214 - Out of the Long Covid Maze: How Lalita Found Her Way Back to Health

We hear Lalita’s Long Covid recovery story, from tachycardia and air hunger to a steady return to health by focusing on nervous system safety. We share practical tools for regulating symptoms in the moment, plus the mindset shifts that make self-compassion possible when you’ve been dismissed or frightened. 

• Early signs after COVID including raised blood pressure, numb lips and fatigue 
• Second infection followed by tachycardia, dizziness, vertigo, chest tightness, brain fog and air hunger 
• Repeated emergency visits and the impact of being told it is anxiety 
• Understanding Dysautonomia and the autonomic nervous system as a unifying explanation 
• Combining nervous system work with naturopath-guided supplements and gut support 
• Using Bowen therapy, Craniosacral work and sleep practices such as yoga nidra 
• What bioresonance is and why some people use it to check for layers of stressors 
• Breathwork as the main anchor, including longer exhales and quick calming techniques 
• Stacking breath with tapping, somatic tracking and reassuring self-talk to build “proof of safety” 
• Emotional processing with body scans and EAET-style exploration of deeper patterns 
• A client case study showing how addressing stress and trauma can reduce symptoms fast

Links:

Lalita's Website: www.stressfreefast.com.au

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

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Welcome And Story Setup

Jackie Baxter 0:00

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long COVID podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Lalita, who is here to share her recovery story. So I'm uh I'm gonna hand straight over to her and say, Lalita, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to hear your story and welcome to the podcast.

Lalita Holmes 0:20

Thank you, Jackie. Thank you. I've been excited and looking looking forward to sharing. So, yes, I'm I'm Lalita and I live in Tasmania, the little island way, way down south of Australia. I'm a neuroplasticity coach, and I've just recently um trained with Dr. Howard Schubiner and his team, with and it's just been fabulous, really, really fabulous. So uh my COVID story, oh my goodness, my first bout of COVID was um before we actually knew it was COVID. So I had just come back from a very big uh conference with lots of people in another state, and I was horribly sick, really, really sick, and I wasn't getting many flus and colds and things leading up to that, but just so so ill for about six weeks, coughing and just feeling dreadful. And then we started hearing all this news about this covert, you see, and uh, you know, Australia was going into lockdown, our little island went into lockdown, and um at the time we had a hotline, and the family was saying to me, I think you should

First COVID And Early Clues

Lalita Holmes 1:47

ring up and see if you've got this covert. And and of course, you know, they asked the questions, have you been with anyone overseas who's come back from China? And um, you know, a couple of questions like that, and I said, No, no, no, but I had just been to this conference where there was a lot of overseas people. Um, so there was no tests or anything back then. So I was really sick, but I recovered, and I didn't realize until the second time I got COVID, which was in August, end of August 2024, and then I started getting all these other symptoms. I think I had some things left over from the first time I got it because my blood pressure had gone up. I was on blood pressure medication, which really shocked me because I had always had very low blood pressure, and suddenly I've gone from low blood pressure to high blood pressure, and I thought, what the heck's going on here? I just accepted it and just started on the lowest dose of blood pressure medication, and I all the time I had these numb lips, and I kept asking the doctor, What have I got these? My lips every now and then they go numb. And he said, Oh, that's just your blood pressure. So, okay, I just accepted that, and I was a little bit more tired than normal. I was needing to take naps in the afternoon, which I hadn't done before. And so that I realized now was left over from the first bout. So, what happened this second time? Very mild case, just felt like a cold, but then these symptoms started to appear. So the very first thing I noticed was the tachycardia. You know, my heart's racing for no reason whatsoever, and that concerned me. And then not long after that, all these other symptoms just started to just one after another after another, you know. Suddenly I'm dizzy, suddenly I have vertigo, suddenly I can't lie down flat, my head's spinning, so I'm having to sit sleep, sitting up on three or four pillows, because if I try to lie down, I'm just spinning out, and then um my legs and my arms feel like lead.

