Free Tai Chi Classes for TBI patients

A British neuropsychologist has adapted to quarantine by creating online Tai Chi classes for stroke survivors and brain injury patients. Giles Yeates has been a clinical neuropsychologist for 17 years and is also a Tai Chi instructor. As described in NRTimes, Yeates uses Tai Chi as a physical rehabilitation tool and a mental and emotional process to help with range of motion and balance, as well as anxiety, fatigue, mood, and sleep quality.

To this end, Yeates asks participants in his ongoing online weekly Tai Chi classes to fill out a survey when they join so that he can measure their progress. Yeates is beginning this research in collaboration with the Centre for Rehabilitation/Department of Movement Science at Oxford Brookes University.

Notably, he says that the psychological benefits for currently quarantined TBI patients can be tremendous: “tai chi can get you into a particular state of mind, where anxiety and depression go down…” Through a state of mindfulness -including attentional focus, breathing control, and stretching- patients may be able to decrease their fatigue.

There are also 25 weeks of recorded sessions. Here are direct links to the first ten sessions: intro video, and sessions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. To find additional sessions, go to the YouTube search box and use the search term Neuroflow Tai Chi session.