Today we’d like to introduce you to Krisia Dhyan Ramirez.
Hi Krisia Dhyan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Well, I give most credit to my mother. She has been highly influential in my upbringing. People ask me all the time why did I decide to become a Massage therapist? My answer is simple. I didn’t see it for a long time. My mother saw the gift in me since very young.
I remember being four or five years old when my mother would ask me to massage her feet. She was a hairstylist since very young and she acquired a condition from wearing stilettos that caused her ankles to be overly swollen at the end of the day. Fluid retention has always been a problem in our family but the stilettos didn’t help. Her feet were swollen all the time. I would take advantage when my mom would sit with her sisters to gossip and talk about sister stuff, I would do the massages to just get a chance to listen in on the juice! At times they would all line up and as a child it felt like I was massaging for hours! Probably not the truth, but it was my truth!
Fast forward to my senior year, I will never forget the day that her clients called me to her salon in our backyard and asked me if I had already decided what I was going to go to school for. One of them her daughter had gone to school for physical therapy and had recently graduated. She stated that it would be the profession of the next decade and suggested that I do the same. She gave me all the information and asked me my scores and thought it was a great idea to apply for acceptance to the program. At the time there were two campuses out of the university of Puerto Rico that offered physical therapy as an associate degree. I chose the one that was only on hour away. I submitted my application and was excited when I got the acceptance letter. In that program, they teach you the principles of massage therapy in the second semester of school. I was still 18 years old, when I started learning the skills. Sometimes I feel like I am still doing the same routine as I learned when I was just 18. After two years, I finished my associate degree and decided that I wanted to come to the United States to finish my last internship. So I did. My sister and I decided for Florida because she had finished a bachelor degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management and there was an opportunity for her internship at Disney. That was right after the incident of 9/11 so they canceled the Disney internships and I had to come to Florida all by myself. The medical field rarely changes, so my commitment with the hospital had already been established and I couldn’t cancel the plans. So in the summer of 2022 I came to Florida for the first time by myself, and I started my internship shortly for physical therapy assistant. I loved physical therapy. I thought I had found a profession with promise that could help my family and I live comfortably. I loved having someone who was not well and I thought having the ability to help them heal was fantastic! Well, I completed that last internship at Fl Hospital Fish Memorial in Orange City and then all I had to do was study for licensure. That’s when things got complicated. My mom moved my two sisters here to Orlando right after my internship, but we were new in this city and for a bigger picture in this country. Back then, the applications for licensure were only processed by mail. It took me six months to have all my documents in and be able to sit for licensure. At first, I didn’t have the money, and later I learned that I didn’t have enough skills to pass those board exams. I kept failing those tests. I took them three times and had to take a remedial course. Took the course and then I decided to go and take it one more time and I still failed. I couldn’t find a job that first year living here because I was always overqualified. All the praying led me to Plan B.
I was sitting one afternoon in the house on my computer, studying for my test, or at least trying to. Somehow, I ended up looking at my Yahoo! Mail and noticed an ad for an institute that offered massage therapy. I immediately thought, I could use this course to help me freshen up on the medical terminology and perhaps although I knew English already I could understand these tests better. So my plan was to get through the massage course, which was only 10 months for a certificate because I already had an associates degree. I got massages every other day and made new friends. I loved Massage school! But to me, it was only a temporary plan.
I completed the coursework and before graduation I decided to test again. One last time for physical therapy and then for Massage. I sat for the physical therapy exam and didn’t pass it by two points. It was always by two or four points. The next day it was time for the massage boards exam, and all my scores were high. I had prayed really hard for God’s will for my life. So when I failed the PT exam, I knew and understood the path.
