07 - Suzy Bolt - healing your mind, body & soul

Episode 07 of the Long Covid Podcast is a conversation with Suzy Bolt from 360 Mind Body Soul. Suzy has recovered from Long Covid - it's both inspiring and useful to hear what has helped her to recover and how she used her knowledge as a Yoga teacher & NLP coach as well as experience with talking therapies to aid recovery.

Suzy is now using her experiences to help others - hear about her Rest, Repair, Recover program for Long Covid sufferers, the research & interviews she has done and how the mind, body and soul are interconnected. Listening to Suzy gave me so many "lightbulb" moments about my recovery - I hope it will for you too.

360 Mind Body Soul website: https://www.360mindbodysoul.co.uk/

Suzy's Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1095053437543132
& Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdUIN1Pu42E4SNTFKz51mkA

Stasis breathing https://www.stasis.life/

Nicole Sachs – The Cure for Chronic Pain - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-tz1Du69PhcBkC3-9_Mgmw & Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cure-for-chronic-pain-with-nicole-sachs-lcsw/id1439580309

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For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Welcome to the long COVID podcast with me. Jackie Baxter, I am really excited to bring you today's episode. Please do check out the links in the show notes where you can find the podcast, website, social media and support group, as well as a link to buy me a coffee if you are able, you should not rely on any medical information contained in this podcast and related materials in making medical health related or other decisions, please do consult a doctor or other health professional. I love to hear from you, if you've got any suggestions or feedback or just want to say hey, then please do get in touch. I really hope you enjoy this episode. So here we go.

Jackie Baxter  
Welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here, so maybe we can start off with introducing yourself. Who are you and what did you do before COVID?

Suzy Bolt  
Well, hi, I am Susie bolt, and I have worked for many, many years, coming up to two and a half to three decades now, as a yoga teacher and a coach and a trainer and facilitator and pre COVID. All of my work was in person, so I was traveling around a lot and working with a lot of different university teams. So I did a lot of work with university leadership teams. I've worked with Oxford, Edinburgh, Sussex, UCL, various places, and I used to work a lot with helping teams move through difficult conversations and looking at strategy. And then I had one to one clients that I would coach, mainly around life coaching, particularly career coaching, looking at beliefs. That was a really big thing for me. And then the kind of physical side of the work, the yoga teaching, I always think it's a bit like coaching, but just using the body, so getting people to have really positive relationships with their body, to feel at home in themselves, to give them the life that they want. So it all kind of tied up into one big package, and then COVID came along, and suddenly I couldn't see any of the people that I worked with. So that was an interesting moment. And actually I was running a workshop for the Pitt rivers Museum, their leadership team, and they were talking about COVID, that it was coming. So this was early in March, and I was facilitating a conversation around, so what are you going to do? What's the plan? And as we sat there in this room, you know, first of all, we were kind of going, should we be wearing masks? You know, this is really early March, and no one was really kind of talking about it, or knew quite what to do. And they were a bit like, we really should be taking this seriously. We spent the day talking about what they were doing on the way home, on the train from Oxford to bright and I went, what am I going to do?

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, at that point when I was similar to you, I was still working early March, you know, I was traveling through to Edinburgh from Glasgow, teaching, you know, hundreds of children a week. And we were just, I don't know, I think looking back on it, we were quite naive, weren't we at that point, but that's hindsight for you. Of course,

Suzy Bolt  
we were, how could we know?

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Looking back on it, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near a school. But

Unknown Speaker  
so what were your experiences

Jackie Baxter  
with COVID itself, and then following on from that long COVID?

Suzy Bolt  
I would say my COVID symptoms developed the week after lockdown. Really kicked in. I was probably aware of it acutely on sort of day one as being this is different to anything that I've ever been ill with before. And I got a really bizarre range of symptoms, none of which the media was talking about, you know. So I got kind of what felt like intense poisoning, and then a slightly kind of delirious kind of malaria like, sort of mental state. I felt icy, cold shivers constantly this, but in a kind of way that it was traveling around my body, through my head, down my chest, in a kind of Oh, my God, I've been invaded by an alien kind of feeling. And whenever I ate or drank anything, it made me feel like I'd been poisoned with whatever it was I was eating. I had a temperature, so I did have a fever, and I felt fluid, but without anything coming out. There was nothing coming out of my nose. There weren't any of the kind of, Oh yes, I recognize this as an illness. Just the combination of symptoms was so bizarre. I remember sitting on the bed and going, this has got to be COVID. It can't be anything else. There was nothing else going around that people are talking about. But, you know, my husband went, Well, don't be ridiculous. You know, you're breathing fine and you're not coughing. I went, yeah, there's just got to be more to it. There's got to be other people out there that are doing this version of it. I kind of rode that storm for a bit because, of course, as I just said, all of my work suddenly disappeared overnight, and I went into a massive reinvention overdraft. Five so managed to set up a well being platform. Within about four days, got a whole load of other teachers and just went, let's put all of our work online. I'll host it as a platform. This is going to be hard. You know, this thing that we're being asked to do is going to be really challenging. So let's bring in mindfulness, let's bring in yoga, let's bring in hip classes. Let's bring in Pilates and give people structure to their days. So I was really wedded to continuing with my part in that as the kind of yoga teacher, and because I was trying to organize all of that and build the website, and, you know, get all of the kind of timetabling, and there was, you know, I was having a couple of 100 people sort of emailing me with saying, Well, can we join that class? Can we join this one? And there wasn't a sort of a process for it. So I was sort of evolving all the processes whilst being ill with COVID. So I managed to kind of pretend that I was making it work for about six weeks, and then I fell off a cliff. And I think that's a really common story for a lot of people. They especially in the early days when we didn't really know anything about what this virus was doing to us, you know, we were seeing what was happening to the stories that made it into the media. But if you were at home and that wasn't you, then you were thinking, well, I've got away with it, you know. So I just kept going and kept going. Felt iller and iller in a way that was really bringing me onto my hands and knees. And then by kind of week seven, eight, I was absolutely gone. Just bed bound. Felt like I was dying. My body just started imploding. That's, yeah, it was downhill massively from there. Yeah, that

