I Survived Covid! Holistic Practices for Covid Support & Recovery with Sherry Zak Morris, C-IAYT

Hi, I'm Sherry Zach Morris, and I'm a certified yoga therapist, and I just survived COVID. Yes, I am symptom-free, and I'm really excited to share with you a little bit about my journey. I am not a medical expert. Everything that I'm going to share with you is my own personal experience, but I want to give everyone who is going through this a little bit of encouragement, maybe a little bit of insight as to what they might expect, and anybody who is fearful about getting COVID, I want to maybe set your mind at ease just a little bit to tell you and give you a little bit of glimpse of what it's like to have COVID. So first and foremost, I'm a certified yoga therapist. I do yoga every single day. Yoga for me is movement, breathing, and mindfulness, and I continue to practice my yoga throughout my whole COVID situation, which lasted, I'm going to say, eight to nine days. I also am a very holistic person. I don't take any medications, so everything I did during my COVID period was, I would say, holistic practices. So just a little bit about my background. I am 64 years old. I don't have any underlying health conditions, although I did have a condition a little while ago that did compromise my immune system, so I figure I'm probably in the vulnerable category, even just based on my age. So I'm going to call this little exchange that I'm having with you my yoga journey of hope and resilience as I made it through the COVID situation. I do want to say I am not a medical expert, so please, everything that I say, please take with your own grain of salt, and if it resonates with you, great. If it doesn't, then throw it away, right? I am all about sharing knowledge because I feel with knowledge is power, and especially in this era right now of COVID, there's so much fear that I want to dispel the fear right now of having COVID in hopes that we all can realize that we can overcome it if we do a few good health practices before, during, and after COVID. So let me show you a little bit about how it transpires, so many of you might be wondering how the symptoms appear, how bad they are, when they go away, and just how the process works. So as best I can, I documented it. I have a journal every single day. I documented my symptoms. I documented the kind of things that I did in order to help myself, and I also documented my temperature when I started realizing that I think I might have something going on. So first of all, I flew to Ohio, my hometown from California, to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday. So I flew home, and I had to fly and connect to another city, so I got home on a Wednesday evening, and the following Tuesday is when I had my very first symptom. Now my very first symptom was muscle aches. For me, it's not a common thing. I move a lot. I do yoga. I stretch a lot. So for me, that was a little bit unusual to start with. And where those muscle aches in me were, my lower back and the side of my hips. Again, an unusual place for me. I don't have any low back issues. I don't have any hip issues, so it already kind of signaled to me that something was a little bit different in my body, right? So by the end of the day, my muscles in my back were so tight that I had my husband help me get adjusted in child's pose. So for those of you who know yoga and you know child's pose, it's when you're kneeling down with your arms stretching forward, your hips back towards your heels, and just lengthening the spine, right? That felt so good. And I had my husband just take his palms and just put it on my low back and just gently kind of press down in there to lengthen that low back area, and that just felt so good. So for me, that was my first symptom. I had no idea. Now, prior to my trip to Ohio, I was experiencing some vertigo. Vertigo is a tendency to, you know, dizzy and, you know, a little bit of disoriented. I always say it feels like you're drunk and you're walking on a boat. That's kind of how it feels, right? So I've had that for, I would say, two to three weeks. But on Wednesday when I woke up, I had it really bad. I could barely walk. I had to have my husband help support me walking around the house. And I had some nausea that went with that. So I'm thinking, wow, this is kind of unusual. I didn't do anything, I didn't think, to trigger such an episode of vertigo. And with the nausea, you can imagine, I didn't really feel like eating either. So that was kind of an off day, I'm going to say. By the end of the day, my vertigo was so bad, I went to bed, woke up the next morning, and by now this is Thursday, right? And guess what? My vertigo was gone. I was shocked. I'm like, oh my gosh, after weeks of having it and a really bad episode, it was gone. So grateful for that, but I still felt a little bit off. I was feeling a little sluggish, a little tired, and by now I felt, hmm, something's up. So I started taking my temperature on that day. Now, my temperature usually averages about 96. I run a little cold. That's just my body temperature. So on that day, my temperature was 97. So I knew it increased a little bit, but nothing to be alarmed about. And I just was thinking, the weekend's coming, I was traveling, I'm 64 years old, and I decided, I'm calling my health care practitioner just to see if I can get a COVID test. So after going through a questionnaire, they said, yes, you qualify for the test within 30 minutes. I was in the drive-thru, two nose swabs, a throat swab, and I was home feeling a little relieved at least that I would have gotten the test and I would wait and see what happened. So they said anywhere between 24 hours and 72 hours. So I knew I had the weekend ahead of me just to kind of see what was going on. I decided Friday I was taking it easy. I was moving slow. I didn't have much of an appetite. I was still moving, stretching, and breathing. Now, I do want to point out, by this time, I'm thinking, if I do have COVID, I know one thing, and one thing for sure, is that the COVID loves the lungs, loves to move into the lungs. So that's when I started taking out and making sure I did a lot of my breathing exercises. Now, in yoga, I do a lot of deep breathing, especially