The Big 2019

It looks like the year 2019 is a BIG ONE. In so many ways. Let me tell you.

Right before Independence Day 2019 it will have been seven years since my family, including me, moved to the United States. SEVEN years. In the mysterious life of mine, and so many others, seven year cycle is an important and meaningful period of time that marks change, renewal and (self-)reflection. That is how it has always been for me. As many of you also have been reminded (not that I have been complaining too much, right?) that I just had a big birthday, which really didn't go as planned, yet I survived. I'm not saying that I feel old, but I am experiencing that this life of mine has brought me so much more understanding and maybe even wisdom, but it sure has introduced me to some stiffness, longer recovery time and funny hormonal changes. But let's not get too deep into that this time.

Most of you know me as an energetic and straightforward, but also creative and enthusiastic person, and those of you who are close to me, also know that I can be pretty introvert at times. But, more than anything, I do need something to be excited about, to be able to thrive and go forward. That excitement has been missing for a couple of years and I have been trying to tell myself, that this period of calming down is desperately needed. Maybe it was; I needed my time cocooning and gathering my thoughts, since something strong and powerful is evolving.

I need the change to stay alive! That's the truth, so I'm happy to be in the beginning of a new cycle. I am creating a new, better, less sustainable way of living and working. It will include some self-reflection, but even more recilience and perseverance towards me and my own ways. I know what I'm doing and I will learn to do it in a less wearing way. My inner turmoil and learning process will have some effects to my clients: I will upgrade my skillset this year and raise my rates next year. I will bring more ease to my work, lessen the pressure I have taught myself to use and be more perceptive to my clients needs. That will not work for some of you, so I truly won't mind if you decide to find an another therapist (I will recommend one for you if needed).

I need to do this for me, to keep learning, to find the passion that was lost for awhile. I want to keep some variety in my work (like extremely interesting neuropathy work and frozen shoulder protocol), but my style of working will definitely lighten up and have more and more pieces of Ortho-Bionomy. Some of you won't experience any changes since I already have changed some pieces of my protocol, some of you will experience the big shift in their treatment plan, an all this happens because I can't physically keep working the way I have been past years. I just can't!

With my new style there's going to be some days that nothing seems to be working, and there will a lot of explaining what I do. It's actually pretty funny; I need to talk myself through some pieces where I usually tend to start pushing and forcing the tissues, verbalizing seems to help me keep focused at this point of learning process. Feel free to tell me if you need your relaxing time on my table to be quiet. I promise to do my best.

I will definitely explain more later, there is so much to learn! I feel like my whole belief system needs to be changed in a way. But nothing will change, that's the beauty of this treatment. I will always do my best to help you in your issues and aches. This is Kata's Way and that means Balanced is Painless. Let's make it painless for me too!

See you in July, I'm off to Finland for a month.

Self help and exercise

Part of this profession is to help my clients to help themselves. Taking care of him/herself should be everyone's priority and seeing a massage therapist (or any healthcare provider) just an addition among other things. Here's some of my tips to take care of yourself!

First of all, do something you really like to do! I know that the world is full of different programs, guidelines and 'this is what you should do to gain this or that' information about everything, but if you really don't like doing yoga, you should find something else to do that gives you the same benefits and enjoyment. There is plenty of options just among different styles of yoga, so go and try them all and then decide if you really enjoy one or the other. If you don't enjoy going outdoors, you won't get the benefits you are meant to get out of wandering in the forests. So do something you enjoy.

But we all need to find some type of exercise to do daily! Only active body stays active and movement benefits each and every system of your body. From my profession I can see many postural problems in today's world, so my suggestion is to also find enough movement to the upper body: yoga (partly), stretching, Pilates, boxing, dancing etc. I suggest you think about boxing for a moment: punching a bag not only takes out of some tension of your (mind) upper body, it also gives some desperately needed movement in all the plates of upper spine movement! That is what we all need.

