Plans for 2022

 My dear friends. 

I can't believe how fast time goes. This year has been good to me and my family, but as you all, I am so looking forward to more 'normal'  world without masks and travel restrictions. Many of you may know that the covid situation is worsening in Northern Europe at the moment while we are just accommodating the idea of things getting better here. Please, keep your fingers crossed for the situation continuing getting better everywhere.

Last couple of years should have taught us all to evaluate our lives, lifegoals and thing we want to achieve. It is so easy on the paper when you are pouring your soul into your personal notebook or stamping down the goals and prospects for your company. It gets definitely harder, when you are supposed to put your foot down and tell everybody what you are giving up, doing less and letting go in your life. I am lucky to have people around me who understand my goals of doing less and feeling better. So here are my goals and promises for 2022:

👉I am rising my pricing 10 % (this happens every 2 years just because I am gaining new skills all the time and also because the life is getting more expensive.)

👉I am taking every 4th week off even if it affects to many of my regular clients' scheduling. This is because:

    👊I have reached limits of my physical well-being in this profession (average massage therapist works for 7 years, I am starting my 16th year in this profession.)

    👊I am also working almost every weekend as a teacher, so off time is desperately needed.

    👊I am an avid writer and unfortunately I am the type of writer who needs space and time to get to the creative zone. 

👉I plan on going to Finland for 6-8 weeks on summer!

I still appreciate each and everyone of my clients, but it has been a rough journey to get to this point. I will be steady and more slowly working on my Ortho-Bionomy skills, but won't probably apply for any certification in it. I am perfectly happy doing things Kata's Way, since it is painless and effective. 

Have a Happy Holiday Season! 

Welcome 2021!

 What a year it has been! 

If I am thinking back I feel like nothing fun or interesting happened 2020, but when I scroll down my Instagram feed, I remember so many good things! Please, do the same.

In January and February I still went to theatres for great shows and concerts. In the beginning of February the trees were in full bloom anticipating a great spring and I was volunteering with immigrants. I miss that! I also got flocked with these hilarious flamingos on my front yard by Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and got to trouble with our HOA... not the first time. 

My sister was visiting us and we made trips to museums and even Atlanta right before the covid19 stay at home hit. Luckily she was able to get home without trouble and I got bored with stay at home order in March and April. But, I did a lot of studying and even a couple of videos about how to move yourself. Check my Instagram!

I also hope that you have made your acquaintance to my dear owl Harry. His wife,  by the way, is called Meagan, and they both live in the area between my house and Blakeney Shopping Center. I was able to catch a great pics of them this summer. 

In summer I was allowed to get back to work, so I still haven't finished all the great, and thick, books that are waiting to be studied... but I did study a lot of Ortho-Bionomy and hopefully will finish my first step - associate degree - this year. Changing your way of living, eating (duh!) or working seems to be pretty tricky: I tend to slip back to my old habits all the time.

I obviously haven't been traveling this year a lot, but I have truly enjoyed taking a few trips to Asheville, Wilmington, Kure Beach and even to Savannah. Mainly to have some alone time; the ways of Finnish introverts are peculiar. I seem to need to spend time in isolation with my computer to do some writing. And computer it has been: in August I got a second job as a Finnish teacher which has been wonderful! That's where I come from and my soul is happy to be teaching - and using - my mother tongue. And I will keep teaching as much in the beginning of 2021. 

One big step was also the ability to donate blood: the restriction around mad cow disease was lifted and I am officially a Red Cross Donor! That makes me feel like I can do something to help in this many ways helpless state of pandemic. 

We all struggle a bit at the moment, right. My way of keeping myself sane and running is the Nature. I am so happy to have been able to enjoy the miracles of trees, roots, ocean, mountains, deer, owl, waves, flowers, changing colors and sparkling blooms here in North-Carolina. We have a beautiful Mother Earth to comfort us and give us strength. Go out and enjoy! Hopefully with a cup of coffee. 

2021 has had a good start and for me it will a bit more teaching and somewhat less working with bodies. Make sure to make your appointment ahead, my working hours are Mondays 10-4, Wednesdays 9-6 and Thursdays 10-4. Pricing will remain the same as 2020. 

My motto for 2021 is Don't Push, Let It Flow!

Welcome to Kata's Way, where Balanced is Painless. 

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.

At this moment

Right now I'm listening to how the sun is shining. It's beautiful. I am lucky that noticed it when most of the day all I have been feeling is coldness and frozen feet. 

In January it's perfect time to calm down, listen to your books and stretch a bit between clients. No planning ahead, struggling with Quicken or worrying about taxes. In the beginning of new year it's time to make new habits. Like listening a book in the middle of workday. Jeff Menapace's Bad Games is almost too scary though! 

How do you enjoy your January?