What started as modest yoga practice in a cramped garret on Lincoln Street in Newton Highlands has blossomed into a leading presence in the Boston yoga scene. How did Down Under School of Yoga achieve this transformation? Founder Justine Cohen traced the improbable transformation.
Cohen’s upbringing in Perth, Western Australia, led to the Down Under name. After law school in Australia and Vancouver, British Columbia, and a stint in Washington, D.C., where she taught yoga at the Supreme Court, she and her husband Jeffrey Cohen eventually moved to Newton, his hometown.
Down Under Yoga started in 2004 in a small second-floor room above the former Newton Highlands store, The Green Planet. The room barely fit ten students. When the business soon outgrew its tiny home, it moved to the parish hall in St. Paul Episcopal Church in Newton Highlands. Early on, Cohen was joined by fellow yoga students/teachers Carin Allen and Nadja Refaie, who helped her build the practice.
Down Under established its first permanent home in 2010 on Walnut Street in Newtonville, in the basement underneath a former CVS store, continuing the “down under” theme, perhaps unintentionally. Cohen said, “At that point I really started to study the yoga industry.” Cohen says that she originally had no plans to open studios beyond Newton. However, she said she realized that adding studios allowed the creation of full time jobs, and eventually employee benefits, for teachers and managers.
Starting in 2013, Down Under grew rapidly, adding studios on Beacon Street in Brookline, in Porter Square and Harvard Square in Cambridge, and in the South End and Back Bay in Boston. In staffing these studios, Cohen says she seeks to hire the top teachers in the varied styles of yoga.
With six studios in 2025, Down Under has approximately 100 yoga teachers and 20 managerial staff. The School offers a variety of classes including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, heated flow, and restorative yoga. Down Under also offers massage and meditation.
As Down Under expanded, she stopped teaching. “About five years ago I started to concentrate my efforts on teacher training, which I love!” She wants Down Under teachers to do much more than lead an exercise class. When training new teachers, she says she brings with her this mindset: “What will cause a student to change their work schedule to take this yoga class?”
Justine and Jeffrey Cohen live in Newton Highlands with their five children aged seven to eighteen. Jeffrey Cohen is Associate Professor at Boston College Law School.
Alan Spatrick was one of the students in Down Under Yoga’s original location in Newton Highlands.
