Unity Physiotherapy & Wellbeing

06/09/2026

🌿A Beautiful Day

I’m feeling grateful for a beautiful and nurturing day.

A slow paced day which included:

A short walk in the sunshine with family, appreciating time with family.

Feeling the sunshine and breeze and noticing the whole of what was present — and simply being.

Connecting to care, thoughtfulness, love and gratitude.

Joy in many things including a gift of beautiful sunflowers🌻

The soothing of listening to the rain after lunch.

The deep awareness, connection, groudnedness and peacefulness sitting in my garden doing a compassion and interconnection meditation from Michael West’s book which I received as a gift yesterday.

💭 What’s been nurturing for you today?

05/09/2026

🌿 A Beautiful Gift

Michael West kindly sent me a copy of his meditation book following an email exchange after I reached out about my compassionate, trauma-informed working services. This followed attending a workshop on compassionate leadership in healthcare with Michael, run by The Compassionate Mind Foundation in June.

I trained as a meditation teacher 13 years ago and have explored meditative and contemplative practice for many years.

There’s a beautiful synchronicity between the book cover and my poetry book Living Wholeness, which I mention at the end of the video.

💚 This heartfelt gift has been gratefully received today.

04/09/2026

🌼 Ending the Week with Joy

To finish the week I thought I’d share a little moment of joy from my garden.

Before work yesterday morning, I wandered around my garden and stopped to smell a beautiful rose that had opened.

There was an immediate ahhh — a moment of grounding and joy. 💚

It’s a beautiful delicate rose with the most wonderful and gentle scent.

I found myself deliberately smelling it each time I wandered around the garden yesterday and today.

It’s easy to overlook small moments of joy like this, particularly when life is busy or challenging.

Slowing down and noticing our bodies reaction to successes, moments of joy, gratitude or something that simply feels good can help us really take in what’s nurturing for our wellbeing — rather than our attention always being drawn towards what is difficult which is the natural tendency of the human mind. We can cultivate a change in this automatic tendency, though it will still show up, no matter how much we practice — that’s part of being human.

When we share our moments of joy with others, they can celebrate with us, feel connected to us and perhaps experience a little of that joy themselves.

Perhaps joy is something we can share today too.

So, as we finish the week I’d love to hear…

💭 What’s a small success (or even a big success), a joyful moment or something you’re grateful for from this week?

I would also love to hear what you notice in your body as you read this post and what people choose to share about their week.

03/09/2026

A lovely offering by Breathworks for Pain Awareness Month.

This , we’re giving away one of our best-selling courses for FREE - Methods to Live Well with Pain & Illness.

Through daily emails, you will hear Breathworks Founder, Vidyamala Burch OBE, share her pain story and teach you the techniques & meditations that help her to live a full and enriching life in this 10-day online course.

Access to this course is free when you sign up by 30th September (usually £25), and once registered, the resources are yours to keep for life.

Click the link below to sign up for free ⬇️

https://bit.ly/free-pain-course-2026

P.S. Help us spread the love! Share this post and tag a friend in the comments who would appreciate this free support 💙

03/09/2026

🌿 Stability Strategies in ME/CFS

In my last post I mentioned when exploring increasing tolerance in ME/CFS it’s important to have some stability (not experiencing frequent PEM), and be integrating strategies that support stability into daily life.

The same principle applies to other conditions that include fatigue, such as long covid/post viral fatigue, PoTS, fibromyalgia & autoimmune conditions. Although some of the principles for exploring increasing tolerance are different in ME/CFS because of post exertional malaise (PEM).

There are many things that can support stability, including:
* Pacing - includes understanding tolerance levels & principles of pacing. Can include HR pacing
* Somatic awareness
* Self-compassion
* Reframing language & beliefs to be supportive
* Sleep routines & getting enough sleep
* Including rest in each day — including restorative rest alongside other types of rest
* Nervous system regulation strategies
* Diet - including regular eating patterns & a healthy, balanced diet to whatever degree is possible
* Understanding the demands of different types of tasks & breaking them down where needed
* Understanding sensory preferences & reducing sensory overload
* Orthostatic/PoTS lifestyle management strategies
* Medication when needed
* Supplements where there are nutritional deficiencies (I often seen iron deficiency without anaemia & indeterminate B12 in people with ME/CFS)
* Stress Management
* Treating other conditions, for example mast cell activation syndrome, endometriosis, PoTS & breathing pattern disorders
* Mental Health support when needed

Just as fatigue isn’t caused by one underlying physiological mechanism, stability isn’t achieved through only using one thing. A tailored combination is needed for each person & consistency is important.

When there’s enough stability it may be possible to explore increasing tolerance in a very gentle & gradual way (not using graded exposure therapy which is contraindicated). Compassionate somatic awareness & flexibility support this.

💭 We each find our own combination of things me of yours?

02/09/2026

🌿 Awareness & Building Tolerance

Over the past few weeks or so, I’ve been gradually exploring my walking tolerance again.

Earlier this year, I lost some physical tolerance after reducing my B12 supplement. Before I lost tolerance I noticed air hunger, breathlessness with exertion and a higher heart rate that wasn't settling as it normally would. After a while, despite not pushing though, I lost some physical tolerance and had to reduce some activities including my work.

I found this confusing because I knew I hadn’t missed signs of doing too much, and was still taking 500mcg of B12, so it hadn't occurred to me that B12 could be contributing. There were also hormonal factors involved and perhaps something else.

Once I returned to my usual higher dose of B12, my physical tolerance gradually improved and I was able to return to much of what I had been doing before. I didn’t bring much walking back in mainly as other things and all the heat waves were enough!