Shortly after that, I quickly found my first job here in Florida working out of a chiropractor‘s office. They all loved that I had a physical therapy background. My heart was torn because physical therapy was my dream job but massage therapy was all I had left. So I gave it my all because I was grateful that at least I was finally working. I worked there for five months, and quickly learned I should leave that practice. That place was the hardest I’ve ever worked as a Massage therapist. But I was so hungry to work, I didn’t even know what was healthy for me. I was overworked, but I worked on so many bodies that it sharpened my skills. I left that place and went to work out of a clinic in Kissimmee. That clinic felt like home. There were a lot of Hispanics, and they pretty much let me do what I wanted mostly because they loved that I made the clients feel like they were home. I worked there for three years and left that job because I needed a vacation. That place taught me that rest and distraction are essential.
My youngest sister challenged me. I was always very scared to talk to people about my skills. She gave me two chiropractor’s offices and dared me to drop off my resume. In the first place I did, I got an immediate interview. The chiropractor saw my résumé and ran to the parking lot to call me for an interview. He loved that I had that physical therapy background and understood how skilled I was. The second place blew me off, but the chiropractor from the first place did not have any positions open. He just told me that whenever he did, he would reach out. That was HOPE. Six months later, I landed the job! I got paid more than I ever got paid working out of a chiropractor‘s office and I had a sweet schedule with weekends off. At the beginning, I worked for two chiropractors, Dr. O (fictitious name) and Dr. Lonnie Meade. That shortly left because one of them kept me busy and so I couldn’t be of service to him. Although I barely did work for Dr. Meade, he learned to believe in my work. He would often tell me that I made his adjustments easier. Dr. O ended up becoming my only boss for the three years I worked for the clinic because I became his right hand person. With Dr. O, I learned to multitask. I was a massage therapist, receptionist, medical assistance, and helped maintain the clinic clean, I opened the clinic and closed as well. The clinic was growing, but I couldn’t keep up with all the work and started becoming demotivated so I decided to go back to school.
They say, “failure is written in pencil.” I became determined that I could rewrite that physical therapy story. The lowest scores in my Physical therapy boards were in the Musculoskeletal and the Respiratory section. I researched ways to continue working towards the physical therapy degree. By then you needed a masters degree to become a physical therapist, so I opted for searching for a bachelors degree that could lead me there. I found a Cardiopulmonary Science degree that was being offered at UCF. I could start with an associates degree in Respiratory Care and then get licensed to work in that while going to school for the rest of the plan. I was willing to do whatever was necessary for completion, even if it took me a long time. I just had to start with prerequisites that required me to leave work earlier. Dr. O wasn’t too happy because it would mean he would have to close on those days. But I was committed to my new plan. And so I quit my job because I wanted to follow my dream. I was able to find a job working as a contractor for Florida hospital (currently Advent Health) doing Massage therapy. For the first time in my life, I was picking my dream before others.
This new journey required risking, faith, and hard work. The first week I only saw three clients. I told my front desk scheduler, if this is all I can get, I will have to quit. Nobody can live off of three massages in a week. So we created a plan. I would stay close to the Rehab Clinic in case someone needed a massage. I was hungry for work so I would sit across the street at a Panera at 8:45 am and would wait until I was called for work. All I had to do was cross the street. And that receptionist took it as a challenge to fill my schedule. I worked almost four years for the hospital. At the third year, I graduated from respiratory school, but my schedule was filled about three weeks out. A year after graduation I was working five days a week from 9 am to 6 pm, studying and taking boards exam. Once again, I could not pass them, I was a horrible test taker! I was doing so well doing massages at the rehab clinic. At the end of the month, I would look at the stats, and I was the most hard working therapist. As a contractor you were required to only work 16 hours a week, and I was doing so much more. I was working overtime. I needed to stick with the plan, so I had to commit to passing the respiratory care boards so that I could get licensed and move on to UCF and physical therapy school. There were three exams for the respiratory care registry and to be honest, I took all three at least eight times. I worked to pay and take those exams over and over again. I was relentless! That experience helped me get really strong on not giving up when I had a vision and a purpose.
