By Javacia Harris Bowser | For the Birmingham Times
When Kenyele Harrison took her first Pilates class in June 2021, she had one thought: “This is where I need to be.”
The mind-body exercises of Pilates—a system of moves that help strengthen the core, improve posture, and enhance flexibility—not only seemed like the best way to optimize her own fitness but also felt like just what she needed for what she calls her life’s work.
“This is how I get our community of Southern skeptics to see that we can work out in a holistic way,” said Harrison, a Fayette, Alabama, native who came to Birmingham in 2015 on a mission to promote generational health.
“You’re not just getting well for you, right now. I say that it’s generational wellness. You’re getting well for your friends and for your family,” she added.
To spread this message, Harrison not only teaches classes at Pala Pilates in Downtown Birmingham but also takes Pilates outside of the studio and into the community, partnering with various organizations, such as the Soft, Ambitious, and Balanced (SAB) Social Club and Jefferson County Greenways, to offer free Pilates classes at places like CityWalk, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Red Mountain Park, and Ruffner Mountain.
“I knew that if I was going to actually be for the community, I had to get out into the community,” she said.
Harrison, 29, calls her Pilates practice business Kenetic Wellness. The spelling is both a play on her name and a nod to her philosophy that wellness can be genetic.
“I want people to understand that wellness and health—that’s in our genes,” she told The Birmingham Times. “It’s in us to be well; it’s in us to be healthy because, even when you feel like you’re about to get the flu, your body sends you signals, so I take that into wellness.”
And it’s through Pilates that Harrison strives to teach people how to listen to and take care of their bodies.
Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In the summer of 2025, Harrison was awarded an $8,500 grant from Urban Impact Inc. (UII) during the organization’s fifth annual BECOME Pitch Competition for small businesses. UII is a nonprofit that is “committed to removing barriers for Black entrepreneurs [in order to] lead, build, and grow traditionally underserved Black commercial districts and communities.” And the BECOME program is one of the organization’s business education services.
“That was definitely like a signifying moment for me,” Harrison recalled with tears streaming down her face. “It said to me, ‘You have proven that Pilates as a public health initiative is worth something. Keep going.’”
More than a New Year’s Resolution
Harrison believes January is the perfect time to start a Pilates practice. “Pilates can help people begin the New Year by helping them set up and understand the importance of routine,” she said.
Classical Pilates focuses on many of the same exercises in each class, Harrison explained. “Some may consider this boring, … but when you do the same thing over again, you get better at it and you tell your brain you can stick to something no matter how new and different,” she said. “It makes those other resolutions not even like resolutions anymore. Just like attending my Pilates class, they become a part of life.”
Harrison also believes that the Pilates principles of breathing, concentration, and control can be applied to every facet of life. “If we breathe with every exercise in Pilates and take full breaths in life, even the hard things become possible to at least attempt,” she said. And as you learn to move from your core in Pilates, you’ll also learn to move from you core beliefs in life.
“Then we have a source to reach from, and we aren’t out here just winging it,” Harrison said. “Our center keeps us strong and balanced. If we concentrate in class and in life, we tend to surprise ourselves with how much we can accomplish.”
What is Pilates?
Pilates, developed in the early 20th century by German physical trainer Joseph Pilates, is more than just a fitness trend. This full-body, low-impact workout system is designed to boost core strength, mobility, and flexibility. According to The Pilates Center, “In developing a Pilates practice, you focus on breathwork, concentration, precision, flow, centering, and control in order to feel strong, conditioned, and flexible in both mind and body.”
“Pilates was a foreign word to me,” Harrison said. “I had no idea what the word even was before I started taking Pilates, and I consider myself cultured. If I didn’t know it, I knew my grandmas didn’t know. I knew my aunties didn’t know it. I knew my uncles didn’t know it. So, it was imperative for me to get out in the community.”
A True Athlete
Harrison was born and raised in Fayette, a small town north of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she saw health disparities exacerbated by a lack of healthy food options and little access to quality health care. She began to ask herself, “How can we put wellness in our own hands?”
