Stress awareness week has rolled around again this year, and with a survey last year stating that one in five people over 16 are stressed every single day, yoga may be one of the easiest ways to manage that figure.
Gurdeep Athwal, 59, is the owner and one of the yoga teachers at Deep Yoga in Nottingham which opened five years ago.
With a previous background in biochemistry on top of his many years of experience as a yoga teacher, Gurdeep is very in tune with his clients and how his practice helps benefit them.
He said: “Yoga is a lot more than touching toes. A lot of people, and most people, when they do it on a regular basis, then start to feel good about themselves in a much broader sense.”
He added: “It’s very well established now in terms of yoga being of benefit to people on many different levels. For some people, when they first started yoga, perhaps they approach it with more of a physical intention, but there are many people who do actually approach it because they think it is going to be something that’s going to help them with other aspects of their life, like stress and anxiety.”
More and more people are beginning to incorporate classes such as yoga, pilates, and spinning into their lives with the intentions of not only improving physically but mentally. Although it’s stress awareness week this week, for Athwal and his studio, it is nothing unusual to what they already value.
“Every day we are focussing on people…not just simply emotion.”
Gurdeep Athwal
He said: “We don’t just simply focus on stress in a week, just because this week is an awareness week, doesn’t mean that it’s the only week we do. The reality is that every day we are focussing on people and part of what we’re focusing on is their well-being as a whole, not just simply emotion.”
