Stillwater

4 teachers · no guest stars

People who learned breath the long way.

Nobody here did a weekend certificate and opened a studio. Between them the four teachers have spent over sixty years in hospital wards, rehearsal rooms, dance studios and delivery suites — which is where most of what they teach actually comes from.

Neve Ashworth

Founder, and most of the Wednesdays · Opened the room in March 2021

Neve spent eleven years teaching people with chronic lung disease how to get through a flight of stairs, which is a poor training ground for wellness language and an excellent one for actually knowing what a breath does. Stillwater exists because she wanted a room with the physiology and none of the hospital. She counts out loud, corrects posture with one finger, and will stop a class to open the skylight.

“Nothing is wrong with you. Your nervous system is just doing its job too well.”

Trained in

  • Respiratory physiotherapist, St Alder's Hospital, 2009–2020
  • Buteyko Clinic International practitioner course, 2016
  • Somatic Movement Education, 500hr, Body-Mind Centering lineage, 2019

Tomáš Řeháček

Long Exhale, The Ladder · Joined September 2022

Tomáš came to breath sideways, through fourteen years of asking choirs to hold a phrase four bars longer than felt possible. He teaches breath the way a conductor teaches a line: with a tempo, an upbeat, and no tolerance for rushing the end of a phrase. His classes are the most structured on the timetable and the most likely to make you laugh at yourself.

“The exhale is the instrument. The inhale is just the reload.”

Trained in

  • Choral conducting, Academy of Performing Arts, Prague, 2011
  • Oxygen Advantage instructor, 2018
  • Two years as a breath coach for a second-division swim squad

Ayo Bankole

Floor Work · Joined January 2023

Ayo teaches from the floor because the floor tells the truth — you cannot brace against it and pretend the movement came from somewhere else. Classes are quiet, slow, and full of instructions that sound too small to matter until the fourth repetition. Expect to spend twenty minutes on one shoulder and to leave walking differently.

“Smaller. Slower. Now do the same thing with less.”

Trained in

  • Feldenkrais practitioner, four-year training, Bristol, 2019–2023
  • BA Dance, Laban, 2014
  • Eight years dancing, then one badly healed ankle

June Calloway

First Mat, The Long Room · Joined at the start, in 2021

June retired from midwifery at sixty-one and was bored inside a fortnight. She is the reason First Mat exists, and the reason it costs eight pounds: she was adamant that nobody should have to gamble sixteen on whether this is for them. She has coached more people through a first anxious breath than the rest of the studio combined.

“You are allowed to just lie there. That is the class.”

Trained in

  • Community midwife, 1984–2019
  • Yoga Nidra, Satyananda lineage, 300hr, 2020
  • Thirty-five years of talking people through the worst hour of their week

We are not hiring, and we are not taking cover teachers.

If a teacher is ill, the class is cancelled and everyone booked gets it back on their account by 9am that day. We would rather lose a class than put a stranger in front of a room that came for a particular voice. If you teach and want to say hello anyway, write to the front desk — Neve reads every one, slowly.

Pick the voice, then pick the class.

Book a matSee the timetable