All my clients are helped with their posture and I give a bunch of self help upper body stretching for every day use. Keeping an upright posture needs some effort in the world of iPads, computers and sell phones, so seeing me (or any other massage therapists) is not enough but everyday movement is essential. If you really want to gain some improvement in your posture, you also need to concentrate on your abdominal corset, and this is not at all what you think it is! The proper engagement of, let's say for example, transversus abdominis muscle is a delicate thing and most of us (yes, me too) have been doing it 'wrong' for years. You need guidance and long-term work to learn to isolate certain muscles and then use them in co-operation to 'hold' your core. I can help you with this too, but I rather guide you to see a true specialist who works with me on this. And yes, it took me 9 months to figure out what am I supposed to do when using the core strength in a proper way.

I think it's essential to do something for your body EVERY DAY! There's no need to run for miles if you don't like running, but go out and see the nature for 20 minutes. There's no need to do heavy weightlifting unless you enjoy doing weights, but move your whole body for 20 minutes every day. There's no need to go sweat in 90 minutes hot yoga if you don't enjoy that, but stretch yourself 20 minutes every day! And if all this is too much, rotate these exercises and do one of them every day. For me this is easy to do while listening books. I'm happy to pay my monthly Audible payment for a health reasons and with a good book it's easier to walk 30 or 60 minutes once in awhile.

But if you need some extra release for your body, Kata's Way is totally Painless and Balanced way of adding some extra care for yourself. I have Gift Cards for those loved ones who may need some extra pampering too... just call/text and ask.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Take time to yourself and believe in what you do!

Two of the most important and the most difficult things for me, and I believe I'm not the only one with this, are to remember to take care of myself and to believe in my skills. It's easy to say, but sometimes difficult to achieve, to stay in a balance with your work, social life, taking care of yourself and free time. Yes, taking care of me just can not be considered as free time, not in this profession.

My work is quite physical, but even more intentional and staying in the moment. My job is to discover misabalance and disstress in my clients' bodies, and to be able to do that, there cannot be a huge misbalance in my own body, nor distress in my life. Or, I should say: there shouldn't be, since I'm struggling with the same issues as you are. I have muscle tension, overly stretched ligaments, reduction in lymphatic flow, my hip tends to rotate on one side and I do have a tension neck most of the time. Not fun, since I cannot treat myself.

So how do I cope? Of course I have a bunch of  great therapists around me and they certainly help me a lot, but I'm also getting better in taking time to be with me. For me and my overly sensitive body, it's a necessity to recognize why I get stuck. Sometimes it's just an amount of clients I take care of some week, but most of the time there's something else happening in my life, that I have ignored. Let me tell you an example.

I'm living one of my most interesting summers at the moment (I have only once been more excited than now and that was four years ago when we moved to States in the beginning of July). I had visitors from home to take part in my daughter's graduation and they stayed for over three weeks. On that time we drove to the beach and to the mountains and arranged a party for my daughter and also for Midsummer celebration (this is my family's tradition; to bring a piece of Finnish roots with us and celebrate the midsummer sun). And I was working. In a week I will travel to Minnesota, Duluth, to teach Finnish language at a week long seminar. After that I will be moving my daughter to the dorm for the first time.

I am super excited about all this, but it is taking a toll on my body. So what can I do? I just need to make sure that I have enough time to do nothing and enough time to exercise. I have just joined back to my book club, so I'll actually read something interesting (besides Principles of Osteopathy) and I have also started Pilates classes to challenge my body to work in a different ways. How exciting! To have someone guide me on-in-one for a couple times of week.

Because there is so much more to learn about human body. There is things you can learn from books, but that is not the only way, especially if you are a bodyworker. We all need touching, palpating and sensing what happens under our skin. And at least in my case, sensing needs time, you cannot rush the tissue for a quick reaction! I have decided to take that time and slow my process, feel the touch. If you feel like I am rushing with your treatment, please tell me that immediately. I believe that only working slowly with your tissue, in your body's allowance, all the sensations can reach the brain, parasymphatetic nervous system will activate and channels for refreshing and healing blood can flow to help the tissue.

I know, that this is the truth. Sometimes I still keep rushing and trying to prove that I can treat your whole body in an hour. Well, I can't! That is why I have added 90 minutes treatment to my services:
until the end of August, you can get 90 minutes treatment for $100 (or 3 sessions for $270, or 5 sessions for $425). I will update my pricing September 1st!

