The Body Awareness Studio in Roswell is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The studio was founded by Leslie Clayton, who leads a team of instructors that teach Pilates and breath exercises. But 30 years ago, Clayton wasn’t looking to start a Pilates studio. It happened by accident.

At the time, Pilates was still fairly new to public consciousness, and Pilates equipment was hard to come by. “You couldn't purchase the equipment on your own,” says Clayton. “For liability reasons, they did not sell the equipment to people unless they were in a Pilates teacher training program or if they were professional dancers. Dancers kind of knew how to use the equipment because it's similar to dance. 

Clayton happened to be a ballet teacher, and a group of her students asked if she would be willing to get trained on the equipment and teach it to them. She said yes. “Then the studio evolved. It was a natural evolution because Pilates was becoming more popular; more and more people wanted to come and learn Pilates,” says Clayton, who explains that she kept getting calls from people asking to use her reformer, a special piece of equipment used in Pilates that looks like a cross between a rowing machine and a weight bench. 

The name “Body Awareness Studio” came from Clayton’s first experience using a foam roller, an encounter she described as flooding her body with energy, giving her an intricate awareness of her spine and muscles. “It was a feeling I'd never felt before, and it was quite profound,” she says. “And when I tried to come up with a name for the business, what I kept telling people was ‘I just had more body awareness.’” 

As far as she knew, Clayton was the only business in the city with access to a reformer, so the demand was high. She began by teaching out of a martial arts dojo and then bounced around from the dressing room of a fitness studio to a side room in a chiropractic office. However, in 1995, Ginger McLeod, a practitioner of Feldenkrais, an exercise therapy, invited her to work out of her building. 

“I had no overhead,” says Clayton as she describes how she was able to work rent-free initially. “I was invited to come to this place because she saw the value of Pilates. She almost wouldn’t take no for an answer.” The Body Awareness Studio has been based at its location—5549 Roswell Road NE—now for the past 29 years. 

Clayton asserts that a lot has changed since then. For one, her clients have become more diverse. “At first,” she says, “it was mostly athletes, dancers and professionals who had to maintain a high degree of physical fitness.” But over time, she noticed more people were coming to the practice out of curiosity or were there to pursue specific health benefits. 

Robyn Degnan is one such woman. Six years ago, Degnan had just undergone a series of four back surgeries to treat multiple herniated discs. Before the surgery, Degnan was a yoga practitioner, but the movements became too painful. That’s when she decided to sign up for one of Clayton’s classes. 

“I used to be in pain a lot,” says Degnan. “And since I've been doing Pilates, I haven't injured my back and I don't have that pain all the time anymore.” With the help of Pilates, Degnan’s back has strengthened to the point where it supports her spine and mitigates the pain she used to feel. 

Degnan credits Clayton’s ability to swiftly understand her body and customize the movements to target her problem areas. However, Degnan stresses that their sessions aren’t entirely about movement. Over the past three years, Clayton, who is also an experienced breath coach, has been guiding Degnan through holotropic breathing exercises alongside the Pilates training. “The breathing sessions bring in a more spiritual energy to our work,” says Degnan. They’ve greatly increased my sense of connection to myself and the world around me.” 

Clayton takes a multidimensional approach to her teaching and is not afraid to bring in other fitness philosophies and modalities. But her approach to Pilates emphasizes “embodied movement,” which she describes as a combination of movement, breath and focused intentionality. “There’s a deeper layer that's beyond just the performing of the exercises,” she says. 

“It’s the breath. It's the movement. And it's where the magic happens,” says Clayton. “It almost feels like that's where the soulfulness happens, because, just like in yoga, when you become more embodied with your mind, there is an aliveness to the movements that makes you more conscious, and new things can happen.” ❧

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For more information, visit BodyAwarenessStudio.com or call 404-252-7550.