246 – Vikki Jones

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Welcome to another captivating edition of the art of living proactively. I’m your host, Tony Winyard, back with an inspiring new guest. Today, I’ll be speaking with the brilliant Vikki Jones. A breathing expert who is using her vital knowledge to help long COVID sufferers. Vikki will share her incredible story of recovering from breaking her neck while surfing. And then later to contract COVID 19, which left her with debilitating long-term symptoms. She’ll explain how learning proper breathing techniques through the oxygen advantage program has been a lifesaver in managing her illness. Vikki is now paying it forward by teaching customized breathing exercises to others struggling with long Covids myriad of symptoms. She’ll provide powerful insights into taking control of your health when traditional medicine fails you. it’s an inspirational tale of overcoming adversity with grit and determination. Be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and YouTube. Great.

If you could leave us a review. And hope you enjoy this breath of fresh air conversation with the remarkable Vikki Jones. Remember, leave your comments on our YouTube channel and do share the episode with friends.

[00:01:26] Tony Winyard: Welcome to another episode of The Art of Living Proactively and my guest today, Vikki Jones. How are

[00:01:32] Vikki Jones: I’m feeling good this morning, so a little win.

[00:01:39] Tony Winyard: and so this morning, so where are you? Because I know you’re in the States, but I’m not sure which

[00:01:43] Vikki Jones: I am in Arizona, so it is sunrise here. Seven o’clock in the morning, it’s going to be a beautiful day. We get a lot of sunshine here. The other thing, we’re at altitude as well I’m at about 6, 000 feet. what they call the high desert. But just gorgeous scenery, lots of mountains. Great outdoor life here.

[00:02:09] Tony Winyard: I think that what you mentioned about altitude, we’ll come back to that later on, because obviously we’re going to be talking about breathing and so on. So we’ll definitely come back to that, but let’s get into, my guests always start with some sort of parable or metaphor. I believe you, you have

[00:02:22] Vikki Jones: I do. my little metaphor is you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. And that really hits with me. I’ve had two really major turning points in my life. And the first one was actually I broke my neck when I was surfing, of all things. and that taught me a lot about health. And the second one was getting COVID, which then turned into long COVID.

And both incidences changed the path of my life and made me really open my eyes to a lot of different therapies, to help me get better. So I am learning to surf on some very different waves right now. And, like I said, that’s my little metaphor.

[00:03:19] Tony Winyard: and do you still surf?

we’re living in a landlocked state. Yeah, you’re not so near

[00:03:29] Vikki Jones: not so near to water.

[00:03:30] Tony Winyard: so when that, the first incident happened, And it’s funny because, I’m not a surfer and I’m nowhere near the sea here, so I’ve never been a surfer, but my image of surfing is a very sort of relaxed thing. It’s on, beautiful weather and it’s all calm and relaxed.

I don’t think, it doesn’t, it wouldn’t cross my mind that you could break your neck while or surfing.

[00:03:51] Vikki Jones: If you fall off your board, you can, and hit your head on the bottom of the, on the bottom of the ocean floor, which is what happened to me. it was, but it is, it’s supposed to be relaxing. Of course, it’s all the things that we think of being healthy. We’re outside, we’re in the water, you’re with nature.

it’s usually sunny and,you think of it as a health. a healthy outdoor activity, but unfortunately on that particular day, it wasn’t the outcome for me wasn’t as good.

[00:04:26] Tony Winyard: So you said, I forget how you worded it, but you said that sort of was like a sort of changing direction for you. So what happened after that

[00:04:32] Vikki Jones: I broke my neck and that in itself was, very debilitating. And,I didn’t know, I knew that I was very lucky to be alive because I broke C1 and C2, which is right at the top of your neck. and my whole life had been about activity and working out and exercise and of course I was immobilized for a long time.

and… Afterwards, I was in a lot of pain,and I had to change the way of life because I live because my, the fracture was considered unstable, so they didn’t quite know whether it would stabilize and I would be able to have a regular life again, or whether I would need surgery and have it fused.

so you live in this sort of, seesaw of and then the pain that came along with it, was difficult to deal with and just, the things that we Take for granted in a life like I used to love to run and that was the first time in my life when I Was unable to run because of the pounding

[00:05:49] Tony Winyard: Right.

