at The Corner...
Wellness is not one dimensional. Your well-being providers needs to meet you where you are in this moment. We are here to bring you back to balance by finding your perfect combination of elements: breath + body, mind + spirit, community comprised of diverse individuality, knowledge, and above all an open invitation to show up exactly as you are and go deeper.
I picked up my first weight when I was thirteen years old – life would never be the same. Yes, I can deadlift over 600lbs after a lifetime of commitment, but I truly found balance and learned to push myself the furthest when I started practicing yoga. It is strength and flexibility in harmony that shapes my routine, keeps me focused, and unwinds me after a long day. My background is in economics and I have been practicing law for almost a decade. I am the General Counsel at a fintech startup but still make time for yoga every damn day. I take pride in the fact that my broga practice has inspired many other men to start practicing yoga as well. The Corner Yoga Studio will be a community where more than the insta-famous-wannabe yogis come to get “toned.” It is rooted in yoga for all – as long as you're ready to commit, work hard, and bring it. I promise you won’t be the sweatiest guy in the room.
All of my continued education has focused on getting to know people and the body better. How to help individuals and communities, help relieve anxiety and pain, understand 'stress,' ‘trauma,’ ‘addiction,' 'alignment' or really: body individuality. I came to this practice from a place of injury, PTSD and heightened nervous system. I get it. I've been there. I believe the trick is not to get stuck. When you continue to show up on your mat things start to happen – you heal (often by kicking your own ass). Service (Seva) - teaching yoga, healing, helping elevate others – has always been my calling. Whether I am editing books, counseling, or assisting the body before me on a mat - I work to help people evolve.
I’m a Trauma-Informed, Vin + Yin yogi, Teacher Training and Continued Ed Director, student of Thanatology (death and grief) and LIFE. I believe in finding joy + play + your deepest self on your mat; in OPTIONS, making space, and have seen yoga change lives. As a queer individual, and a person forever curious about the many explorations of identity, I believe in creating safe spaces for ALL humans occupying bodies. You will be held dear here. Yoga is a wonderful tool to get to know YOU better.
The Corner is built on the back of many years teaching and even more years managing yoga studios around NYC, Astoria + BK. I’m the one scooching my mat over when someone needs a spot! I love getting down in the mud, doing the work, extending a hand, and lifting my fellow yogis up. I may be a teacher/leader in this setting but we all have so much to learn from each other. The Corner is a space for ALL - no BS!
rebecca
joe
meet our founders, rebecca and Joe
THIS HAS BEEN A DREAM, MANY YEARS IN THE MAKING.
When Rebecca teaches she brings along her sweet mini dachshund, Chowder… who sometimes sleeps and sometimes, well,
is a real puppy about it.
May he add to the joy of your practice!
Studios like to boast that they offer all levels classes and that all students are welcome but with little follow through. Most cater solely to the advanced practitioner. The Corner will provide our neighborhood with a community studio prepared to make space for every individual who walks through our doors. We want to share yoga, utilizing it as a tool, so that you can confidently come to your mat to learn how to get what you need out of a practice.
At the corner, we work to fill a void in the current yoga wellness landscape.
without having to look like anyone else while doing it.
If you think Williamsburg is popular now, you should have been there in the early 1850s. At that time, the number of residents had ballooned to 35,000, the riverfront was bustling with industry, and this Kings County town ambitiously incorporated itself into a city (before changing course and becoming part of the neighboring city of Brooklyn three years later). During these booming years, two real estate investors teamed up to buy and develop parcels of land in the center of Williamsburg, some of it farmland. Billed in a June 1852 edition of the New York Times as future “magnificent dwellings,” the houses weren’t intended for Williamsburg’s wealthy business owners. Instead, the walkups on what was later renamed Fillmore Place were multi-tenant “flats” meant to be owned or rented by the working-class folks who came to Williamsburg to fill jobs and enjoy a lower population density than that of New York across the East River...
Life on Fillmore Place appears to have been a step above the options available to most working-class New Yorkers. One of those walkups was home in the 1890s to Henry Miller—author of Tropic of Capricorn, among other novels. Though Miller only spent the first nine years of his life at 662 Driggs (below), his description of Fillmore Place, his “favorite street,” as he called it in a 1971 New York Times essay, can give you an idea of what life was like here at the tail end of the 19th century.
“The house I lived In was between North First and Metropolitan Avenue, then called North Second Street,” Miller wrote in a 1971 essay for the New York Times. “Opposite us was Dr. Kinney, the veterinarian, and on the rooftop next door to his place Mrs. Omelio kept her 20 to 30 cats. Diagonally opposite us was Fillmore Place, just one block long, which was my favorite street and which I can still see vividly if I close my eyes.” His description of Fillmore Place in Tropic of Capricorn perfectly captures many people’s love for the historic little block: ‘[it was] the most enchanting street I have ever seen in all my life. It was the ideal street—for a boy, a lover, a maniac, a drunkard, a crook, a lecher, a thug, an astronomer, a musician, a poet, a tailor, a shoemaker, a politician."
(Source: https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/henry-miller-fillmore-place-driggs-avenue/)