Second Infection And Symptom Avalanche

Lalita Holmes 4:34

You know, I go to stand up and very heavy feeling in my legs and my arms, and this tightness in my chest, unbelievable. So yeah, the symptoms just kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. Now, luckily, because of my training and because of the work that I'd been doing, and by this time really understood all the long COVID symptoms, I've been following it all fairly closely because a lot of my clients had these symptoms. So when as I was experiencing them, I knew exactly what it was. And luckily for me, I knew what to do, so I didn't have to go down the rabbit hole like I see so many people doing, chasing up. You know, could it be this, could could it be this, will this work, will that work? I knew straight away this is my autonomic nervous system, it's affected that, and that's why I've got, you know, I had probably about 30 different symptoms. You know, my gut was affected, I had headaches, I had muscle aches and pains, I had this kind of stabbing pain in my body. So every now and then I'd feel like someone was stabbing me in my right breast, and then in my spleen, and then in my ovary, and then just this very, very strange symptoms. Yeah, brain fog, this coscochondritis, you know, this tightness across the chest. And then one day I was out with the dentist, and suddenly I had to get up. I had to tell them to stop because I went into complete panic. Get me out of here. I couldn't breathe. So this air hunger had started out of nowhere. You know, I'd be in anywhere that was confined space where there was no window, I would feel like I couldn't breathe. And that was a horrible feeling. Again, I realized after the first time I got COVID, suddenly I would get claustrophobia if I'd had to have a scan. And I didn't put that together that it was part of this long COVID until the second time I got it, and then then the penny dropped. I thought, ah, okay. And and then I had my first trip into emergency because I had this chest pain that no matter what I did, it just would not go. And I went through the night with it, and first thing in the morning, I rang a friend of mine up who's a nurse practitioner, and I said to her, Can I ask your advice what I should do? I don't really don't want to ring the ambulance up because I don't think this is a heart problem. Because by that time I'd already been to see the cardiologist from that tachycardia. I'd had all the tests done, I'd had my blood stun, I'd had thyroid hormones, all the tests that you could possibly do after those

Emergency Visits And Anxiety Dismissal

Lalita Holmes 8:12

first initial lot of symptoms. And the doctors had no clue, they had no idea what was going on. They just kept telling me, you're perfectly fine, all your tests are fine, there's nothing, nothing showing, there's nothing wrong, which I know so many people get told. But I knew something was wrong. And so so she suggested I go, go with the ambulance. And of course, as soon as they arrived and they put on all the you know, the little pads on you, heart's fine, there's nothing wrong, but we still need to take you to hospital. So go to hospital and I'm there, and the doctor's there again, no help whatsoever. Oh, I think it's anxiety. And a friend of mine was with me who knows me so well, she's known me for a long, long time, and she just looked at this doctor and she said, You don't know Lelita, she's the most chilled out, calm, relaxed person that you'll ever meet. I don't think I've ever experienced anxiety in my life, you know, apart from the normal fears that you know that you have. Never experience anxiety. Because I've worked in mental illness, I've seen people with anxiety know what they go through, and that was not me. So I wasn't very happy coming out of there and being told it was just anxiety. You know, the only reason I went was because it had to do with the chest, you know, and I was paying my due diligence and thought I'd better go. Two other times I ended up there, same. Same symptoms, same. And because it's the chest, anything, chest pain, and I guess being my age as well, I ended up going. Same story each time.

Jackie Baxter 10:09

You're totally fine. There's nothing wrong with you. Um, or there's nothing wrong with you that we can find. You're you're coming into this in a slightly different way to how I did. And I think a lot of people possibly come in the same way that I did, where we've never heard of the nervous system, no understanding of it at all. And that comes through the experience of long COVID and starting to understand and starting to find other things. Um, so it's that kind of, you know, um, yeah, learning about it through the experience. Whereas you came into the experience of long COVID already having an understanding of the nervous system. Did you ever have any doubts? I mean, that you've said that you went through all the battery of tests and you know, you were able to confidently say these doctors have checked me out and they can't find anything structurally wrong. But um, and that must have helped, I imagine. But did you have doubts about whether, you know, is is this really what it is? Is

Why The Nervous System Fits

Jackie Baxter 11:05

the nervous system really this powerful? Can it really do all of these things? Is it really the underlying thing? Or were you very totally sure about it?