[00:05:50] Vikki Jones: and you just have to think more about your activity because things like falling and You know just impact Really could change you know what was happening to me, but you know the big thing was I It made me open my eyes to the fact that how lucky I was to have survived it and how lucky I was to be able to still be walking and for it and it also put me in a direction of natural health care.

I’d got into some chiropractic work to help me with the pain and I got in with a community that really took me in and started talking about, some alternative health options.

[00:06:48] Tony Winyard: And what age were you when this

[00:06:49] Vikki Jones: it was 2006, Not that long ago. actually, quite a long time ago. But I, I had children. I had children. I had three children who were honestly scared to death. they saw their mum who was active and they didn’t know what was going to happen and, as much as it happens to you, it also happens to your family and it really, I know it really scared them.

So yeah, I was a mother at the time. still am.

[00:07:23] Tony Winyard: Okay. and so one of the areas that we’ve got in common and how we got to know each other, we are both members of the Oxygen Advantage sort of community, I suppose you could say. And it’s interesting, we are speaking before the recording started, and I was asking you how did you get involved in Oxygen Advantage?

that’s a fascinating story. could you tell the listeners that

[00:07:43] Vikki Jones: I got involved, through contracting COVID. So I got COVID in July of 2020. which was the first variant. and I didn’t get, I didn’t get bad symptoms, just a mild COVID with pneumonia, but I didn’t get better. So I was this healthy, what I thought was healthy, strong, fit, I was working as a trainer and I got COVID.

And then didn’t recover. And it was at a time when, there was a lot of COVID around, but the whole thing about long COVID was very quiet because it was something nobody saw happen, saw happening. and I started thinking, this isn’t right. I’m not, had incredible fatigue. I couldn’t think.

There were some days I couldn’t get out of bed. Of course, my mind was, oh, I’ll just, I can exercise through this. Probably not the right thing to do. But I had a lot of shortness of breath, and then I read an article in the Atlantic Magazine about a program that was coming out of Mount Sinai, which is in New York, and it was called STASIS.

It was a breathing program, and I enrolled in that. My husband helped me through it because, mentally I couldn’t comprehend a lot of things. And… It was a breathing program, but it was too difficult for me. So my breathing was so labored and, compromised. But as a trainer, I knew that the sort of the foundation of learning to breathe would help somebody like me.

And they recommended, the stasis people recommended that I reach out to Patrick. And he runs, or is the founder of the Oxygen Advantage in the Buteyko breathing courses, and I did both of them. and it’s funny, long COVID is strange in as much as it’s a very new issue that’s come into society and the people that are suffering with it are the people that are driving the, information about how, what the symptoms are and how we need to be treated and all that other stuff.

And Patrick was actually the first person who listened to me. He was compassionate. He was open to changing his ideas of what long COVID were and how breathing could help people with long COVID. So that’s how I met you, Tony. And I’d already met Patrick and got onto that,learning to breathe, to help people with long COVID.

[00:10:51] Tony Winyard: So you mentioned about how the long COVID was giving you problems cognitively and so on. So the oxygen advantage, some of the information or something, the course is not that easy to begin with, but I can’t imagine trying to do that course if I’m impaired cognitively. So that sounds well.

[00:11:10] Vikki Jones: I had to,

[00:11:11] Tony Winyard: Well done on

[00:11:12] Vikki Jones: yeah, I had to do it a couple, I think I’ve done it like three times because every time I learn something new, and often I would, often I’d sit and do the course and I’d have to just turn my video off and listen and go back and listen. just so that I could, learn the stuff.

but it has been, it has really changed my life. And it has really changed my, ability to deal with some of the… the symptoms and the long journey that long COVID puts you on, learning to breathe properly, having breathing techniques has made a big difference. it is my kind of pillar for health.

