FOR 14 years Jenny Gilmore was so ill she spent most of her time in bed.

She was suffering with ME - a chronic illness that left her feeling so exhausted she could not walk more than 50 yards without a wheelchair.

Very few people ever recover from the debilitating illness, but thanks to a new ground-breaking treatment, the 43-year-old has finally got her life back.

Jenny, who lives in Fulford, York, was 27 when she contracted ME. She fell ill with glandular fever during her final year of studying occupational therapy at York St John's University and never recovered.

She said: "I was in my 20s when I got ME and I've come out the other end in my early 40s. I almost feel like somebody has folded time - it's as if I've walked through a time warp and lost 14 years of my life.

"I still can't believe that I'm symptom free - It's absolutely amazing. When you have ME, the longer you have it, the less likely you are to get well, and after 14 years, I really didn't think I'd come through it."

Jenny, who was unable to work throughout her illness, has recently-qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist and has set up her own business specialising in the approach that transformed her own health.

She said: "I used to chair the York and District ME Support Group and one day, somebody rang up the support line to say that they were better. I couldn't believe it because people with ME don't get better. But they said that they'd used a new kind of therapy called The Lightning Process and it had had a dramatic effect on their health."

Jenny did some research and found that although The Lightning Process wasn't available in the Yorkshire area, there was a similar approach, called Mickel Therapy.

The treatment is a combination of osteopathy, self hypnosis and life coaching.

She said: "I started the therapy in 2005 and by 2006 it had really made a difference. I wasn't completely better, though, and I decided to start to train as a hypnotherapist, specialising in the Lightning Process.

"That is what has brought me to where I am now - completely symptom-free. For me it is so exciting that I'm now able to bring this approach to local people with ME.

"When you've got ME, it's not possible to travel long distances and before I qualified, the nearest Lightning Process therapist was in Middlesbrough."

Since recovering from ME - a condition which is thought to affect 2,000 people in North Yorkshire - Jenny has been able to enter a world that she thought she would never see again.

She said: "Sometimes I would be virtually housebound for a period of maybe a month or a month-and-a-half. Every time I did anything, I paid this awful price for it. You feel like you have the flu, you are feeling absolutely exhausted all of the time. You can't concentrate and any time you do anything it makes you feel even worse. I used to use a structured pacing regime that helped me to keep my illness stable.

"Every day I had seven to eight hours a day bed rest - resting for 45 minutes and then getting up for 15 minutes. If I did this, then it meant I was able to get up for about two hours in the afternoon and do something active.

"I just about had time to drive in the car to a small supermarket like Iceland and get a few things before coming back again."

Jenny was a keen cyclist and hill-walker before her illness and has recently been able to dig out her hiking boots and bicycle again. For more information about The Lightning Process, phone Jenny on 01904 655911, email her at info@generatingchange.org