David’s Story
Meet Dr. David Aaron, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Regional Burns Centre at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, and discover how Luma³ is supporting calm, grounding, and emotional wellbeing within burns care.
Where Luma³ Was Used at a Glance
Regional Burns Centre | Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust
Luma³ was introduced across:
- Patient recovery spaces
- Dressing clinics
- Physiotherapy and rehabilitation sessions
- Wellbeing and grounding support
- Moments of anxiety, overwhelm, and emotional distress
Recovery Beyond the Physical
In a burns unit, recovery extends far beyond the physical body.
Behind every dressing change, physiotherapy session, and rehabilitation milestone is a person navigating pain, trauma, uncertainty, and emotional overwhelm in real time. Patients are not only recovering from injury, they are also learning how to feel safe in their body again.
For staff, those moments can be incredibly difficult to manage.
Nurses and therapists are often supporting patients through emotionally heightened situations in real time, while balancing the relentless pace of acute care itself. Sometimes, it’s not always possible for the psychology team to be present.
“What I’ve always been struck by,” says David, “is that there isn’t enough capacity to see everybody in the burns service.”
For David, the challenge was never simply about increasing psychological support. It was about finding more accessible ways to help patients feel calmer, more grounded and emotionally supported throughout recovery, especially during moments of formal care.
David has always viewed recovery as a more holistic experience — one that supports not only physical healing, but emotional wellbeing too.
That search eventually led David to Luma³.
“Psychosocial care should be available whether psychology is in the building or not.”
David Aaron, Consultant Clinical Psychologist
The Search for Something More Supportive
David’s work has long been driven by a belief that recovery should support the whole person — not just the physical injury. He wanted to explore ways emotional wellbeing support could feel more accessible within healthcare environments, particularly during difficult moments when patients were experiencing pain, fear, or overwhelm.
Not every patient in distress needed formal psychological intervention. Often, what people needed most was something immediate and grounding.
“The burn care standards would say that psychosocial care should be delivered 24/7 by the team… Psychosocial care is everybody’s business.”
But creating emotionally supportive moments inside acute care settings is not always easy. Hospital environments can feel intensely clinical, overstimulating, and emotionally exhausting for both patients and staff.
David wanted to introduce something calmer into those spaces without making it feel medicalised, complicated, or inaccessible. Just as importantly, it needed to fit naturally into the rhythm of the ward — supporting nurses in emotionally demanding moments rather than becoming another task to manage.
“I’ve always been interested in ways technology can help our teams feel more confident supporting emotional wellbeing,” David says. “So they feel empowered to respond in those moments, rather than feeling that support has to come solely from psychology.”
When he discovered Luma³, something immediately stood out.
Discovering a Different Kind of Support
What first drew David to Luma³ was its simplicity.
Healthcare environments are already filled with screens, alarms, and constant digital stimulation. David wasn’t looking for another piece of technology that added to the noise. He wanted something intuitive, calming, and easy for frontline teams to use in real time, without lengthy explanations or disrupting the flow of care.
“The first thing that drew me to Luma³ was just the non-screen,” he says.
Instead of demanding attention cognitively, Luma³ introduced something softer: light, rhythm, and breath.
No app.
No complex instructions.
No expectation to explain how you were feeling.
For David, that became one of its greatest strengths. Luma³ did not require patients to process or articulate emotions during overwhelming moments. Instead, it created a simple sensory experience that helped people pause, breathe, and regain a sense of calm and control.
“It just reinforces what people have available to them — their breath”
For patients experiencing exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, or language barriers, that simplicity mattered enormously.
Early feedback from staff reflected a similar response. Nurses and leadership teams described Luma³ as particularly supportive for anxious patients during lengthy dressing procedures, giving patients a point of focus and helping create a greater sense of steadiness throughout care.
Bringing Calm Into the Environment
The Regional Burns Centre became the first deployment site for Luma³ Editions, with units introduced throughout patient rooms and patient waiting areas.
Over time, something subtle began to happen. Staff naturally started reaching for Luma³ during emotionally heightened moments across the ward.