[00:11:59] Tony Winyard: getting through that. I guess at this point we should maybe, because there will be some people listening to this who probably will be unfamiliar with what the oxygen advantage is. I mean it has been mentioned on previous episodes but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will know what it is. So could you just explain what the oxygen advantage is, what Buteyko is, and

[00:12:19] Vikki Jones: Okay. the, I think the basic program or the medical program as I would call it is Buteyko. Buteyko is a breathing program that teaches people to breathe, to use breathing exercises to help, with things like anxiety, depression, pain, sleep issues, even things like COPD, asthma. So it really focuses on learning to nasal breathe in order to help.

certain, medical issues. And that was invented by Dr. Buteyko. He was a Russian doctor who saw that, a lot of people that were chronically sick were upper chest breathers and he had them all start nasal breathing and a lot of their symptoms changed almost overnight. And Patrick then developed, from the Buteyko, he then developed Oxygen Advantage, which is more learning to breathe for performance, for health.

and for, all the things that go with that. So there’s kind of two pillars to it, but they’re both focused on using your breath in the way that we should to make our bodies, the healthiest that they can be.

[00:13:59] Tony Winyard: And I guess what may surprise some people listening is there’s so little understanding in for many people in breathing properly and what is functional breathing or Most people aren’t even aware of what is dysfunctional breathing, but I guess some people might be trying to think Where does a long COVID come into this breathing?

How does that all match up? How does breathing help you with long COVID?

[00:14:25] Vikki Jones: all right. So before I got COVID, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know anything about breathing, even though I’d been, an international athlete, I’d done all this training for people, and I’d never focused on breath work. I think we talk about breath work for yoga, but when you get long COVID, one of the symptoms you get is you get very short of breath.

Very short of breath. And, our whole body’s changed, so I think there’s 300 symptoms that come along with long COVID. And… Many of them are, very serious symptoms, but they’re, it’s difficult to explain. you have things like heart palpitations, you have neurological issues, you have digestive issues, there’s a myriad of symptoms, and most of them are untreatable by conventional medicine.

So a lot of people with Long Covid have been gaslit. You go and you talk to a doctor and you say, I’m having these issues. They run the gamut of conventional western medicine tests. They all come back normal and you feel like it’s in your head. So when you learn to breathe properly, you can take…

Many of those symptoms, and give, we’re just trying to calm the body down, in all honesty, because we are in a heightened state of anxiety, so we’re in that sympathetic mode of fight or flight. We wake up with anxiety or we wake up feeling fatigued or you wake up in pain and your body is like always just in this state of And by using certain breathing exercises we can then take the body from this fight or flight. into the rest and digest. So we have to be very careful with the exercises that we do because some breathing exercises, you can, what we call stimulate the nervous system or upregulate. And the ones that we use for long COVID tend to be down regulations.

They tend to be calming exercises because we have enough of the upregulation with what’s going on with our bodies.

[00:17:02] Tony Winyard: yeah So once you learnt the oxygen advantage method and Buteyko and so on so were you initially? I’m guessing it sounds like you were just initially learning it just To help yourself and then it, what developed from there and what happened

[00:17:19] Vikki Jones: It, like I said, Patrick was so open to listening about the symptoms of long COVID. And when I was a trainer, one of the things that we do when we have clients is we have to modify exercises. We have to make them applicable to our clients. And that’s what happened with oxygen advantage. you have the basic nasal exercises that you’re doing, you’re inhaling and exhaling through your nose.

But for people with long COVID, you have to modify them because our breathing is so dysfunctional and what someone would normally consider a very achievable breathing exercise, people with long COVID cannot do. And so that’s when, A, I saw how much it helped me if I was having what we call a relapse or an episode that are, very scary.

Then, I could use the breathing exercises or my husband could talk to me about what I should be doing to calm myself down. So you go down this road of, Oh my gosh, here comes a neurological episode that I’m not going to be able to control. you can use your breath to help you get past that point of almost no return where you get into the upper chest hyperventilation and just being very scared.

and so when it helped me, I realized how much it would help other people with long COVID. So we have, with long COVID, we have an incredible support system on social media, because that’s the only way that we can support each other. so there’s Facebook groups and other groups and people in there suffering and you want to be able to help them because they’re not getting answers from Western medicine.

