My story so far with M.E/CFS

Hi everyone! I really hope you are all having a beautiful Summer so far...

I wanted to write to you all and talk to you a little about some of the health struggles I've been going through in the last 6 years, I'm sure that you will all be able to relate in some way and may have had similar experiences yourselves.

I recently announced to you all that I was taking a little break from teaching for a while over Summer because of the health issues I've had, in particular this year. Reading your responses, I suddenly realised that nobody really knew that I was unwell... This initially surprised me, but of course no one knew how unwell I've been, it's just not something I talk about or really tell people, which I actually hadn't noticed until that moment!

It's just fascinating isn't it when you notice one of your blind spots. As someone who is very candid in general, it's surprising (even to myself) that I actually keep a lot hidden away and unconsciously present as being well.

Meaning, I can be going through something huge and it is totally all consuming and very prevalent to me, but generally people would never know. My Moon sign being Cancer means that I like to retreat into my shell sometimes when I'm dealing with things.

This is a common theme with something like M.E, certain chronic health issues generally affect certain personality types and there'a reputation with M.E/Chronic fatigue syndrome/fybromyalgia, that you would simply never know that person was unwell... Anyway, my story so far, in brief...

I had my little girl 6 years ago and ever since I never really popped back to full health, full energy. This labour somehow seemed to trigger a long health journey for me.

I started to get what I thought was flu for a few weeks at a time but in-between would feel back to normal, then I'd get another 'flu' and it went on like this for probably around 18 months. I assumed my immune system was lowered because I was breastfeeding, I now had 2 kids to look after instead of 1 and I just thought that this is what it was like now being a parent of 2 kids (A depressing thought in itself).

I then got 'ill' again and I actually stayed that way for around 4 months this time. My symptoms very much felt like a flu, very achey, extremely tired, struggling to get up and anything physical I did involved taking some time to recover again by resting. Some days it was an achievement getting to the top of the stairs. I was pretty bed bound for a lot of that time and attempting to raise a 4 year old and an 18 month old at the same time, as well as running my business and keeping my relationship together.

This is when I realised there was definitely something more going on and there was something very wrong in my body.

Of course, as always with M.E/CFS, all tests will show that you are completely healthy and doctors are pretty stumped.

I was working with a nutritionist, supplementing iron, having spiritual healing & energy work, kinesiology, acupuncture, heavy metal detoxing, astrology, shamanic healing and trying different diets/cleanses which all helped to a degree. I of course looked to Kundalini Yoga and deep meditation which helped with symptoms but the underlying cause was eluding me and anyone else that was trying to help me.

I went to the Tony Robbins event back in 2019 which hugely helped and gave me a good few months reprieve from symptoms which I thought was me cured!

I had a knowing all along that there was a type of transformation going on, a spiritual transformation, a physical one and also an emotional one. I was working on a lot from my past, clearing of emotion and traumas, I was also discovering some physical things such as heavy metal overload and correcting this, so all good work which needed doing for sure anyway. I had such a transformational week at Tony Robbins and really thought I had learnt all this illness had been brought to teach me, I felt wonderful!

Covid then happened and my symptoms began to return incrementally as the months went on.

I then began to experience lots of other added symptoms such as anxiety (never experienced in my life, horrible!) and heart issues, I could write you a long list of weird symptoms!

I'll just say that at this point I absolutely did not know what was wrong with me. I did believe my symptoms were that of Chronic fatigue/M.E/Fibromyalgia, but I also knew these are just names for a list of symptoms, my symptoms fit with many fatigue related conditions that actually don't tell you what's wrong or how to recover.

I chose not to identify with a label and to see that I was going through something quite huge that would be transformational for me and I was in a process of experience and learning for my Soul and my life purpose. It's this, and my generally sunny disposition (lifesaver) that gets me through. I'm not sure how people cope with anything in life without certain belief and a knowing of something greater.

So for the last 4 years I would say I have been through many phases like this, of feeling great then feeling very unwell and finding many things along the way that have helped me hugely.

One thing I have noticed is that the only thing that has consistently helped my symptoms, and sometimes cleared them altogether for months at a time, is energy work & teaching. This has been very clear to me from day one. This is perhaps why it's been so hard for me to accept that I have an 'illness' because I experience how quickly it 'disappears' when I step into certain spaces. As soon as I sit down to teach, enter meditation, go for energy healing, go into any retreat space my symptoms literally vanish, just like flicking a light switch. It seemed to me that I had an issue with energy (feeling exhausted/weak was my main symptom) and the thing that always helped was energy. I felt I was being shown how energy really works.

I have always believed that there is something being shown to me, something I need to learn and physically experience in order for me to evolve and grow. I felt I was somehow missing the point as I kept having to go over this lesson time and time again, but in slightly varying ways. I'm sure the Universe is getting just as frustrated with me as I am with it!

