Optimal Health and Fitness brings together the basic principles of integrative medicine and functional fitness to create a company that achieves excellence in safe, effective, inspiring and empowering programs, classes and healthcare services. We strive to make every contact with our business a personal and professional experience that makes a difference in your everyday health and wellness. Our mission is to help people thrive in the shortest time possible and to teach you how to sustain your improvements by bridging the gap between awareness, choice and action. I believe that the greatest power to transform is from within. With this in mind, Optimal Health & Fitness keeps the following values at the core of its operations:

Honesty & Integrity: The health and fitness industry at large is based on advertising that promises big results for small efforts. Optimal Health & Fitness offers honest assessment, instruction and treatment, which allows clients to reach realistic goals based at where your starting point is. 

Education & Empowerment: Optimal Health & Fitness strives to educate and empower our clients with knowledge that will enhance their personal programs and to dispel common myths and misconceptions that exist on the topics of health and fitness.

Dignity & Respect: Optimal Health & Fitness views each client as a valuable human being to be treated with respect, regardless of your level of vitality or initial level of fitness, gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disease or disability.  Each client is treated with dignity and respect at all times.

Balance & Sustainabilty: Optimal Health & Fitness encourages clients to actively pursue balance in all areas of their lives. In the context of fitness, this means realistically balancing conflicting time demands, developing both nutritious and pleasant eating habits, designing challenging exercise programs which recognize the importance of rest and recovery periods, and striving to include fun and joy in motion. In the context of health, this means heightening your awareness around all your relationships in order to discover and reveal the areas that need some fine-tuning. Along with your willingness to change, we facilitate different assignments we call homework that allow you to truly transform every relationship in your life. 

Consistency: Change happens gradually over time. Most people have started a health or fitness program only to stop as soon as they got frustrated or were not seeing the results they wanted. By recognizing the value of realistic small steps and by providing support at every point in the journey, Optimal Health & Fitness can help each client strengthen their confidence, establish healthy patterns that are effective and uncover a harmonious and sustainable relations with their lifestyle.

Optimal Health & Fitness is committed to assisting each client in improving their physical fitness, health and overall quality of life. We are honored to be of service to the Santa Cruz community and beyond.

Some of Our OHF Team

LeTa B. Jussila, DAOM, CPT, FLT Provider

Leta is a Board Certified Licensed Acupuncturist and Herbalist, Certified Personal Trainer by the International Sports Sciences Association and Certified Qi Gong Instructor. She acquired her Bachelor of Arts from Syracuse University in Environmental Public Policy and her Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine from Five Branches Institute. She is currently enrolled in receiving a clinical Doctorate in Neuromuscular Pain Management from Five Branches University as well as going back to China to earn her Ph.D from Zheijiang Univeristy to continue her research on the efficacy of Chinese Medicine with weight loss. 

LeTa has earned various certifications and her clinical practice is based on the teachings of Jeffrey Yuen, world-renowned teacher of Oriental Medicine and 88th generation Daoist priest; is highly influenced by the Global Balance method of acupuncture as taught by Richard Teh-Fu Tan and embraces the lifelong work of Japanese Doctor Kiiko Matsumoto

LeTa upholds the belief that good medicine is an integrative approach and that in order to guide her patients on the road to optimal health, individual education and empowerment are vital to achieving wellness. She believes in the integration of various therapeutic modalities to best serve each individual’s health care needs. Competent and effective health care is provided not only through a wide referral network of health care specialists, but mainly through the application of acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutritional counseling, symptom questionnaire and lifestyle changes. LeTa is dedicated to genuinely care and listen to each patient to create a customized treatment plan and integrative approach, as well as educate them on their role in the program toward better health.  Her goal is to get every patient to their best state of health possible in the most efficient manner.

Because of her integrative approach to assisting people in living the best life possible, she teaches Qi Gong Stretch and Qi Gong for Stress classes in the Chi Center, outdoor fitness classes around Santa Cruz County and rewards individuals for investing in their health through the health and fitness contest called the Santa Cruz Challenge.

Because so many people spend so much of their days and evenings inside, coupled with living in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, outdoor fitness seemed like the perfect marriage. Working in the outdoors when the environment surrenders to the elements and using the different landscapes, we are able to create dynamic, full-body workout using nature's own props. Facilitating group fitness is an honor for LeTa and it shows with her relations to her clients.

She is a member of IDEA Health & Fitness Association, American Acupuncture Council, American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and California State Oriental Medical Association. She has just started a blog for her patients that will be based on the theories and principles of Chinese Medicine.

Dr. Michelle C. Bean

Caitlin Levin, Personal Trainer

Bill Marzola, Personal Trainer

Sarah Kalman, Marketing Manager