I was born into a very nice family in the complex city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city made famous, between other things by Tango, Maradona, and its political unstability. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, and actually the lifestyle and architecture are markedly more European than any other in South America, but it is really an immense city, and although many people really enjoy that - it is really very vibrant and energetic - for me it has always been a very difficult thing to adapt to.

After I finished my secondary school, I started to do some social work, particularly working with what is called 'chicos de la calle', kids that live on the street and work with older people and started to do some massage and YOGA courses as well. Although I did not know it at that time, all these things had a lot to do with my questioning of the way people relate to life in general and to their own lives in particular. Since I've been a kid I've had this feeling that people in general are too unhappy, and that it should not be so. When I looked around me, it was easy to see too much negativity, too many problems, too much sadness. And so, I always wanted to see other cultures, other ways to live, other ways to understand and see life.

I tried some university careers but they were all taking too long, and went to study to become a school teacher. I worked in this for a while, but after some time I did not want to stay in Buenos Aires any longer and in 1989 left Buenos Aires in what I called in that moment 'my search for another way to live and experience life'.

For some reason, and I'm still not sure why, I went to the United States. Since I spoke no English, I started to do massage for a living, which actually was the perfect career because I really enjoyed traveling and I found this job to be a great profession to take with me wherever I was going. I kept doing courses of massage and YOGA and travelling around North America and Europe. Somehow it was easy to make money in USA, and I did not have any other responsibility except myself.
For the next 15 years I travelled extensively, lived in several different cultures and study different traditions of psychology, art, philosophy and medicine. In 2006 I decided it was time to come back to Buenos Aires. But first I wanted to make a kind of a big tour for Europe and, travelling through Greece I met Alina, my wife. It was a very romantic story and after a while she came to Buenos Aires. A year later she wanted to come back here, I had no problem with that, and here we are.

As I said before, I have been studding YOGA since I'm quite young, but for me it was not so much a method of movement but more of a search for a better way to live. In any case, in the process I learnt about movement, the right position of the body, healthy leaving, etc. My brother, who aslo left Buenos Aires, went to live in Spain. He opened the first Pilates institute in Palma de Mallorca. Everytime I went to visit him I will of course practice Pilates, and after some time really I started to feel that the combination of both YOGA and Pilates complement each other beautifully. I went to do some courses, including studying with Johnatan Urla, the person that created Yogilates, but mostly I learnt from my brother.

Yogilates was created by Jonathan Urla and his style is excellent, but the interesting thing about Yogilates is that it can become whatever you make it. There is YOGA and there is Pilates. How much you put of each, and especially, what you put in it, is up to the teacher. So, yes, for sure is a system of movement that will help you to increase your health, but to me, it is also more than that.
From all the things I learnt in my travels, may be the more important thing is that one of the main reasons why people are so unhappy is because there is a great disconnection with who they are. Basically we forget to look inside of ourselves, the only source of real happiness. And it is really very interesting to see that here in Romania, as much as there is a completely new current about working harder and harder in order to make more money, there is also a completely new influx of people looking for something else...

...it is not easy to describe... one way to say it is that it is a search for integration, for harmony, and actually the translation of the word YOGA is 'union'. I think that never before, even with all the technology available, or actually because of it, people feel more and more separated than ever from... everything else; but especially from themselves. And it is by connecting again with oneself that one is able to connect with the rest of the world. And so in the classes, besides helping people to feel better with their own bodies, one thing I try to do is to create a space in their busy lives and help them to connect with themselves. For example, one of the reasons why we create so much stress in our lives is because we don't listen to our own body. Our body has its own particular language, which is definitely not intellectual, but because we are so so busy, we loose the whispering of our body. It keeps talking to us, repeating over and over its needs, but we are deaf; and then the body has to scream, that is, we became sick.

Yes to all. I did many courses in Argentina, United States and Europe. Also, I put all my studies together in a very personal way; but I have studied much, and have no intention to stop doing it, and I have no intention to stop creating my own style.

The kind of lifestyle that any person should have, not only the person that practice Yogilates, is simply a harmonic lifestyle. What does this mean? You cannot expect to have a painless body and work for 8, 9, 10 or even more hours a day in front of the computer and then come home and sit in front of the TV or just go to bed. The body is made for movement, and we need to move; we cannot expect to have a nice skin or a healthy digention and eat kilos of chocolate, or fast foods, or food full of additives and conservants; we want to have lots of energy but then we only sleep 5 or 6 hours per day. Everything has a consequence. A good lifestyle is basically commun sense...yes, one problem is that in modern society commun sense is not really very commun. And so we come back to the need to get connected with ourselves. Our body knows exactly what it needs, we just need to be attentive enough to listen to it. He is talking to us all the time.

There are two classes I would like to add, sometime in the future. One is for pregnant women and the other is for elder adults. They are both quite challenging and very rewarding.

Bucharest is not a particular easy city to live in, but I'm learning to appreciate many things that may not be very obvious at first sight. There are many Europeans cites that can be more comfortable, or less chaotic, but also most cities have lost what I will call 'essence'; they are too plastic. Bucharest has lots of life. You can still feel the influences of nature. For example, although you can go to any big supermarket and get anything you want any time of the year, here you can also find in Spring the best strawberries I've ever tasted, while in summer you can find the nicest tomatoes and best melons; you can find the sweetest grapes in the fall, and you eat very good zacusca in winter. Here you can still be in contact with the seasons, and although this may be burdensome to some people, I find it to be very special.

With respect to the classes, for now mostly women came to them. In California, which is where I got most of my experience, it is done by both men and women with absolutely no distinction. It seems that here the idea of YOGA or Pilates is not for men as apparently here men are more attracted to do weights and become more muscular. But this is starting to change.