NALA Massage Barcelona

Hello and welcome!

My name is Oksana. I'm a massage therapist, bodywork practitioner, yoga teacher and a student of osteopathy.

Yoga, meditation and bodywork therapies have become valuable tools for me to build and maintain a healthy and resilient body and mind, embrace my emotions and explore the full range of human experiences. As a therapist and future osteopath, I recognise mind-body connection and my mission is to meet each person where they are in their journey, providing a compassionate and nurturing space to embrace the emotions and epiphanies manual therapy may uncover.

In my free time, I love to read, go for long walks while listening to inspiring podcasts, hike in nature, take cold swims under the rising sun and enjoy soothing quality time with my loved ones!

Books that I love:

Range - D. Epstein
The obstacle is the way - R. Holiday
Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship - D. Whyte
Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief - D. Kessler

Besides the language of touch, I speak Latvian, Russian, English, Spanish and Italian.

I am looking forward to meeting you!

My story

It all started many years ago, during a challenging period of my life. I was going through a breakup and studying for an MBA in Latvia after spending a few years traveling and volunteering for various youth projects around Europe with organizations as AIESEC and AEGEE. I was young and driven, starting my career in banking and later transitioning to sales and marketing.

During my MBA studies, we analyzed numerous case studies about different projects that failed due to cultural differences within teams.

Loving challenges and risks, an idea crossed my mind:

why read about other people's experiences when I can go somewhere radically different, work, perhaps fail, and learn firsthand?

A few months later, I moved to Mumbai, India, to work for the biggest expo company in India. I wanted a challenge and definitely got one! The fast-paced, loud, and culturally diverse city put me in a state of shock. Feeling exhausted and dissatisfied, I decided to give Iyengar yoga a shot, even though I was skeptical about the whole "yoga thing." Since I was already in India, I thought I might as well try it out.

To my surprise, those regular yoga sessions brought me an incredible sense of peace and inner order. I felt more accepting, loving, and curious about life. I continued attending classes and eventually made the bold choice to undergo my first yoga teacher training.

Exploring inner and outer worlds

After completing my one-year contract with the company in Mumbai, I embarked on a year-long solo journey around India and Southeast Asia. This path led me to explore Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayas and Thailand, immerse myself in Vipassana meditation, and spend time in meditation ashrams around SE Asia. While documenting my travels in a blog titled "Live your life as It would be your favorite book to read!"

The title became my mantra. I lived without a grand plan, driven by a desire to travel and explore. I aimed to learn about different lands, cultures, and my inner landscapes. So, I did exactly that: flirting with life, leaning into the unknown, and following my heart one day at a time.

The way shows the way

Eventually, I moved to New Zealand, where I started to guide my first yoga classes, encouraged by a newly made friend who, had read my travel blog where I was documenting my adventures. Back then, I was so shy and didn't believe that anyone would take me seriously as a yoga teacher. But people did, and with every class and practice, my confidence grew.

Suffering from lower back pain I sought out bodywork from a fellow teacher and holistic massage therapist. When I stood up from the massage table, my pain was gone. It was then that I thought, "I want to be able to do this! I want to gift people a pain-free life!"

Soon after, I started my first deep tissue massage course and began working in the best-rated spas in Queenstown, New Zealand. That was eight years ago.

Work as an expression of who I am

Over the years, I have delved deeply into the art of bodywork, mastering various modalities such as Deep Tissue Massage, Thai Massage, Shiatsu Bodywork, and Somatic therapies. This journey of continuous learning has now led me to pursue an osteopathy degree in Barcelona - an endeavor that is both the most challenging and exciting experience I have ever undertaken.

Living with anxiety and often experiencing anger motivated me to explore somatics and trauma studies, aiming to understand how emotional dis-ease manifests in our bodies as tension. This exploration has been transformative, allowing me to reconnect with my heart, embrace self-love, and navigate life's twists and turns with grace.

As a former competitive swimmer, my love for movement has only grown over the years. My journey has taken me from yoga to gymnastic conditioning, movement culture, mobility, and FRC training. Currently, I am passionate about "the art of eight limbs" - Muay Thai (Thai boxing) and weightlifting - reflecting my ongoing commitment to integral well-being and personal growth.

My mission is help people feel good in their bodies

Today, I am dedicated to providing tools and practices that foster deep rest, effective recovery, and lasting strength. By integrating everything I've learned along my journey, I help people live free from tension and pain, and embrace life with grace.

I still navigate anxiety and the feeling of not being good enough, or that I should be doing more. It's a journey.

But today, I know that our practice does not end on the mat or in a 60-minute class. The true practice is how we live our lives - both when everything is good and when it feels like everything is falling apart.

Thanks to my osteopathy teacher's guidance, I have transformed my relationships with my parents and healed something profound in my family tree. For this, I am forever grateful.

I deeply trust that there are no coincidences in life. Instead, we are guided by some kind of higher intelligence (universe? God?) towards our highest good. And a true intimacy is allowing ourselves to feel life fully as it unfolds: the beauty, the pain, the love, the grief, the fear, the excitement. And finding meaning in the experience.

Welcome everything, push away nothing

Openness - a willingness to look into whatever arises. It doesn't reject or get attached to a particular experience or view. It is a spacious, undefined, non-biases allowing. A total acceptance. Openness is the nature of awareness itself, and that nature allows experience to unfold.

This openness welcomes paradox and contradiction. It permits whatever energies to emerge. Openness means keeping our hearts and minds available to new information, experiences and opportunities for growth. It means having tolerance for unknown.

- from "The Five Invitations" by Frank Ostaseski