WITH the current strain on NHS staff due to the pandemic, a yoga centre is offering them free access to its online classes in the hope that it gives them some relief from the current stress on the frontline.

Cornwall Yoga Centre, a community interest company based in Truro, has been forced to close over the last nine months and had to go online with its business, eventually offering over 200 videos and classes in a variety of yoga, pilates, mindfulness, live broadcasts, interactive sessions and more.

After being closed for nine months, they launched the site in December and say they are beyond grateful to NHS workers for the work are are doing and all the hours spent on the front line in this crisis. They say they are now in the position to give back to the community by offering free classes to NHS staff.

"We decided the only way for the business to survive was to build ourselves an online studio," said Amanda Nother video content/ business manager. "We had a soft launch in December and now are in a position to offer all NHS staff free access to its basic membership giving them access to all online content and free mindfulness classes in hope that it gives them some relief, escape or just the help they need to relax.

"Cornwall is a big place and we have thousands of NHS workers, we would simply just like to offer them a helping hand to get through their day at this awful and strange time we find ourselves in.

"As a community interest company, we provide services to our community to help individuals with their physical and mental health, and knowing that what you face can’t be easy, we would like to give you all a free membership and access to our mindfulness course to support and thank- you for the work that you do."

Director Aimee Blackman said her co-director Simon Centofanti had created a complete introduction to mindfulness course with educational talks and practice videos on six mindfulness themes which they have also included as free for NHS.

"Simon is a firefighter so understands frontline services and the stress levels involved," she said. "I finished uploading the last batch of videos that I'd edited from the December input and I just thought 'I can't sit on this resource and wait for us to build our subscription base or to get funding to support the project - I have to share this stuff'."

"If one person sleeps better because they found one of our ten minute stretching practices relaxing I will feel we have done a good thing.

"We intended to do free access for charity referrals once we had built up our client base and had some support in place but on Sunday I saw a news report on the stress levels in NHS - this is getting worse- I was just like I can't do much but I can do this and I can do it now.

"The team all agree that our job is teaching tools and techniques to help people manage stressful lives- and this stress crisis is happening now."

You can sign up for the classes here