After finding Deep Yoga both deeply relaxing, and deeply difficult to master – especially when attempting to fashion a somewhat nonchalant expression during an unbalanced Half Moon Pose – Bridie Squires spoke to Dr Steven Athwal, Director of Deep Yoga in Nottingham, about his journey into yoga and why local studios matter more than ever…
I’m in Warrior Two. Making sure the knee doesn’t go over the toe. Opening the hips. Energy into the outer back foot. I’m looking down the middle finger of the hand that’s reaching out in front of me.
I’m remembering all the details I’ve been taught. It feels strong and grounded. And then I hear: “Be happy. It’s only yoga.”
That’s Dr Steven Athwal. Yoga teacher and Director of Deep Yoga.
I’ve been going to Steven’s classes for a few years at a commercial gym in Nottingham. Steven’s teaching style is very detail oriented. He’ll talk about the edge of the foot, the lift of the triceps, the direction of the gaze. But then he’ll say something that cuts through the seriousness.
For Steven, yoga is simple. “You can make yoga very complicated,” he says. “Or you can say: ‘as long as you’re breathing, just come.’” There’s no prerequisite, aesthetic, or performance standard.
Steven grew up with values closely aligned to yoga philosophy through his Sikh background, particularly sevā: ‘selfless service’, which often entails community participation.
“Many people go out and do selfless service,” he says. “If someone was trying to cross the street, visually impaired, nine out of ten people would help. That is yoga. So everybody is doing yoga, they just don’t know it.”
Yoga wasn’t initially a career move. It was personal. Steven practised regularly in the UK while working full time in scientific research. Over time, his practice would raise deeper questions, like: what is yoga beyond the physical postures?
If someone was trying to cross the street, visually impaired, nine out of ten people would help. That is yoga. So everybody is doing yoga, they just don’t know it
That question took him to India. He spent over a year researching yoga schools before choosing to study under teachers with strong philosophical lineages, including traditions rooted in Rishikesh.
After returning to the UK, Steven began teaching alongside his job, emphasising breath, accessibility, autonomy and philosophy. “Yoga isn’t just a physical practice,” he says. “It’s community. It’s personal wellbeing.”
Then life intervened. The R&D division he worked in closed, making him redundant. Shortly after, COVID lockdowns removed immediate employment options. Instead of seeing it as a setback, he used the time intentionally. He wrote a comprehensive yoga teacher training manual and prepared to open a Yoga Alliance-accredited school.
Through a community connection, he learned of an available space and took it over during lockdown. Alongside Daneesha Dhillon and accountant Dan Roper, he renovated and prepared the studio – much of the physical labour they did themselves.
“We’ve never had a launch,” says Steven. “We just opened one day,” which says a lot about Deep Yoga.
On my first visit to Deep, it was interesting to see Steven out of that commercial gym context. The studio is in the Oldknows Factory off Mansfield Road. Inside it’s warm, with plants, mood lighting, space to breathe, and a real sense of community.
Steven is clear about what the studio is, and what it isn’t. “The studio is just a platform. It’s there to help people experience yoga, for whatever that practice is for them.”
That ethos shapes everything. Teachers have autonomy. “Teachers should teach yoga the way they’ve been taught to.” he says. “In a corporate environment yoga can become a formula. Someone decides what works, and everyone fits into that. Yoga doesn’t really work like that.”
“At Deep,” he continues, “you might have someone doing a handstand up against the wall, and right next to them is someone under a blanket with eighteen bolsters and sandbags on them. Nobody’s judging any of them. They’re just doing their own thing. We literally don’t care who you are, just come.”
That non-judgement is palpable. There are Ashtanga sessions led by Dr Hind Elhinnawy, also a Director of Deep, which I’ve enjoyed in their intensity and precision alongside Rachel Frodsham's restorative Yin classes, where poses are held for longer and nervous systems can be reset. All, of course, alongside Steven’s sessions.
Community-priced classes are available for those unable to pay, with the opportunity to pay more and subsidise supported sessions for those who can afford it. Outreach sessions and collaborations extend beyond the studio walls. It’s paying it forward without making a big thing of it – it’s ingrained in what Deep Yoga does.
Rian Charles, who runs MOAI Gym in Bulwell, a strength-training studio, had been doing yoga on and off before attending Deep. “Coming to Deep made me actually start to understand it,” he says. “It stopped just being something you pop into now and again.”
He was attracted to Steven’s teaching style. “Straight to the point. I respect that,” Rian says. “It makes you want to come back every week.”
One of Rian’s favourite classes is Deep Yoga’s ninety-minute hot class on a Friday night. “That’s my little me time,” Rian says. Even if he’s working, he’ll try and get away so he can make it.
For someone rooted in strength training, the contrast is interesting. “Strength training can be pretty ego driven,” he says. “You’re lifting more. You’re pushing harder. You’re comparing numbers. Yoga’s the opposite, you’re not thinking about anyone else in the room. You’re actively practising that reduction of ego.”
Mentally, the benefits are just as significant. “That quiet time is massive,” he says. “Switching the phone off for an hour, you don’t really get that otherwise. And that little bit of stillness at the end of class, lying in savasana, is probably the most valuable part.”
It took nearly ten years of practising yoga with various teachers before I decided to train as one myself. It was a gradual process; years of moving, listening, paying attention.
Completing my training in Bali felt like a natural extension. It wouldn’t have happened without the foundation and steady encouragement embedded in Steven’s classes.
Local studios like Deep matter. They are grassroots spaces. They exist because people show up, because someone is willing to paint the walls during lockdown, because teachers are trusted to teach as they were taught. They offer something that corporate spaces often can’t: continuity, community, and non-transactional care.
In a world that constantly asks for more, it’s important to make time to move our bodies, open the lungs, step away from our phones and egos, and breathe. To support the spaces that allow us to do that.
And maybe that’s the point. Yoga can mean complexity, philosophy, lineage, anatomy, and community. But it can also be simple.
In the words of Steven: as long as you’re breathing, just come.
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