt of number 7818B! The address is 7818B Renaissance Court, Charlotte, 28226. I will send these directions in every confirmation email!

I’m so excited about the year 2018 and we will have AN OPEN HOUSE with refreshments etc. on Valentines Day, although I will start in the new office already in the middle of January! I can’t wait the new opportunities and co-operation this office will bring to Kata’s Way, which still is Painless, because Balanced is Painless and that’s Kata’s Way! 


Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Finland 100yrs

I’m pleased to announce that Finland has turned 100 years!
We had a wonderful celebration here in Charlotte and I was so proud to give a speech at our festivities for over 60 people. Here are some highlights of my first part of the speech (the second part was of course in Finnish).
My name is Kata Hyvärinen and I have been living in Charlotte for almost 5,5 years now. Among you all, 5,5 yrs is still short time period, but for me it’s a lifetime, a completely different way of living.
Finland is, and will always be my home country, place for my soul to be in peace and place that I weekly but happily miss from our sweet Carolinas.  I, and my family are 100% Finns, we speak Finnish and I still think and dream in Finnish. It was kinda hard for me to leave my home, family and career in this age, but I have managed pretty well to bring Finland here with me! Being a traditional Finnish bodyworker, although I’m also NC licensed massage therapist, is not only my job, it’s my way of living and my trademark. So, I brought this Finnishness with me and made it my brand. I’d say that it’s something to be extremely proud of.  But even more than my work, I’m proud and touched about, is our language: Finnish.
Ok, let’s stop for a moment and emphasize that in Finland we have 2 national languages, Finnish and Swedish, and also Sami languages, Finnish and Swedish Finnish sign language, Romani and Karelian have their semi-official status in Finland. The third biggest languages at the moment is actually Russian, followed by Estonian, Somali, English and Arabic.
Finnish is one the oldest languages in the world and it’s estimated that Finnish was spoken already 5000 years ago. I am grateful and proud about the fact that we have been able to sustain our own, peculiar language in the middle of all the Scandinavian and Slavic languages surrounding Finland. I am thankful for those great men and women that struggled to collect and develop our tongue to one of the official languages of our country. The tongue that has it’s specific status, written form and that we can go to school from Kindergarten to doctoral level using our own language! That’s much more than for example sami people can say (although since 1992 sami has had an official status in northern Finland, meaning that sami people can speak their language in health care and social services, but that’s only in a few cities up north). And actually, several of our related languages (Votic, Livonian, Ingrian for example) are in danger of dying out, or has already died, since there is no common written language. To give you a perspective about this: they speak 3 different Sami language in Finland and those three are as different from each others than Finnish is from Hungarian. They do not understand each others and that could be our situation if were’t Elias Lönnrot, Mikael Agricola and even Aleksis Kivi. Without them I would’t be able to understand some of you even if we would speak Finnish, because the development of spoken forms eventually separates tongues. But today, we don’t have worry about eastern and western dialects of Finnish going farther away from each others, because we have one, common written language to keep us together.
At this point, you have probably figured out that for me Finnish is not just a language I speak, it’s a language of my thoughts, my feelings, it`s my passion and my profession. And I have been able to keep teaching my language even when I live here in NC: who would have thought that they need Finnish teacher here?