Healing Through Movement: Gia Rossi on Grief, Strength Training & Building Energi Studios
RAW Season 2, Episode 24
RAW Season 2, Episode 24: Building Energi: Strength, Healing, and Creating a Studio with SoulBuilding ENERGI: Gia Rossi on Strength, Healing, and Creating a Studio with Soul
What does it mean to build a business from a broken place — not a broken spirit, but from the kind of clarity that only comes after you've been forced to rebuild yourself from the inside out?
Gia Rossi, founder of Energi Studios, knows that feeling well. A new Pilates, yoga, and strength training studio opening in Ohio City, Cleveland, Energi isn't just a fitness space — it's the physical form of everything Gia survived, learned, and chose to create. In this episode of RAW, host Alison Hite sits down with Gia for one of the most open and grounded conversations of the season — one that touches grief, body image, eating disorder awareness, the power of movement, and what it takes to build something from sheer belief alone.
"Show up for your body the same way it shows up for you.”
— Gia Rossi | RAW S2E24
Meet Gia!
Gia Rossi is the founder of Energi Studios, a new Pilates, yoga, and strength training studio opening in Ohio City, Cleveland. Creating this space from the ground up on her own while following a passion for movement, wellness, and community, Gia believes in leading with a positive mindset, embracing every challenge as an opportunity to grow, and building a place where people feel stronger, more energized, and empowered. She leads with light and love — and she can't wait to meet so many new souls at the studio.
In This Episode
Movement as Medicine After Loss
Gia lost both of her parents — her mother to an eating disorder, and her father in a tragic motorcycle accident. These losses could have derailed her. Instead, they redirected her. Yoga, Pilates, walking, breathwork, and strength training gave her something to return to when everything else felt unmoored. Movement became less about changing her body and more about staying connected to herself.
She describes it simply: "Movement saved me from feeling disconnected from myself." This is the thread that runs through the entire episode — the idea that fitness can serve a deeper function than aesthetics or performance. For Gia, showing up to move was an act of grief processing, self-trust, and eventually, gratitude.
Eating Disorders, Body Image & the Responsibility of Fitness Spaces
One of the most powerful threads in this conversation is Gia's relationship to her mother's eating disorder. Watching someone you love suffer from a distorted relationship with their body reshapes how you understand fitness entirely. Gia has carried that into the DNA of Energi Studios. She doesn't want to run a space that traffics in fear, shame, or aesthetic obsession — she wants people to leave feeling more connected to their bodies, not more critical of them.
Her quote says everything: "You're so much more than your body." In a fitness industry that often monetizes insecurity, Gia is building something that actively pushes back against that.
Women's Strength Training — Why It Actually Matters
Strength training is still misunderstood by a significant portion of women, many of whom associate it with bulk, intensity, or a culture that feels unwelcoming. Gia dismantles this. For women especially, strength training is one of the most important investments in long-term health: it preserves muscle mass, supports bone density, improves metabolic function, and builds the kind of physical confidence that carries into every other area of life.
Energi Studios will offer strength training alongside Pilates and yoga — not as competing disciplines, but as complementary ones. The goal is a complete approach to the body that honors both power and recovery.
Fitness Doesn't Have to Feel Serious
Ali and Gia share a common belief: the fitness industry often makes movement feel like punishment, performance, or obligation. Gia's reframe is refreshing — "Working out doesn't have to be that serious. Enjoy your life and show up for your body the same way it shows up for you." That single line is a more effective motivation strategy than most gym marketing campaigns.
Energi Studios is being built for people who want to move without dread — for community, encouragement, and a space that actually feels good to be in.
Building a Business on Belief
Gia moved from New York to Cleveland and is building Energi Studios largely on her own — without a proven roadmap, without a co-founder, without certainty. What she does have is clarity of vision and the willingness to stay in motion before the path is fully visible.
Her advice: "You just have to believe in it and see yourself in it, and it will come." Ali echoes this with one of her own truths: "We are capable of anything, but we teach our brains that we can't." Entrepreneurship as a practice of un-learning limitation — this is the kind of founder story that actually resonates.
