Jennifer Mann was convinced that she would never recover from the mysterious illness that suddenly floored her in 2019.
“A year had gone past, and I was lying on the ground in tears of agony after yet another devastating visit to a neurologist,” says the former ballerina and yoga teacher. “The doctor had told me I would not recover, and – worst of all – that I’d never be able to have any children. My pain was physical, but it was also emotional. And when I heard that news, I honestly thought I would rather die.”
At the time, Mann was 28, a trainee physiotherapist, living in London with her partner Yiannis Konstantonis, a fitness coach who had worked with the Team GB Olympic canoeing team.
“Just before I fell ill I’d been working exceptionally hard,” she says. “From 6am I was teaching yoga and Pilates at a gym in west London; then spending the day studying for my physiotherapy degree at King’s College London, only to return to the gym until 10pm.”
When Mann started to develop fevers and body aches, her GP told her she was “just tired”. “I now realise that, with every symptom, my body was screaming ‘no!’ and imploring me to slow down,” she says. “And yet I ignored all the signs, and kept pushing.”
The last straw came suddenly in February 2020, when Mann’s back suddenly spasmed in excruciating pain during a yoga session.
“The following day, I developed flu-like symptoms, far more severe than the earlier fevers and pains,” she says. “I was so exhausted, I simply couldn’t get out of bed. At one point, I didn’t even have the energy to speak.”
Mann had to drop out of her work, and put her university course on hold. Overnight, Yiannis went from being Mann’s boyfriend to being her carer. “I became so incapacitated that he had to carry me to the toilet, cook for me, even change my clothes and wash me,” she says. “I was terrified, and in tears much of the time.”
As Mann’s illness progressed, her vision became blurry and her face covered in acne.
As most people would, Mann sought a solution from her doctor. “The first few doctors told me it was ‘in my head’ and ‘just anxiety’, as if I was making everything up,” she says. “Then they thought it might be a recurrence of the malaria I’d contracted as a child in Africa. At one point I was convinced I had cancer.”
When Mann’s heart started producing “a third heartbeat”, they rushed to A&E. “Yiannis was afraid I would die there, in that hospital,” she says. But no definitive cause could be found.
As Mann’s symptoms persisted and no immediate explanation was forthcoming, she received a series of vague diagnoses. “I was told I had chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and long Covid – even though my symptoms had begun before the pandemic,” she says. “One doctor said it was something called POTS (postural tachycardia syndrome) which is when your heart races. But the truth is, no one really had a clue why I was so ill or how to help.”
The NHS defines chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) as “a chronic illness with a wide range of symptoms including extreme tiredness and other symptoms that make it hard to carry out everyday tasks”. It is often clinically hard to define as there are no diagnostic tests and symptoms are similar to those that present in many other illnesses. Fibromyalgia and long Covid present similar problems to the medical establishment.
Desperate for a solution, the couple turned to private medicine. “I saw doctor after doctor, from immunologists to neurologists, even forking out £900 for one 45-minute consultation,” says Mann. “I had MRIs, scans, blood tests, heart investigations. Then I turned to alternative therapies: functional medicine, IV vitamin therapies, liver cleanses and parasite cleanses. At one point, I was on 50 pills a day from antiviral medication made in Switzerland to antibiotics and supplements.”
By the end of the process, Mann and Konstantonis had spent more than £20,000 – half of which they had to borrow – on trying to find a conventional cure. “It took this much money to realise how little understanding doctors have of chronic illnesses,” she says.
Mann was losing hope when, in 2021, she was surfing the web for videos that might help her. She came across a woman who had recovered after following an online programme which dealt with chronic fatigue. “The girl explained how she had done a form of ‘brain retraining’, which had led to an amazing recovery,” says Mann.
Coming from a medical background, Mann was initially sceptical. “I assumed the woman had been paid to say this,” she says. “But I was intrigued. Surely this was at least worth a try? I said to Yiannis: ‘If one person has recovered, so can I’.”
So Mann signed up for a three-day online course. “From the first moment, I was stunned at how much sense it made. The science I was learning was so basic and so obvious, yet I hadn’t learned it at university.”
Mann started to learn a new way of looking at chronic disease: namely, how the link between the mind and the body can lead to ill-health. “I heard how, over time, repressing, avoiding and shutting down feelings can become the main ingredients in the recipe for burnout, chronic stress and illness,” she says.
The theory goes that repeated stress can cause the body to pump out “fight or flight” hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, that eventually lead to negative changes in energy production and the immune system – and then a “crash” that it can be very difficult to come out of. The idea then is that chronic stress alters our mitochondria, the “batteries” in our cells that provide energy.
“Over years, my nervous system had adapted to the high levels of stress and became ‘dysregulated’,” says Mann. “It became clear I had been collecting stress my whole life with no way of knowing how to resolve its cause or impact.”
Mann learned a series of exercises to help her “retrain” her brain. “For example, I was automatically telling myself that I will never recover,” she says. “I soon realised that this was an unhelpful thought, and once I was aware this was the case, I was able to tell myself: ‘well, you can do something about that’. All of a sudden, I had less fear in my body.”
Mann’s recovery curve was rapid. “Within a couple of weeks, I could take the bus, go to the supermarket, and not crash with fevers and pain afterwards,” she says.
Despite her new resilience, Mann felt herself backsliding into illness after family visits that triggered difficult emotions, or reminders of “trauma”. Indeed, from her early life, Mann had faced difficult circumstances. She was born in Uganda, but her British-born father left the family when she was only seven, and she moved to Italy with her mother.
In her mid-teens, she landed a place at the prestigious La Scala ballet school, where the training was often brutal. “Teachers were emotionally abusive, shouting at me: ‘you’re not good enough’ and ‘you’re too fat’.”
While wondering how to deal with these unhappy memories, Mann met Karden Rabin, a practitioner with experience in treating illnesses related to the nervous system. From him, she learned a school of therapy known as “somatic experiencing”. As well as the mental self-talk, Mann began to use a variety of relaxation exercises, such as deep breathing and various forms of gentle chanting. For her it was the final piece of the puzzle.
Karden and Mann decided to pool their knowledge and to launch a healing programme @SomiaInternational. They now work treating people with trauma and stress-related disorders, and have more than 67,000 followers on Instagram.
Four years on from that lowest point, Mann now describes her life as “wonderful”. Despite the doom-laden prognosis of the London doctors, she and Yiannis went on to have a son, Leo, who is 20 months old. In February 2023, they took the decision to up sticks and move to Bali, where Yiannis now works as an online trader.
“The nature and the sun remind me of my early life in Africa,” she says. “I felt sad about leaving my physio training behind me, but I don’t need to prove my worth anymore. At the age of 32 I can experience life fully and be the mother I always wanted to be.” She and Rubin have a book called The Secret Language of the Body coming out at the end of May.
“When I look back at what happened, I feel sad for anyone who is dealing with chronic fatigue, who has to go through the conventional medical system,” she says. “There is another solution. And now I want the whole world to know.”
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
