Eight years after choosing Miami as her base and thirteen years into her discipline, Anita Ayala has shaped a distinct territory within the fitness and movement market. What began as a personal search for an artistic way to inhabit her body quickly outgrew individual performance. Today, alongside her co-founder Fabio, she heads Viva Aerial, an experiential concept where hammock training, artistic expression, sunrise workshops, and specialized instructor certifications converge into a cohesive creative ecosystem.
Her pedagogical vision extends far beyond studio classes. While her community affectionately calls their students fairies, Anita is actively building the future leadership of the aerial world through tailored teacher trainings that balance technical safety, transition fluidity, musicality, and original choreography. Rather than treating fitness as repetitive physical conditioning, she curates elevated, feminine spaces where women move past hesitation, claim their strength, and develop their own voices.
FITNEUR sat down with Anita Ayala to talk about aerial arts, teaching and creating meaningful experiences through movement.
You discovered aerial more than a decade ago. How did a personal physical practice evolve into a platform for training the next generation of teachers?
— I discovered aerial 13 years ago because I was looking for a way to move my body through something artistic, something that would make me feel alive and connected to myself. From the very beginning, it felt different. It wasn’t just movement; it was a way of expressing myself, challenging myself, and creating something beautiful in the air. Over the years, I realized that what connected me to aerial wasn’t only becoming good at it. It was being able to share everything I was learning with other people. Teaching became another passion that I didn’t even know was there. I started watching people come into a room with no experience, sometimes afraid or unsure of themselves, and slowly seeing them become stronger, more confident, and more expressive. Now, through my specialized teacher training, I want to give future instructors more than just the ability to perform poses. I want them to understand foundations, safety, transitions, and the art of choreography, to develop their own voice. It feels like watching something I love continue to grow beyond me. I’m helping create the next generation of people who will carry this art forward, build their own communities, and share that same feeling of freedom.
Launching Viva Aerial marked a significant professional leap. What have been the most demanding lessons of building an independent movement brand?
— With Viva, I feel like I’m building something that represents so much of who I am, my values, and my vision, and because of that, I care for it with so much love and intention. My boyfriend, Fabio, is my co-founder at Viva, and together we’ve created this movement of experiences around an art that I’ve loved for so many years. Entrepreneurship has definitely challenged me. There are moments of uncertainty, moments where you question yourself, and moments where you have to be willing to start over or take a completely different direction. But growth requires courage. Sometimes the hardest decision isn’t starting something new, it’s letting go of what you’ve already built when you realize you’re no longer growing there. Staying somewhere where I knew I had stopped growing would have been much harder. That realization gave me the courage to choose myself and trust my vision.
How do you define the Viva experience within a crowded fitness landscape, and how do you decide where to direct your creative energy?
— The easiest way to describe what I do is that I create experiences through movement. Aerial is the heart of what I do, but I don’t see it simply as fitness or learning how to do a pose in a hammock. Sometimes that looks like an aerial class at sunrise, a workshop, a private experience, or a teacher training, but whatever the format is, I want people to leave feeling like they experienced something, not just like they completed a workout. I’m thinking about the music, the energy, the environment, and how we can turn movement into a form of expression that feels artistic, elevated, feminine, and connected. I’ve learned that I can be passionate about many things at the same time, but that doesn’t mean I need to give everything the same amount of energy. What connects everything I do is movement and creativity. They’re different expressions of the same passion. Aerial is the foundation, teaching is how I share it, and creating experiences is how I continue to expand it. I’m building different branches from the same root, and that root is movement, art, connection, and community.
What guidance would you share with another coach or creative who feels called to launch their own venture?
— Don’t wait until you feel completely ready, because you probably never will. There will always be a reason to wait, until you have more experience, more money, or more confidence. But sometimes confidence doesn’t come before you start. It comes because you started. Trust what makes you different. Especially as women, we sometimes feel like we need to have everything figured out or prove that we belong in a space before allowing ourselves to take up space in it. But your perspective and the way you see things are part of what makes your work valuable. And don’t be afraid to outgrow something. If something no longer allows you to grow, choosing a new direction isn’t failure, it’s evolution. Build something that carries your energy, your values, and your heart. When you genuinely love what you’re building, people can feel it. That is what creates a real community, not perfection, but authenticity.
Follow the movement: @anitaayalam · viva-aerial.com
Ph: https://www.instagram.com/amirahadlacreator/