With ME/CFS & PoTS it's important to understand our current tolerance and establish some stability before exploring whether we can increase it. Tolerance isn't a fixed point — it can change with different factors. I prefer to see using baselines as part of pacing in a flexible way, rather than set times or ways to do things.

I already knew where my tolerance had roughly been for walking before the setback, so I've been gradually exploring what’s possible now.

Over the past week, I've had three walks of around 35–40 minutes. One involved considerably more time on my feet overall and was probably a little more than was ideal right now as it created post exertional symptom exacerbation, though not post exertional malaise — PESE & PEM are not the same thing.

For now, my plan is to keep the frequency and length of these walks fairly consistent for a few weeks, before gradually increasing the length of one walk.

When exploring increasing tolerance, I generally suggest keeping other things relatively stable and exploring increasing an activity without triggering PEM or PESE.

Somatic awareness is another important part of this for me. Noticing what's happening with curiosity and compassion, rather than over analysis or fear, can help us respond in a wise way.

One of my guides is my heart rate: not simply the number itself, but whether it continues to rise rather than settling. I use this as information, without constantly checking it. If I do slip into over-monitoring I compassionately acknowledge this and change my focus.

Sometimes an additional short restorative rest or regulating practice can also help support stability whilst working with building tolerance.

✨ Somatic awareness, understanding tolerance levels, strategies that support stability, and self-compassion can all support exploring what may be possible and building tolerance.

31/08/2026

🌿 Post-Treatment Lyme Syndrome and The Role of Dysautonomia

I attended the Dysautonomia International Conference in July online, as I have a few times before.

I attended a little live & am slowly catching up on recordings.

Yesterday I listened to a talk on post-treatment lyme and dysautonomia with John Aucott.

This was really interesting, partly as I developed post-treatment Lyme disease after early Lyme disease had been ineffectively treated. I had a 6 month gap between antibiotic courses, which I later learnt was against the NICE guidelines, and during this time more symptoms developed & severity increased. I suspect it has been one of the contributors to developing ME/CFS, PoTS and MCAS (though I’ve likely had the latter for much longer).

There is still some non-acceptance & misunderstanding around Lyme disease. One important point from the talk was that antibody testing can be negative in the early stages because it takes time for the immune system to produce detectable antibodies. This is something I experienced with having had a classic rash and subsequent confirmation of Lyme by infectious diseases, yet some other medical professionals have still questioned this!

There were a number of interesting things in the talk including:
* The different stages of Lyme infection — from the early skin infection, to possible cardiac & neurological involvement, and later inflammatory arthritis if left untreated
* The rash doesn’t necessarily look like the classic ‘bullseye’ or target lesion & can vary in appearance; and can look different in females
* It is suggested that around 10-20% people treated for Lyme develop persistent symptoms, although the true figure may be higher
* There are significant overlaps with Long Covid & other infection-associated illnesses, particularly fatigue, brain fog & pain
* Fatigue is the most common & severe symptom
* There are several proposed biological mechanisms, including immune dysregulation, inflammation, changes within the nervous system & potentially autoimmunity
* Research has identified neuroinflammation on PET imaging
* Studies have found dysautonomia in people with post-treatment Lyme disease, with symptoms across a variety of autonomic domains
* Research also has shown an association with small fibre neuropathy
* An interesting study compared people with post-treatment Lyme & people with non-lyme PoTS. The overall pattern & severity of dysautonomia was similar, although some areas, including orthostatic intolerance, were more pronounced in the PoTS group

There was recognition that post treatment Lyme disease isn’t necessarily one single presentation. Different people can have different combinations of symptoms & underlying mechanisms. I think this is true of many chronic illnesses.

It was great to hear there are further studies underway and that at the Hopkins Centre they run an MDT clinic for people with post treatment Lyme.

30/08/2026

I love growing veg, and this year I’ve grown a few things that I haven’t before, including peppers and beetroot. I grew the peppers from seeds out of a shop bought pepper. It took a long time to turn from green to orange, it was worth the wait.

When picking some little tomatoes late afternoon I noticed the lovely thyme smell (they are right next to the thyme) and this inspired my tea.

Fresh thyme from the garden, along with some root ginger, fennel seeds and cumin all went in to the sort of stew. Everything else I harvested went in too, except the beetroot leaves, though some were steamed to go with the stew. Chickpeas, salt and black pepper were also added.

I’m now sat with relaxing a thyme tea 🙂

I’m grateful for my little vegetables patch and the joy of growing and eating the produce 😋 and sharing some with family too.

🌱

30/08/2026

I enjoyed a lovely short walk with my mum and her dog this morning around a beautiful little lake.

Time outdoors is nurturing in many ways 💚 and it was lovely to walk with my mum too. It was a lovely way to start a Sunday.

Yesterday, I chose not to do any higher-energy physical activity as there had been some early warning signs after a few consecutive days of walking and gardening. Today things were fully settled and walking within tolerance levels was possible.

May today include something nurturing for you 💚

29/08/2026

Do you live with Long Covid or ME/CFS?

Are you not currently accessing an NHS specialist service and haven’t done so within the last 3 years?

You could take part in HERITAGE - a £1.4 million, UK-wide NIHR-funded study looking at how care and NHS services for Long Covid and ME/CFS can be improved.

The study aims to recruit 3,000 people to better understand:

• Experiences of accessing care
• Unmet healthcare needs
• The overlap between Long Covid and ME/CFS
• Different models of specialist care

The findings will help inform future NHS services and the development of a National Service Framework for Long Covid and ME/CFS.

If you’re eligible, consider taking part and helping shape the future of care.

🔗 Find out more: https://heritage.leeds.ac.uk/join/