Nineteen Years in the Soup with Eddie Ellner

Eddie Ellner didn’t realize he was building what would become a local institution when – 20 years ago – he had the idea to create his own yoga studio just off State Street and a few blocks from the beach. But he knew that yoga would be the foundation.  He’d discovered the practice years before at a “crossroads in life, facing a challenge about which I had no idea what to do.” He never stopped. 

“Everything about it made sense, moving the body and the psychology and philosophy,” he said. 

But more than just another yoga studio, the place had to be something that offered an elixir that didn’t even require joining a class. 

“I just wanted a place that I wish I had been able to go to growing up when I was very confused and disoriented and running into the endless kinds of challenges we all face in life,” Ellner recalled. “A place that offers easygoing hospitality where it’s not transactional, no pressure to necessarily buy or do something. You could just come in and sit down and hang out. Somewhere that could penetrate all demographics and at least offer people shining a light to a deeper kind of wisdom than we’re accustomed to. That’s what saved me time and time again over the years.”

Ellner called the new studio Yoga Soup as a metaphor, as offering daily servings of actual soup didn’t come until much later, referencing more the pastiche of styles and approaches that would encompass a wide variety of practices in yoga and beyond. 

“I didn’t have a particular lineage or teacher that I could rely upon, but I had a lot of inspirations,” he said. “I draw upon a lot of resources at the studio and in my own classes and that’s a good soup. There’s an endless amount of ingredients that get combined and remixed, and the flavors are always changing, but it’s always nourishing and nutritious.” 

Obviously the formula hit home with yoga practitioners and teachers from Santa Barbara and beyond, as Yoga Soup has grown into an essential resource for the community, with more than a dozen classes and events offered each day split between two studio spaces – everything from ecstatic breathing to ecstatic dance, song circles to sound baths, mindfulness to conversations about “A Course in Miracles,” cacao ceremonies to Qigong, and, of course, a wide variety of yoga practices including such styles as flow, Yin, Vinyasa, restorative, Ashtanga and Kundalini, to name just a few. Not to mention the warmly inviting living room-style space full of couches and chairs, books, fresh fruit and vegetables, bread from Oat Bakery, hot and cold beverages and serve-yourself soup prepared by the Organic Soup Kitchen. 

“Soup is such a great little lifesaving dish to eat, and also a great metaphor for what our lives end up resembling,” Ellner said. “Just a mixture of so many different things that keep changing over time, as we have and do.” 

Yoga Soup will be marking “the ordinary miracle of 19 years of growth, service and community” with an anniversary celebration on Saturday evening, March 22, a five-hour event that touches upon a few of its myriad ongoing classes and events. After some social time and snacks, song leader Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame) will teach basic call-and-response songs, both traditional and more modern, often in three-parts for harmonizing and connecting through music. That’s followed by an intentional meditation with Suzanne Marlow before Ellner shares a few words. A break with “food, treats, tonics, Tarot and other delights” serves as a transition period to the closing event, a 90-minute ecstatic dance, the popular free-form movement to music specifically curated for the space. 

The event also serves as a fundraiser to support a current era of expansion at the studio as a new, smaller studio space is being added adjacent to the larger studio. The new space serves as a testament to Yoga Soup managing to not only survive the pandemic with loans as well as online and park classes, both of which continue, but to flourish. Yoga Soup at this moment might be more popular than ever, with more diverse offerings. 

“It’s a little space that became available, and we’ve always wanted to do smaller groups, different kinds of more intimate journey work and smaller training,” Ellner explained. “It’s great for psychotherapists and somatic therapists and many other practices. And we will finally also have our own kitchen.”

It’s just the latest step in a now two-decades-long evolution, moving closer to fulfilling Ellner’s vision – a space and place that is meant for everyone seeking to discover who they are and what matters on a deeper level – especially in these remarkably polarized times where often our divisions define us. 

“It’s a place that in spirit transcends what gets lost when we identify as old or young, rich or poor, Republican or Democratic, aspects of our lives that are so limited and narrow,” he said. “What yoga’s done for me is remind me constantly that there was something original before I started to add elements to myself; something basic and natural that is worth getting back in touch with. Whereas much of what we do is aspirational, making more money or wanting to amplify your life, or chasing or running from something, Yoga Soup is about the opposite. It’s about being reminded of what has always been here and is always available. It always sounds a little pretentious and weird to say that, but to create an environment where that’s the important thing, that’s always been the challenge of the studio.”  

Yoga Soup is located at 28 Parker Way in Santa Barbara. Call (805) 965-8811 or visit www.yogasoup.com.