With all the shopping, cooking, decorating and spending, Christmas can be more stressful than merry.

The period afterwards, when the bills come in, can be even more so.

The Breathing Room at 9 Par-la-Ville Road in Hamilton offers a solution. The studio offers a range of services and classes with two goals: relaxation and self healing.

Damika Tucker started looking for stress relief options during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She is in information technology and is vice-president of sales at Bermuda Microsystems.

“I was trying to get everyone up and running while working from home,” she said. “I was dealing with supply chains. Employees were out because they had Covid-19. It was a very stressful period of my life.”

She and Jill Bennett, a restorative personal trainer, opened The Breathing Room in July of last year.

“Since then, we have been working through the ups and downs of opening a business,” Ms Tucker said. “We are just coming on to 100 per cent operation right now.”

The Breathing Room brings together Ms Tucker’s love for relaxation with her interest in technology.

All of the massage chairs, therapy beds, lights dancing on the ceiling, relaxing music and virtual reality headsets have computers operating discretely in the background.

For example, there is an artificial intelligence-powered massage chair. Clients sit in it and it massages their whole body from feet to neck. Meanwhile, the lights are dimmed and soothing music plays.

“The AI helps it know someone is sitting in the chair,” Ms Tucker said. “It applies the pressure accordingly.”

The chair also has the ability to stretch the body if requested.

“Unlike a human masseuse, it can apply pressure to the whole body at once, rather than doing one side and then the other,” she explained. “It is particularly good for people who have lymphatic drainage system problems or pregnant women who can’t seem to find relief on the body.”

It is also good for those who do not feel comfortable with strangers massaging them.

Another highlight of the facility is the float therapy bed.

Clients lay on a table. The surface under them inflates and lifts them up so that they feel as though they are floating on water. All pressure is taken off the body.

“Thirty minutes on that is equal to about an hour of sleep,” Ms Tucker said. “It gives you some breathing room. Hence, the name of the business.”

Ms Bennett found restorative relaxation after a health scare. In 2007, doctors diagnosed ovarian cancer after one of her ovaries was surgically removed.

The treatment probably saved her life but it also felt like it destroyed it.

“I was an athlete, a personal trainer and a health coach,” she said. “Major surgery left me fairly debilitated and in pain for a lot of years. Like many people, I tried to move through it too quickly and that led to metabolic and endocrine challenges, such as adrenal fatigue and really low motivation.”

She had surgery on her other ovary more recently.

This time, she pulled right back and gave herself time to heal.