CARRBORO -- To Sarah Honer, dropping in at Balanced Movement Studio is like dropping by a buddy's house just to say "hi."

"It's like a good friend's house, where you can grab what you want out of the fridge and hang out as long as you like," said Honer, who has been teaching beginners, intermediate and advanced Pilates classes at Balanced Movement since it opened four years ago.

"And people do drop by," she added. "It's a safe and fun environment for anything you want to do here. It's like a community space."

Balanced Movement Studio is the company owned by Elizabeth Towe, which houses Balanced Physical Therapy, husband Brian Beatty's practice. They opened the space at 304 W. Weaver St. together on Labor Day of 2003.

The couple's intention from the beginning was to have Balanced Movement be a community gathering spot.

"It had been something that, for probably 10 years, Elizabeth and I had discussed," Beatty said. "How we could create a space that would allow people to ... figure out what health means to you as a person."

They didn't just happen to land in Carrboro, though. They sought it out as the location for their venture. They spent about a year looking for the right place in Carrboro to open up. The couple just knew Carrboro was the right fit for them.

"We knew what we wanted to do, and we were looking for a place where there was a vibrant community, that you could drop in and be a part of," Beatty said. "We looked at the Research Triangle Park area and Chapel Hill, the Durham-Chapel Hill border."

"These places are transient ... you're there and you work there, but you don't feel like you belong to something larger," he added. "You may know some of your neighbors, but [those areas] don't have this feel that you connect with all the people who live there."

Although they sought a like-minded community, the kinds of people who teach or take classes run the gamut.

"We have some people who are nationally accomplished in certain areas, and we also have some people who just want to pick up their child or drive their car," he added. "Or they're battling cancer or have battled cancer, or they're someone recovering from a stroke. So we're helping them define on their own what is a healthy life and how do they pursue it."

Beatty owns Balanced Physical Therapy with Rob Schneider. Before opening up Balanced Movement, he had run the Balanced Physical Therapy for eight years and had been a physical therapist for 14. Towe had been at the health and fitness department at GlaxoSmithKline for five or six years.

Now, their place is a well-known spot downtown.

The hoopers on the Weaver Street Market lawn have taken or taught classes at Balanced Movement. Bruce Thomas, aka "the dancing man," has taught a meditation class there. And the guys from the WaBu Cycle Tour -- who rode their bicycles across the country -- took a body awareness session there before leaving on their journey this summer.

On Tuesday evening, Kathleen Mottus waited quietly outside the classroom door for her 6:30 p.m. qigong (pronounced chi-gong) class to start.

She had been taking classes at Balanced Movement for about three years. Although she has taken a Feldenkrais movement class there, she mostly goes to practice qigong.

"It's a really nice flooring system to do physical exercise on," said Mottus, who lives in Burlington but works at UNC-Chapel Hill's environmental science and engineering department. "It's got a good feel to it -- what Brian's done to the place."

"It seems like all the teachers are just really good people and really want to help people, so [Balanced Movement] seems to attract that," she said. "And they seem to be all really good, quality teachers."

"Not only does he attract them, but he keeps them, too," she added. "To me, that's a good sign."

Beatty said he and Towe wanted a place "where people who are our teachers or people we've been inspired by have a place to teach as well."

Sarah Honer, who owns Spira Pilates Studio on East Main Street in Carrboro, is one of them.

But she's inspired by everyone else.

"It's the people who come here, and it's the teachers. They're all just really cool people," she said. "It always is intimate, and the space is beautiful."

"The teachers are special and giving and inviting," Honer said. "I think it all goes back to Brian and Elizabeth. They're just really cool people who happen to own a business."

During the five-minute cool down at the end of her Pilates class Tuesday, she had a realization.

"I'm so happy here," she thought to herself in the quiet moment. "I have this place -- with all these amazing people here -- that I can be a part of."