Jackie Baxter  
sounds so familiar, like, again, a lot of the people that remained at home, many of whom maybe should have been in hospital, but because the bar for admissions was so high, did stay at home that did then start to recover, and thought, like you say that they got away with it. Well, you know, I'm fit and healthy. I've had my COVID. It's over now, you know, and then the long COVID kind of symptoms kicked in two, three months later, it's, it's becoming much more common.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, I would say at month three was probably the worst moment. So that point where I kind of, you know, I really do describe it as falling off a cliff, I then got quite seriously ill, to the point where my doctor sent an ambulance for me and went, you're going into hospital. Now, I was on the phone to him, and he went, we can't do this anymore. You've got to go in now and be seen. So for me, that was a relief. You know, the moment paramedics walked into the house, it was like, Oh, good, because we've been making this up as we go along here. I've been eating natural yogurt and taking paracetamol, and I don't think it's helping me. So actually, for me, that was a really interesting turning point, because I went in and they did all the battery of tests, which they do, and they said you are fit, and well, we can see that you're not well, that actually all of your stats tell us that you're good, you're going to be okay, but we can see that you just going to need to give yourself some time To recover from this, because this virus is vicious. It is killing people, and it's triggered off a bunch of reactions in your body, but you're going to be okay go home. So they literally chucked me out at like, three in the morning with my little bag, and when you can go home now quickly, please leave so off I went in the night, going right? So it's just me. And you know, that was a really great turning point, because that was the point where I felt it's back in my hands, because they've gone all the stuff that we should be worried about, you're not displaying. And you know, when I was in there with other people, most of whom had blood clots on their lungs, and they were not looking great, and they said to me, you're the healthiest person in here, probably out of the staff too, you know, with just looking at your age and your stats and your physical health generally. But they so, they said, Just go away from here as fast as you can. So I kind of left with a tiny bit of a spring in my step, almost, you know, admittedly, was, was still very, very poorly. But so that was the point at which I set up the Facebook group, because I knew I need help with this, and I need to focus on my recovery now, and not my illness. So I wanted to separate those two things out. So that's when I set up a Facebook group, which now is very much focused on, what are the things that you can do to help yourself now

Jackie Baxter  
I'll, I'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes, along with the websites and other things so people can access that. Have you managed to recover now? Or are you sort of still mid we'll be right back. I'm interrupting myself for a second to tell you about long COVID breathing. The Fabulous Vicky Jones and I have teamed up to bring you long COVID breathing. We are both passionate about sharing our expertise and experience of the breath and how incredibly helpful that can be with long COVID, we've worked together to develop a course that is specifically tailored to those with long COVID. It's a six week course with 12 sessions, all delivered online. The community feel and learning that we're all sharing is such a joy to find out more information. And to sign up for our courses, workshops and other shorter sessions, please check out the link below long COVID breathing.com or email, long covidbreathing@gmail.com to start your breathing journey with us.

Speaker 1  
No, I think it's a really good question, because actually I call myself completely recovered. And anything that comes along now that kind of kicks me in the pants a little bit, I just go, oh, you know, yeah, I need to slow down, or I need to do things differently. Like yesterday, I had the burning pain in my lung, which was quite a significant part of my illness when I was at my most unwell, and for about four or five months afterwards, my right lung was like there was a bonfire in it all the time. And you know, sometimes that comes back, but when it comes back, I don't think, Oh, I've got long COVID still. I go, Oh, look, there's that pain in my lung. I know there's nothing wrong with you. You've had a CT scan. And, you know, I'm reassured by that. I know not everyone gets what they need from those things, and they need further tests. But, you know, I am functioning fully as myself again. And yes, I have a burning lung. Sometimes, yes, my heart has palpitations. Sometimes, these are not things that freak me out anymore. I think I had pneumonia, a very, very stress related, you know, build up towards pneumonia about six years ago, and my heart first, then started to do things that had never happened before. And I learned about my heart, and I learned about stress, and, you know, what was occurring in my body, so I'd sort of taken medication a little bit at that point, and then decided to come off it and just work with myself to get my autonomic nervous system to calm down. I'd been going through a particularly difficult time in my personal life, and for sure, you know, it was showing up in my body, not surprisingly, in my heart, you know, so for me, that all made sense. And so when my heart started kind of misfiring again. It wasn't as terrifying as I think perhaps it was the first time, you know, the first time, six years ago, I went into a and e3 times with a heart that was doing things that, you know, the doctors would just like go to A and E right now. But this time around, I was much more sort of settled within my own symptoms, I suppose, and a little bit less afraid of what it might all mean. I do say unrecovered, and I think we're all changed by COVID, right? It's a pretty vicious virus that come in and it does damage. And, you know, there are little bits of my body that that bears those battle scars. Definitely, I don't think about myself as still in recovery in that way, in the same way I've recovered, the stars still itch sometimes. Let's just say it like that.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, that's great that you're able to not panic as well, you know, to kind of understand what to worry about and what not to worry about. I definitely find that,

Speaker 1  
yeah, and I think, you know, for many people, they've never been ill like this before. They've never been this ill before, and it's absolutely terrifying. You know, it really is. And a lot of people in that kind of first wave didn't get any support unless you were not breathing, and then you might have got lucky if they'd caught you in time. But you know, everyone else was just basically told, just get off the phone. You know, we can't help you. We don't really know. We don't really know. We can't explain what's happening. But if you're breathing, then you're winning at this. And that was kind of it on your left to go. Well, why have I developed a stammer? Why do my lungs feel like they're collapsing? Why can't I stand up anymore? Why when I eat or drink anything, does it go through me like I've eaten something poisonous? Why is my whole body shaking? What is this icy thing in me? All of these bizarre things that COVID triggers off, and they're terrifying. And I think actually for me, and I don't know about you, but for me, I think it was probably more terrifying for the people around me, because they were watching, whereas when you're so ill, you're just in it, you know. And I was just in my own little world, you know, at the peak of my being unwell, I was just in kind of cloud cuckoo land, disappearing into my bed. But the people that are watching are going, oh my goodness, they're disappearing. And I think that's really, really terrifying. So, yeah, I think everyone is has got some kind of trauma. If you've been around someone with this, the people around you, the people in it, people doing it, I think, you know, never mind the people who are kind of on the front line trying to help, but there's collective trauma that needs recovery from. I think, yeah, there absolutely

Jackie Baxter  
is that feeling of abandonment and just being, you know, left. There are people worse off than me, but that doesn't sort of make it any better. When you can't breathe, I'm

Unknown Speaker  
feeling pretty bad.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, exactly, yes. I don't really care that there are people worse than me? Because I literally feel like I'm about to die. Yeah, it's incredibly traumatic. And I think yeah, a lot of those scars will still be there for a lot of people, yeah, both physically and mentally. I think like, oh, without doubt.

