Meet Integrated You
Integrated You is an amalgamation of Katie’s personal and professional experiences. Katie has always been curious about people, their stories, and the intricacies of humans. Why do we do what we do? How do we do what we do? What makes us unique? What connects and unites us? The one thing that seems to be at the center of it all is connection. A safe connection within ourselves expands outward allowing us to feel safe enough to explore the world around us. Where does that safety come from? How does it impact our daily lives, our ability to learn, interact, and grow? At Integrated You we help you re-establish your inner safety and foster mind-body connections to help nurture and maintain that sense of safety so you can thrive in the life you seek.
Integrated You is based on the concept that each of us is our best self when we are our whole self. We all have a unique story; some parts we love, some parts are frustrating, some are exhausting, others are joyful or sorrowful, and others we try to avoid or forget. Yet our body remembers and responds, often in ways we don’t always understand or appreciate at the moment. This can be in the form of chronic pain, fatigue, allergies and GI issues, emotional outbursts, anxiety, depression, poor sleep, brain fog, sensory sensitivities, avoiding social situations, etc. In kids when their internal messaging and external messaging don’t align or are beyond their current level of cognitive development or processing skills they can present with difficulty transitioning between tasks, difficulty with changes in routine, feeding challenges, emotional outbursts, sensory processing challenges, avoiding situations, difficulty following directions, being in constant motion or scattered attention, etc.. Integrated You meets you where you are with curiosity and compassion to help identify contributing factors and provide you with tools to navigate the challenges you experience. We don’t attempt to normalize or fix people but to understand and support people to live the life they desire. Integrated You uses a whole person approach to facilitate a deeper connection to self and ones’ inner wisdom. Depending on your specific needs Katie can administer craniosacral therapy, massage and myofascial release techniques, breathwork training, neuromuscular re-education, safe and sound protocol, sensory integration techniques, and functional assessment of activities of daily living. Integrated You uses a bottom-up approach to get at the root cause of your challenges, not only helping you function better, but to live life and accomplish your goals with ease, comfort, and success.
For evaluations, we can meet at your home or in the community to discuss your concerns, offer our impressions, and help you determine if further treatment is needed. Using a holistic approach we will explore your personal background, health history, and perform physical assessments to determine the factors that are contributing to your areas of challenge. We will develop a collaborative treatment plan that is best to address your needs.
“ The greatest thing then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally as opposed to our enemy.” –William James
About Occupational Therapy
The concept of Occupational Therapy can be confusing due to its name and its wide variety of applications. Many people think occupational therapists help people do their jobs better. Which is not completely false but a little narrow. It is helpful to understand the origins when the practice began. The word “occupation” was intended to mean “the things we do in order to live.” As humans, we are complex beings who are composed of physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual components which impact our daily performance. Values, beliefs, and spirituality influence a client’s motivation to engage in occupations and give their life meaning.
Occupational therapy practitioners recognize that health is supported and maintained when clients are able to engage in home, school, workplace, and community life. Thus, practitioners are concerned not only with occupations but also with the variety of factors that empower and make possible clients’ engagement and participation in positive health-promoting occupations (Wilcock & Townsend, 2014). Occupational therapists view clients holistically, they consider client factors that involve values, beliefs, and spirituality, body functions, and body structures. They affect and are affected by performance skills, performance patterns, activity demands, and contextual and environmental factors.
It is in the process of observing a client engaging in occupations and activities that the OT is able to determine the transaction between client factors and performance.
*Wilcock, A. A., & Townsend, E. A. (2014). Occupational justice. In B. A. Boyt Schell, G. Gillen, & M. Scaffa (Eds.), Willard and Spackman’s occupational therapy (12th ed., pp. 541–552). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.