Cleveland's Wellness Community Is Growing
This episode quietly makes the case for Cleveland as a wellness city on the rise. Gia sees Energi Studios as part of a larger shift — and Ali, who has built TheCheekyClean into a platform for conscious living rooted in Cleveland, agrees. Ohio City is a neighborhood with energy, community, and an appetite for intentional spaces. Energi fits right in.
Grief and Gratitude Can Coexist
Perhaps the most lasting takeaway from this conversation: grief doesn't have to be something you get over. It can be something you carry alongside purpose, joy, and love. Gia doesn't present herself as someone who has "healed" in a tidy sense — she presents as someone who has integrated her losses into a bigger story she's still writing. That realism, combined with her genuine warmth, makes this one of the most grounding conversations RAW has produced.
Key Takeaways
Movement can be a powerful tool for processing grief and rebuilding self-trust
Fitness spaces carry a responsibility to prioritize body neutrality and belonging over aesthetics
Strength training is one of the most underutilized tools in women's long-term health
Entrepreneurship requires belief before evidence — the path becomes clear as you walk it
Losing a parent to an eating disorder reshapes your entire relationship to fitness and the body
Energi Studios is coming to Ohio City, Cleveland — Pilates, yoga, strength, community
Grief and gratitude are not opposites; they can coexist and fuel purpose
The best fitness philosophy? Show up for your body the way it shows up for you
This conversation is one you'll want to sit with. Gia's honesty about grief, body image, and the courage it takes to build something from nothing is the kind of content that lingers.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and watch on YouTube.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Gia Rossi is the founder of Energi Studios, a new Pilates, yoga, and strength training studio opening in Ohio City, Cleveland. Originally from New York, she relocated to Cleveland and is building the studio from the ground up. Gia is passionate about movement, wellness, and community — and believes fitness should help people feel stronger and more at home in their bodies.
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Energi Studios is a new movement studio in Ohio City, Cleveland, Ohio offering Pilates, yoga, strength training, and stretching classes. Founded by Gia Rossi, it is built on the belief that fitness should be inclusive, empowering, and community-centered — not driven by aesthetic pressure or intimidation.
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After losing her mother to an eating disorder and her father in a motorcycle accident, Gia turned to yoga, Pilates, walking, breathwork, and strength training as tools for emotional healing. Movement helped her stay connected to herself during grief — not as an escape, but as a practice of self-trust and gratitude that ultimately inspired her to open Energi Studios.
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Strength training preserves muscle mass, supports bone density, improves metabolic function, and builds physical confidence — all critical for women's long-term health, particularly as hormonal shifts occur with age. Unlike cardio-focused fitness, strength training specifically supports longevity and overall resilience.
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RAW is a weekly podcast hosted by Alison Hite, founder of TheCheekyClean and Conscious Cart. It explores topics like wellness, conscious living, personal growth, women's health, and entrepreneurship. Episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and at thecheekyclean.com/podcast.
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Movement — especially yoga, Pilates, breathwork, and strength training — supports the nervous system, helps regulate cortisol, and provides structure and community during periods of loss. Approaching exercise as a form of reconnection rather than distraction or punishment can make it a meaningful and sustainable part of emotional healing.
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Energi Studios offers Pilates, yoga, strength training, and stretching in a welcoming, community-centered environment in Ohio City, Cleveland. The studio is designed to feel supportive and empowering for people of all fitness levels.
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TheCheekyClean is a wellness and conscious living brand founded by Alison Hite, featuring the RAW Podcast, a clean product marketplace called Conscious Cart, and a community focused on clean ingredients and intentional living. Shop at consciouscart.com.
Related Episodes
S2E13 — What the Fitness Industry Gets Wrong ft. Adrienne Smith
Adrienne Smith challenges the assumptions behind conventional fitness culture, making this a direct companion to Gia's philosophy of movement as connection, not performance.
S2E06 — How to Get Healthier As We Age ft. Dr. Mary Teague D.C.
Dr. Teague covers strength training, inflammation, and women's holistic health — a practical, clinical complement to Gia's personal story about why movement matters long-term.
S1E18 — Less Polarization, More Evolution ft. Bianca Beach
Bianca Beach opened up about grief, eating disorder awareness, and building a passion-driven business in Cleveland — a thematic mirror to Gia's story of loss, healing, and entrepreneurship.
