Meet Alina Tuluceanu a passionate Romanian girl whose dreams lead her to Holland over eleven years ago. Alina was searching for something amazing and found it at Rasalila in Amsterdam, a place where acrobatics, silks and tricks make magic. Read her inspiring journey to loveable teacher and find out more about her unique classes.

A Dreamer

My name is Alina and I’m a teacher at Rasalila. I originally come from Romania, a place where you are expected to get a job, get married, get settled and that’s life. There, I felt that the part of me that wanted to peruse my dreams was gone forever. So I took a bold step came to The Netherlands almost 11 years ago. I set out to find something I enjoyed, I tried out various gyms but I was never pleased since I don’t like training on my own. I joined group classes in the gym, but still it wasn’t for me. Then I found Rasalila. I loved it so much, I started taking all the classes in the schedule, I didn’t know how to do anything but I just wanted to be there. Sometimes I trained almost 25 hours a week.

Hidden Talent

While I was at Rasalila I noticed that I was very interested in analyzing movement. I’ve had many different jobs in the past, but always in the role of a coach. I have a lot of patience with people and I love to see people develop and grow. I believe that you can learn a lot in life but some things you are born. I think my gift was to be a teacher, to share knowledge with others. I took this and completed my training to become a teacher and I’ve now been teaching already for three years.

Passion for People

People are really my passion. I love to analyze behavior and I still want to do something with psychology or anthropology in the future. I want to learn more about how to motivate people so they can bring out the best in themselves. For example if people give up during a class, I’m always looking for ways to be positive and to find something they can do. You have flexibility moves and strength moves. Some strength moves are hard and some people can’t do it, but once they try a flexibility move then they can do it. I think listening to people and being empathetic as a teacher is really important.

Up in The Air

My classes are a soulful, feminine way of moving through storytelling. We breathe through every move and let breath lead the movement. At Rasalila I teach Pole classes and Aerial classes. Aerial Hammock Play is about being playful. It will help you get strong and lean because the fabric helps to create space between your joints and also massages you throughout the class. Aerial yoga is essentially yoga using fabric. You hold the poses a bit longer and you get support from the fabric which makes it accessible for everyone. Aerial dance is really dancing with the fabric. It’s elegant and soulful. It’s amazing how you learn to work with the fabric and use all of your body. I once read, ‘don’t use your body to get into the pose but use the pose to get into your body.’ You can’t trick the fabric but you can use it.

Girl Power

There are a lot of women that come here and very often, they don’t get supported by their men at home. So it’s really important that we emphasis that it’s good to make time for ourselves as women. If you are happy, it makes the people in your life happy. For example, pole dancing is still a taboo in some places and isn’t widely accepted. It’s a challenging sport but women gain a lot of self-confidence by doing it and that is the most important thing at Rasalila. When we use the poles and fabrics the first thing we do is try to get out of our heads, there isn’t room for us there anyway – so we get into our bodies.

Learn an Aerial Flow with Alina…

Alina teaches Pole Flow Beginners, Intermediate and open levels at Rasalila in Amsterdam. She also teaches Aerial Hammock Play (easy flow & level up), Aerial Yoga and Aerial Dance. Even if you’re a complete beginner, book a class and experience a new challenging workout that will make you feel like an acrobatic goddess.

Written by Laura Court-Jones

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