FAIRHOPE, Ala. — “The floor is down. The curtains are up. We are touching up the paint,” said Melanie Buffett of her yoga studio’s Feb. 7 grand opening and free class on Jan. 24 as part of Yoga Day USA. “I will start teaching my Tuesday and Thursday evening classes as soon as the space is barefoot safe and super cleaned. Fairhope is in for some great yoga.”

Sitting at a patio table outside the Yoga Birds storefront on North Section Street recently, Buffett, 36, spoke passionately about the benefits of yoga, and some common misconceptions about it.

“It’s an ancient system of self-awareness that can transform your body, mind and spirit,” she said. “And the physical practice itself can bring a sense of peace and calm for busy lives during such stressful times. But people have the wrong idea if they think they have to get in better shape just to start, or that they’re going to be twisted into pretzel shapes.”

Buffett said her studio would promote a range of yoga styles.

“I’ve been talking to people in the community, listening to what they’d like to have at the studio,” she said. “So, we’ll have beginner classes, therapeutic ones for people with physical limitations to a more advanced practice, as well as an active aerobic one, which does help with weight loss and control.”

She should know.

Hard to believe now, but Buffett, 36, was not always this picture of radiant health, brimming with energy — and a walking advertisement for yoga’s benefits.

“I was an overweight and out-of-shape kid,” Buffet said. “I’d walk up a short hill and be huffing and puffing. But within a year of my first class, I had lost 80 pounds and stopped smoking.”

That was during college in Bozeman, Mont., where she graduated from Montana State University with a major in photography. After those first yoga classes, she said — which led to making a small yoga studio of her bedroom after moving the furniture out — she never looked back. A few years later, she immersed herself in the large yoga culture of Los Angeles, eventually receiving certification as a yoga teacher in Austin, Texas, from the Yoga Alliance, which is sponsoring this month’s Yoga Day throughout the country.

During a period when she lived in Fairhope in 2001, she gave a demonstration to some people who knew her when she grew up in Daphne.

“Are you really the same girl who left here?” she was asked.

She laughs at that story, but it’s a compelling one, especially if you’re the one sitting in front of her, having just huffed and puffed up a small hill yourself earlier that day.

“That is one of the gifts of yoga,” she said, referring to the possible physical transformations and improved health that can result from the practice.

Buffett describes Yoga Birds as Fairhope’s first full-service yoga studio.

“When I say that, I mean there will also be some retail to support the yoga services, such as specialized exercise clothing and props,” Buffett said. “And we will only be doing yoga here, not Pilates or anything else, in a quiet and peaceful environment. We’ll also have a Web presence to schedule classes and take payments online.”

The studio will employ other local yoga teachers, she said, providing a number of day, evening and weekend classes.

As for the Yoga Birds name, “I love hearing the symphony of birds in the early morning on the bay,” she says. “There are a vast number of species of birds, and they all look and act and sing differently, yet they all share the common trait of the ability to take flight. Similarly, there are lots of different styles of yoga but they all share a common thread of unifying body, mind, heart and spirit.”

Buffett said the name also Fairhope’s being a bird watcher’s paradise.

“There are ‘bird sanctuary’ signs all over, and it’s always a reminder of how blessed I am to live in such a beautiful and special place.”

Starting a new business is always a risk, but Melanie Buffett’s engaging enthusiasm plus a lineage of very successful entrepreneurs — mother, Lucy, and uncle, Jimmy — probably makes her chances a good karmic bet.

“I want to provide a yoga practice for every person,” she said, smiling. “I look and see a yogi everywhere.”

Yoga Birds is located at 458-B N. Section St. For more information, visit www.yogabirds.com. The Yoga Day free class is 10-11:15 a.m. on Jan. 24. The grand opening on Feb. 7 is expected to include yoga demonstrations, live music and an open house.