Speaker 1  
And I think actually, it's a really important part of the recovery to acknowledge that those scars are there and that trauma is there, and to actually work on that. Because. It will be some of that that keeps the experience persisting. It's very difficult for the body to heal. If it's still terrified of an experience that it's holding on to, it's all connected, isn't it? It is very much. So yeah, there was a kind of aha moment for me, and I know when I shared it with other people, it was the Nicole sex podcasts, because she she does a podcast. You may have come across it. You're nodding. I can see her how to manage chronic pain, or the cure for chronic pain. And her thing is, you can't just heal the pain. You've got to heal everything else in your mind and body. You know, you're not just operating in isolation. You know, with this one specific pain, there's a whole lot of stuff that kind of supports that pain there. And that was a really great moment for me, where I went. We can't just look at the symptoms. In fact, the symptoms are just a manifestation of something that's going on underneath. We need to really take on the whole shebang and get stuck in and you know, one of the first things I did to help myself was get into therapy. I've had counseling training. I'm a trained NLP Master Practitioner. I knew that my mind needed to have the kind of pathways cleared in order for me to physically recover. And so it wasn't a long, thought out decision. It was something I just went, Okay, I'm ready to talk for 50 minutes. I'm going to get into therapy and I'm going to talk about this, because that was hard and that was scary, and I need to move out of it. And so by August, I was, you know, working with a counselor and kind of processing the experience and looking at what it brought up for me, and looking at those dark moments, and allowing myself just to kind of come to terms with it and put it to bed. And that helped me hugely, hugely. And I'm still talking to him now, you know, while everything else that kind of comes my way as a result of all of the work that's happening. It's just great to have a kind of sounding board.

Jackie Baxter  
I've heard a couple of other people mentioned similar, and I should probably have listened to them, like a year ago, but it's

Unknown Speaker  
never too late. That's all I'm gonna say. I

Jackie Baxter  
know. Yeah, no, that's, that's my to do list for today. Actually, I think, like you say, admitting that you need to, it's probably a hard thing. I certainly find that, well, I think for

Speaker 1  
a lot of people, the idea of talking to someone, or that you might have something in your mind that is preventing you from kind of recovering, or, you know, anything like that. Well, that's to do with mental health, and I'm not mentally unwell, and it's a bit like, well, that's a really old fashioned belief around the benefits of talking therapy, and it's absolutely, you know, I'm not mentally unwell, but I'm an absolutely avid fan of talking to someone who is non biased, professionally trained in helping me unravel my brain and will sit with me in my difficulty without trying to instantly make me better, because they can't bear my pain, you know? When you talk to a friend or a loved one or a family member, they're like, Oh, God, oh, they'll stop crying, you know. Oh, here, let me make you a cup of tea, like, shut it down, because I'm not comfortable with it, you know. And the great thing is, you pay someone some money, and they sit with you and your pain, and they're just like, Okay, let this one out. And that's actually what most of us need. We need a safe space to kind of process this. And I think it's a fundamental part of recovery. The mind and the body work together. They are not in isolation. So it's about creating the right environment, mentally and physically for your body to do what it needs to do. And if you are worried about talking to someone, you know, I would say, just try it out, or talk to a few people who have, you know, I'm a huge advocate in my Facebook group, oh god. Get into therapy. Get into counsel, find someone, anyone. Just make sure you don't know them. I think that's really important, because otherwise it gets complicated. So if you've got a friend that's a counselor, that's not the person to go, to go to someone that has no relationship with you at all. And then it's really clean. Tonight,

Jackie Baxter  
I was actually having a conversation with my partner about this last night, and I talk like, that's how I deal with stuff. I just talk. And normally I talk at him, and he ignores me, and it doesn't really matter that much, because it's the talking that kind of that does it. And then I realized that actually I just answered my own question by just talking at him. I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, I need to go talk to someone, someone that's not you. Oh

Speaker 1  
yeah, no, dude, Jackie, go and he'll be really, really glad that you stopped talking at him.

Jackie Baxter  
Probably, oh absolutely yes, because

Speaker 1  
you know he's also, he's so involved. He's witnessed this, he's watched this. He's also hugely invested in you getting better, and so that that puts tension in that, right? You know, he's like, Well, when are you going to get better? And I thought you were better, as is the way with some of our good days, right? I thought you were better now, and that creates a whole load of other stuff that people have to navigate, and it's hard. So, yeah, do not know the person you go to to talk at

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, and it sounds like your sort of knowledge and understanding of yoga, talking therapies and the NLP and yeah, and how everything just works together and fits together that's helped you to kind of work through your own recovery. Then we'll be right back. Me, Hey there. I'm just jumping in for a second to see if you're enjoying this episode. If you're finding it useful, maybe you would consider sharing it somewhere, a friend, a group, or even on your Twitter feed. If everyone was able to share just once, we'd be able to get this information out to even more people who really, really need it. So please consider sharing somewhere, if you possibly can. I hope you enjoy the episode, and thank you so much.