And so we go down, or I certainly went down a path of, I need to doctor myself. I need to find things that I can use on a daily basis that are going to help with my symptoms that don’t include going to the doctor. They include things that I have within my own control. that whole alternative medicine is to me what has helped with, this long COVID journey.

but the breath work is something, that’s something we do all the time, every day, constantly. So if we don’t change our breath… We’re never going to get a different outcome with our health.

[00:20:25] Tony Winyard: And so as you improved your breathing and you were downregulating and then your cognitive functions, just what improved a lot as well? I’m guessing,

[00:20:34] Vikki Jones: on good days, yes. the thing about long COVID is such a weird, is just very strange because you can have a good day and here I am, I’m having a good day. You can talk to me on a not so good day and I am not going to be with it at all. So it’s almost like we have to celebrate our good days.

We have to. be very grateful for them, but, and I, you have to be careful because you don’t want to live in that point in that place of thinking, when’s the next bad day going to come. But the thing that I do know is if I am going to have a bad day or COVID episode, long COVID episode, I have got the tools to get me through the difficult situations.

[00:21:29] Tony Winyard: one thing I didn’t realize, and I’ve just realized as you were speaking then, is. So it’s now, what, three years since you initially got the long COVID, and you’ve still got long COVID. So it sounds like this is something, what, that’s never going to go

[00:21:42] Vikki Jones: I’d hope that it will eventually go away. It, Tony, it’s one of those things we don’t really know. the, we don’t know if we’ll ever fully recover,

[00:21:54] Tony Winyard: Right.

[00:21:55] Vikki Jones: because, there are some people that have recovered, but there are some people that are also three years in, and they’re still getting episodes of, or relapses, that’s what we call them, relapses.

so it’s an unknown thing, and that in itself gives you a little bit of anxiety, but, once again I’m going to go back to that’s why we have to take control of our health, because One of the things that long COVID has taught me is how important it is that we control our health.

We take control of our health. We look for the solutions. because we don’t know how long it’s going to last. And, I want my good days to be really good. And, if I’m going to have a bad day, I want those to be as minimally bad as possible.

[00:22:52] Tony Winyard: So I’m wondering, it’s, so the reason I got into the oxygen advantage, I have a history, I’ve had asthma since I was a child. And this sounds like there’s some similarities. I will always be asthmatic and, until the day I die. Using the oxygen advantage has enabled me to have control over my asthma, but it will never cure my asthma.

But by doing regular breathing exercises, I’m able to keep it under control. There’ll be certain environmental triggers that will make me more likely to have an asthmatic episode, but by doing breathing exercises, I can again, control that. So it sounds like there’s some sort of similarities there.

Are there environmental triggers for you, say, for that? For this?

[00:23:38] Vikki Jones: I have tried to see if there’s a pattern of environmental triggers or any kind of triggers. So long COVID is triggered by, or episodes of long COVID are triggered by stress. Stress on the body. And we don’t know what stresses will cause a relapse. it could be environmental, it could be emotional, it could be physical, it could be chemical.

It’s all of those things. And, hence, I know, cleaning up your diet, making sure you are eating really good food. we all do a supplement routine. Exercise, which a lot of people use for, to decrease stress. is an incredible stressor on someone that has long COVID and managing your stress and pacing is important.

So there’s a lot of similarities and you look for a pattern. So often if I’ve had a relapse, my husband and I will look for a pattern. Was there something that happened that caused this? and usually there isn’t. It’s just, there’s something wrong with people with long term COVID. There’s something going on with our autonomic nervous system.

So the things that we take for granted, like digestion, and heart rate, and, neurology, being able to think, and, our body temperature, that’s all, and breathing, that all changes, we suddenly, it goes awry, and you’re left with, okay, what can I do? the only thing of, the only part of your autonomic nervous system that you can actually control is your breath.

The rest of it, you have to, it just, it happens.