It is still Kata's Way and Balanced is Painless. 

Our Feet

Those of you who already know me, also know that I like feet. Not just my own, but also my clients. That´s simply because everything starts there. Feet are like a basement of a house and you sure want to have a firm, healthy and stable base to built your house on.

Here is some facts (http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/picture-of-the-feet):

The feet are flexible structures of bones, joints, muscles, and soft tissues that let us stand upright and perform activities like walking, running, and jumping. The feet are divided into three sections:

• The forefoot contains the five toes (phalanges) and the five longer bones (metatarsals).
• The midfoot is a pyramid-like collection of bones that form the arches of the feet. These include the three cuneiform bones, the cuboid bone, and the navicular bone.
• The hindfoot forms the heel and ankle. The talus bone supports the leg bones (tibia and fibula), forming the ankle. The calcaneus (heel bone) is the largest bone in the foot.

Muscles, tendons, and ligaments run along the surfaces of the feet, allowing the complex movements needed for motion and balance. The Achilles tendon connects the heel to the calf muscle and is essential for running, jumping, and standing on the toes.

 My job is to make sure that each and every one of those joints are movable, muscles and soft tissues are flexible and there is no ischemia. What does that mean?

In my treatment I will check all the joints between each parts of toes, toes and metatarsals, between metatarsals, between cuneiform and cuboid, between cuboid and navicular etc, you get the picture. Sometimes the muscles and tendons are so tight that the first session goes on more superficial (soft tissues) work, since a big part of the picture are muscles of the shins (peroneals, tibialisis, soleus and gastrocnemius) and only in the second session we can try to move those ligaments to open the joints.

Opening the joints is essential because we want all the nervous tissue be free of any kind of impingement and discomfort. Is it painful? Definitely no, if it's done in a right way. When I am opening your joints, it happens with time and you probably don't even feel it. If we have more stubborn foot, I might ask you to flex and extend your ankle, so that you are always in charge of the movement. That is if I have a slightest idea that my work would give you any pain.

Why you want your feet to be flexible? Because that is how they are meant to be to keep you going. If we wouldn't need the flexibility all those joints give us, we wouldn't have that many joints in our feet!

Most of you have also heard about Reflexology, that addresses all the pressure points at the souls of the feet to help in a huge variety of issues. And yes, I do some reflexology, but that is not my specialty or the field where I am in my most comfort zone. In my believe, you can't get all the benefits of reflexology if you feet lack blood, are swollen or immovable. If the signal from the brain (like keep your feet warm) can't reach the feet, how can the signal from the feet (reflexology) make it's way to a different parts of the body? At least the reflexology session is much more helpful to you if your feet are healthy.

Okay, I will not start to explain about how an imbalance in one ankle affect to the knees and hips etc. You can read about that in my other blog posts (About Posture, More about Soft Tissues) . But what I want to tell you, is that I am able to help you so many issues with your feet: plantar fasciitis, bunions(!), rheumatoid arthritis to a certain point, achilles tendon issues, edema, calluses(!), corns, heal spurs, fallen arches, mallet toes and claw toes (depending on situation) and sometimes even in Morton's neuroma. My treatment is helpful also in cold feet or even peripheral artery disease and peripheral neuropathy if it is supervised by a medical doctor.

Unfortunately I can not help you, if you have gout, fraction, any kind of infection or osteoarthritis or osteoporosis (unless your doctor is working with us). I also need to know and be prepared, if you have warts, athlete's foot or any other kind of fungal infection.

And if you don't have anything special going on with your feet, just come and relax. I know some relaxation techniques that make you sleep in my table.

Loving your feet is healthy!

What are those soft tissues I keep talking about?

  Ok, let’s take a second try. Blogger was so kind and throw away all my hard work yesterday. I am going to try to explain what I mean about all the soft tissues I keep talking about. Like you already know, I am a licensed massage therapist and as so, I feel blessed to work in a field I truly love and am passionate about. But I am also something more. Or should I say, that I am trained in a two different ways.