Speaker 1  
Well, I really knew, I knew about the power of beliefs, and I know beliefs is a really interesting and quite controversial thing, so a lot of people don't like talking about beliefs around recovery, because they find it puts in a position where maybe someone is blaming themselves, or they're feeling blamed for not managing their own recovery. But what I try to kind of counter it with is, you know, for me, the belief that I had always when I was very, very unwell was, first of all, that I would get better. It just wasn't a question. And now, of course, you know, most people will start out with that belief, and then that belief, over time, can get really challenged. So actually, the thing that I've realized underpinned all of my beliefs was the concept that everything was impermanent. It's a Buddhist saying, it's a sarvam antiom. It means everything is impermanent. So this moment is impermanent. This moment where I'm happy, that's impermanent. It's not going to last this moment where I feel like I'm dying. It's not going to last until the point where I am dead, and then it's done. So, you know, but, but it will all change. And so I knew there was a journey that I was going on, and it was always forwards, because that's the law of the universe. There's always, change. And that allowed me to sit with it, and it allowed me to have the days where I was relapsing, and I would sit in that mantra of, this is impermanent. This will not last forever. You will wake up in a few days and go, Ah, great. The shift has occurred, and now I'm I'm back on the path again, you know? And that Snakes and Ladders process, I became very accepting of that. And I think in the very first video that I made, the very first yoga class I recorded, which makes me laugh sometimes now when I watch it, because I'm kind of there, it was the first thing I'd ever recorded on Zoom when I was there with a bit of paper kind of clunking around on my desk, just like, right? You've got to accept that you are ill and that you cannot recover from this in the way that you've recovered from anything else in your life. And that sense of acceptance, I think, was a really big thing for me when I realized that that's what I needed to do. And then I could see, my God, everyone needs to accept this. We're all coming at it with all of the skills and resources that we used to recover from a cold with, and this is not that. So we need to come at it with a completely different set of skills. And the first one is accepting that we are that ill, that we need to do it differently. And I think so many people that's been viewed like 15,000 times now that video, and I get so many messages from people going, you nailed it in that moment when you just said, I need to accept that I'm ill and ill in a way that is different. And, you know, often people don't find that moment until they're quite far down the line of just pushing and pushing against the virus and its damage to the body. And the body is going, I don't want to play it's too hard, it's too stressful, you know? I've got trauma. I'm trying to recover from this terrible virus. And actually, there just needs to be a point where we all sit still and go enough just be for a bit. And that's, I think, for me, was the beginning of my recovery, you know? And it's nice because I there's a date on that video. It's like June the 14th or something. Now that's the day when I started recovery and I stopped only being ill, so there was a kind of marker point for me. Okay, I'm going to do something completely differently now, and I'm going to be really conscious about it, and in order to keep my momentum going, I'm going to share that journey. Because I don't like doing difficult things on my own, and I always go on about that in my group classes. It's like, this is hard. Don't even try and do it on your own, because it's lonely, and no one recovers when they're lonely. You know, there's so much research now about loneliness and its impact on health, and even you know, your life expectancy if you are lonely and you don't feel support and you're isolated, you will not live as long the stats are there. And it's like, well, it's the same for recovery. We need to feel understood. We need to feel acknowledged. We need to feel empathic. You know, we want to know that people get it. And actually, that was where social media, I think, came into its own, because we could reach out to people from our beds where we were feeling like we were dying, and go, Hey, there's someone in Carolina, the states, that totally gets that comment I just made that's cool. Oh, look, there's a bunch of people in Sweden. Oh, look in Finland as well. And it's just been this extraordinary reaching out and connection and support for me. I, you know, I'm, I'm desperate for someone to kind of document that. And. To capture the whole of that kind of episode for history. You know, I want someone to download the Facebook accounts that have been these support groups because the wealth of information and evolution of how people have used technology to share information and support each other where there was nothing available. You know, there's just so much that's worth capturing. I know the Bodleian libraries have been kind of pioneering some downloading of the Internet to capture it. So I'm going to get in touch and say, I think you need to capture these accounts, particularly absolutely

Jackie Baxter  
and might you say the support groups have been absolutely amazing because all of these people that are so isolated, a lot of them living on their own, and everyone isolated, you know, through restrictions and lockdowns, and suddenly you go on and you realize that there are so many other 1000s of people with the same problem as you, and they're all feeling the same emotions, the same loneliness, the same abandonment, a lot of them have very similar symptoms. So you can discuss what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and it's helped so much. I mean, it's also, you know, you look on there and you think, Oh, my goodness, that person's been ill for three months longer than I have. I can't take another three months of this, but you can learn from them as well. There's so much shared learning,

Speaker 1  
absolutely. And there was definitely a point when I was at my most deal that was really, really valuable, and I was tapping into the main kind of groups where people really share symptoms, and I have a bit of a code around not letting much symptom sharing occur in the group. Now, I've met some in and that's fine, you know, because I think there's a lot of wisdom in my group. But I was really aware that as someone lying in bed feeling like I wonder if I might die, when I was reading about other people who had lost a 13 year old daughter to COVID, or who'd lost a husband, or who had been in a coma for six weeks, seven weeks, and you know, and you're getting posts like that, and you're tapping into that, the grief of that, and the horror story I thought this now isn't serving me. This is triggering me constantly to stay in that fight, flight crisis, you know. And actually, one of the things I was really clear on as a yoga teacher, as a coach, as a counselor, was like, I need to not be associating into the grief of the world now, because my nervous system is already in hypersensitive overdrive, and that's exacerbating my symptoms. That's part of the problem. So I need to read things that are motivating for me. I need to read things that talk about the psychology of recovery. I need to read about the best yoga nidra that people have found on the internet, you know, kind of guided relaxations. I need to hear about what people are doing to help themselves sleep, not just I haven't slept for 10 weeks, you know, I need to hear from someone that says I've done this, I've tried this, and I really wanted to have the focus shift into that domain. And so I'm quite I curate quite a lot of what gets posted, so that the focus mostly, it's like 65 70% forward, looking, optimistic. You know, what have you tried? What's helping? And then there's, you know, that space for people that really do just want to reach into this group of people and go, can you help me? Because I've got this going on and I don't know what to do. And there's a really, really powerful group of people that we've collected now with loads of experience that will jump in and scoop people up. And it's amazing. But the whole experience of the group, I always thought I want to create something that feels like a really good magazine, like a healthy magazine to tip into, you know, like psychologies, or something where you kind of go, Okay, no, I got something really useful out of that. I didn't just tap into the grief of the world. I just really believed it was important to have an option, you know. And I think we need all those choices. They're the groups where there's a lot of discussion of symptom I think are really important for those early phases of the illness. And when you need that kind of support, other things evolve, don't they? Yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
and they're looking forward thing. I guess even if you feel like you're tapping a step backwards, you know, you are still moving forwards, even though it doesn't feel like it absolutely, of course you are. It's hard to think like that. When you just think, oh my goodness, I feel like I've gone back a month.

