It already feels very familiar to me, although less because of the scents and sounds (which are, as I mentioned, currently those of a building site). Home will be on the site of Sattin\u2019s previous studio, the renowned Triyoga studio, which stood there from 2000-14. It kick-started the yoga craze in this country, and I went to classes there three times a week through most of my twenties and early thirties. Sattin\u2019s golden retriever back then, Teddy (\u201cAh Teddy,\u201d Sattin sighs), would wander around, downward dogging and tail wagging, and he was far more of an integral part of the place than the celebrities. But it\u2019s impossible to talk about Triyoga without talking about the celebrities.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Yoga fans Kate Moss, Matthew Williamson and Sienna Miller in the Noughties<\/p>\n GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Before the studio opened in 2000, yoga was still seen as something for the mung beans and hippy beads crowd. But things were about to change. In 2002 Christy Turlington was photographed doing a yogic backbend on the cover of US Vogue. The UK\u2019s version of this was the pap shots of Kate Moss<\/a> and Sadie Frost trundling around Primrose Hill with rolled-up yoga mats under their arms, on their way to Triyoga. Yoga \u2014 an ancient Indian spiritual and physical practice \u2014 had officially arrived in the western zeitgeist. But why then?<\/p>\n \u201cWell, the teachers we had at Triyoga were all excellent,\u201d Sattin says, which is why I started going there after an osteopath, infuriated by the stiffness of my shoulders, suggested I try yoga. But other factors sexier than stiff shoulders brought the celebrities.<\/p>\n Primrose Hill was then known as the home of British celebrities: Jude\u2019n\u2019Sadie, Pearl\u2019n\u2019Danny, Kate\u2019n\u2019Whoever. By the Noughties those people were looking for something nearby to counterbalance what is euphemistically referred to as \u201cthe partying\u201d. \u201c[The designer] Matthew Williamson lived nearby and he got involved with Triyoga as its designer. We had these dark wood floors upstairs and he walked in and said, \u2018No, they need to be white.\u2019 He put jewel colours everywhere, reds and purples and blues. Then he brought all the fashionable people. And that was that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Inside the celebrity cult of Barry\u2019s Bootcamp, 10 years on<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Sattin was never the most likely trendsetter. He still looks less like a yogi and more like the lawyer he was several decades ago, when he lived on a daily diet of \u201c40 cigarettes, 40 cups of coffee, plus a few other things\u201d. One day, a colleague said to him: \u201cYou\u2019re a bit weird, you should try yoga.\u201d Almost immediately, the cigarettes, and then the coffee, and eventually the law practice, fell away as he devoted his life to yoga. Every time I went to Triyoga, Sattin was sitting in reception making sure things were running properly, and always accompanied by Teddy. \u201cInitially I thought I\u2019d sell up and move on soon after,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I found that I really believed in it. And I believe in what I\u2019m doing now. Otherwise I wouldn\u2019t be doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n But Triyoga was a casualty of its success. In the two decades after it opened the centre overexpanded, with outposts across London, in Soho, Covent Garden, Chelsea and more, and not even Sattin and Teddy could oversee all of them at once. Then, in 2014, the landlord of the original Primrose Hill site decided he wanted to develop the building and kicked Triyoga out. Sattin found another building down the road in Camden, but it didn\u2019t have the elegant, tranquil feel of the original building and many regulars moved on.<\/p>\n United Fitness Brands, an investment group, offered to buy Triyoga in 2019, but Sattin didn\u2019t think it was a good fit. Then Covid hit and in the immediate aftermath, when former regulars were slow to return, he didn\u2019t have a choice. By 2022 Sattin was out of the company he had built and loved.<\/p>\n Further problems had been brewing for Triyoga beside overexpansion and Covid. Countless other yoga centres copied its formula of being serious but not pious, aesthetically pleasing but not too chichi. After Triyoga opened in Camden, I switched allegiance from the centre to my favourite former Triyoga teacher, Stewart Gilchrist. Eleven years on I still follow Stewart to wherever he teaches around London \u2014 and every other regular yoga student I know does the same. It\u2019s all about the teachers now, not the centres, and we keep up to date with their teaching schedules via their social media.<\/p>\n![\"Collage](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/\/cfcb57e6-6623-45bb-b3a6-637d3aaf8b74.jpg\")
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