“We started with the first one in our waiting area because we got a lot of people who sat there waiting for dressing changes.” David says, “and now we’ve got the ward’s Luma³, we’ve got the outpatient dressing Luma³, we’ve got psychology Luma³, we’ve got therapies Luma³ like OT and physio.”. Rather than feeling like another process to implement, Luma³ became part of the process around care itself.
“If someone’s really distressed or they’re delirious, and a nurse asks me what to do” David explains, “rather than just giving a long-winded answer, I can say in the first instance just grab for the Luma³ and guide them through that exercise.”
In emotionally heightened moments, Luma³ helped create a calmer starting point, it softened the atmosphere, slowing the pace of the moment and giving patients an opportunity to pause before difficult conversations or treatment began.
David also noticed how naturally Luma³ opened the door to more supportive conversations between staff and patients. “It’s a bridge to a conversation between any member of the team and a patient around managing distress or pain or worry or uncertainty.”
“It just reinforces what people have available to them — their breath”
Supporting Emotional Recovery From the Beginning
David believes emotional support should not be reactive. It should be felt from the very beginning of a patient’s recovery journey, represented in the environment, the conversations, and the experience of care itself.
That’s where Luma³ began changing the emotional tone of recovery too. By creating moments of calm and grounding early on, patients were able to feel more emotionally steady before navigating painful procedures, difficult conversations or periods of uncertainty.
Over time, David noticed that those moments helped patients reconnect with a greater sense of control, resilience and hope throughout recovery.
“For me what’s good about the Luma³,” David explains, “is that these things are early. So they’re available right from the beginning. It’s given people a sense that they’ve got some control over their pain. They’ve got some control over difficult feelings and thoughts and that kind of self-efficacy. It starts to build in that level of independence and hope that they can manage the various things ahead of them.”
Supporting Recovery Beyond Physical Healing
Burns rehabilitation is not only physically demanding, it can also feel emotionally overwhelming.
Pain, fear and anticipatory anxiety often become deeply intertwined, particularly during dressing changes, rehabilitation exercises and major recovery milestones. “f this becomes a pattern, this can lead to delayed discharge and impact their recovery outcomes.”
The team began introducing Luma³ ahead of treatment and rehabilitation sessions, helping patients feel calmer and more settled before emotionally difficult moments.
“Luma³ is almost like a jump-start to a procedure,” David says. “That’s the point of giving it to them, so they can begin the breathing exercises and start tuning in.”
Rather than distracting patients away from what they were experiencing, the device helped create a greater sense of emotional regulation within the moment itself.
“When supporting people in acute distress, grounding techniques like mindful breathing are incredibly powerful,” David explains. “That’s why packaging it into something as simple and accessible as a lit cube makes complete sense to me.”
Alongside the physical challenges of recovery, David also observed how frequently worry and fear shaped a patient’s experience throughout their journey. Many patients were navigating uncertainty about the future, changes to identity and fears around what recovery might look like long-term.
Reflecting on the emotional complexity often witnessed during appointments, David explained, “One thing we didn’t anticipate is how much Luma³ can be used to support people with worry.”
“Fear- avoidance is a huge factor,” David explains. “Mindfulness, alongside tools like Luma³, helps people confront their pain, better understand it, and begin to dispel that fear.”
Rather than becoming consumed by spiralling thoughts about the future — Will I get better? Will I always look like this? — patients were encouraged to notice those thoughts without becoming overwhelmed by them.
For many, Luma³ became a grounding point to return to during those moments, helping redirect attention back towards breath, calm and the present moment itself.
“If you’ve got a Luma³ there then just tune into that,” David says. “If you notice that thought come again, if you feel it grabbing you, just notice it and bring your attention back to Luma³.”
For some patients, the experience became a consistent source of reassurance throughout their recovery journey.
“What we’ve often found actually is for some patients we’ve just left the Luma³ with them for their entire stay.”
What Patients and Staff Began Noticing
Feedback gathered throughout the pilot reflected consistent themes around calm, focus, and reconnection.
Across inpatient and outpatient settings, patients described breathwork guided by Luma³ as intuitive, calming and supportive during periods of anxiety, discomfort, and emotional overwhelm.
One patient described the experience simply as: “It helps make my brain quiet.”