Speaker 1  
Which is why, you know, the shared experience is really important. Because, you know, someone just posted about that yesterday in the group, she'd been doing really well. She'd been kind of getting up and about and and suddenly she found herself back in bed again for a few days, and was just kind of, what does this mean? And we went, does it really mean anything? Just means you're back in bed for a little bit and then you're going to get up again in a bit when you're ready. You know, let's not try and attach meaning to everything. It's coming back to that sense of acceptance and going, okay, obviously, whatever it was, I'm here because I need to be here and and what can I do while I'm here that's going to really serve me, just to get me back on my feet again? Yeah? But it's chat. It's a challenge, which is why you need support, which is why you need other people that can kind of scoop you up on those days you can't do it on your own because it's hard. Yeah? I think yeah, that acceptance as well is important. I mean, I I like answers. I think we all like answers. You. Why has this happened? Why am I back in bed? Why is my type chest back this week? Why have I had another month where I feel terrible and sometimes there isn't really a reason you just need to get over it. Take the time and the space to let yourself recover, but that's obviously much easier said than done. Yeah, right, because we have to earn a living, and we have, I've got two kids. They're like, we kind of need you to be our mom. And I was really, really absent last year. You know, as a parent, I basically abdicated from my role. You know, that was tough, but I I didn't really have a choice. So luckily, their dad, my husband, was pretty awesome at just going, I'm just going to manage it. Let us know when you're coming back, kind of thing.

Jackie Baxter  
He sounds amazing. Having someone to support you makes such a different makes such a difference. Yeah, I really feel for people that are living on their own and don't have somebody right there. Yeah, I've been finding it hard enough, and my partner's awesome. And like you say, you know, your husband's has been really, really supportive, but it's still been really hard. Yeah,

Speaker 1  
absolutely. I think some of the toughest things that I've definitely witnessed or read about or met an interview have been the cases where people have had to manage this on their own. Quite early on, I was interviewed as part of a research project for Sussex University Medical School, and they pulled in about four or five of us from the local area, because I'm down in Brighton, and they just wanted to hear about our stories. And one guy said that his partner didn't live with him and he wouldn't let her in because she was asthmatic. And of course, we didn't know that most of us are not at all contagious after those initial kind of eight days or whatever. And so he got more and more unwell and then stopped being able to breathe, but had been watching the news so much that he felt like he'd be a burden if he called 999, so he didn't, so he would go on to hold for 111, for hours on end, and he couldn't breathe if he lay down. So he couldn't lie down. So he tied himself to a chair and spent days tied to a chair. You know, it was a zoom interview, and I sat listening to this, just going, Oh my God. And I could see, you know, you can spot trauma, because they're just going over and over and over. And basically, I think psychologically, he was still stuck in that chair. And not surprising me, because, my God, he believed he was dying. He thought the best thing that he could do to save himself was tie himself to a chair and not let anyone in. And I just thought I did not have that. I didn't have anything remotely like that. I was never isolated. I was never alone. But that's going to be one heck of a thing to recover from. But

Jackie Baxter  
yeah, that's horrific. Yes, yeah. How do you even begin?

Speaker 1  
You begin with a very good therapist and a very good team of people that say it's okay now you're not in the chair anymore, and gently lead the person's mind and body back out into a kind of a space that's lighter and brighter than that dark room.

Jackie Baxter  
And the awful thing is that there will be so many people with similarly horrific stories. Yeah, something else, isn't it?

Speaker 1  
Right? So the power of support, and actually, one of the things that I love about not just the Facebook group, but actually the live classes that I now run, is that, you know, we get quite a lot of people who are on their own, and they're recovering on their own, and they show up every day to whatever is on the timetable, because it's a routine. It's something in their day. And they are witnessed live, and someone will say their name and greet them. And, you know, we get to see people, obviously, a lot. And so I can tell if someone's having a good day or a bad day depending on which room in the house they're in. It's like, Oh, you made it into the living room today. That's really good. And they're like, Oh yeah, high five and, you know, and just having people witness that, I think, is so important for your mental health. You're not just doing this on your own. We could just keep saying that again and again, get into some kind of support system that's kind of bigger and broader than maybe just the person that you live with, because that's a lot of pressure for one person to kind of hold you up above the water. Especially when things are really hard, it's almost an impossible task. They will also need to be held above the water at some point.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I think the supportive partners and husbands and wives and people that have been looking after us day after day after day, it's easy to forget that they are also suffering. You know, they may not be physically suffering in the same way that we are, but you know that, yeah, their lives been turned upside down as well, so they need something to totally

Speaker 1  
Yeah, well, they will at some point that either they'll get sick because the stress of it all just kind of breaks them, or I've definitely seen a lot of posts where people's partners have left them and they've walked out and, you know, gone. I can't do this anymore. You're on your

Jackie Baxter  
own. Oh, you feel for both sides of it, don't you unbelievably difficult. So let's talk about the setup that you've got so you managed to set this up alongside being ill, which is absolutely incredible to me, because you know, even 18 months in, there are days where I struggled to get out of bed. So that you managed to do this is awesome. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about about the setup and. You've got working alongside you, yeah.

