From Down Dog to Warrior Pose: Yoga’s Finest

Janice Cornell teaches students the benefits of yoga and stretching.

Photo by Hitomi Mochizuki

Janice Cornell teaches students the benefits of yoga and stretching.

Bess Bloomer, Staff Writer

Many know her, but few know her–during the day she is known as WJ’s bubbly yoga instructor, Ms. Cornell. But when the large, airy yoga room is locked up at the end of the day and school is closed, Janice Cornell has more hiding behind the cheery smile and muchloved Savasana sessions than people may think.

She wasn’t always a yoga teacher. Cornell is from upstate New York– “Rochester,” she specifies with a slight accent. In fact, she didn’t move to Maryland until she finished college and went to graduate school in Massachusetts. To add to her extensive background, Cornell then started teaching General Physical Education and Health in a school in Washington, D.C. 

“I tell everyone I’m working my way down the coast,” she said.

After Cornell started teaching in Montgomery County, she was split for a while between Wootton and WJ. She spent half a day working at each school, but eventually set her heart on the latter, since the principal was very interested in the idea of developing a yoga class. However, it was a constant struggle to inform the thousands of students about her new yoga class.

“In my first year, I had only twelve kids in my class,” Cornell said. Yet slowly but surely, its popularity expanded, making it one of the most desired classes offered at WJ today.

Cornell became interested in yoga because in her youth, she was a gymnast and a diver, so she has always been involved in athletics. While she was still teaching in D.C., one of the other teachers got her started on yoga, giving her classes after school, and Cornell hasn’t stopped doing yoga since then.

“Everyone should try [yoga] at some point,” she said. “It’s not competing with everyone around you…[in the process] you learn more about yourself and what you can work on.”

While one is taking yoga, over time one begins to learn their strengths and weaknesses, and through these one can explore their inner identity.

Yoga isn’t the only thing Cornell does in her free time.  She also enjoys a wide variety of hobbies, including  skiing in the winter, water skiing in the summer, golf, and even competitive sailing.

“I used to travel all over New England to compete,” Cornell said on her long-time passion. However she’s recently been expanding on another pursuit: dog agility trials.

“I had no idea what I was getting into!” She said, discussing when she first starting competing in trials as far away as Florida.

As well as competing in sailing and with her dogs, Cornell has travelled to as many as eleven countries in fourteen days, including Italy, Croatia and Amsterdam as some of her top picks.

Yet if there’s a stressful time in her life, Cornell says that yoga is always there.

“I love to do handstands–it gets the blood circulating when I’m stressed out,” she said.

She is very passionate about her job as a yoga teacher.

“[I] love all [my] classes because everyone wants to be here and learn…it gives me something to look forward to,” said Cornell.

 

0
0