Covid-19 Diary / How can I grow into this?

We are all overwhelmed, anxious and exhausted in April 2020. We have this new non-normal called corona-virus surrounding our lives from every perspective, and we are forced to isolate ourselves from many things. Most of all, we need to isolate ourselves from our friends, daily routines and activities that require any kind of contact with other people. Touching won't be allowed for, at least, few more weeks.

And touching is my work.

I have been trying to give myself a lot of space to be able to feel where I am. How can I live my life in this limbo which doesn't have an ending date. What am I doing with my life? I certainly haven't been able to do what I love the most, and surprisingly, I have not been able to do what I love the second best: writing. 4 weeks ago (I saw my last clients May 14th) I had very clear picture in my mind, that included a lods of blogging, self-journaling and completed exercises for my creative writing class. Now that I'd have the time! None of those has happened. None!

Instead I have immersed myself in a lot of studying, starting from Spanish and US Governmental system (yeah, I might consider that naturalization process after all), relearning gastro-intestinal system and ending up to deepening my psychological understanding. I have also been immersing myself into Ortho-Bionomy through several web gatherings that includes self-reflection, support and deepening the various ways of treating my clients. So where all that takes me?

I have decided that I will come out from this crisis with more resilience and positivity towards myself. I want to keep helping my clients the best I can, and as my top 3 character strengths are love of learning, curiosity and creativity, I will use those strengths to evolve and overcome some of the less strong characteristics I tend to describe myself. I struggle with gratitude and appreciation of what I have, and most of all: self-regulation. The lack of self-regulation in my life does not look like too little training or unhealthy eating, it shows like doing too much, pushing too far and making excuses about self-healing.

This definitely is not a new revelation, but something I have been struggling all my life, but I feel like I have found a refreshing way of working with it. Being compassionate toward yourself is not something you either have or don't have. Compassion is something you can learn as a process, as a constant reminder throughout your days, like a muscle I have been ignoring, but am now reviving and strengthening. This definitely sounds like my language: I can strengthen my compassion muscle!

How do I do this? I simply use 3 times 3 exercising every day. I will think 3 positive thoughts about myself every day. Some days I do this more often than the others, but my goal is to catch whenever my thinking starts leaning towards 'oh well, I just have this neck ache, what I can do', and start finding out what I CAN DO about it. That actually is the second step: do 3 good things to yourself every day! (And of course my first good deed will always be that empht cup pf coffee.)

That sounds simple, right? But it isn't. I need to do 3 good things that nurture my body, my mind and also my emotions every day. Yes, I am damn good about treating my body with the ways I enjoy, but as I keep nagging to my clients, we need to re-educate our body (and the mind and the spirit) to do things that don't feel so natural at that moment. My weaknesses from this perspective are lack of aerobic exercising, mindfulness and something that I call STILLNESS.

I need to talk about stillness a bit more. It is a very strong principle in Ortho-Bionomy, maybe even the most important, and definitely the one that I have strong feelings about. I have used so many years of my life to learn how to do, how to stretch, how to push or pull and how to be a tool to a change in the body. If you think it, that is the whole western culture's point of view and that is definitely how we have achieved almost everything we actually have achieved. That is amazing. I am so thankful.

But. If we look at this from a perspective of HEALING, the picture becomes somewhat different. Healing the body is not something I (or anybody else for that matter) can do. Healing is a process of your body, mind and spirit. We don't know what is the whole complexity of the process of healing, but we do know that each individual body (with mind and spirit) has a huge capability of doing so. Ortho-Bionomy teaches me how to be a facilitator of that healing. Which brings me back to stillness.

When I touch you, I need to listen what your body is telling me, and let some kind of reaction to happen. For that (and for everything to grow) I need stillness, because that pause is actually a beginning of a conversation. If I can't pause myself, how can I help you to do so?

I have given some thought to the lack of stillness in my life. Yes, I tend to be pretty active person and that is definitely okay, I am not going to try and change that. But when I have a moment, I need to stop and be still. I need to feel what I feel. I need to let myself recognize my emotions, name them and let them go (there is a tool to do that too). If I do that three times a day to STRENGTHEN my 'emotional muscles', I will learn to do so with ease and compassion toward myself.  That will tremendously help me to be in stillness with my clients with  ease, and save my precious vitality. To keep working, to keep learning.

The growth is a mindset! The strength lies in a balance of our life's components: working, learning, making a living, seeing friends, spending time with a family and being alone. Laughing. Positivity is a tool I have chosen to help me with my life, and I am appreciating this long pause in my work, because it has forced me to dig in deeper to what makes my life more balanced. And as you know, that's what Kata's Way is all about: Balanced is Painless, and so is Kata's Way.

