Humidity washed over Ebony Archie as she entered Bikram Yoga in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside her friend, Jamara Haymore, in 2013 during her junior year at Rhodes College. The instructor had set the thermostat to 95 degrees, and a humidifier was spewing enough water vapor into the air to create a faux-tropical environment.
Wearing athletic clothes, Archie peered around the room, her eyes taking in the assortment of people of varying ages and other demographics there for that morning’s hot-yoga class, including a man who appeared to be in his 70s wearing a speedo.
“This is going to be interesting,” the history major thought to herself. Haymore had invited Archie to join her workout, and while she would normally be sleeping at this hour, Archie agreed to wake up at 5 a.m. for her first hot-yoga session.
The next 90 minutes comprised one of the most challenging workout classes the Jackson native had ever encountered. As the session reached its conclusion, Archie lay in the final pose: the Savasana, or lying corpse pose, a practice used to integrate the mind and body. Soaked in sweat, tired and processing what she just endured, Archie breathed deeply as the yoga instructor walked around the room and put cold towels on each person’s head.
“Everything you did today was good because you are good and everything you’ll do today is good because you’re good enough,” the instructor relayed to the class.
Those words resonate deeply with Archie, reminding her that goodness isn’t earned and neither is rest.
“For me, it was so liberating because of how challenging it was,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “That was a space where it was like I couldn’t perform. I couldn’t try to perfect my way into this. It wasn’t a thing about grading or trying to see how well or bad I did in class. The purpose was being present and just honoring what my body could do in that class.”
Since then, Archie has continued to take the hot-yoga classes, currently going two-to-three times a week. She also began juicing, eating quinoa and working out more often—accruing new wellness tools for her proverbial toolbox.
Today, Archie has taken everything she’s learned about wellness and bundled it into Sol&Self Co., a Mississippi-based wellness and lifestyle brand focused on movement, journaling, self-care and community healing. Through a new collaboration with Downtown Jackson Partners, she has begun hosting yoga sessions in Smith Park and the Green Space in downtown Jackson on Saturday mornings.
“It started with journals and sunshine when I was a child, and now it’s turned into a lifestyle in a way that I am always trying to implement in my life and choose to prioritize in my life,” Archie said.
‘I Love Home’
Ebony Archie spent her childhood days between the south and west sides of Jackson, where she attended Pearl Street AME church. She remembers knowing all the neighbors on her street and feeling safe knowing she could freely go in her backyard, lay in the sun, and journal—a wellness activity she’d been doing since she was 8 years old.
“It was the one place where I knew I could express myself whether that was my dreams, my hopes, my imagination, but also the challenges that I was wrestling with as a child; it started off as the one thing I could always return to in life,” she said.
As she got older, Archie began to diversify what wellness means and looks like for her by incorporating more physical exercise into her routine, like stretching or going for long walks. She graduated from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in 2011 before attending Rhodes College in Memphis, from which she earned a bachelor’s degree in history and minors in urban studies and community health. She lived in Kansas City before settling in Chicago, where she entered a career in marketing and communications. Still, she loved Jackson.
“I would say that, oftentimes, grief brought me back home while, simultaneously, there was this deep longing to always come back home (to Mississippi),” Archie said. “I lived in a lot of different cities. Chicago was my last stop. I started doing this thing where I would come back home during the winter for a prolonged period of time.”
While she loved Chicago springs and summers, she found herself feeling reinvigorated whenever she would travel back to Jackson. A number of people seek to leave the Hinds County city, Archie observed, due to issues relating to infrastructure and blight, particularly when comparing Jackson to other major cities. But where some see divestment, Archie saw opportunity and possible solutions she could share with the people who love Jackson, she explained.
“I love home, and I think I just couldn’t ignore it anymore,” she said.
When she arrived in Mississippi in January 2025, she intended to just stay for the month. But one month turned to two, and two turned into four. Eventually, she applied for yoga-teacher training with no real timetable when she’d return to Chicago. Ultimately, she decided that she didn’t want to leave, and she instead moved back to Jackson permanently. Shortly afterward, she created Sol&Self Co. to spark some joy in her life, she said, a brand that spawned in part because of her morning coffee routine.
“I started making matchas every day, and that got me out of bed to the point where I started buying my own cups and straws and stickers,” Archie said. “I kinda created a whole matcha concept where I’d walk around and people are like, ‘Where’s that from?’ and I’m like, ‘I just made this at the house.’ And that turned into matcha pop-ups (under the name) Little Miss Latte.”
