Registration is Now Open to Begin Any Time
When we soften, move with ease, listen to how we feel, and respond, we create space. When we do this together, we gain support, encouragement, friends, cheerleaders, and often collaborators in future endeavors. It’s my honor of a lifetime to lead groups of great people from different backgrounds and experiences from all around the world, in this practice of yoga and leading with ease that we call Strala.
A long weekend intensive is a great moment to reset your whole self. Whether you are a teacher, a coach, guide, care giver, student, a long-time yogi or first time on a mat, everyone is welcome. You deserve to feel better in your yoga practice, and in every moment of your life. Creating a foundation of softness, moving peacefully and easily, is healing for yourself and those around you. Moving through this practice in a way that also feels like you is a foundation for feeling fully alive, comfortable with who you are. And it creates space for those around you to achieve the same.
We’ll learn the practical foundations of softness, breath-body connection, the movement vocabulary of yoga, and sequencing for yourself and whoever you happen to be leading. You’ll be able to glide out of this time feeling comfortable in your practice, and confident to share with your neighbor or a group. For existing teachers, guides and coaches, you’ll renew a sense of confidence, avoid burnout by dropping bad habits, and shift toward a sustainable way of leading that you and the people you lead feel great about.
We all deserve to feel better. I’m so thrilled to do this together.
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What: Strala Online 25+Hour Intensive Yoga Teacher Training. This yoga and tai chi training is a special chance for us all to connect together now, to release, renew, and revive our bodies and minds, so we can bring some ease, harmony, and joy into all that we share.
And if you’re looking to lead classes in yoga, tai chi, or carry new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, this also provides a 25+Hour Yoga Leadership Certification and continuing education credit.
Every year this program has a totally new curriculum, so whether it’s your first time or you’re returning to reconnect, we’re excited to share a wonderful new experience with you here.
Where: This course is entirely online, so you can join from right where you are each day. You’ll also have forever access to the private online group for everyone in this training, so you have all our shared sessions, questions, and discussions forever, as well as a place to keep connecting with your whole group.
When: You can begin now whenever you like. These sessions can be completed in three days, just like our in-person intensive trainings, or you can go entirely at your own pace. Everything here is all recorded, so you can begin any time, watch on your own schedule, and keep it all as a resource forever.
Everyday private online group for everyone in this training. This group is for sharing more discussions and video sessions as questions and experiences come up, and also remains here for you forever, so we can all keep connecting and growing together. If you’re taking this course as a teacher training, review and practice is super-important, so please go through the instructional sessions twice, and always you can come back for more whenever you need it.
Intensive Training Cost: $595. This includes two video sessions each day (or at whatever pace is best for you), all recorded so you can watch any time and keep them forever, plus forever-access to the private group for everyone joining this course. You can click here to register.
Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi. Strala is also a Registered Yoga School (RYS) with Yoga Alliance Professionals.
“Strala is an elegantly simple and sophisticated way to move our breath, our body, and our whole self into the state we need, to create who we want to be: the optimal expression of ourselves.”
– Dr. Rudolph Tanzi – Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital
Common Questions
Q: Can I call my class Strala after taking this Intensive?
A: Yes of course, once you’ve completed this training, you can join Strala Home for continuing education. It’s our way of sharing, growing, and progressing together in these skill-sets, practices, and approaches, for connecting and helping. As long as you’re here, you can use the name Strala Yoga as your class title. Often teachers and care providers also keep going each year or every few years, with another online or in-person training here. Always what we share is new each year, so you’re never repeating hours, and everything builds toward a more advanced degree and certification. Please click here to start with your Strala Home classes, we’re so happy for this place to keep supporting each other and practicing together each week.
Q: I’ve already done my 200 Hour Yoga Training, is this the same?
A: We follow a completely unique curriculum grounded in East Asian Healing and Tai Chi, address yoga sequencing as a vocabulary of movements rather than poses as end points, create connections based in Shiatsu principles for body position, inclusion, and creating a safe environment. There’s more, but hopefully this clears up fear of repeating material. What you’ll learn here is all new, and makes a wonderful addition to any previous studies. And every year we share a new curriculum in all our courses, so always we can keep growing and progressing together.
Q: I’m not interested in teaching yoga but I want more ease in my life, is this for me?
A: Absolutely. We all deserve to feel better, and bringing sustainable ease into your life is a perfect reason to join in. Fair warning, once you start walking around embodying ease, folks are going to start asking you to show them how you’re doing it. We’ve had quite a few scientists, moms, school teachers, actors and performers join these programs for personal reasons, and end up sharing yoga in creative ways with those around them. A big part of my goal is de-mystifying leading yoga as something for a select few. Just like cooking, once you know and love the recipe, it’s impossible not to share.
You can always email us any questions through info@stralayoga.com.
What’s in this Intensive Training
With this training, we get into the Experience: How to uplift and enable yourself in your yoga, and your life.
What you have for yourself is what you have to share with others. People mostly respond to how you are, far more even than what you say. So we begin by getting into your own way of being and moving through yoga, as practice for how you want to be and move in your life.
We have three whole days together for a nice immersion in how to move with grace and ease. When you move with harmony and coordination, your body and mind can stay relaxed, even in the midst of challenge. From relaxed, our energy flows easily, we’re able to feel, and can move creatively and inspiringly wherever we go. This is everything you need, to go everywhere you want.