Another reflected that the guided light was “easy to follow,” particularly during stressful procedures.
Staff also observed that the portable, wireless nature of Luma³ allowed patients to continue engaging with the experience while lying down, sitting, standing or moving through rehabilitation exercises. Importantly, the experience integrated naturally into the environment without feeling disruptive to care delivery.
One team member described using Luma³ as an alternative to their usual grounding exercise at the end of a session, helping patients transition into a more settled state before leaving treatment.
Even staff themselves began emotionally connecting with the experience and wanting them on their desk space or around where they work to set ambience and mood for calm working.
Making Emotional Wellbeing More Accessible
For David, one of the most meaningful aspects of Luma³ has been its accessibility.
Regardless of age, background, language or previous experience with mindfulness, patients were able to engage with the experience instinctively. Often during some of the most emotionally overwhelming moments of their recovery journey.
Rather than positioning emotional wellbeing as something complex or exclusive, Luma³ helped create a simpler and more accessible pathway into grounding and emotional support within the realities of acute healthcare itself.
“This is one of the strengths with people who don’t have English as their first language,” David explains. “It’s just so accessible. You can use non-verbal communication to introduce patients to Luma³. You can guide them through mime.”
For David, that simplicity matters deeply when thinking about health inequalities and access to emotional wellbeing support more broadly. David says, “it’s an economical tool both in its cost and its delivery.”
Rather than relying on expensive interventions or specialist knowledge, Luma³ helped reconnect patients with something inherently available to them already… their breath, presented in a way that felt intuitive and emotionally supportive during difficult moments.
In many ways, clinicians like David are helping reshape how emotional wellbeing is experienced across healthcare environments. Making moments of pause, breath and mindfulness feel more human, inclusive and available to everyone.
“I do feel like Luma³ is a permanent fixture in our ward.”
Evolving the Experience of Recovery
As the pilot evolved, the team began discovering more about how moments of calm could be supported most effectively throughout recovery.
Staff found that introducing Luma³ proactively, before anxiety significantly escalated, helped patients settle more naturally into the experience. Keeping devices close to patients within their own spaces also helped make moments of grounding feel more accessible and intuitive throughout the day.
“I think very strongly now… the Luma³ needs to belong to the patient. I think it needs to be in the room.”
David is helping redefine what a hospital room feels like for a patient, creating spaces that feel more relaxed, personalised and more like somewhere they can rest, regulate and feel a sense of comfort during recovery.
Looking Ahead
For David, the future potential of Luma³ extends far beyond burns care.
“The potential for it is massive.” From rehabilitation spaces and waiting areas to emotionally demanding healthcare environments more broadly, he sees growing value in creating experiences that help people feel calmer, safer and more grounded during difficult moments.
While the pilot remains observational, feedback from both patients and staff has been positive. Patients consistently described the experience as calming and supportive, with all respondents indicating they would use Luma³ again.
For David and the wider team, those responses reinforce something increasingly important across both healthcare and wellbeing spaces alike: people are not only looking for treatment or information, they are looking for ways to feel more in control, more emotionally supported and better equipped long after they leave hospital.
Most importantly, Luma³ helped create small but meaningful moments of calm within one of the most emotionally intense recovery environments imaginable.
Moments to breathe.
Moments to ground.
Moments to feel more in control again.
Moments to navigate difficult emotions with breathwork.
“Everything I try to do in terms of the training of the staff and embedding this stuff in here,” he explains, “is that if for any reason psychology was to fold, they would feel like they could use a version of it.” For David, creating more emotionally supportive environments is not simply an added extra within recovery — it is part of responsible, compassionate care itself.
“It just feels like the responsible thing to do to equip your team and patients.”
Summary
The pilot reinforced something deeply important: recovery is not only physical. Through moments of breath, grounding and calm, Luma³ helped patients feel more supported and more in control during overwhelming moments.
For David and his team, accessible emotional wellbeing support is not an added extra within care. It is part of creating more compassionate, human-centred recovery experiences for both patients and staff.
We want to thank David for taking the time to share his experience and thoughts on Luma³. David is doing incredible work and generating remarkable impact for patient outcomes and we’re honoured to support him and his team.