Lalita Holmes 11:14

100% sure, because I had a long history of chronic illness before. And the way that I recovered from that was using nervous system. And a lot of the symptoms that I was experiencing were ones that I experienced back there, right? So the dizziness, the the pots type symptoms, and eventually I got diagnosed with um dysautonomia, because I had that umbrella, you know, of all those symptoms, dysautonomia. But um no, 100%, but also what I had learned from my previous recovery, and and that's what I did this time. So I decided, okay, I know what's going on, and I'm going to do exactly the same as what I did last time to recover, and I think that's why I recovered in in the 12, 13, 14 months max, max I was fully recovered. The last thing to go was tinnitus, which was interesting. So everything else, the the pots went fairly quickly, the digestive issues went fairly quickly. Because what I did was I used a combination. So yes, I knew it was nervous system, and that was my number one go-to during the whole process. From the from the first day I got symptoms, I was straight into my nervous system tools. So it was a blessing to me that I had them and knew them. And knew myself as well. I really understood my personality, my traits, my uh self-talk, my thought process. I was very, very aware of those. So I was able to get into that work quite quickly, and and then combined it with the next thing I did was I went straight to my naturopath, and that's where I got all the supplements from. So she put me on a host of supplements, like straight away, I was on the NATO kinase and the dandelion

A Multi-Pronged Recovery Plan

Lalita Holmes 13:34

tincture and the stinging nettle tea, um, quercetin, black seed, all the vitamins, the antihistamines, salt water therapy, prebiotics, probiotics, curcumin, the whole list of things. I just started incorporating those to help with the immune system issues, to help with the gut issues, to help with the hormonal issues. So everything that was being affected, all the systems of the body that get affected with long COVID, um, I started on that.

Jackie Baxter 14:11

That was under the guidance of you said a naturopath. So it was targeted.

Lalita Holmes 14:17

Oh, my naturopath, a very good naturopath, who I had been seeing before when I was ill and completely trusted their knowledge. So that was a bonus, a big plus for me. And then after that, I started um Bowen therapy because I had a lot of aches and pains. And again, I'd used Bowen therapy before previously, and I used bioresonance therapy to check for any spike protein or any um because I had been hearing from people that you know herpes were activated, Epstein Bar was activated. And yes, absolutely all of that was happening when once I started the bioresonance therapy, that all got picked up. And I was really surprised they also picked up that I was anemic, that I was low in iron, which I had never been before. I've been a vegetarian most of my life, and I've never had an iron anemic problem. So something was happening in my circulation system, you know, my my blood supply system was getting uh affected as well. So onto the iron tablets as well, as all the herbs and all the supplements. So bioresonance was amazing, Bowen was really amazing, and then later on I added cranial sacral therapy, everything was coming back to let's support the nervous system. Do whatever you can to support the nervous system. So it was and you know, yoga nitra every night. And if if I had to have a nap through the day, through the day as well. Um you know, making all those dietary changes to support the gut as well as the the supplements, so really small meals and no carbohydrates and a very paleo-type um diet to to support my my gut as well. A combination of whatever is going to help support my body, my nervous system, and then using the mind body processes, the nervous system processes to support my mind and my emotions, you know, the emotions, the roller coaster of emotions that you that you go through, right, Jackie, on this journey.

Jackie Baxter 16:53

That's quite a roller coaster, isn't it? Absolutely. Um I'd love to hear more about your nervous system practices and the sort of emotional support and and all of that. Um before we do that, I would love, partly for my own curiosity, um, because it hasn't really come up, but the bioresonance, can you say a little bit about what that is? Because I don't think anyone has mentioned that before.