[00:25:50] Tony Winyard: So is it a case of everyone with long COVID, one of the main issues they have is their breathing? Would that be true to

[00:25:58] Vikki Jones: I would say a lot of, let’s go back to a dysfunctional breather. I would imagine that most people with, Long COVID, prior to getting COVID, were probably dysfunctional

[00:26:11] Tony Winyard: Breathers.

Yeah, that

[00:26:14] Vikki Jones: breathers. you get that upper chest, breathing through the mouth, that hypervent, very fast breathing, so that’s a dysfunctional breather. Now, I was one of them and, and a lot of people So your question was about dysfunctional breathing. A lot of people have breathing issues. that’s one of the things that, COVID comes along with the COVID virus.

It has an effect on your lungs and your breathing function. The feeling of suffocation, which you know as an asthmatic is very real with people with long COVID. the fact that when I, on a bad day, my BOLT score, which is the measure of my, tolerance of oxygen was something like three.

[00:27:06] Tony Winyard: Wow.

[00:27:07] Vikki Jones: as a breath instructor, you know that’s, that, that makes you feel like someone has put a pillow over your face. you are having trouble, you’re having trouble breathing.

[00:27:20] Tony Winyard: Yeah. So something that was going through my mind as you were saying that in, about dysfunctional breathing and so on. And I wondered whether… The initial accident with the, when you broke your neck, is if that contributed towards your dysfunctional breathing.

[00:27:38] Vikki Jones: I don’t know. I’ve always thought of, I’ve always thought of myself as a very healthy person. But I think one of the things that we are learning now is we are not taught to breathe properly. And I don’t know what the number is, but I think in society probably it’s more than 60 percent of people dysfunctionally breathe. even as an athlete, I ran marathons and, reached a very high level of athletic achievement. achievement. Nobody ever talked to me about breathing. So I was a dysfunctional breather from early life. when I used to run races, you could hear me coming just by the fact that I was my mouth breathing.

and it’s one of those things I don’t even think we’re conscious about, we’re not conscious. about breathing until you can’t breathe. you probably weren’t conscious about how difficult, you’re breathing until you got asthma and felt that heaviness in your chest. And, when I got COVID, that was the first time I was like, I can’t breathe.

I was in an accident one time and I actually punctured my lung. And, I can remember then thinking, Oh my gosh, I can’t breathe. I still had one lung working. But, thinking, and that just, your, question just brought that back to me. The feeling of suffocation is, is incredible if you haven’t, it’s someone holding your head underwater,I think so many of us are dysfunctional breathers and it affects so much in our life, it affects our sleep, it affects our recovery, it, your performance.

day to day life. It affects your ability to concentrate. long COVID is, it’s been a very difficult time, I’m grateful every day that it has taught me so much about breathing and the other parts of things that we need to do to keep our health as optimum as possible in the situation we’ve been given.

[00:30:11] Your BOLT scores varies greatly day to day?

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[00:30:11] Tony Winyard: Would your BOLT score be very changeable day to day then? Right.

[00:30:17] Vikki Jones: Very changeable. And so is my HRV, so my heart rate variability changes day to day, and so does my BOLT score. And that was one of the things that, you know, when we, talked to our clients about, Breathing exercises for long COVID, a normal healthy person could depend on their BOLT score as an indication of whether their It, whether their breathing is improving.

Now, with long COVID, that’s not something that you can depend on. you can, it’s, it’s like a zig zag. it does tend to go in the right direction, but if you’re having a bad day, then it’s going to drop right down.

[00:31:06] How often do you need to practice your breathing exercises?

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[00:31:06] Tony Winyard: So what have you found other, The breathing exercises you need to do and how, often do you need to be doing them, multiple times a day or what is it for

[00:31:16] Vikki Jones: I do them multiple times a day. obviously my main focus is that I nasal breathe. If I’m not talking and I’m not eating. I am nasal breathing. and I usually wake up in the morning and I will do my breathing exercises before I get out of bed. And then, if I’m able to go for a walk or if I’m,doing some form of exercise, I’ll do some warm up breathing and,I’ll do the "Many small breath holds".

it’s or just if I’m having a little bit of anxiety, I’ll do some cadence breathing or left nostril breathing. I use it throughout the day, just to down regulate my system. If, if my heart rate starts going up, it’s okay, I need to do some calming breathing or, and then I’ll definitely…

Always do, some breathing to down regulate before I go to sleep. And I tape my mouth every single night.

