Press Coverage

Philadelphia Style, Spring 2005

IMMATERIAL GIRL
Corina Benner left Wall Street for a yoga studio.

Corina Benner may be the most adored yoga teacher in Philadelphia, but her career path hasn't always been as obvious to her as it is to her students. In fact, she can rattle off half a dozen careers she's had so far, some of them more congenial with the spiritual practice of yoga than others — actress, stints at TV Guide and an advertising agency, Robinson's Luggage, wine sales. "I've had a lot of reversals," she says.

But no career reversal has been as dramatic as her short career on Wall Street, which began as a favor to a friend and former employer but led her to take and pass the Series 7 exam. "I did portfolio evaluations, capital gains and loses. I was licensed to buy and sell securities," she explains, carefully avoiding the label stockbroker. After one too many quarters on Wall Street for someone who came to New York to pursue acting, Benner decided to quit and explore a totally divergent interest — yoga.

In the absence of her demanding day job, Benner had the opportunity to study yoga under one of the most prestigious teachers in the Unites States, author and teacher Cindy Lee. Benner trained at Lee's celebrity-saturated Om Yoga Center in New York City. After emerging from the program, she returned to Philadelphia but had a difficult time finding a yoga center where she wanted to continue practicing. She decided to take over the dilapidated storefront downstairs from her apartment in Fairmont, and she turned it into the bright studio that would be home to Wake Up Yoga in 2002.

Soon, she was mentoring students who wanted to be teachers. Other students gave up longtime gym membership as they noticed the way yoga helped them develop arm and core strength. A rigorous yoga practice can ameliorate conditions from obesity to anxiety, and as yoga began to produce results in various areas of her students' lives, their devotion to Wake Up Yoga increased. Some students even eschew classes led by any other instructor.

Ali Caccavella ranks Benner as the best teacher she's had in her 10 years of yoga practice. After moving from San Francisco, a city on the cutting edge of yoga, to Philadelphia, she had trouble finding a studio that measured up. "I go to New York, I go back to San Francisco, but her class is just so rich. It's the perfect meld of the spiritual, physical and philosophical elements of yoga," Caccavella says.

Part of Benner's appeal is her ability to bring the spirit of yoga off the mat. A sense of fellowship permeates the studio, from pre-class chitchat to the active rideshare bulletin board. It may not be the way her Wall Street mentors taught her to approach a business plan, but from the looks of her packed classes and the faces of her students, it's a bull market for Wake Up Yoga. And though she disapproves of the way the word is used in the West, she may be the closest thing Philadelphia has to a guru of its own.

—Joy Manning
Philadelphia Style
Spring 2005