Lalita Holmes 17:18

Amazing, amazing. You know, it's been around for probably 30, 40 years, mostly in the European countries. I believe it's really big in um Germany, where it may have possibly started, and Poland and a lot of those um European countries have all been using bioresonance for many, many, many years. Um, I came across it when I was ill before, um, because I went down the rabbit hole of because I had lupus and fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and all these other illnesses. Um,

What Bioresonance Testing Looks Like

Lalita Holmes 17:59

and a lot of the practitioners I was seeing was were telling me that, you know, it could be a virus, it could be dormant viruses, it could be so we went down that rabbit hole, and the bioresoners machine is one that picks up on that. So it checks for viruses, bacteria, um, you know, chemicals in the body, uh, worms, you know, those lovely worms that they find in people. So it's this little machine, but basically it works on frequencies. So every everything resonates on a frequency, okay? And and and we as human beings resonate on different free frequencies. So it's like, I guess, like dogs, you know, they can hear something and we can't. They're on a different frequency to us, right? So everything has a frequency. So every um virus, bacteria, um, fungi, all these things are on different frequencies. So the machine checks checks that against what's happening in your body. So it can tell you whether you have mold, you know, in your system. It can tell you if you have certain viruses, like mine showed up, and the and it was interesting because the practitioner that I saw this time, I hadn't seen her before. She didn't know my history at all. And when she said, Oh, Epstein Barr showing up, I said, Oh, that's interesting because I haven't had that for you know 30 years. Here it was showing up again after COVID. Um, and herpes, she said, herpes is is showing up again. I hadn't had that for years last time I was tested. So I, you know, I get tested fairly on a regular basis with this machine because I want to stay really well, I want to stay healthy. And so the the basis of it is that if you can eliminate or reduce a lot of these layers of the toxins and the viruses and things in your body, your body has a better chance of healing. So that's that's basically why I wanted to check it and I wanted to do it. I wanted to know have I still got the COVID um virus, you know, in the body, is it still floating around there like Epstein Barr does? You know, just stays there dormant, herpes stays there dormant until you're under a bit of stress. Shingles is another one, you know. So many people getting shingles now, they're under a bit of stress, they may have got covert, and boom, up comes the shingles, right? So it's it's very similar. So I wanted to to check that and make sure that that wasn't going to hinder me using the supplements and and everything else that I was doing. I wanted to really give my body the best chance of healing. I wanted to put it into that healing state, which included, you know, really good sleep and good hydration and really nourishing foods and that and that lovely yoga nidra that just calms your spirit and your soul whilst you sleep.

Jackie Baxter 21:38

Yeah, I was a big fan of Yoga Nidras as well. I use them a lot. Um, it was about the only thing that I could find at the time that would help my mind to calm down. Um, because I have a very busy mind. Still do, but I have a little bit more space for it nowadays. Um, but um, yeah, this this buyer, isn't it? It sounds really cool because it sounds like it. works as that kind of almost like a diagnostic but also then something that you can use against that so so that's kind of cool.

Lalita Holmes 22:09

It does that's right.

Jackie Baxter 22:12

Wow that that is amazing. Yeah and I I don't think anyone has mentioned it before which is why I thought oh let's find out a bit more about this that's amazing um I love what you were saying about kind of creating this environment in which your body was going to heal as well because like I hear this from so many people and it was my own experience as well you know there isn't one thing that's going to help you know it's it's about finding a whole host of different things that's going to help. And some of that is making sure that your environment is as conducive to healing as possible whether it's you know the the space that you're in you know whether whether you're eating and drinking stuff that's good for you, the air that you breathe and then what we consume in terms of things like social media as well which is a huge influence nowadays, isn't it? And you know, you know this this kind of our environment is more than just our physical environment I think isn't it and I I love that you've been kind of pulling in lots of different things where you said okay well this is nervous system but also the nervous system doesn't work in isolation so what else can I do to support my body whether it supplements with your naturopath or the bioresonance and the other things that you've been talking about.