That journey allowed me to work as a Respiratory Therapist at ORMC (Currently Orlando Health- the Trauma Hospital) where the Pulse Victims got care. Which by the way, I was the Respiratory therapist on the Trauma Stepdown floor the day after that incident. There is always a purpose for every journey. I remember I stopped working there the week that that last Pulse Victim patient got discharged. That is a whole other story to dive into. That week I got a FaceTime call with a long time friend that was a nurse at Nemours Children’s Hospital. She called me with the Respiratory Therapy Department Manager. He wanted me to interview for a position there. I took the call and later went for the interview and got the job. During this time, I’m working as a respiratory therapist full-time and working massage therapy as a side gig. Many times I did the massage just when I wanted it extra cash to do the things I wanted to do, but I never really took it serious. Then in 2019, I had been working respiratory for almost 10 years and I wanted to have a little bit more independence and time for myself. I felt like I had spent so many years just serving my community and gaining education for it and I had joined an MLM that had shown me the possibilities of time freedom with the right business and so I thought that with those two things I could live the life that I dream than imagine I worked a lot. I did three jobs and I gave my all touching people‘s lives through them, and so to handle the stress I had decided to dance as a hobby. I didn’t wanna sit down and watch dancing with the stars at night. I wanted to dance myself because I’ve been a dancer since I was three or four years old. I got into a local dance studio and many times I did that on and off, but I finally got serious that I wanted to do it professionally. So I joined the ladies styling team and I joined the couple’s Training Team. They offered seasons of training. Beginning of 2019 we had finished our main performance and we were just doing performances in small locations here and there. And I had been a part of all of the performances and had made a promise to God that I wasn’t going to do any more dancing in 2019. I had prayed to God and asked for a successful business so that I could do it full-time. I had decided that I wasn’t going to invest my time in dance anymore. I just thought I was spending too much time and energy and my business required those two things to grow and get established. Then my dance coach convinced me to do one more performance for Valentine’s Day and I agreed to do it. On February 13, 2019, I was in practice and suffered a head injury due to a prank done by my dance partner. Since that night I have had what looked like seizure like spells. Due to the symptoms presenting so bad, I had to pause my business and I couldn’t go to work at the hospital. I used to work in a pediatric ICU and my symptoms would get worse because of the overstimulation in my work environment. I was so sensitive at the beginning that it took the concussion specialist doctors three weeks to be able to completely test my brain capability and function. After three weeks of testing, they diagnosed me cognitively impaired due to the traumatic brain injury. You see, when my dance partner pranked me, he had me do a side cartwheel as he came from behind to surprise me. But he failed, possibly due to my surprise reaction. As I flipped, I hit the side of his knee and knocked him out and he lost control of my body so my head after hitting his knee, went straight down to the ground, and then kept rebounding towards the right side of my head and then I fell back. My audiologist after the head injury explained that when you hit your head once your brain rebounds 2 to 3 times and so as I was told, I hit my head four times. I can’t even imagine how bad! I just know I felt a horrible pain on my head and since that accident l have never been the same. My brain was so inflamed that light and noises, pain and any kind of strong emotion triggered me into seizure like spells. Sometimes they lasted an hour, sometimes a few minutes. I always kept a notebook to help me track so that when I went to my doctor’s office I could explain with detail what was happening to my body. All of the specialist that evaluated me would tell me that they’ve never seen a head trauma with such response. Once they diagnose me and the made me cognitively impaired, I could not return to work at the hospital or doing massages for my business. My doctor asked me to be in a dark room to help rest the brain from stimulation. At that point, I felt like I was the MVP from the ICU on a bench. I’ve always worked so hard to take care of my patients in the hospital, and advocate for them. So I could not understand why I had to be in a room that at the time felt like the lowest place, and it was in all senses the darkest place. I could never be by myself because of the episodes that were happening multiple times daily. My mother came from Dominican Republic and became my caregiver as well as my oldest sister Kenee. But in life, they say God is present through your highs and your lows, and that was so true. As I felt that I was in the lowest place in my personal and professional career at that same time, my business was going viral in a mommy Fitness Facebook group. I had one client that I had treated for a long time that had placed my business information in her Mommy bootcamp group. About two or three of those moms had come to see me at the beginning of the year right before my head injury