Could ‘body mapping’ help Kiwis living with Long Covid?

Five years after the Covid-19 virus first swept the globe, it's estimated 40 million people are living with the debilitating syndrome known as Long Covid.

While many people with Long Covid may look okay, it's very common to feel isolated and misunderstood as you struggle with a level of daily exhaustion that the word ‘fatigue’ just doesn't seem to cover, says Oonagh Cousins.

In March 2020, the former professional rower had been pre-selected for Great Britain's Tokyo Olympics team when she got very sick with Covid-19 and never fully recovered.

Now a Long Covid advocate, Cousins says it was heartening to meet others struggling with symptoms at a body mapping workshop created specifically for people living with the syndrome.

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For Cousins, what was more “emotionally salient” than the disappointment of being forced to retire from professional sport in her mid-20s was the daily grief that accompanies living with a chronic illness.

“There's this misconception that Covid is over but it's not over for a lot of people. There's a lot of people who would love it to be over and it still isn't", she tells Saturday Morning.

While she's doing better now, Cousins endured an “incredibly difficult few years” after first getting sick in 2020 and was often unable to cook her meals or clean the house.

At the two-hour Visualising Long Covid workshop, she and four other participants were first asked questions about how they've experienced their own bodies before and after Long Covid and then tasked with drawing a map to illustrate what they've said.

Because athletes saying they’re unwell are given more “credibility”, Cousins says she was at least believed when she spoke about her Long Covid symptoms, even though there was very little medical treatment on offer.

“There was nothing any doctors could do for me, but they did at least believe me.”

While it was at first intimidating to tell strangers at the body mapping workshop about her “deeply personal, very traumatic experience” with Long Covid, Cousins says participating has helped her come to terms with the syndrome and could be greatly beneficial to others.

“People with Long Covid need treatment, they need biomedical research but in the meantime, this is an activity that can help people process what they're going through.”

While body mapping has been around as a mental health treatment since the 1990s, says researcher Maaret Yokela-Pansini, the Visualising Long Covid programme tailors the therapeutic technique specifically to people with this syndrome.

Workshop participants draw not just an image to represent their bodies, she says, they also depict difficult experiences and emotions that are located in specific body parts - frequently their brains.

Visualising Long Covid's body-mapping toolkit - which you can download for free here - is a guide through the whole process, including some relaxation exercises that can help people prepare.