PAINTING THE RAINBOW

Working with the NHS, we ran a pilot study for cardiac rehab patients (phase 3 & 4) which gave excellent outcomes resulting in the first even NHS funded Tai Chi for rehab DVD; this DVD is free to all cardiac rehab patients. This fed into the pulmonary rehab program (COPD) where we provide sessions on tai chi (exercise) and NLP/CBT (anxiety management); we are smashing the national average of 75% patient retention with a 90% plus retention since we started in 2009. Using tai chi as an alternative to circuits has proven very successful as patients enjoy it more and we are increasing their heart rates to 120bpm without de-saturation... We are still striving to obtain funding that would enable us to cover instructor's costs so that we could deliver our classes, without a charge, to service users who are not in the financial position to take advantage of PtR... In addition to this we run seated tai chi sessions for AgeUK, Community Groups, Day Centres, Special Needs centres, and schools..

Primary location: Alvechurch United Kingdom