I acknowledge this discomfort in my life, because life is a journey. I am growing. I keep nurturing my spirit with some exercising, some stretching, some unhealthy eating, some stillness, some dancing, some shaking, some studying, some boredness, some excitement, lods of coffee and stillness. To be able to be.

In hopes of seeing you soon!

P.S. Zoom-classes/treatments are still available, text to set your time.

How am I doing this?

That is the question that I have to make myself every once and a while, and it's also a question my clients ask me, when they are worried about my fingers handling this job. My fingers and hands are doing really well, what sometimes bothers me, is actually my lower back. And that, my dear clients and friends, is the reason why I started my career as a bodyworker in the first place.

Let's put it this way: when I no longer have any low back (hip issues actually) trouble, I'll probably be dead. Because the truth is that all amazing bodyworkers' and therapist' have (had) some issues, so they are able to relate how it feels to be in pain and frustration. On our path of growing to a healer, you need to face different bodies, different issues and different situations, because you need to learn! You need to learn from books, from others, at school, in different situations and learn to make connections! That's actually my main thing: how different things connect to each others and what my role, as a facilitator for healing, in that process is. So, I am, actually, happy, that I need to face my own issues.

I also believe that everything we have experienced in this world, is stored in our body. The tension of the body, in it's simplest way, can be described as a guarding mechanism from pain. That is actually the most important function for muscles (together with moving the bones). Simply to keep a pain away. Sounds simple enough, but get s a bit trickier, when emotional and psychological pain is taking into consideration. An that is something I have tried to avoid for the longest time. I have always profiled myself as a healer of the physiological body. Recently I am getting to understand that you really can't separate the different parts of our being.

And that is the biggest lesson to learn. Don't get me wrong, I am, and will always be, the healer of the physiological body, but I also need to see the bigger picture: tho whole body and how it works. I, and you, need to respect the body's own ability to heal. When I will be a brilliant 88 years old grand old lady with all the knowledge and information about human body, I can still only be a facilitator for healing! That has been a big step to comprehend and some days I am still uncertain about my role as a BODYworker. 

So back to my body: I have these layers and layers of past experiences stored in me and everything seems (at this point) to linger around my (left) hip. It's like an onion (yes, it makes me cry) that I need to recognize and peel off, to get to the innermost. And I needed to learn all I have learned so far, to get to this point, and, I needed to leave my country to be able to see things more clearly. There is so much left to learn, but what I know now is the factual respect to our own bodies: nothing is left to undiscovered nor without consideration. My body knows the (different) truth (than my brains).

The wisdom lies not in the brain, but in the body. And that's why I need to do what I do! But I would never be where I am without this great network of mine. Because I'm so Finnish and modest, I won't list any names here. But you all who gathered to my house, live in my house, or who I met or messaged during past few days, are essential for me to keep developing in my path.

This is Kata's Way and that's Balanced just because Balanced is Painless! 

P.S. Our First Workshop this Fall is right on the Corner!

What do I do in my bodywork?

One of the goals in this blog is (to learn if in/at or some other preposition is correct) to tell you what I do when I'm treating my clients. My way of treatment includes (among other things) massaging, lymphatic work, stretching both tendons and ligaments and 'freeing' joints to their full range of motion (only if that's possible without causing any pain).

It is sometimes hard to describe what I exactly do, so let me start with telling what I will try to achive with my treatment.

My main (only) goal is to find a ways for you to be free of pain. Many times we can not achieve this goal with one session, but most of the times at 5-8 session (that means if you do your part of the job). If you are still in pain after 5 sessions, I probably am not a good fit for you and you need to see other specialist.

But I will promise you that you'll be feeling more and more balanced, refreshened and energetic after every treatment! Sometimes (well, most of the time) I won't let you take a nap while I'm working WITH you, since our goal is to achieve a gentle change in your body's kinesic pattern in a long run, not just relaxiation for the moment (that'll be an extra gift).

My goal is to make you feel better by balancing your physical body. Many times this includes bringing your more upright position while sitting. So, search for an optimal posture is definitely one of our main goals. Always and for everybody (including me). 

I want to write this down one more time: we are here to find a balance! From my point of view I'm talking about relieving tension, braking adhesions and even releasing trigger points in your physical body, but for you it can mean something different. It is always completely up to you how much you inform me about your goals, but I will do my best to synchronize my goals with your (body)s.

Just remember that I am forever curious to find out the possibly hidden reasons for physical imbalances and by balancing the physical, to give you some tools to do the rest.

Balanced is Painless and painless body wants to keep moving! Let me help you.