Lalita Holmes 23:29

So it's this kind of like multi-pronged approach isn't it that's right which which all end up actually supporting the nervous system you know all of those things it always goes back to that central autonomic nervous system because that's in charge of all the systems of the body so why not help it along and and I think it's really um it's about self-love and self-care when you do things like that. And it's going to be different for everybody you know everybody would will need different support systems but at the end of the day I think it's really about caring for yourself and putting yourself first and really putting in that effort you know to give yourself every chance of recovering and I was determined to you know I had this total total belief that I was going to fully recover and I think that was helped by the fact that I'd recovered from all these other you know hideous um illnesses in the past I'm like if I can do that I can do this so I was just like really pulling all the tools out of my toolbox again that I hadn't needed to for a long time you know there's some some things that I've just always used in the last so I've been I was well for 14 years right fully recovered well for 14 years and then developed long covert so I hadn't needed to use like I don't think I'd had a a Bowen therapy for for years and um or even you know gone to naturopaths for supplements and a lot of these things I hadn't done they were all on the back burner because I was so well the thing that really really I think propelled my healing more than anything else was the breath work. Really that was my nervous system go to and I yeah I wanted to share that with you and tell you just what an impact that that had so for example you know when as soon as I started noticing that dizzy feeling and the vertigo and you know I couldn't look up I couldn't look down everything was spinning I would go to my breath immediately go to my breath and three long slow breaths that would pass and that was my proof like okay this is working so that's going to be my number one go-to whatever symptom that I had even those visits to the ICU that I had with the stabbing chest pain I continuously used my breath during that whole time and I'm pretty sure that's what helped me to stay calm to not buy into the fear so much and just ride out these waves of waves upon waves of different symptoms that were coming you know like 30 30 different symptoms was that's what really was my number one go-to was the breathing techniques. I used them in different ways you know I I did the

Breathwork For Symptoms In The Moment

Lalita Holmes 27:13

I would use the um four in and six out and then I would also do what my grandchildren call the sniff sniff poo. I'd use that one when I felt like I was going into a little panic or or a little anxiety I would use that one. But most of the other times I would just use the four four in six out but what I did was at the same time I added to it and I don't know whether you do this or not but this is where the the nervous system tools came in as well I would use the self-compassion the self-talk you know you're going to be okay everything's all right everything will be fine this is just your nervous system you're not in danger so I would do the breathing and the self-talk combined and that worked very very well for me with every every and look sometimes it was 30 40 times a day I would have to do it you know I'd be in the kitchen cooking something and suddenly I'd get the air hunger and I'd go over to the window open the window and I would breathe and I would do the self-talk and I would just feel myself relaxing. I'd notice my nervous system just regulating again right yes yes going from really activated because the air hunger really clicks on that fear response you know you just don't think you're gonna get the next breath so every single symptom that I'd have I would go to the breath go to the breath and another one I used was breathing and tapping so I had done a lot of tapping before when I got well so I combined the three tapping breathing and the self-soothing all together and that got me through some really difficult challenging times as well when the symptoms were you know very high I love this because like the first thing that we find that really helps is so powerful.

Jackie Baxter 29:51

I mean you said that you know you understood what was going on and you had this belief that you would get better. And even so having that kind of oh this this breath practice that I found this helps me each time things start getting really challenging I can do this and it will help. And it's not solving every single problem I have in the world but it is helping and you kept coming back to that and then stacking it up and adding in the self-compassion because the breath doesn't work in isolation we are you know whole body beings aren't we so you're bringing in these other things alongside the breath work which is you know amazing and and the fact that it made you feel better and helped you through some of those really challenging times is what's the proof in the pudding isn't it you know that that it was helping um which is which is awesome yeah I found that those in the moment tools were really what worked the best yeah you know and and having that understanding of working from the the danger response understanding that you know I'm I'm experiencing this symptom right now because my nervous system is perceiving some type of danger.

Lalita Holmes 31:13

Now that danger might be that the virus is still there um it may be that um this feeling that I'm not getting any air um that my that my blood's you know rushing to my legs when I stand up um that my head's throbbing that my heart's racing you know all these uh symptoms that I was feeling were signaling danger to my nervous system so then my nervous system is ramping up the you know that fear so so Dr. Schubner's um the five F's which are now seven F's but there were five to start with you know I have I really use those to my advantage am I fearing this symptom right now and I'm not getting this air hunger am I in fear um I've got this throbbing pain in my head am I focused on that right am I f feeling frustrated with having to constantly do this breathing and constantly having to stop and do some tapping do some self-talk do you know go over there and have another glass of salt water and just all these things you know that I was constantly having to do and my frustrated about that.