Speaker 1  
So, okay, you heard that I set up this online platform just as I was getting ill, right? That then became something much more kind of solid. Luckily, we found a host for the online platform so that that then could become all kind of automated and technology could take over all of the things that I was trying to do, which was great. And then, you know, as I was posting more of my own journey into this little Facebook group that I'd set up, we realized people were saying, you know, can you do a live class? And the guy that I work with, Ross Cooper, he was a PT, and he was working with me from January of 2020, he'd been my personal trainer. I'd got him onto the platform to teach when I'd set up the online platform in March, and then he'd also got COVID and had a kind of a month of really, really difficult breath and cough, etc, etc, and had sort of recovered mostly had a big chest infection in the summer of last year, and then had a massive chronic fatigue, kind of post viral crash, and is still working his way out of that from January to now. So, you know, I think it hit him later, so it was a gap of him being really well and fine. But anyway, we were working together, and he was helping me with my recovery, and then I've been helping him with his recovery. And I said, Well, why don't we just put on some classes live, ones that, you know, we can invite some of the people in from the group that wanted to show up live, and then we can kind of hang out with them and chat and have our own support group. And you can do a bit of reconditioning, because, you know, we all just need to just do a tiny bit to keep the body in that kind of homeostasis of wherever possible. And I'll do some yoga and some kind of breathing, and just help people learn the importance of relaxing and calming down the autonomic nervous system, like the science in this. This isn't just, wouldn't it be nice to be more relaxed? It's like, actually, you can help what's happening in your body by calming things down, slowing the breath and shifting into that rest repair mode. So we set up the classes, and that was in September 2020, and it's developed itself into a whole program. You know, the feedback was extraordinary. People were just so amazed at how much it helped them to have live support with people that understood, we have a group Q A on Thursdays after one of the classes, and we'd get maybe 50 people or so hang out for that after class, and we just share wisdom, you know. And there's so much information now. There's obviously, you know, people been on the journey for a long time. There's a lot of newer people coming in and going, who knows how to help fatigue? Or what have you done? Or which is the probiotic that's a good one to take if you've got MCAS. Well, you know, what's MCAS? Who knows anything about Ella's Danlos Syndrome? Who knows about this? You know? And so we, we share information, and a lot of it is personal story and just support. And every time we have one of those, there's always someone that will be like, Oh my God, that's just blowing my mind. Or they'll have a complete cry and be like, this group is amazing. I feel so much better now. It's so powerful. And I would say they're the kind of the highlight moments, but on the program now I've got, I just worked it out earlier because I sent an email out to everyone saying, hey, well done. The more people that we get signing up, the more I can put on the timetable. So there's now nine things on the timetable, nine different classes. We've got a chair yoga class, a mindfulness meditation session, gentle yoga for kind of level two and above, which is an hour. We've got the two COVID recovery specific classes, which are the ones that Ross and I co teach. We've got a breathing class. We've got a gentle Pilates for level three, when you're ready to do a bit more. We've got a beginner's weights class for when you're kind of level two and you want to just do a tiny bit of, you know, reconditioning. We've got the whole thing. And, you know, I'm being approached by sort of NHS Trust, going, how have you done that? Because that's really brilliant, and we don't really have the ability to do what you've done and put it all in one place, because everyone has to come to us in different clinics, and you've done this thing where you put it all together. So, you know, I'm giving a talk to a couple of NHS Trusts about how I've done what I've done, and why I believed it was important to do it. And it's a real privilege to be able to offer some wisdom and experience from someone that's been on the journey, but actually someone who's witnessed 1000s of other people who've been on the journey as well and go would you know, this is what I think people need. This is actually what people need. Don't make them do all these really difficult physical tests. Don't make them come to you and sit in a waiting room for an hour, all stressed, and then ask them to do the sit stand test five minutes. Just don't do that. You know, it's not going to help them. Let's just make an assumption, the fact that they've been referred to the long COVID clinic, that they're not well. Let's just make that assumption, don't test them to see how unwell they are, because you'll probably put them in bed for a week. You know, there's things like that that I've learned. It's like, let's just take everyone and put them at this very, very bottom baseline. It doesn't matter how well. They think they are. Doesn't matter. Let's just start everyone at the same point, even if they go, Oh, I probably am better than that. I'm like, I don't care. I want you right down. This is how it works. This is the protocol. You do the bare minimum, and from there you will gently, gently progress. Great that you feel like you could do more. Don't do more, because so many of us, and I don't know if you identify with this, but have got that bit that's an achiever. I need to feel like I've done something. I need to feel like I've achieved something. And actually, that's the bit that can push us to do stuff that's too much the body's not ready to you know, those good days I always say are the most dangerous days. It's like, on that good day, I want you to sit down and enjoy that good day. Don't go shopping. What the dogs see friends. Go for dinner. Go to the movies, go to work, have a zoom call. Don't do all of those things until you know that you've actually desensitized the autonomic nervous system enough for it to not go into kind of that emergency. Ah, you've done too much, and now I need to give you post exertional malaise as a punishment.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. I mean really, you say resting on the bad days is not really so difficult, because you feel awful on the good days is when we're tempted to, you know, I don't know, we're so fed up of feeling so ill for so long, but you want to enjoy those good days. So you think, right, well, I'm going to do all of the things that I couldn't do for the past week because I've been feeling bad. But then, obviously it then makes you feel awful for another week, two weeks, whatever. So yes, it's finding that balance, isn't it, and not pushing too hard. It

Speaker 1  
is finding a balance. Yeah, there's also something when you do start to have more good days, I think that is really important point, that you start to go I think I've recovered from this, and now it's just about letting my body catch up with me. And we are looking at taking those people who've definitely had organ damage as a result of this, or, you know, proper damage at a level that needs treatment. Let's just put that group of people aside. If you are having more days where you're feeling a lot better and you're back in you can Okay, I'm beginning to get there, then I think it is really important that you focus on the fact that your body now knows how to do well again, and actually some of it is conditioning, because the process takes such a long time, we've kind of almost conditioned ourselves to expect to be ill, and so that can be part of the problem. That can be one of the things that can give us post exertional malaise. I know that what puts me back in bed isn't the expectation now, it's actually just simply the massive overdoing of myself. But what I know is I just need to have a sleep I need to go lie down. I need to just, you know, switch off the head and and take care of myself for a bit so I don't catastrophize. I just go, okay, don't panic. It's fine. You you're actually just not practicing self care. Susie, which COVID taught you in bucket loads. Let's not forget those lessons now, and let's just be really respectful. You know, we also need to know the point where you're ready to go It's okay now, because I think my body is mostly there. Now I need to let everything else catch up with me.

Jackie Baxter  
I think we've probably all learned that we need to take more care of ourselves, right? I mean, I was awful for this, you know, I was working all the time, and then when I wasn't working, I was out exercising, I was up the hills at the weekends and out cycling in the evening, and then I was doing more work and and I always had so much energy that it didn't seem to matter at the time. Now I've been ill for so long, it really it makes you appreciate that so much more, but I think it also makes us realize that we need to take more care out of ourselves. Because, you know, maybe when you're young you can do that to yourself, but it's not doing you any good. And then as you get older, I guess it's going to have more of a toll on you, isn't it? Well,

