“In a lot of ways, I feel like the last 15 years have been a kind of apprenticeship for me,” mused Eddie Ellner on a recent sun-soaked morning while finishing an almond milk latte outside of Handlebar Coffee. “It is like I am really just now starting to teach.”
The man behind Yoga Soup, an undisputed titan in Santa Barbara’s ever-growing yoga universe, was waxing philosophical about his Parker Way studio’s 10th anniversary, which he’s honoring with a rebirth of sorts, reimagining philosophies, offering new classes and teachers, expanding the schedule, and remodeling modestly. “Often in life, you end up taking a journey you didn’t sign up for but wind up with gifts you could have never imagined,” said the reenergized and evolved Ellner with a certain sparkle. “I have taken that journey myself in recent years. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’m here and I have a renewed appetite to offer what I’ve learned. It feels great.”
A native New Yorker with curly, indifferent hair and sympathetic brown eyes, the 55-year-old yogi once made a living writing for professional wrestling magazines and advertising agencies before moving west in the early 1990s and finding yoga. Soon enough, he was teaching classes at the Santa Barbara Yoga Center, where he began developing an approach to yoga that’s grounded more in the grit and regular miracles of reality than in the crystal-gazing, neo-New Age of Om. Ellner quickly grew a devoted following of yoga misfits and folks scratching for something beyond a good stretch, so it was only a matter of time before he opened his own space.