‘My Place of Wellness’
Part of what inspired Archie to create her wellness business was her belief that when people are well, they create well communities. Because she found so much joy in wellness, she wanted to give back and help those in her community grow in their own wellness journeys. She believes wellness can be an avenue through which people can tell new stories and shift the infrastructure of what Jackson looks like, she said.
“(Home) has always been my place of wellness. It’s always been my place of respite, and I understand that part of that probably comes out of a privilege of my upbringing—not because of how much money I have, but because of the deep well-connected community my mom grew up in and was thus able to sustain. And I got to experience the safety of my neighborhood,” she explained.
Archie also authors a Substack series titled “The Cult of the Deep South,” which builds on the journaling she started in her youth. She uses the series to craft the South in a way where readers can see it through her eyes and understand it better through her perspective.
“ I always say people yearn for the Deep South and they just don’t even know it. You yearn for your ancestral lands; you just don’t know it. And that is a space where I get to wrestle through, ‘What does that mean to me?’” she said. “Presently, in its future state, in the nuance of it and the complexities of living in Mississippi, it’s not always easy, but it’s a place that I think is worth it.”
In April, she partnered with Downtown Jackson Partners for a seven-week free yoga series at Smith Park in downtown Jackson. Every Saturday at 9 a.m., people could come to the park with their yoga mats for themed sessions like goat yoga, R&B yoga and puppy yoga.
“I think on one hand, I literally just had such a hard time finding spaces to teach yoga classes, and from that, just also being open to alternative ways that I could still teach classes and have people come out. So that’s where the partnership with Downtown Jackson Partners came from,” she explained.
“They were like, ‘Are we crazy? We wanna do goat yoga?’ And I was like, ‘You’re not crazy ’cause I wanna do community yoga. I love goats, and I love animals, so heck yeah.’”
‘We Need More’
The spring yoga series was so successful that Downtown Jackson and Ebony brought the series back for the fall. “Sipp&Stretch” is a four-week free yoga series that launched Sept. 12, 2026. Attendees can come out every Saturday morning at 9 a.m. in the green space right outside ’Sippsi Good Tea off Capitol Street in downtown Jackson.
Earlier this month, Archie met a mother and daughter who attended her yoga class after finding out about it on Facebook. The mother expressed how she and her daughter were trying to find ways to connect to their environment and find peace of mind. It made Ebony consider how trees, grass and nature can mean something different to people in the South.
“Landscapes have been both terror and refuge, (but they can help us) reconnect with our public spaces in Jackson,” she said. “I literally did a survey from the spring series, and I think almost 90% of people said (that being outdoors) helped them feel closer to downtown Jackson.”
Three weekends ago, a group of overnight nurses from Lorman, Mississippi, came straight from their shift to the green space, using the class as a way to decompress from their demanding jobs. The group of friends don’t get to hang out as much, so these yoga sessions offered a way for them to bond. They have attended sessions since then, even bringing some additional colleagues from work with them.
“I (feel) immense gratitude, and it also makes me think about ways to invite more people from surrounding areas to experience Jackson and Mississippi in the ways that I find so lovely and restful,” Archie said.
The wellness entrepreneur’s vision for Sol&Self Co. is to expand the experience and capacity to other cities across the state. She sees comments on her social media all the time of people asking her to come to Tupelo, Biloxi, Hattiesburg and other cities. She’d also like to create more intentional ways of intergenerational exchange.
“I feel like this is our ancestor’s wildest dreams. Thank God, Timothy Ray, Kemar, Brianna building the health and wellness center, the Jackson Run Club, Thick Chick Pilates chose to come down here,” the yoga instructor said. “Instead of being like, ‘There’s nothing to do here,’ they said, ‘I’m gonna create it here.’”
“I’m gonna believe that people do want to engage in wellness here, and the proof is in the pudding,” she added. “They’ve stayed, they’ve been committed and have built incredible communities from it, and I think we need more.”
Ebony Archie will be continuing her yoga collaboration with Sippsi Good Tea (100 E. Capitol St., Suite 106, Jackson) starting Oct. 24 at 9 a.m. To sign up and for more information about the class, visit solandself.as.me.
Archie will also be hosting a visual journaling workshop with the Mississippi Museum of Art on Saturday, Nov. 7, at noon. To keep up with Ebony Archie online, follow her on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram. To read her “The Cult of the South” series, follow her Substack. Read her latest article for ‘SippTalk here.