when I'm moving and I'm breathing. But I got this little contraption when my dad had his hip replacement about a year and a half ago. He was given this when he came home from his operation to make sure that he did this a few times a day to keep his lungs open and to make sure he didn't get any pneumonia. I bought this because I thought, what a great contraption. This is a great way to help increase your lung capacity, to keep track of your lung capacity, because it has a little metrics. It has a little marks, right? So immediately, I picked up this thing and I started breathing to make sure that my breathing and my volume, right, of the breath coming into my body had not changed in these last few days. And guess what? Everything was the same as it always had been. So I was relieved about that. But I said, you know what? This thing is going to be my buddy and my companion throughout this whole process, whether I have COVID or not. So I started realizing that if I do have it, I better start really taking good care of myself. So I decided to really be mindful of my eating. Even though I was not very hungry, my appetite wasn't really strong, I decided whatever I'm going to eat, I'm going to make sure it's nutrition dense. And that's when I turned to my Ayurveda cookbook, right here. I have many of them. This one happens to be by Laura Plum. It's Ayurveda Cooking for the Beginners. And I love Ayurveda because it is a sister science to yoga and it talks about all the things that we bring into our being, be it the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the thoughts that we think, the movement, the prana that we move throughout our bodies. All of that comes into play in terms of the health of our overall being. So for Ayurveda, it focuses a lot on what you eat. And I knew, again, that I wanted to eat as much nutrition because my body needed it if it was going to conquer anything that's foreign inside of me. So I made things like vegetable curry. I made a dish called kichari, which is the chicken soup of Ayurveda. It's just so much nutrition in just one serving. Every single morning, I would have my oatmeal, and that would have raisins and walnuts and sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut, as much as I could throw into there, almond milk, to have a nice big bowl, hot bowl, something that's really nutrition and dense. And then for lunch, I would do a smoothie and I would throw everything in there. I would have spinach leaves in there. I would have avocados and blueberries and bananas and a coconut and almond milk. So all of that protein powder, vegan protein power. So that was a big, huge meal. And then I would have a mid-afternoon snack, usually some kind of denseness, some kind of nut butter. And then for dinner, I would have some Ayurvedic meal that would include spices. Spices are very, very important because spices inside your bodies can counteract a lot of toxins and help you flush out things and create a little bit of heat for you. So all of the Ayurvedic cooking came in really handy during my COVID period. Decided to take the day off and I just binge watched Outlander on Netflix. For those of you who are Outlander fans, I just got addicted to it. And that took my mind so far away and I needed that. Again, the mindfulness aspect of my COVID, I'm going to say, journey was very important because we all can go into the negatives. We all can go into the what ifs. We all can go into the fear. We all can go into the worry. That is a discipline that we must keep. So I decided to share my journey of mindfulness and my yoga practices by creating some yoga practices while I was doing COVID. So I'm sharing those with you. I have several that I would love for you to enjoy, participate in if you are going through COVID. And if you're not going through COVID, these are practices that I do almost every single day. So they're kind of my health regime, basically. So Friday, took it easy. Saturday morning, woke up. Of course, I didn't get my results yet, but I knew that I was moving a little slow and just wasn't quite feeling right. I was getting a little bit of pressure in my sinuses, a little bit of a headache. And I decided to make sure my temperature was looking good. And guess what? It was up to 98. So for me, I had raised my temperature two degrees. I knew definitely I had an infection in my body. So took it easy on Saturday. On Sunday, same situation. But some of the symptoms started to dissipate on the top part of me, which is my sinuses and my headache, and started to move into the back of my throat, which is a little bit of scratchiness in the back of my throat. So warm water, lemon water, lime water, lots of warm water, soothing water. I also did some airbornes and some additional zinc, vitamin D. Every single day, I went outside to make sure I got that beautiful burst of vitamin D and prana and deep breathing when I was outside. So all of those practices, every single day, I made sure to take time and to fill up my energy tank, basically, so that I can remain strong. By Sunday afternoon, I got the results, and they said, yes, you are COVID positive. Took my temperature again on Sunday. I'm still at 98. So I knew that I had the infection inside of me. And I knew I had to keep on doing what I was doing, which was just eating right, sleeping in, moving my body, getting the energy to move through my body, mindfulness, being aware not to go into the negative aspect of everything. And I did a little bit of work. Work for me is always fun. I am a yoga teacher. I create yoga videos. I edit yoga videos. So for me, I did spend some time on the computer being creative, but I didn't spend a lot of time. I also did some binge watching of Outlander on that day as well. So overall, I felt that I was pacing myself well, eating really well, and feeling not super great, but not super bad. So now comes Monday, and I wake up with a little bit of a scratchy throat. So every time I swallow, I can feel, wow, there's something going on in there. Take my temperature. It's down to 97. I dropped a degree. So I'm thinking, that's a good sign. So basically, my temperature peaked two degrees above normal, stayed for two days, and then started coming down. So I was really