And so I find myself 6 years down the road.. and still having long phases of feeling horrendous. And I can tell you, I have tried EVERYTHING.. well it certainly feels that way. I started with rest, diet cleansing & energy work, then onto functional medicine, kinesiology and a long phase of heavy metal detox and parasite cleansing, Tony Robbins seminars (which are so fun!) a year of deep rest & just acceptance, Shamanic healing and astrology, forgiveness work, a year of not giving it too much attention or energy and trying to just enjoy life, absolute emotional excavation of my past, many medical intuitives, plant medicine ceremonies, work within my relationship and adjustments to all my relationships and friendships, work in the Quantum field and deep meditation retreats, electromagnetic field and geopathic stress work, therapy, hypnotherapy, past life regression, .. they're just the phases I've been through, I won't list all the therapies I've tried. This mission of mine to feel good again is costly, but has also been a lot of fun and utterly fascinating.

We went to Thailand over Christmas and I got very poorly there, it turned out I had a kidney infection & I ended up in hospital for a week of the trip, I was so unwell there and it scared me actually how unwell I became. My symptoms weren't the usual symptoms of a kidney infection so it was strange. I did get better there, thanks to the gorgeous Thai nurses and lots of rice soup! And luckily we managed to keep traveling and really enjoyed the rest of our holiday.

On returning home I became ill again, with exactly the same symptoms as I had in Thailand, very strong symptoms, ones that didn't make sense, yet I was testing negative for another kidney infection. It was really scary being that ill again and with no reason for it this time, it was very confusing and quite terrifying actually at what was happening with my body and with no answers or even clues as to why. That same question again of 'What is wrong here?'

It took me a while to get over that the second time around, probably until around March. I had a small reprieve and felt pretty good after, we had an amazing week in Ibiza for my retreat and I felt better than I had in years in that retreat space. I crashed quite hard soon after that and since May/June have felt quite awful.

I made the decision to stop teaching over Summer a little earlier than usual to give myself some time off. I suddenly realised that in all these years of being so unwell I had never actually stopped working. I say 'working', I absolutely do not think of teaching Kundalini Yoga as working, it has never felt like work, especially as for the last 6 years it is one of the only things that makes me feel better, which is why I have never even considered giving it up for a moment. Teaching is the time when I feel totally in alignment, totally free of symptoms and completely myself.

After all these years of trying everything, this is the one thing I had not tried and I began to feel the call to take a mini sabbatical as part of my new recovery plan.

This year has taught me so much about this illness. And the way my body has reacted has taught me so much about what the root cause of this could possibly be. I have come to realize that many of my symptoms are that of a nervous system response, I began to look into the connection between M.E/CFS and the nervous system and I have found such a wealth of information there along with some incredible practitioners and clinics that work very specifically with fatigue related illnesses and healing through nervous system recovery. I also found some great books on M.E/CFS and it has utterly convinced me that what I've been through and what is going on with my body is most certainly M.E, without a doubt, these books have also taught me how to decode how I got to this place and therefore the path and steps to recovery.

So I am going into full on recovery mode now, learning as much as I can about M.E, reading as many recovery stories as I can and using a multi faceted approach focusing on nervous system recovery, the maladaptive stress response I am most likely in (being stuck in fight/flight/freeze) and nutrition. It all makes so much sense to me and I can feel the penny dropping. And if the root cause is nervous system based then as a Kundalini Yoga Teacher, this is something I can tackle! Isn't it quite incredible that I find myself in a position where I teach EXACTLY the thing I need to learn most of all :) There are no coincidences.

So a big part of my recovery plan will also be to shorten my school run. As many of you know my kids go to school quite far from where I live & teach in Windlesham, meaning that for the last 3 years I have spent around 4 hours each day in the car getting my kids to and from school in Frensham. (It's a gorgeous alternative school that is certainly worth the drive and I feel very lucky that a school like this is even within driving distance for us).

We attempted to move a couple of years ago but the timing seemingly wasn't right, I believe it is now time for us to begin on that journey again and look into moving closer to school. This means that House of Kundalini will also eventually move closer to Frensham and no longer be based in Windlesham. But it's not that far! So I'm really hoping you'll all still join me.

I am still running regular Yoga Retreats, I have one coming up soon which I cannot wait for in October and I have just announced details for another I have planned for March in the Cotswolds.

This is life isn't it, I know I am not the only one going through struggle of some kind. Many aspects of our lives can be wonderful but most of us will be challenged in one area at least, whether it's health or finances, relationship or lack of purpose... We are here as Souls to experience and to evolve, there is no good or bad, it is simply experience.

The drive I have had to learn and the motivation to understand would never have been there if not for such an illness. I have had to go so deep into healing which has created vast & visceral experience which is exactly why we're here. I have a newfound compassion and such empathy for people going through struggle, I can look into peoples eyes and tell them I really get it.

You simply cannot take people to the depths of healing if you have not been there yourself, and if that is the only reason for this journey then that will have truly been worth it. I hope to take everything I am learning and use it to help as many others as I can to bring themselves out of hard times and make a full recovery also.

What I know for sure is that the answers are not outside of you. The power to heal is within us and the body has an incredible capacity to self heal. Our job is to create a healing state and let the body do what the body is capable of doing.

The question isn't 'why am I unwell?' but more 'Why am I not getting better?'

The body cannot heal itself if we are in a stress state, which we so often are. My work now is to create a healing state within my body and mind. And more often than not, you will know the answers innately on how to do that for your exact, unique situation.

Sending you all huge amounts of love & I'll be in touch again as soon as I am up & running with classes and workshops again.

Charlene

xxx