Jackie Baxter 32:46

So so the five F's were really getting me in touch with what was triggering my response and then and then I was very much aware of I must bring safety to my brain I've got to give safety messages to my brain constantly consistently I believe that that's what got me through I just being relentless in my every single symptom just go to the breath go to the breath go to the breath do some tapping and breathe do some self-compassion and breathe and they passed and then then I had lots of proof so each time I had a symptom I used the tool in the moment it would pass I had proof so my brain was building up all this proof that ah she's not in danger she's not in danger she's safe she's okay so it was that awareness and then building the strategies or finding the strategies that worked for you and then employing them consistently you know every time over and over and over yes yes did you sort of find I suppose this is a sort of two parter did you find that things sort of did consistently start to improve and then what did that kind of final off ramp up to that full recovery kind of look like for you I was amazed you know I was amazed when suddenly all the POT symptoms were gone.

Lalita Holmes 34:26

It's like really people are telling me that they've had POTS for six years for you know and and when I was sick before I had POTS for years. So I went really so quickly that's amazing it's got to be what I'm doing this combination approach of what I'm doing. So there's proof more for my brain no more visits to emergency you know just those three and all the symptoms were just melting away one by one by one sometimes I wasn't even realizing that they were gone do you know and and when I started to think about them all and write them down before I spoke with you I was like oh my goodness I'd forgotten that I forgot what that was like yeah yeah so they were just really just going going going and and like I said that the the tinnitus was really the last the last thing to to go and I believe the antihistamines helped a lot with that and again you know I went to the audiologist I had everything checked out thoroughly anything that I thought I've got to do my due diligence here and have it checked and tested and then because then I could cross that off I could say okay I've done that I know it's my nervous system that's why I have this tinnitter so I'll just persevere just keep going so I did a lot of somatic tracking as well it was interesting because in the back of my mind I kind of said to myself okay you've got this thing you're only going to have it for 12 months give yourself that and then you're gonna be dusted done and dusted so so I don't know if I had a placebo effect there as well maybe but I'm like why not why not tell your brain that do you know and believe that you're gonna fully recover.

Jackie Baxter 36:33

It's really interesting because I mean one of the things I get asked so many times in terms of my own recovery, you know, how long will it take? If I start doing this now how long will it take me to recover? And you know I can't answer that question you know and you can't judge that question on my recovery on anyone else's recovery because everybody is different. And you know I I think I have always thought until you said what you said that staying away from timelines is helpful you know be curious to things happening be open be you know to the fact that they can work and you know having that hope and belief that things can and will get better. But if we put that timeline on it, you know, it's that deadline and that deadline adds pressure and that pressure is you know is is going to be unhelpful because it's going to make us feel unsafe. And it sort of sounds like you did the opposite but I'm wondering if the way you did it was in a sort of curious way it was a no pressure way.

Lalita Holmes 37:34

Yeah no pressure way just always a loving loving compassionate approach and this that's one thing I've learned from Dr. Schubner's training you've got to do this work with love and compassion and and find joy you know keep finding joy in your days even when you feel miserable and terrible find those moments of joy and um take the pressure off yourself. Yeah yeah absolutely so you know if I hadn't recovered within the 12 months I would have checked in with myself because that's what the emotional work is about you know I check in with myself how am I feeling about that I'm a little bit past the 12 and I've still got a few symptoms here I would just go really easy on myself all right it's okay I know it's not far off I've only got a couple of symptoms left look at all the symptoms that have gone now you know so I just do that self-talk again reassure

Timelines Hope And Self-Compassion

Lalita Holmes 38:37

myself again and just focus back on what what I needed to do which was just keep doing what I was doing you know keep following this routine.