Speaker 1  
of course. But also, you know, we are in a society where we are encouraged to push and just keep going. Women are praised for giving birth and getting up and going out to the supermarket on the same day. Oh, look at that amazing TV celeb who just gave birth and now she's in Sainsbury's, what a wonderful model of achievement. It's like, hang on a minute. Why is that good? That's not good. That's really weird. We need to understand that these bodies, these brains, this incredibly complex system that we are inhabiting actually needs to be treated with love and respect and kindness. And I can look back at a lot of the way that I've kind of pushed myself over the years and go, I think I probably haven't been very kind to myself. The idea of self care might be, well, a glass of wine on Thursday night or two or, you know, yeah, I'll go and push myself really hard on a piece of work to the point where I'm almost mentally crunched up by it, and then, oh, that's it, you know, great, look at that. That's me kind of I don't go and de stress from it. I'll just pick up another piece of work and off I go again. And actually, I would like to think that whoever's gone through this journey, or is on this journey, that understanding the importance of self care and what that actually means, like really, what it means when you're really practicing it has changed their their way of being with themselves, and their way of looking after the vehicle that carries their soul, so to speak. You know, I think most of us can probably put our hands up and say, Yeah, I've been pretty disrespectful. I. Over the years, definitely looking back. And I definitely see a lot of people go, I'm not going to go back to the person that I was. You know, this broke a pattern. This broke a cycle. I also see a lot of people go, it's really hard cycle to break, particularly people that maybe put other people before themselves and never, ever dared to kind of think of themselves as number one on the list. Those patterns are the patterns are the patterns that therapists will help you look at. You know, if prioritizing your own needs is challenging to you, if achieving things all the time is one of your drivers, you're going to need to talk about that. You'll need to have a different driver to help you recover, and it's a driver that is much more based on compassion and kindness and love and wisdom. And it sounds a bit wooly, but it's true,

Jackie Baxter  
and allowing yourself to ask for help when you need it as well. I'm terrible at that. You know, I do everything myself because I don't trust anyone else to do it. I'm sure that says an awful lot of things about me. Okay, I have to let other people do a lot of things now for me, and I am getting better at it, but like you say, it's habits and patterns that you know, you've lived with your entire life, it's quite difficult to break out of them and even to realize that you're in them, I think half the time, yeah, but it is important, as you say,

Speaker 1  
it is really important. And I think coming back to that question, I was just remembering the question you'd asked me, you know, How did I manage to set that up whilst I was ill? It's because I wanted to be part of it. So it was a bit like, well, nothing quite exists like that. So I'm just going to set it up. I am someone who's always been self employed. I'm a bit of a kind of, I can do that kind of person. And actually, I was talking to Dr Boon Lynn about this at the weekend. He was like, how did you manage to set up one of the most successful all in one house repair programs whilst being ill. And I said, Well, I just did it one day, and then it was happening, and then it grew. I said, I didn't ever think about it as this thing, this big thing that I was doing. I just set up the thing that I knew I needed to participate in for myself, and that was the motivator. And then as I got better, I realized it was a great thing, and then it just grew. So the grand plan wasn't to set out a kind of recovery program, it was to put on a couple of classes a week that were going to create a space where I could go. Who else struggles with insomnia? Because I'm really struggling with this is a big thing for me. And have, you know, 20 other people go, yeah. Have you tried this? And I'd be like, Oh, no, I've not even heard of that. Let me go and look it

Jackie Baxter  
up. Because you were ill and you experienced it, you knew what people needed as well. I guess

Speaker 1  
Absolutely. Yeah, I think I intuitively knew I need that. And I'm sure if I need that, someone else is going to need that at some point. There can't only be me that wants to feel like the power of support around them, not just on Facebook. I need it live. I want to be able to talk about this stuff. And that's what we did. You know, some of those classes, some of those sessions with the group chats I've posted on the YouTube channel, because they're so powerful. On World Mental Health Day, I think I tackled the kind of like, okay, let's go in, let's go in and talk about mental health at the end of the session, and one of the most profoundly moving classes, because people were just really opening up about the challenges that they're facing. And you know, they've lost friendships, they've lost relationships, they've lost identity, they've lost themselves. And you know, if you think about that from a combined body aspect, how can you recover. How can you create the right environment in your body to switch into that rest repair mode if you've got all of that going on, you know, it's really hard, and so I'm a big advocate of saying to people, if you need medical help to get your mental health in place, go get it. If you need to also balance that out with talking, go get that too. Let's prioritize the mind first, because the mind is in control of the body to a lesser or greater extent. However you want to believe it. I know it's quite a challenging thing for some people to kind of take on board. I'm just pushing it all the time as the message go, get your mind in order, then your body will be able to follow the right cue. You know, you're looking to get those kind of signals from the brain to say it's okay. You don't need to panic now you can, you can do what you need to do, do the magic the body knows loads of brilliant ways of recovery. Just need to create this situation for it to happen. Yeah, it's like

Jackie Baxter  
clearing the decks to allow your body to do its own work, I guess, right? And that's, yeah, it's amazing that you've been able to set up this whole thing. And so you've got different levels for different abilities within the long COVID Recovery has failed, so it's sort of appropriate for anybody, wherever they are. In terms of recovery,

Speaker 1  
we get people showing up from bed, totally in bed. And I call that the level zero. And I'm a bit like, you know, if you are in bed, you're still absolutely part of the program, because just logging in and getting yourself here, showing up and then watching, watching other people who've been where you are and are now on level three, and lifting hand weights. I keep, we keep all of the exercises the same. You just add in different levels of resistance so it's really easy. The cognitive drain is very limited. We try and make it more interesting by having a bit of fun. And Ross and I. Always have a bit of banter going on. We're a bit stupid. And, you know, actually laughing, you might lie in bed and have a bit of a giggle for the first time in a week, which is just magic for the soul. I'm a big believer in that. And then you'll kind of watch and say, okay, okay, body, how does it feel about the idea of maybe joining in a tiny bit from bed next week? You don't need to do it all in one go, and just inviting yourself to think about it. You want to kind of cellular level. I'm just going to mentally think about joining in. And then people go, Okay, I'm ready to try joining in now. And then you start at that really, really, really base level, and then you can kind of progress. And we say to people, you know what? It's really important that you remember it's not linear. If you have a day where you need to go back to bed. Fine. If you have a day, we need to come down to level one. Come down to level one. It's fine. Constantly reminding people don't push. Remember you're not here to achieve anything. This is not an exercise class. We're not here to get your glutes toned. We are just helping you retrain the autonomic nervous system so that you can tolerate moving, being, existing, laughing, thinking, without it causing all of that kind of catastrophic crash that can happen for people.