Originally my massage therapist's studies are from Finland, where it takes 10 months to complete your studies and get your license. We were taught pretty much the same techniques than here in NC, but our qualification system differs quite a bit. On the other hand the muscles and joints are the same where ever you are learning your basics, so I feel pretty confident about knowing my muscles. Well, at least I have learned them (and passed my exams) twice; once in Latin and second time in English. (And by the way all the 650+ muscles also have a name in Finnish).

But my true passion is that functional and structural bodywork in which I completed 3 year program while working with my clients. We were taught to see the big picture and in my education it was crucial to see the differences between the body's left and right side, rotation in your skeleton and leg length discrepancy (pretty often caused by rotation in hip bones). We were challenged to analyze different ways to stabilize the body and see how dysfunction in joint or a problem in a  range of motion will affect to another joint. I am also able to see and feel adhesion not only in a muscle, but also in a ligament and analyze its function to the whole kinetic chain.

Pictures are about ankles; here flexion.

That being said, I pretty often start by treating your ankle, even if you make your appointment to treat pain in your neck. That is because if your left ankle (‘s joints) isn’t functioning properly, that definitely affects to your (left) knee. And if you have trouble in your knee, your body will compensate it all its best ways to keep pain away and that brings you (most probably) some trouble in the opposite hip, which tries to ease up left knee’s job. And finally, if your hips’ muscular balance is off, your spine compensates the situation and you might end up having neck issues. Sounds easy enough, right? But no, it is not that easy or predictable every time, but that’s pretty much how it goes.

This is the way my special training in Finland taught me to see your body, and I am unable to see it any other ways. I can (and I am) use many different techniques and modalities, but my inner self always wants to figure out this chain of functional and structural alignments, and try to bring your left and right side as even as they can in their current situation be. So, I work with your tendons (they attach your muscles to the bones) and ligaments (they attach bone to bone where is no muscle) as much as with your muscles. My work is always gentle, so stretching the tendon is not painful, and we’ll do it together with a client’s own movement.

But our body is not only muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones, but as I have recently learned, we have to pay so much more attention to our lymphatic system, since it is one of our cleaning processes and has everything to do with our immune system too. Lymph has its special ways and directions to run around our body, but unfortunately it doesn’t have its own designated pump (like the hearth is the pump for blood circulation). Our lymph needs movement to keep functioning properly and in many cases we (yes, I am looking at my own mirror right here and now) are sitting too much and not being active enough. The best lymph pump is to get up and walk/get up and down to your toes/run. So again, if you come to see me with that neck pain and I figure out that your lymph isn’t functioning as well as it should be, we’ll go back to your feet and start our pain relieving process from there. Just be prepared, that I could suggest you something completely different that you think you need, and so we’ll make you a customized treatment plan.

But it is always up to you. Or actually, let’s just ask your nervous system what it wants to have done. This is probably the biggest difference between Kata’s Way and deep tissue/trigger point massage (and I can do both): I don’t want to give you any pain! (And actually, no therapy, not trigger point therapy nor deep tissue massage should ever, ever, be painful.) In Kata’s Way we go as deep to your tissues than your tissues allow. So simple! If I try to press too hard, your nervous system gets activated in a nanosecond, and do you think that hyperactive nervous system will allow us to relieve any pain? Then, if you ask me to go deeper, I will tell your brains to be quiet, since I’m working with the body and not with your brains. And I say it with all my love.

And here's the extension (of one) of  the ankle joint.

Now, don’t get me wrong; my treatment will be effective and deep, sometimes even a bit uncomfortable, but if you really want some deep deep tissue work, maybe I am just wasting your time (and you are wasting money). But if you have some specific issues (tennis/golf/shoulder tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, sciatica etc.) or you just feel that something is off, please come to see me and we’ll figure out together, if my style and my skills can help you.

Your body is an amazing system and it knows how to heal itself. You just need to know how to listen. I am pretty good at listening your body, so please bring your body to me and let’s figure it out together. I am here to learn new ways to help you relieve your pain and bring your body to its balance.