and they had gone into that Facebook group to share with other moms how much I had helped them feel better. Per my concussion doctor‘s order, healing required time in a dark room. It was hard to handle any light, so I moved into my sister’s guest room and that became my dark room for 3 months. During that time I was to stay away from any blue screens because having the spells multiple times a day, sometimes 3-4 times and then lasting 60-90 minutes every time meant that my brain was overstimulated, highly injured and extremely sensitive. I collected hats before my head injury, I thought they were a great accessory. But they became my tools, that and sunglasses. Florida is extremely sunny, and that spring and summer felt so painful because of all the sun. I wore glasses and hats every time I left the room. One of the girls at the hospital suggested blue light blocking glasses. So they became another tool at work and many of the places I had to go to. During the first 6 months I could not work at the hospital. So the doctors suggested to try doing massage at least 1 person a day to fulfill the need for some kind of service, connection with the world outside of mine and allowing for some income for my therapy. I had therapy every day. Physical therapy 3 times a week and Osteopathic treatments twice a week alternating between the physical therapy days. I honestly don’t know how I paid my bills that year. While I was healing, I had women from that mommy bootcamp group making appointments. My sister would call or text them and explain my situation because the schedule was blocked 4 weeks out. We just didn’t know how soon or not I would heal. We had all of the hopes to return to all that I used to do prior to my injury. I went to 19 specialists, the best in Orlando because they understood that it was a rare case and I was a good clinician in the children’s ICU that wanted to get back to work. They did 6-7 Head CT scans and just about the same MRI’s. They couldn’t find the damage. At some point they thought that there was a leak of the cerebrospinal fluid because fluid kept coming out one side of the nose upon exertion. It was not enough fluid to diagnose and not enough damage in the nerves to be seen in imaging. But the brain was hypersensitive. Those spells looked scary like uncontrollable seizures and the episodes only got worst. I suffered one at work that looked like I was having a stroke. So I was sent by way of ambulance to the adult hospital to be treated because I couldn’t move one side of my body and I couldn’t speak and my face had involuntary movements on one side only and I couldn’t control my bowels ( I was peeing on myself, so embarrassing!). See All this was too much to handle. That neurologist that evaluated me for the follow up asked for an emergent evaluation at Mayo Clinic and three months later I saw the first neurologist there. She was a young doctor. She was a movement disorder neurologist. She confirmed that my condition was not a movement disorder but a result of the head trauma. She recognized it from her residency journey up north she had seen many patients with that manifestation of overstimulated damaged nerves due to trauma. So she recommended brain rehab which was actually Pain Rehab. She also referred me to a migraine neurologist that explained “that seeing my nerve damage through a CT scan is like seeing people from the moon.” That neurologist also recommended brain rehab mostly because I was doing my healing totally holistically, without using conventional meds to calm the nervous system.
The brain/pain rehab experience went for a week until we got interrupted due to the world being paralyzed by the existence of Covid on March 5, 2020. The rehab had to close because all of us came from all over the United States. So I was sent home for two more months to work on my rehab. Although I was an active respiratory therapist and highly in demand, they couldn’t release me because of my brain damage. The world was in desperate need of more Respiratory therapists and I felt like I was an MVP sitting on a bench. I couldn’t help. So I made my full time job my rehab. That became my focus. I had to let go of what I could not control. I did my exercises twice a day. I became my own physical therapist, I mean, I did go to school for it! I had all the knowledge and the ability to rehab myself back. In the meantime I called Mayo every day asking when they would reopen. When they did, I was the first one they called back. I went through the full 3 week program and then was given a chance to return to work for reconditioning. That meant I was only allowed to start with 4 hours of work per day. And every other day doing massage. In the meantime my occupational therapist kept motivating me to consider massage as my full time job to allow my brain to have its time to heal. I was in full denial. The work conditioning went on for 6 months and the most I could do was an 8 hour day. 10 hours was an epic fail. So my managers decided to send me to try working in the Sleep Lab. That was a blessing. I didn’t want to do it but it taught me what Dr. Sletten at Mayo Clinic tried to teach me which was the fact that in order to heal, sleep was essential. I thank a little girl wherever she is for that lesson. The Nemours team was loving, patient and forever kind with my healing journey for two years. Nobody ever complained for the support they gave me while I was healing. They never removed my health insurance during that time, even in times when I wasn’t working. It served me well.