relieved that maybe I'm on the downside of this thing. But I also knew that something was going on in my throat, right? So I made sure I kept on drinking that warm water, the lemon water, the lime water, taking some airbornes, taking additional zinc, making sure I go outside, getting that sunshine in, taking those deep breaths, of course, doing my deep breathing with my volumizer probably two or three times a day just to make sure that my metrics of my breathing volume had not changed. So I was basically monitoring myself a lot, making some really good Ayurvedic meals, enjoying those. And by midday Monday when I was drinking my smoothie, I noticed one symptom that I had heard about, and that was losing your sense of taste and smell. Now, that was a bummer for me because I do enjoy my food, and especially all the wonderful flavors in Ayurveda, which have wonderful spices and curries and vegetables, and it's a wonderful taste treat. But when you lose your sense of taste and smell, it's not very fun to eat. But I knew I had to. So luckily I was still eating those nutrition-dense meals, and I knew I was getting the nutrition I wanted. So by that evening, I had dinner again, couldn't taste a thing. Tuesday morning, I wake up. Now I have definitely a sore throat, a sore throat. So every time I swallow, I'm like, oh yeah, there's the soreness in that. No taste, no smell, still eating good. My temperature now is down to about 96.5. So for me, I feel like I made it over the hump of the infection that was heating up my body, and now I just needed to make sure that I just kept my strength up, right? So rested, definitely did yoga every single day, definitely did my breathing practices. And then I started realizing that my taste of sense and smell, I had to do something about that. So I did a little bit of research on the internet, and they said that was a common symptom. It usually comes towards the end of the COVID period, and it could take anywhere from seven days, 10 days, three months, maybe never. But one part of this one article I read gave me a light bulb, an aha moment, and it said, what's happening with your taste and your smell is that those nerve endings are damaged, and some of them may come back, or some of them may not, right? But in order to re-encourage neuroplasticity, for anybody who knows what that is, it's the ability for your body to regenerate nerves and nerve connections, they said to start smelling strong smells to see if you could, even if you can't smell them, to imagine in your mind that you can. So they said the best smells to do are something like rose, lemon, mint, right? Something that's really pretty powerful. And they said aromatherapy being the best, essential oils. So I couldn't go shopping to get any, but I did have two, and I had peppermint and lavender, two smells. So I said, okay, I'm going to give this a go. So I started breathing in, right? Started with the peppermint first. I felt the coolness of the peppermint, but I did not smell the peppermint. And same with the lavender, nothing, nothing at all. And so, of course, that concerned me because it kind of validated the fact that I cannot smell, and when I eat, I cannot taste. So the next day, being Tuesday, I still had the no taste, no smell. My temperature now is down to 96, feeling good. Guess what? Scratchy throat, gone. Almost every single symptom gone except for taste and smell. That's when I decided I'm going to be doing this aromatherapy a few times every hour or so. And now it is Friday. It is Friday. So from Tuesday to Friday, I have been diligent with my aromatherapy. I've been diligent with my breathing. I've been diligent with my eating. I have been diligent with my yoga practice, and now I can smell the peppermint. I can smell the lavender. I tasted my smoothie for the first time today. So I'm really relieved that these abilities are coming back to me. And as I mentioned, that's my journey. I'm thinking it's a total of eight or nine days. I'm going to say I'm symptom free. For everything that they are sharing about COVID, once you are symptom free, there's a period of time you still wait, and then you should be free to go about your life. So that's my journey. I do want to say that I had hope the entire time. I never went to the dark side. Very, very infrequently, I did. And when I did, I caught myself, right? I said, I'm going to make it through. And when I make it through, I'm going to share the strategies that I took in order to be comfortable throughout my journey and to share with everybody everything I did to maybe overcome some of the maybe more common symptoms that people go through. So I hope that's helped you a lot. I've actually created three different yoga practices. I filmed them throughout the period that I had COVID. So I wanted to really express in my body what felt good. For me, I call my yoga practices organic, which means I don't have a script. I usually get there in my presence of my yoga. And I wait to see what my body and my mind are telling me that I need to do. So those yoga practices I'm sharing with you. I hope that they serve you. For everybody who is afraid about getting COVID, I tell you, please keep yourself healthy. Please do yoga every single day. Please do breathing, deep breathing every single day and mindfulness every single day. Keep your mind in a really positive state. I know the world is in a crazy place right now. I did not watch the news for almost a week. And of course, all the escalating cases, all of that information, I did not watch that. I did not want to put any negative energy in my body because I knew I needed all the energy to fight the virus that was in my body. So for all of you, I hope I gave you a little bit of hope and that we can be resilient if we take good care of ourselves. Watch what you're thinking. Watch what you're eating. Watch what you're doing. And just keep yourself safe, everybody. So I will say this in closing. If you're not a yoga practitioner, I hope that I have convinced you now that yoga is a practice that will keep you healthy. And when you're going through something like this, it will maintain you through that process and it will get you to the other side. So everyone, be well. Stay safe. Keep moving. Namaste.