If you're entrenched in the Atlanta Pilates world, you've likely heard of or taken a class with Dr. Tanya Stephenson. A licensed chiropractor, Stephenson is the founder of Stretch ATL, the first Black-owned Pilates studio, which opened in 2013 at 2033 Metropolitan Pkwy.

For over a decade, she's been building community and helping people align their mind and body, from watching miraculous transformations of people who had been in accidents regaining the ability to walk to offering pop-up classes around metro Atlanta.

Now, she's celebrating the grand opening of her second location in Buckhead at 2293 Peachtree Rd. (3rd floor). The Atlanta Voice talked with Stephenson about the growth of Stretch ATL and the rise in popularity of Pilates within the Black community.

The Atlanta Voice: You opened the first Black-owned Pilates studio, Stretch ATL, in 2013. How did it feel for you to be able to do that for the community?

Dr. Tanya Stephenson: "It was the driving force for me. It was not present in the community, and I felt the need to be that pioneer for it. And so while doing that, it had its plus and minuses. The plus was that I was able to bring it to the community. Some of the community saw it, never tried it, but were interested. There's also the skeptical aspect because Pilates is not very inexpensive. I did as much as I could to make it affordable by reducing the class times; instead of 45 minutes to 1-hour sessions, I did a 30-minute session that gave them everything that they needed inside of that. That kind of gave them the idea of what it was. But once I got them to jump in, they joined the studio."

AV: That's so interesting to hear because, from my perspective, Pilates has become so much more popular and accessible in the past few years. There's been this idea attached to it that the exercise is for rich, white women. Can you talk more about opening a Black-owned studio before this wave hit?

TS: "The kicker was that I decided to do a Groupon. On the Groupon, it was a Black girl on the reformer. I did that intentionally so that they wouldn't think it was another studio that was already available to them. And then to have it in the community made for a huge amount of interest. I got overwhelmed, actually, with that. That was my strategy to introduce it to the community, and it worked."

AV: Taking it back a bit, where and when would you say your love of Pilates began?

TS: "When you're in chiropractic school, you're there for four years plus. You have to learn how to adjust, and you learn by working on your colleagues or or your classmates. Like I said, they're practicing. Just as well as they can help you, they can hurt you. While I was in chiropractic school, I also had a baby, and so with that, I got some bad adjustments from my classmates. After having her, I was really not myself afterward, so I had to stop letting the students adjust me and let only my professor or my doctor adjust me. When I started Pilates, it just kind of sealed the deal. Pilates helped me get my body back after baby."

AV: What do you think it is about Pilates that has made it so popular and accessible in the past few years?

TS: "One is the way it makes your body feel. You become aware of your body in terms of learning what good posture feels like. It will definitely bring you to reality with yourself. The other is the fact that it wasn't available but yet I brought it to the community. What's also a beauty is that it's not a drag-out fight -- it's a softer drag, you know? It's not lifting weights. It's not perspiring like crazy.

"I think people are becoming more aware that the wear and tear of the body really does impact your quality of life. Pilates is a functional type of work; the things that you do in class, you take it home and you take it to work, and you take it to the desk that you sit at every day. I think that's one of the main reasons that it has become such a popular thing, and the girlies love it. The guys are getting there. I have a huge number of professional ball players and collegiate ball players who have also come to understand that it enhances their skill set."

AV: (laughs) I love seeing videos of men trying Pilates and leaving the class shaking.

TS: "It's hilarious."

AV: What are some benefits of Pilates that people may not be aware of?

TS: "When I was a chiropractic student, my mentor had a chiropractic practice in Marietta Square, and it was a small adjustment room. But when she showed me around, it was a huge room like this with a bunch of reformers in it. She explained to me that she sends all of her patients to Pilates, which makes it so they don't have to get on the table to be adjusted. So, it's an alignment thing; it is a form of chiropractic work. It's a form of aligning the body and getting the body to do what it wants to do because it does want to do the right thing -- we just get in the way of the body."

AV: You go into these classes, and you're actually seeing people who look like you and live in the same community as you. How important is representation in these spaces?

TS: "I shadowed her [my mentor] for a few years, and the whole time I worked with her, I never saw anybody who looked like me. She had a great, very established practice, but I never saw anybody who looked like me. And that was the horn that tooted in my head to say, 'Take this to your community. Your community deserves this, too.'

"It's such an intrinsic reward. I know that those spaces were not open or not available or just weren't knowledgeable enough for us to be there. And I laugh sometimes because, on social media, the comments are hilarious. They're like, 'Look at all those Black people in there.' I feel so accomplished when I get those kinds of compliments."

AV: You just opened a second Stretch ATL location in Buckhead. What does it say to you about the growth of the studio, and what does this milestone mean to you?

TS: "I would say this: for a very long time, if you happened to talk to a Pilates girl that looked like you in the Atlanta world, and they have Pilates experience, they generally have started with Stretch ATL. So, I really put a footprint in Atlanta for Pilates, and I think that footprint has made such a difference in terms of how the growth is going. Ideally, I'd like to be the mecca of Pilates in the area. I've really come a long way."

AV: For those who have never been to Stretch ATL, what makes this Pilates studio so special, and what do you hope for the future?

TS: "I really come for the whole body. We talk about the food intake, we talk about the mind-body, and we create a community. So when you come here, you leave your junk outside, and we come in and we're a collective. That's what makes Stretch ATL quite different. We really make sure that we look out for each other.

"We also have a mobile unit, so everything that we do inside of the studio is on our mobile unit. You can do Pilates, you can do barre, you can get a one-on-one stretch, all in our mobile unit. We creatively brought that together and made that shine, and we are very, very proud of it. We're going to meet the people in the streets. If they can't make it to us, we're going where they are."