Jackie Baxter 38:51

So you yeah you were able to kind of not put pressure on yourself but also I mean I think what often is the danger is you know you say oh that person's been ill for five years I can't do that um so it's that kind of you know I won't necessarily be ill for that long but I'm also not putting pressure on myself to be better really quickly. So it's that kind of yeah middle middle ground kind of thing yeah that's hard to find. And you mentioned just then the kind of you know emotions and we we talked a little bit about this earlier and then went off on a different tangent about the sort of emotional roller coaster that comes along with this is not surprising when you know everything you know this it takes over your whole life doesn't it when something like this happened um so our emotions are obviously a huge part of that and I would just love to know just you know how how did you kind of manage to balance allowing emotions to be felt without them overwhelming you again using the the breath so I use a a a technique which I teach most of my clients now is a body scan and a self-compassion.

Lalita Holmes 40:06

So I would because I my awareness is already you know really honed because of the previous work that I've done and and I've been coaching you know for 14 years and learning about the emotions and most recently with with Dr. Shubner with the EAET's all about the emotional processing right and so I was absolutely aware of what my emotions were and I would scan my body notice notice the emotion first scan my body notice where I felt the emotion then I would acknowledge it I'm so sick of this right now I just wish it was all over you know if it was anger frustration times sadness like there were times when my family'd want me to come out with them and I and I couldn't go out with them because I knew that I'd have this awful air hunger and this awful lead feeling in my legs you know and I just really didn't want to go anywhere. So I just noticed that emotion where it was in my body acknowledge it was really really important and then go to the self-compassion right and and and do that self-talk you're gonna be okay you're not in danger you're all right this will pass and just breathe through it and next thing I know the emotion would just be right down and I'd carry carry on with whatever I was doing until the next time it showed up again so again it's that in the moment you know doing things in the moment and not letting them pass not avoiding them not ignoring them not trying to get rid of them just letting them be there but using the pool the the tools to process them whether whether it was processing the symptom processing the thoughts that I was having about the symptoms processing the emotions I was having and and really diligently doing that consistently throughout the day every day and sometimes through the night you know sometimes I'd I'd wake because I had the irritable bladder so I'd be you know getting up five times through the night and and getting so frustrated because most of the time I would go back to sleep but sometimes I wouldn't and then I'd be annoyed and so I again I would just go to my breath I would do some tapping and breathing I would do some self-talk I would do some somatic tracking whatever I needed to do to help my nervous system so my number one goal was how can I support my nervous system to just when it's activated so the emotions would activate the nervous system the symptoms would activate the nervous system the thoughts would activate the nervous system so my job was that I'd give into myself was you know bring myself out of that activation as as quickly as I could as easily and as loving loving as I could in the gentlest most compassionate way how can I do this?

Jackie Baxter 43:55

You know the biggest theme almost that I'm picking out from what you've been saying is This self-compassion, which is something, you know, it's it's so hard, isn't it? I mean, it's something that I'd never even understood before, and um certainly had never been kind to myself in the past, uh, was never aware that I should be, and then certainly wasn't when I became ill because my body had let me down and I was useless. So uh, you know, it suddenly became a thing that I was aware of and it was this absolutely impossible thing. And yet it is something that is so important. So I think, yeah, I think for people who are listening, if you're thinking, well, that sounds impossible, you know, it it's very difficult, or it certainly can be. But you know, I'm picking out so much from you and the way that you speak is how important it is.

Lalita Holmes 44:42

And you just start off slowly, you know, start start off very slowly. If you can't find that self-compassion for yourself, you know, imagine it's for your child, imagine it's your best friend, imagine it's somebody else who's going through that, and what would you say to them? Right, and and as you build on that, as you practice that and you do that regularly, you start finding ones for yourself, and you start really, really it gets easier and easier. If you haven't experienced self-compassion from others throughout your life, if you've experienced more criticism and judgment and harsh words, which many of us have, you know, many of us, then it is difficult to find that self-compassion. But if you just start gradually introducing it and build on it, I often say to people, can you ask your friend what they would say about you? What are the things that they would say that they love about you? And all of a sudden, you know, they've got this, oh, they've got this list of things that they know about themselves, you know. And I believe that we all have inner strength, all of us, you know, we all have the wisdom, we all have knowledge, and nobody knows you like you do. Right? So I said, trust that, trust you and what you're doing, and listen to yourself. I see so many people out there, they're always listening to everybody else. Oh, you know, this person did this, why can't I do that? And why why aren't I getting better? Just listen, listen to yourself and trust yourself. Honestly, if if I hadn't done that the first time I got sick and this time I got sick, I don't think I would recovered as quickly. So it's just trusting, trusting the knowledge that I already had, the knowing that I already had, really helped help tremendously.