[00:32:29] Do you track your HRV?

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[00:32:29] Tony Winyard: And so would you, do you track your HRV? You mentioned HRV, so if your HRV is going down, would you start doing some breathing exercises then?

[00:32:38] Vikki Jones: your HRV, I only measure my HRV in the morning. So that usually, to me, indicates, how resilient I am to stress for that day. So if my HRV has changed a lot, I tend to have a much quieter day. but one of the things with long COVID is you get these bouncing around of your heart rate that comes on very suddenly.

So it can drop very low and then bounce very high. if that happens, I’ll sit and I know to do my breathing exercises.

[00:33:17] Does hormetic stress help?

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[00:33:17] Tony Winyard: Would this prevent you from doing, things to, hormetic stress, along like saunas and cold showers or anything with that?

[00:33:25] Vikki Jones: I actually use those to help.

[00:33:30] Tony Winyard: Okay,

[00:33:31] Vikki Jones: So I can get an immediate response with my HRV if I do a, like I’ll do a face immersion in ice water in the morning. That will increase my body’s resiliency to, stress. And cold showers. I’ve done a little bit of cold water swimming. I understand the benefit of those.

it helps reset your autonomic nervous system. And you can see in the background, we have a sauna here, an infrared sauna, which,I’ve used to try and detox our body because initially we thought we had,we, we don’t know, but, detoxing your body from spike proteins or some of the viruses that, and also to, it’s a great place to sit and do some nice calming breathing exercises.

[00:34:23] What is the difference between an infra red sauna and a regular sauna?

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[00:34:23] Tony Winyard: yeah. And actually while we’re on that topic of an infrared sauna and I think most people still don’t know really what is the difference between an infrared sauna and a regular sauna, so how would you answer that?

[00:34:36] Vikki Jones: that, the infrared sauna has panels that emit a slightly different light. So the regular, the Finnish saunas. is a dry heat, and they’re putting, you have those stones, you put water on it and you get a very dry heat. And the infrared saunas have a different heat source and the radio, I think the radio frequency or the light frequency is a little bit different.

the way that I was taught about it was that It gets right below that skin level. So some saunas are just, you’re sweating from initial part of your skin, but the infrared saunas get much deeper into your body and then you sweat that out. So it’s much more of a detoxification.

[00:35:41] Have you tried red light therapy?

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[00:35:41] Tony Winyard: And have you looked into things like red light therapy, would that be helpful at

[00:35:45] Vikki Jones: have, one of the things I do use is Rife therapy. using radio frequencies, to help heal certain areas. I have not done light thera red light therapy, and the other thing I haven’t done is like the hyperbaric chambers, the ozone therapy. But I think I’ve pretty much done everything else. I’ve done the acupuncture, done grounding, a lot of meditation, hypnosis, supplements, and…

keeping a very clean diet, but, I, I go back to that whole thing is we have to find things that work for us in our daily life, and I have, I’m very lucky that, my husband is my partner in this, we’re going to find solutions that are going to help me and we’ve got a little routine of, using certain modalities that are what I know is helping me get through the long COVID.

[00:37:00] How does living at altitude effect you?

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[00:37:00] Tony Winyard: And so living in altitude must make it more difficult as well,

[00:37:03] Vikki Jones: thankfully I was living, I’d already been living at altitude for, two years before I got long COVID. So when you live at altitude, you adapt. So I, initially when my husband and I moved here, it was like, you’d walk up an incline and just be good, breathlessness and, but it definitely does make a difference.

because you could go out and walk and you would feel, that feeling of suffocation, that air hunger that we talk about with. Oxygen Advantage. So I, it’s interesting because you think the people, that have trouble with asthma, the place we live in Arizona used to be a center that they would send people with asthma, because they thought that was a therapy that, or the high altitude is a therapy that they would, that would help them.