One day I was sitting looking at the hours that I was working at the hospital and the income that it was generating and I did that for 6 months with the massage business. It kept growing every month. And the moms had made me viral on that Facebook group. So I took a leap of faith and decided to become a full time massage therapist. I had a Flight Respiratory therapist that encouraged me to be kind to my body and allow it to heal without having to worry about the constant spells due to the overstimulation in the hospital. So many little details were paving the way. I left the hospital in Dec 2021 and became a full time business owner in January 2022. By August 2022, I got an opportunity to open my own spa suite. I had the hardest month in July 2022 financially in my business. If I would’ve made my decision based on that month’s income I would’ve never had the chance to live this opportunity thus far. I have been blessed with the support of family, coworkers and patients that have supported my business and they’ve done the word of mouth about my services. My business has been built about 85-90% through word of mouth. It has been a truly unique experience. Google has helped some since I moved in to the suite because I was able to claim the location. But my business was built with the word of mouth and the reviews mostly of those moms from Flock fitness and my other clients that have followed me 15+ years. I have been blessed. The lotus on my logo is a reminder from a post that I came across on Pinterest during those months in the dark room. It said, ”Just like the lotus, we too have the ability to rise from the mud, bloom out of the darkness and radiate into the world!”
I am currently building my business and in my spare time training my service dog Koquito which was a gift to myself when I left the hospital. He is a great chocolate labrador retriever born of two service dogs. He should be fully trained by the end of this year. I am training him with a company called K9 Got your Six in Chuluota, FL. It’s been a beautiful experience because sometimes when I take Koquito to the spa, I see the joy in my patients. Most of them are dog owners, and the ones that are not understand that I am better to serve them with him by my side. This journey has been a blessing. It’s taught me to lean into God for every moment of my day and to trust Him and all that He is doing with my life. He is intentional! He doesn’t make mistakes. There is a reason and purpose for everything under the sun. I can’t wait to see all that He will continue to do in my life to show His mighty glory.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been a smooth journey at all! Like I mentioned, “Failure is written in pencil!” We have the ability to thrive despite our circumstances.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Krisia Massage and Wellness?
I offer therapeutic massage services to families. I believe that to bring peace to the world, you have to start with bringing peace and overall wellness to yourself and your family and then you can share that with the world.
I am most known for the therapeutic massage services that I love to give and what sets me apart from others is my thorough medical background where I studies physical therapy first, massage therapy, respiratory therapy, sleep medicine and now doula work. I see the body as a whole and understand how it all works and mostly how pain feels by my own personal traumatic experience. The traumatic experience helped me learn and understand the benefits of Craniosacral therapy. I mostly do therapeutic treatments that are tailored to every individual client depending on their needs for the session. I have a variety of tools like hots stones, bamboos and FIR infrared light that I use to achieve overall relaxation.
Pricing:
- Swedish and Deep tissue massage $50/30 minutes , $99/hour, $129/90 minutes
- Pregnancy massage $89/hour, $119/ 90 min
- Hot Stone Massage $189, 90 minutes
- Tian di Bamboo Massage $179/90 minutes
- Hima Rose Stone Massage $149/60 minutes, $189/90 minutes
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.massagebook.com/Casselberry~Massage~krisia?src=external
- Instagram: instagram.com/iamrenewedbyk
- Facebook: Facebook.com/Krisiamassageandwellness
Image Credits
Jose Ivan Higuera – for images with uniforms.
Https://instagram.com/_jocho
The rest are mine.
