Today we’d like to introduce you to Kachina Abeita.
Hi Kachina, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hello, officially I am a Feldenkrais Practitioner® and Medicinal Aromatherapist. I’ve built a diverse practice here in Dallas over the past 43 years learning from the uniqueness of each individual I’ve touched and taught.
My professional journey from offering massages to becoming a somatic movement specialist has been a path of stepping stones. Pausing to find balance, sitting in the unknown then feeling for the next step has held the magic for synchronicity and divine guidance to take me into a life of service and healing so deeply fulfilling and interesting for myself and my clients.
Somatic movement offers a path for self knowledge and self trust. My experience with somatic inquiry really began as a kid in competitive dance and figure roller skating. I was timid and shy and thought I wasn’t good with people because I froze up when I had to talk. But through an intensely focused figure skating practice I learned I could escape awkward social interaction while developing a skill set I’d put into my practice later in life. Skills such as focused attention, listening deeply, keenly observing subtle detailed differences and figuring out how to do things differently to change the outcome.Yes, rolling around for hours on those figure circles, keeping that thin line between
my 4 wheels exercised a subtle control of my neuro muscular ability to turn and balance around my own axis which renews its value for clients who have issues with falling.
Later at age 28, with 3 yrs of college but no degree, I left Austin and the gypsy lifestyle of a Renaissance Fair vendor and moved back in with my parents to get a “real job in the real world”. Just days before Kelly Services responded with a job offer as a temporary secretary, a friend of a friend asked me to take over her massage therapy business while she went on a spiritual retreat that summer of 1981. Thus began my “real vocation” in place of a real job.
Apparently I had unexplored gifts of healing hands to develop and so averted a path of dead ends and failures since I had NO clerical skills at all but was brimming with a sensitive touch and intuitive potential.
In those early years as a massage therapist, I found mentors and teachers with intuitive healing abilities and had many years of practice before Texas even required a massage license. Mostly I learned by osmosis, when receiving body work, and by opportunity when working with so many different bodies with different pain or stress patterns and varied responses.
Following my curiosity through the many techniques and methods being offered in the emerging world of “healing
arts” I studied and now integrate into my current practice the energy systems of Polarity Therapy, Jin Shen Jytsu, Acupressure, Reflexology along with Aromatherapy. And
most recently have been influenced by the Body-Mind Centering teachings of Embodied Anatomy.
My sessions are grounded in my foundation in the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education which helps me address the structural issues people have with their posture or scoliosis or joint injury or age related weaknesses or the neuro-muscular aspects of improving their golf or tennis game. My clientele has included young musicians, actors, dancers, runners and a race walker along with ordinary folks with ordinary aches & pains. The Feldenkrais training launched a full career in playing with movement to expand awareness, brain function & one’s sense of self beyond relieving pain.
At the same time my love of precision led me to embrace Iyengar Yoga, a rigorous system of physical refinement, rooted in spiritual philosophy. It was a perfect discipline allowing me to thrive and deepen my understanding of the physical and energetic bodies. It strongly influences how I support and position people on the table for postural alignment and to naturally open energy flows and release tensions. I taught yoga and eventually partnered with Fred Dowd to establish the Dallas Yoga Center that has been evolved into a thriving yoga community by David Sunshine, its current owner.
The next beautiful ingredient in the alchemy of my work was to study martial arts. Finding Grand Master Lee to teach me the profoundly grounding & empowering practices of Tai Chi & Chi Gong was the blessed next step. It gave an embodied experience of unblocking energy flows to strengthen and heal the body. It was the inner bridge that brought my interest in energy systems, the nervous system, and structure all together. And is most useful in my work with us Baby Boomers to accept gentleness in actions and loving kindness towards ourselves as we strive to keep our aging bodies happy and thriving.