But I know we’re very close to Flagstaff, and a lot of the world’s top marathon runners come to Flagstaff to train because they’re at altitude, and it, what it means is you get that adaptive, reaction, and then when you go back and do a race at sea level, it’s like a performance enhancer.

[00:38:30] When you’re at sea-level do you notice a difference?

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[00:38:30] Tony Winyard: and so when you’re at sea level, do you notice any difference,

[00:38:32] Vikki Jones: do.

[00:38:33] Tony Winyard: right?

[00:38:34] Vikki Jones: yeah. It’s yeah, like I said, it’s, it is different here. We, you definitely feel that you’re at altitude.

[00:38:43] Long COVID training programmes

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[00:38:43] Tony Winyard: So moving on to, you mentioned before about the sort of training and so on, stuff that you do, I know you’ve got some, I think it was some group programs or workshops coming up.

[00:38:53] Vikki Jones: We do, we’ve got some breathing techniques for long COVID, which actually focuses more on the Buteyko exercises. So the people, that are… Okay, so I would consider myself a high functioning long COVID sufferer. It means that I can go out and walk on some days. I can go and do a certain level of exercise.

And then there are people that are literally horizontal. their exercise for the day is getting out of bed. Their exercise for the day is getting a shower. they have incredible fatigue and shortness of breath. So when we developed the courses, we realized that, we’ve got two very distinct groups of people with long COVID.

You’ve got people that are horizontal and you’ve got people that are vertical. So the people that are bedridden and less ambulatory, we did Breathing Techniques for Long Covid and then we’ve also got a course that is Breathing Techniques for Long Covid Athletes. Because the athletes among us have had That kind of pillar of, support, meaning exercise taken away by long COVID and it’s our hope that, by learning to breathe properly, those people can then start exercising and at least when they recover from long COVID, they’ll be able to have that nasal breathing to help their performance.

So yes, I’m offering.

[00:40:42] Tony Winyard: it

[00:40:43] Vikki Jones: Yeah, two separate courses, but they are both 100 percent focused on people with long COVID.

[00:40:50] Tony Winyard: And are they face to face or are they online, or how are

[00:40:53] Vikki Jones: We’re going to be doing them on Zoom, so we’re going to do them actually twice a week for six weeks. they’ll all be recorded because we all know when you’ve got long COVID sometimes you just are having a bad day and it’s probably better that you listen to a recording. So that’s, and we’re going to keep the course, the, groups very small because we want to be able to offer individual support because we’re all so very different in the symptoms that come along with long COVID.

We wanted to be able to offer people, individual support with their specific issues.

[00:41:36] Tony Winyard: And so you mentioned, I think you said what, twice a week for six weeks, did you say? And that

[00:41:42] Vikki Jones: it begins, November 6th, the week of November 6th. So I think we’ve,

[00:41:49] Tony Winyard: or. This is coming out on November

[00:41:51] Vikki Jones: oh!

[00:41:52] Tony Winyard: 4th, so in two days time.

[00:41:54] Vikki Jones: Two days before the course starts. you know what? We’re gonna offer, we’re gonna offer more courses. So this is our first course that we’ve put together, that we’re offering, and then we’ll do another six week course in January, and we’re just gonna keep offering six week courses, and then eventually You know, there’ll be a course available online that people can do at their own pace with specific breathing exercises for people with long COVID.

[00:42:28] Are there many resources for people with long COVID?

—

[00:42:28] Tony Winyard: are you, are there many resources like books and so on for long COVID?

[00:42:35] Vikki Jones: No. It’s, Tony, it’s such a new, it’s been out three years,there’s very few, there’s very few studies, there’s very few books, there was very few guides. It’s, it really is, something that has been driven by the people that have it. And obviously the people that have had it the longest are, the three year plus when that initial COVID variant came out.

Those are the people, there are still some of us that have still, got long COVID. And,once again, it’s been driven by those that are suffering because it is stumping the medical community.

