Meet Jo Black... The Virus Expert

My Story

Hi, I’m Jo Black.
My story began in New Zealand when I was eighteen. I suddenly became very ill.

I had no idea what was going on, but I was so exhausted that I had to stop playing squash, I worked less,

and even my social life came to a standstill.

I looked for help and ended up with a Holistic Therapist.

Slowly, I started to recover.

But since then, I’ve spent most of my life dealing with recurring symptoms.

Every year, I would end up in bed for at least a week, completely drained, with no clear reason.

I always made excuses like, its the flu.

And then suddenly, just like that, I would be back on my feet again. And I would carry on.

For years, I thought: I’m just bad at handling stress. Because every time I had a lot going on and a lot of stress, I would get sick.

But it wasn’t the stress. It was a left over virus that kept showing up whenever my system was weakened.

I just didn’t know that at the time.

That virus turned out to be the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) Glandular Fever. And I only discovered that when I was 50.

During my training as a holistic therapist, my teacher tested me. “I think you have had the  EBV (glandular fever),” she said. And she was right. A blood test confirmed it.
After all those years of falling down and getting back up again, I finally understood what was going on.

I finally started to understand my body and how it reacted to, either what I was eating, stress, physical of mental stress, not setting boundaries, and realizing that these things had a huge impact on my physical and mental health.

That moment was painful, but also a huge relief.
And it gave me direction

This is now my passion, my goal to help people who feel just as lost as I was.

Why I do this work

I’ve now been free of symptoms for eight years.

Those years have taught me how important it is to listen to your body.

What I do now is actually quite simple.
I help people who struggle with vague symptoms, people who may have been told a hundred times that “it’s all in their head”

I look at the whole picture
At the body, the emotions, the nervous system
Not with big interventions, but with small, tangible steps.

Gentle, and tailored to who you are and what you need.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this.....
Your body has been whispering to you for a long time what it needs

You just have to learn how to listen.