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A workout far underground.
This is how corona therapy works in Poland.
In the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Kraków, people who have been infected meet for a gymnastics session.
The goal: You want to recover faster - from the consequences that you can still feel even after the infection.
Jozef Biros, patient in the salt mine:
"For a long time I suffered from ringing in the ears, anxiety, I got tired quickly and couldn't breathe when climbing stairs."
Krystyna Gorniak, patient in the salt mine:
"Lack of balance, terrible fatigue, great weakness and the fear of going out on the street because I felt as if the ground would fall away from under my feet."
Dariusz Kasprzyk, patient in the salt mine:
"Dry whooping cough with breathing problems and breathlessness at night."
The fact that people meet down here is because the special nature of the mine helps them.
Before the air gets down here, it moves through a series of salt corridors.
In doing so, it is cleansed of the pollution above the earth.
A rehabilitation course takes place here for three weeks.
And in the end, the patients feel a significant improvement.
Jozef Biros, patient in the salt mine:
"Two weeks have passed and I can say that I feel better and better, both from breathing forth and physically." "Simple things bind like shoes: Before that, I bent down and have get no air. Now I can tie my shoes without any problems. "
Krystyna Gorniak, patient in the salt
mine : »Typical breathing exercises like blowing a feather or sucking in a cotton ball with a straw help us to breathe in a different way. But also to stretch the chest or exercises that help to increase the lung capacity. "
Dariusz Kasprzyk, patient in the salt mine:
»I breathe better. My breathing is stronger. I breathe more air in and out, I definitely feel a lot better. "
As early as the 19th century, patients with respiratory diseases benefited from the salty air.
Today the mine is a Unesco World Heritage Site and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year with its stone-carved church.
They have to stay outside right now.
For the time being, access is reserved for Covid 19 patients.