[00:43:24] Tony Winyard: Absolutely, yeah. Time is moving on. So staying with books, but moving away from COVID. Is there a, can you think of a book that’s moved you for any reason, at any time in your

[00:43:35] Fave book

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[00:43:35] Vikki Jones: you before the podcast, it was going to be Charlie at the Chocolate Factory. That’s my favorite childhood book. but I think The Secret, the book The Secret, I read, and it talks so much about, taking control of your life and, whatever your life happens to be at the time, we have to, as people, realize that we have a lot of control.

over the outcome of our day to day feelings and mind space and all of that. So I think the secret was, something that I’ve read over and over again.

[00:44:17] How to get in contact

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[00:44:17] Tony Winyard: Okay. if people want to find out more about you and the courses that you offer and so on, obviously all that’s going to be in the show notes, but just for people who only listen and don’t read, what, how would they

[00:44:27] Vikki Jones: we have a Facebook page. It’s called Long COVID Breathing. We have Instagram and I’m not a great social media person, so I don’t know what the tag is. And there’s a YouTube channel. I think that’s also long COVID breathing. all they, all we have a, an email. If people have questions about the courses, we have an email, long COVID breathing.

at gmail. com so they can shoot us an email we’ll get back to them with answers, about the courses, and I think I, I dropped you some information, you said you’d put it in the show notes.

[00:45:11] Tony Winyard: Yeah, all of everything you just said and the other stuff you said, all of that will be in the show notes

Yeah, and the other thing is Oxygen Advantage, because we’re both instructors, and if you go to the Oxygen Advantage site, and,type in my name, and it will come up as I think that, I think there’s a link there as well. Okay. finally, just before we finish, Vikki, what, have you got a quotation that resonates with you

[00:45:38] Fave quote

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[00:45:38] Vikki Jones: I’ve got a healthy quotation and it’s, good health is above wealth. another one applicable to, especially to me, because, it’s not until you lose your health that you realize that, it is probably the most important thing that we have in our life, good health. And that’s why You know, it’s so important.

The takeaway is that we need to doctor ourselves. There’s no one more interested in me feeling good than me. And, like I said, long COVID is tough, but it has taught me so many things. I am, I feel actually lucky to have had it. Because it has taught me so much. It’s taught me so much gratitude.

It’s taught me to look for modalities that will keep me healthy now and for the rest of my life. And it’s also taught me something that I can pass on and help other people with. I’m, in a very small way, very grateful for, the long COVID journey that I’ve, That I’m still on.

[00:46:59] Tony Winyard: Okay. And what you just said there about being, doctoring yourself. that is a sort of proactive attitude.

[00:47:05] Vikki Jones: it absolutely is. It’s, it, we all have, we’re all responsible ultimately for our own health and there are answers out there. We just have to look for them. We have to be open enough to think, you know what, there is an answer, but I have to be invested enough in my own health to, to go out and look for it.

And like I said, that’s why,I feel grateful for the journey that I’m on right now because it’s opened my eyes to so many modalities that, help us.

[00:47:45] Tony Winyard: Yeah. I think that’s a great way to end the episode. So thank you for, I think, really educating our listeners on what is long COVID because it’s something you hear about but don’t really know what it is, especially if it’s not affecting you. So yeah, thank you for that.

[00:47:58] Vikki Jones: Thank you for having me.

Get ready to be enlightened next week as I shine the spotlight on the captivating world of red light therapy with special guest Wes Pfiffner. Wes will illuminate the illuminating benefits of red and near infrared light. Busting myths and clearing up misconceptions around this proactive health treatment. We’ll discuss how light as energy can power your cells, stimulate mitochondria, reduce inflammation and accelerate recovery. Discover how to implement red light therapy into your daily wellness ritual, for enhanced energy, performance, sleep and more. Wes will spotlight the importance of dosage, wavelength, and power when sourcing your red light devices and steer you away from dubious products. You’ll also hear Wes’ insights on maximizing your natural light exposure. Implementing healthy light habits and the impressive benefits of combining red light therapy with saunas. Don’t miss this radiant conversation that will brighten your outlook on harnessing light for whole body health. Tune in next week. Your cells will thank you. And please leave us a review. Share this episode to spread the light.