Jackie Baxter  
That's where that Acceptance comes in, again, I guess, yeah,

Speaker 1  
and because you've got the magic of all the group support and the magic of laughter and feeling connected and understood, you know, it's a really potent place people, the feedback that we get really regularly makes me cry, because people absolutely say, My God, what was I doing until I found this? I was a bit lost, and it's changed the direction of people's recovery, and it's great. And I think it's important to say everyone will find their own thing. You know, it's not for everyone. There's people out there that go and do the Gupta program and lightning process, and it really works for them, those that talk about it, those that do it, and it's not for everyone, and I think we have to be respectful of the fact that we all approach these things differently. And so I'll be like, Yeah, you know, my recovery program is great. It's it worked for me myself, and I think it's helping lots of people. And there'll be people that come and go, it's not for me, it's fine. It's like, okay, go find your thing. But just don't give up. Don't not look. Just keep looking. Oh, that's amazing.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. And, you know, the results speak for themselves. It is helping a lot of people, allowing them the tools to recover, I guess.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think just offering that real sense of positivity, you know, we're really upbeat about it's all possible. It's possible. You know, we look at it from a beliefs level. You showing up because you believe you want to recover, and then you believe that you can. It is about looking at that too. I think a lot of people get lost as soon as you stop believing that the recovery is possible, that that's a really sticky place to find yourself. If that's where you are, I would again, get back into counseling and go. I need help with looking at that, because if you believe that to be true, then that's a tough one to bust, definitely, yeah, keeping hold of that belief, yeah, it's important. I think hope is a big one. Yeah, yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
it is. And seeing those positive stories and people that are making progress that that does also help. So I think that is important too. And we now know that, you know, long COVID can affect so many different people in so many different ways. And one of the research people I was speaking to a few weeks ago said they'd put a list of 150 different symptoms, and that was with lumping together a lot of them in groups just to make it manageable. So it's so many different ways affect people, and that can be really overwhelming. Yeah. Do you have any just to finish off? You know, a couple of tips that might help. Where would you start if you're feeling completely overwhelmed?

Speaker 1  
Well, do you know, I was asked this question by Boon Lim the other day. Dr, Boon Lim, he said, What's your top three? I said, I think I have got a top three. My first one is educate yourself so there's enough interviews, videos, shared experience out there now that you can watch and listen from your bed and go, Okay, now that's interesting. If that's happening, I'm reassured, or I now need to go and ask for this specific piece of help from my GP and be referred to, you know, like, educate yourself. What is this virus doing? What could be happening inside you. And let's get some tools in your kit around what to ask for help around. So I've got some great interviews that I did with Boon Lim, consultant cardiologist, should I say, and his brilliant colleague, Dr Melanie Danny, who's a consultant geriatrician. And they offered three hours of their time over two interviews, just explaining a lot of the things, not everything, but a lot of the things that are quite common that people are dealing with in this post COVID malaise. So yeah, understand dysautonomia, MCAS, inflammation, histamine, diets, the role of antihistamines. Understand your gut, understand what you can do there. So education, that's my piece number one, number two would be really start practicing deep rest, like active deep conscious rest. Practice it. Do guided meditations. Do your breathing work, slow things down. The stasis breathing program is one of the most amazing. Programs that's out there for free. It's by Josh Dunst. I'm actually interviewing him in a couple of weeks, and Mount Sinai Hospital collaborated with him to kind of promote that, and it's free. And they talk about how to help retrain the body and the autonomic immune system into that kind of rest repair mode. And they've got a very specific set of protocols that they use of people with long COVID And they are accessing hundreds of 1000s, if not millions, of patients around the world. And it's free, so find out about things like that. Get into the idea of practicing active rest three times a day. And active rest isn't holding a phone in your hand, looking at Facebook whilst you're in bed. That's not active rest, okay? Active rest isn't watching a movie on TV, lying on the couch that's not active. Rest really understanding, if I'm trying to calm everything down, I will need to do things differently. So get that, you know, really firmly under the bonnet of your beliefs. Get into doing some body work. Get into doing your yoga practice, even if it's just lying in your bed and kind of moving a tiny bit, soothe your body and your mind like it was a three year old having a panic attack. Soothe it, and then the next one, my number three, is support. Don't do it on your own. Don't expect someone that doesn't understand or isn't going through it to get it. Find people that do align. Find your tribe, get a buddy. Pair up. We've just set up something within my 360 membership now where we're buddying people. Maybe someone who's got a bit more experience with someone who's newer, you know, maybe there's similar sets of experiences and they can kind of support each other. So that's something that you know is another layer, like, okay, you've got group support, you've got one on one support, you've got Facebook account support. The layers are important, because not everyone in our lives gets it or is interested in it. I certainly haven't talked about my COVID journey with many of my very close friends a lot. I think you know, they know, and they've witnessed and they've said, Is there anything we can do? And I'm like, You know what? I'm good. I'm kind of managing it, and I've got this group of people over here who are doing it with me, and that's really me, and that's really helping. Let's save our conversations for the other stuff in life. So that would be my kind of number three, get some support in place, and if that involves going and seeing a counselor, do that too. Amazing.

Jackie Baxter  
Well, thank you so much for coming on today. There is so much good stuff in there for myself, and I'm sure anybody else listening, I certainly need to go and re evaluate some of the things I've been doing, and I'm sure a lot of other people will feel the same. So that's been absolutely brilliant. I'll put some of those links into the show notes so people can access there's

Speaker 1  
lots of free stuff on the YouTube channel to be all the interviews that I've done are particularly helpful if you know you want to understand dysautonomia a bit more. And there's an occupational therapist and neuro specialist, occupational therapist. I interviewed. I interviewed a couple of female doctors, one with long COVID, one without around hormonal changes. So it's all sitting there, and I've got more coming. And then there's obviously classes and content that people can just start experimenting with and kind of just watch, just put it on, lie in bed and watch. You don't have to participate. I think that's important, but just begin find something that triggers a little bit of hope. And if it's my stuff, great, and if it's someone else's, that's great, too. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. It's been a pleasure talking to you, Jackie, thank

Jackie Baxter  
you so much to all of my guests, and to you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it, or at least found it useful. The long COVID podcast is entirely self produced and self funded from doing all of this myself. If you're able to, please go to buy me a coffee.com. Forward slash long COVID pod to help me cover the costs of hosting the podcast. Please look out for the next episode of the long COVID podcast. It's available on all the usual podcast hosting things, and do get in touch. I'd love to hear you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai