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Photos by Shay Allen.
Akasha Ellis, co-owner of Birmingham Yoga, practices yoga in Avondale Park in April. Ellis considers yoga and meditation to be not only physically and mentally healthy, but also more accessible than most people might think.
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Photos by Shay Allen.
Akasha Ellis, co-owner of Birmingham Yoga, practices yoga in Avondale Park in April. Ellis considers yoga and meditation to be not only physically and mentally healthy, but also more accessible than most people might think.
The ancient discipline of yoga uses meditation, breathing and a wide variety of postures to help practitioners achieve greater control over their minds and bodies, a sense of peace and well being, and even feelings of self-mastery.
And yoga, though it takes discipline, is “definitely doable for everybody,” according to Akasha Ellis, co-owner of Birmingham Yoga in Forest Park.
“Yoga can be done by someone who’s 90 or someone who’s 10,” Ellis said, who has practiced yoga, including kundalini and Ashtanga, for almost four decades. He has taught in India, the United States and at workshops around the world for more than 20 years.
You could call Ellis an evangelist for a discipline with both physical and spiritual aspects that he — like other devotees — believe can help people improve their health and experience a harmony unattainable any other way.
But yoga is not a religion, Ellis said. “It’s the trinity of merging the body, mind and spirit,” he said.
Not only is yoga more accessible than some may think, but Ellis shows that yoga masters are not just old guys with beards squatting on windswept Himalayan peaks.
Ellis, 48, discovered meditation at a class with kundalini master Yogi Bhajan in Atlanta when he was 11 years old — a self-described “regular American kid” who loved “Star Wars,” dreamed of being a Jedi knight and avidly practiced martial arts.
Bhajan continued to mentor Ellis, who stuck with yoga despite otherwise average teenage interests.
“I was into cars, girls, beer and football,” he said.
Ellis — who wanted to be a doctor — studied biology at George Washington University and attended medical school in New Mexico.
But he turned away from traditional medicine after discovering Ayurveda, a form of alternative healing from India that incorporates yoga.
He moved to India in his early 20s — he had already spent a revelatory year traveling there as a teenager — and started some businesses.
By 2000, he was “fried” by the corporate world and returned to America to teach yoga full time.
He moved to Birmingham in 2001 after visiting some friends and began teaching at various locations, including Golden Temple. He opened Birmingham Yoga in 2012.
Yoga offers physical benefits, according to its proponents, including flexibility, improved muscle tone and greater vitality.
A regular daily yoga regimen can also lead to weight loss, as well as regular bodily functions and sleep patterns, according to Ellis.
“The rhythm of how we were made biologically is balanced,” he said.
And there are psychological benefits, according to Ellis, who said that the Sanskrit word yoga means “union.”
One taps into that internal union by meditating or concentrating on some object, according to Ellis.
“You can use a posture, a breath or a chant, and when you can settle the mind for a moment to actually lessen the thoughts, lessen the desires, then the peace will begin to happen, because from the union comes peace, so if we can generate concentration and focus on one thing, we will begin to merge with that object we are focused on,” he said.
Meditation is rewarding, but it’s not easy at first, Ellis said.
“You’re trying to deal with this mind that’s like a wild horse or wind,” he said. “What we’re asking it to do is focus on something for a period of time, and that focus begins to settle everything.”
For those who stick with yoga, there are numerous rewards, including greater focus and concentration. “You don’t get as distracted by all the things going on around you,” Ellis said.
It can also bring you into the present moment.
“You can’t be trying to meditate and constantly be thinking about the future,” Ellis said. “You’ll forget what you’re meditating on.”
Yoga practitioners are largely in control of their own processes, with the teacher serving mainly as “a sounding board” who can demonstrate techniques and offer guidance, Ellis said.
“I can’t give you the light,” he said. “The light’s already in you. You are responsible for your growth.”
And that growth can be deeply spiritual, according to Ellis.
“You are the divine light,” he said. “You are god. It’s not an ego trip. It’s a very compassionate, loving aspect. Because then you see that divinity in all.”
“Yoga has given me the ability to see the beauty within and the beauty without,” he said.
People who use yoga to find that inner beauty achieve a greater self-acceptance, according to Ellis.
“All the other stuff that’s going on outside you that you use to try to fill your sadness or emptiness or darkness with — relationships, work, goals you set, all these desires you may have — those kind of melt away as you begin to love yourself and become one within yourself,” he said.
Ellis said he believes his teaching reflects his own immersion in yoga.
“I live and breathe ... that quest of union, so that’s integral to who I am,” he said. “It took me years to find compassion for myself … and I think that now spills over. I have a great joy in showing someone that they have that light that they can tap in on their own.”