What creates the sacred during my sessions and opens up the emotional and mental bodies to transformation is the power of plant medicine. Early on in my career, my own history with migraine headaches led me to rely on the healing effects of essential oils. I started out making an individual blend for each massage client at each session keeping notes of the blends and the shifts in their mental, emotional, and energetic states. This process revealed that with the support of the plant essences people came to a deeper connection with their authentic self, resulting in greater emotional freedom and mental stress relief.
Today I work exclusively with the essential oil company called Wisdom of the Earth. These high-frequency medicinal plant and tree essences are of a quality I had not experienced before and will elevate your treatment with me into a safe and sacred space. With the increase of stress,
loss and trauma so many of us have endured in recent years the need for the soothing emotional and mental support they give is remarkably fulfilled.
Over the past 40-plus years I’ve enjoyed evolving my practice to offer bodywork sessions I call Essential Somatic Integration combining the medicinal plant essences with the structural and the energy work for a truly holistic experience of oneself. My office is in North Dallas but will be moving to Oak Cliff this coming Spring of 2024!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the obvious struggles early on was a cultural conflict of perspectives/intentions/motivations. I (using the Feldenkrais Method®) was trying to introduce a SLOW, GENTLE, EFFORTLESS movement practice that was about orienting our brains to a different criteria, towards what is easy, simple, smooth, comfortable, and not effortful in the era of NO PAIN, NO GAIN and the rising popularity of aerobic exercise dance classes. The idea of giving value to our sensations and our perceptions of ourself as we moved our bodies slowly with awareness was not an easy sell. It would take many, many years for consciousness to shift and our Dallas community to slowly embrace these
concepts as preferred ways of being. I’m so happy its time has come.
Another challenge was with the term “woo woo” being attached to anything considered New Age (which was defined as dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural, or unscientific). There was a sense of needing to keep under the radar. Being labeled as “alternative therapies” when in fact, much of what I learned and taught was rooted in traditional Eastern medicine or ancient yogic traditions, indigenous wisdom, or cutting-edge neuroscience, it still held less value. So oddly, it was best to keep a low profile, help people the best I could with whatever I had in my tool chest or “bag of tricks” and certainly don’t boast about what I do. I would not have had the courage nor inclination to speak about myself as I am now back then. It’s so wonderful that times have changed and people are welcoming the health benefits of the “alternative therapies”.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I reached a genuine place of joy in my practice a while back when I felt it was time to “come out of my wizard closet” and stop trying to compartmentalize my different skills or box myself into one professional association. I am not just a Feldenkrais Practitioner® nor just an aromatherapist nor energy worker…etc.
What do I do? One thing I do is teach how to listen to the constant feedback your body sends you. Which translates into helping people figure out how to get out of their pain patterns…Low back, shoulder neck knees, jaws, etc by changing HOW they move. I love being the detective, looking for the clues, paying attention to the smallest things and teaching the simple solutions to what limits our ability to live as we like.
When we ask for help we need to be seen and heard so my best abilities are my observational skills and the instinctive capacity to sense the many layers and depths of people when they are open and seeking support in their healing or self-discovery process. Seeing into, feeling through, asking the pertinent question is something I am grateful & proud to offer.
My favorite thing is that because I’ve built my practice mostly by word of mouth I not only have a variety of clients that I’ve served I also have worked with their friends and relatives. I’ve gotten to experience some of their community. And that warms my heart! I am grateful for them all.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
So, I’ll leave you with this…there are places in this world of success and fulfilling careers for introverts…even special places where your quietness or timidness or sensitivity is a gift to the people around you.
And not every path is lined with flood lights for you to see in full detail all the way up the road all that is to come to you. You’ll need to trust…in yourself, in your higher power… follow your heart and place one foot in front of the other…feel for the next stepping stone. You’ll get to where you’re meant to be, even through the dark…
Pricing:
- $130 Feldenkrais Functional Integration®
- $150/1 hr Essential Somatic Integration
- $200/90min Essential Somatic Integration
- $100/75min Aromatherapy Consultation & Anointing
- Sliding Scale Pricing available as needed
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kachinaabeita.com