At an early age, Harrison did this by staying active. At Fayette Middle School, she played softball. While at Fayette High School, she was a cheerleader and played tennis. Still, she didn’t consider herself an athlete until she began to practice Pilates.
“Back then I was learning how to play a game, how to play a sport, but not actually how to use my body,” she said. “Pilates really has taught me how to use my body. I know how to keep going and when to push back.”
And this is what she aims to teach her clients—regardless of age or fitness level—so she considers them all athletes.
For example, Harrison said, “My 89-year-old client, Ruth, is an athlete because she wants to keep using her body for life.”
Harrison came to Birmingham in 2015 to study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She wanted to be a surgeon, but then she got another idea. “I’m a preacher’s kid, so I’m gonna say the Lord spoke to me,” she said, adding that she was moved to focus on helping people before surgery was necessary—and the Kenetic Wellness movement was born.
Certified
Before Pilates, Harrison frequently suffered injuries from sports and other workouts. So, in June 2021 she took her first Pilates class at Club Pilates in Cahaba Heights, a neighborhood of Vestavia Hills, Alabama. “I laid on that Reformer, [a resistance apparatus with a padded platform called a carriage that moves back and forth on rails], for the first time, and I was like, ‘Oh, yes, this is where I need to be,’” she recalled. “I’m getting the strength, I’m getting the flexibility, but I don’t feel pain. I only feel the soreness that’s supposed to come with working out.” After one class, Harrison was hooked and soon signed up for teacher training with encouragement from Club Pilates Birmingham owner Lindsay Booker.
“My first certification was through Club Pilates. … This is not a weekend certification. It’s a 500-hour, fully comprehensive certification, which means I’m certified to teach every piece of Pilates equipment,” explained Harrison, who went on to get additional advanced certifications from The Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado.
“I understand how to teach specific populations,” she said. “I understand how to teach somebody with osteoporosis. I understand how to teach somebody with Parkinson’s disease or with vertigo.”
“She Looked Like Me”
Monica Tabb of Bessemer, Alabama, has been practicing Pilates with Harrison as her guide for a little more than a year. “I’d heard a lot about Pilates, and I’d always kind of been interested in it,” Tabb said. “I was on Instagram, and Kenyele’s picture and information kept popping up. It encouraged me because she looked like me.”
One day, Tabb, 45, decided to try one of Harrison’s introductory classes: “And I haven’t looked back,” she said.
Tabb takes both group and one-on-one classes with Harrison. “I never did think that Pilates wasn’t for African Americans because I feel like health and exercise is for anybody,” Tabb said. “But I felt like Kenyele could understand my body type. I felt like she could understand some of the struggles that Black women have.”
Since Tabb started practicing Pilates, her posture and flexibility have improved and her core has gotten stronger, she said. The breathing techniques of Pilates also help her keep anxiety in check if she’s stressed.
Tabb, who works at a U.S. Postal Service plant, said, “I’m doing a lot of pulling and pushing and moving and walking and bending, so I think it has helped a lot with my job, too.”
As a bonus, Tabb said her body is more toned—something that friends and family members have noticed.
Tabb makes Pilates a family affair. Whenever her sister, who lives in Montgomery, Alabama, comes to visit, they always take a Pilates class together. And over the past year, Tabb has begun to see Harrison as family, as well.
“I see her like a little sister, and I am just very proud of her for all of the work she’s doing,” Tabb said. “I think this is a calling for her.”
Pilates is a Practice
Harrison dreams of one day owning a massive wellness facility that will host fitness classes and house a café that provides healthy foods. She also wants to establish satellite centers in small towns like Fayette.
In the meantime, Harrison will keep going. She’ll continue encouraging people of all ages and backgrounds to try Pilates, whether it’s at one of her free community classes or at one of the classes she offers at Pala Pilates.
“Pilates is a practice,” she said. “Pilates is a mind-body connection, and you learn a little bit more about yourself during every single class.”
Before that can happen, though, Harrison said you must release the doubts and distractions that can get in the way. And most of all, she said, “Release the idea that you don’t belong.”
Follow Kenyele Harrison on Instagram @keneticwellness or visit pilatesbham.com/studio/schedule.