Jackie Baxter 47:14

Yeah. And it sounds like from what you're saying, and again, I've heard other people say that, and I'm coming to realise it myself as well, is that you know, it could be seen as a journey back to yourself, you know, reconnecting with your body and that kind of, you know, who would I be without everyone else's expectations? And certainly for myself, I don't think I realized how much of my life I was living for other people or in the way that other people thought I should be living it. And I feel like I'm much closer now to living the life that I want, but that has taken a lot of well, it's taken a horrible, horrible experience of long COVID. Um, and it's taken a lot of pain and a lot of work. Yeah, it's not something you would have wished for.

Lalita Holmes 48:02

That's right. And there was a part um of the work that I did um following along the EAET um practice, is you you kind of dig a little bit deeper under the hood, um, particularly when you notice patterns. So there was a pattern that I noticed when I was sick, where I would be more in fear and panic when I was on my own and I had particularly the heart symptoms. So I noticed that and I thought, oh, that I got really curious about that, and and I remembered from my training, just look look a bit deeper under the hood, what what could be um, you know, call causing that, what that could be about. And um so I swapped a session because I started to figure out what it was, and I had a session with another practitioner, and we had a swap, and I said to her, could you explore this pattern that I've I have noticed? And sure enough, it was to do with my father, because he because it only happened when it was with my chest, with my with my heart issues, and um because he had died of a heart attack when he was only 48, and he was on his own, so that was the link, and so I was able to just work on those emotions of that and how it related, how I was relating to it now, so what unconsciously could have been adding to that fear, and so I was able to to process those emotions using using the EAET, and um that never happened again. I didn't have that symptom again,

Emotional Links And Deeper Healing

Lalita Holmes 50:07

and I didn't have that fear again. So sometimes you've got to go a little bit deeper. So I wanted to share with you this wonderful um experience I had with a client, a young girl who came in to see me. She'd been in and out of emergencies, she had all the long, long list of symptoms, she was taking note of all of them. And when she arrived, her father dropped her off to see me because she couldn't drive any longer. She's she's only in her late twenties, I think, mid-twenties, and she's telling me that she's not working any longer, she can't go to work, she can't drive, and she's just every day living in this fear of all these symptoms. All the doctors she'd been to told her it was anxiety, and both her parents and her said she's never experienced anxiety before, it's not anxiety. Um, she was um had all the tests possibly that she could have done, and so she came to see me. Her mother had contacted me, she knew what I what I do, and and what we did, we used that danger response alert system of the brain, the nervous system work of the brain, and I said to her, tell me three or four of the main stresses, traumas that you've experienced before COVID and since you've had COVID. And so all we did was we worked on those.

Jackie Baxter 51:52

Amazing.

Lalita Holmes 51:53

And the next time she came to see me, a week later, she was driving herself, she was part-time back at work, she was gradually adding, so in a very short space of time, just by addressing that nervous system, and I gave her some breathing techniques

A Client’s Rapid Turnaround

Lalita Holmes 52:16

to do, some other little exercises to do, and you know, she fully recovered in I'd say probably a month, a month max. She had no more symptoms, she's back working full-time and hasn't had any relapses. She's perfectly fine. So, you know, it's can be different for everybody, different for everybody.

Jackie Baxter 52:46

Yeah, that's amazing. And you know, we've had two recovery stories for the price of one today, actually, haven't we? Oh Laily To thank you so much for coming along, for sharing your story, for sharing so much wisdom. And um yeah, just thank you for being awesome.

Lalita Holmes 53:05

It's been wonderful, wonderful talking with you, Jackie. And keep doing what you're doing. You're doing wonderful work there, and I'm looking forward to sharing what you do with others.