Neuropathy

Hello my friends!

It's August and the beginning of a new season is on the door. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to buy new calendar, some notebooks and binders because the fall is calling. Maybe it's because I have been a teacher for such a long time, that in August I start preparing for a new (school) year?

Well, I don't need a new calendar at the moment, nor have I purchased new gadgets, but I am full of excitement after a couple more lazy months. Today I want to talk you about Neuropathy!

As you already know me, I won't give you a complete picture of the ugly and very, very uncomfortable disorder, that's your doctor's job, but I will tell how I have been able to help my clients who suffer this condition. Neuropathy can be not only painful, but also very disturbing with numbness, tingling, cramping, twitching, over-heated or restless legs and feet. It can be all of those at the same time.

There is nothing I can do to help with inflammation of the nerves or your (pre)diabetes, or other causes of this condition, nor can I promise to make your feet painless. But I do promise to:
- bring flexibility back to your tendons and muscles on your feet,
- help your ankle to function in it's best
- open up your peroneal, tibialis, gastros and soleus (meaning calves) muscles
- make sure that flexors and extensors of the feet are equally strong
- open up each and every joint, muscle, tendon and ligament connected to metatarsals and
- make your feet feel good!

When all this is done, many of my clients have been able to stay painless 5-15 days in a row! 

So, neuropathy is one of the rare cases when I need you to come see me weekly at least for 6-8 weeks and pretty frequently even after that, because we need to keep peripheral blood flow going and help the lymph climb up towards the heart manually. Clients with neuropathy also need to keep seeing me frequently; some clients stay symptomless with monthly treatment, others need the 30-45 minutes treatment every 2 to 3 weeks.

I hope that you are not suffering from neuropathy, but if you are, don't hesitate to contact me and get same help! We can figure out together if Kata's Way can help you. And Kata's Way is painless, very relaxing and effective. 

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. 

How do I work?

"What are you doing during the treatment?" is a valid question to ask me. And I am trying my best to explain, but sometimes I can not find the correct words. At the moment I am studying for my CE (continuing education class) and here are some explanations that I have learnt years ago, but now am reading in this book. This explanation is my own version and will not give the whole picture about your pain or nervous system but explain the way I look at things.

*Tissues want to be in an ideal position of comfort. 

This is both good thing, since the body always is trying to avoid (local) pain, and a bad thing when the most comfortable position is a learnt habit/posture which is not ideal in the big picture. I give you an example: our right leg is so used to be active during driving a car that our nervous system makes an assumpion to use that leg more than the other. That leads to over-compensation which leads to constant rotation of (right side of) the hip. That is comfortable and 'ideal position' for a leg, but not at all for the hip. 

*In an injury of any muscle, protective muscle spasms are activated to guard the injured. This is pretty much a reflex at the muscle level which means that you can not prevent this reflex to happen. 

Reflexes are amazing functions of our bodies and they are switched on instantly, but how can you switch them off, when this guarding function is no longer needed? That is a very complicated question, since our body very well  adapts to it's current levels of functioning (for example, you need to check your blood pressure and blood sugars because you can't feel changes happening). Our body adapts itself in a various, complicated ways and in my work we sometimes find a client's kinesic chain of movement functioning in a weird, adapted way because it is used to do so. In these cases we are trying to re-educate the muscles (and other soft tissues) to function in a better (and usually also original) way. 

One example of this can be a wrist pain after falling down: nothing is broken, but using your mouse on your computer  will be a bit uncomfortable the week after and you will adjust your wrist and forearm movements a bit. So,  first, muscle spasms were activated during the fall to guard the joints of your wrist. Second thing happened litte later, when muscles of the forearm adjusted to this and changed their ’normal’ pathways. Two or so weeks later there is no more pain in the wrist, but your elbow is getting to feel funky... So which one is to blaim: the wrist, where a protectice spasm did it’s job after a fall, or the elbow, which tried it’s best to change it’s movement patterns to adjust to the wrist? 

This is a simple example of one pattern of kinesic chain I am trying to figure out in my work! Each and every part of the body functions with others and sometimes my work is to be detective. And, again, I need your help to do that: You are the expert of your body and your feedback during the treatment is essential! I can not make a change, but I can lead the way for your body to make it’s own changes.

You are very wellcome to experience my treatment: Balanced is Painless and Balance is Kata’s Way!