Daily Plan
Introduction. An overview of Being, Moving and Healing.
Approach. How to create our best yoga, tai chi, and life practice, through Breath, Feeling, and Natural Movement.
Breath-Body Connection. There is a moving and healing relationship between your breath and body, waiting to be uncovered. Every inhale lifts and expands. Every exhale moves you further. This oceanic experience allows your body to go along for the ride, creating space for lightness and ease in your experience.
Feeling. Slow down and breath deep enough to feel, believe that what you feel is worth responding to, and respond. Your connection to feeling and intuition allows you to move into exactly what you need in each moment.
Process: The Principles of Movement. How to accomplish far more, with far less effort, in everything you do. We begin with our breath, connect to our feeling, and move from our center. With easy, natural movements, we can progress far beyond pose goals, and dive into the process of getting to know our bodies and minds.
Practice: Hard Things Easy Workshop. Learn to handle challenge in an easygoing way. Drop the stress and struggle from your body and mind, and use the principles of natural movement to make the impossible possible.
Healing: Connection, Touch and Support. How to create a supportive, enabling, and healing relationship with yourself, and with others.
More Practice: 6 classes, 2 each day. All of our trainings are very practical. We’re not just talking about all of this – we’re going to do it together. So we have plenty of real class time for practice, exploration, and making what you want real in your everyday life.
This training is a curve back toward your most natural self. It’s time for you to gain what you specifically need at this moment in your life. Whether you’re craving some time just for yourself, a jump-start to your passion, insight for your practice or leading, entering a new phase of life, or simply feel the urge to be here for a reason you’re unable to articulate yet, you are invited to lean into these weeks of ease and connection. I am happy to welcome you all here.
TOPICS
Foundations for Movement, Connection, and Healing, in Yoga, Tai Chi, and Traditional Medicine. How to accomplish far more, in everything you do. Begin with softness, the ground for moving your whole self with ease. From here you discover how to use breath, center, and all the movement principles found in tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, to unlock energy and bring your whole self into harmony. Challenge is met with peace and ease, rather than force and aggression.
Softness and Breath-Body Connection. Softness enables you to move your whole self without a fight. Movement is guided and fueled by your breath. Every inhale lifts, expands, strengthens. Every exhale softens, makes it easier to be here, and moves you further. This oceanic experience allows your body to go along for the ride, creating space for lightness and ease in your experience.
Feeling. Slow down and breath deep enough to feel, believe that what you feel is worth responding to, and respond. Your connection to feeling and intuition allows you to move into exactly what you need in each moment. You’ll learn to be in alignment with yourself always, and feel good every step of the way.
Practice: Make Hard Things Easy. It’s possible to get where you want to go by learning to drop the stress, and move easily through challenge. In fact, it’s not just possible. The best among us – the most inspirational of any human effort – has been achieved in this way.
We’ll replace the self-limiting myth of no pain no gain, release stress and struggle from our bodies and minds, and use the principles of movement to make the impossible possible. This becomes your way of being. It becomes how you move, how you create yourself, and the world around you.
Whatever goals you might have, how you feel when you get there is created by how you are along the way. In yoga, this is why challenges like handstands are best achieved not by practicing handstands – but by learning to move easily and comfortably in your body, through everything you do. Of course you can take a handstand by force – jumping and crashing, using muscle rather than coordination and grace. But this will never feel good. And the goal will lack meaning. We’ll have learned only to reach our goals by force, by not feeling good.
So of course there’s a better way, moving with grace and coordination, rather than by force and struggle. We learn something valuable about ourselves, moving this way. We learn that we can accomplish much more in our lives without stress and struggle than with it. We learn that we can get to wherever we want from wherever we are. And we learn that we can feel good, always. It’s not about the handstand. It’s how you get where you’re going that creates what you have.
Guiding: how to create an uplifting and enabling experience. Your first responsibility is to take really good care of yourself. What you have for yourself is what you have to give to others. From here, we move through the best ways to orchestrate an amazing experience for everyone around you. You’ll learn to lead people into their own freedom, intuition, creativity, and radiantly good health.
Healing: Touch and Support. How to create a supportive, enabling, and healing relationship with yourself, and with others. We’ll detail the core principles of safety, alignment, and practical anatomy, and provide an effective approach for healing of both acute injury and chronic pain.
Stress, Health & Nutrition. We’ll explore your mind-body connection, the role of stress in disease, and techniques for releasing stress and activating your body’s Relaxation Response. We’ll also explore the microbiome, and various nutritional strategies for curing ailments and enabling optimal health.
Leadership, Work, Life. We’ll carry our practice of being, moving and healing into how you create the life you want.
More Practice. All of our trainings are very practical. We’re not just talking about all of this – we’re going to do it together. So we have plenty of real class time for practice, exploration, and making what you want real in your everyday life.
What You Get
Approaches, Practices, Skill-sets: We’ll explore practices to discover and enliven who and how you are, in everything you do, using Strala’s approach to yoga, tai chi, qigong, and meditation. You’ll carry with you something both simple and straightforward enough to practice every day, right where you are, in whatever you’re doing. And powerful enough to change everything. It all begins with you.
Daily Video Sessions: You can begin now whenever you like. These sessions can be completed in three days, just like our in-person intensive trainings, or you can go entirely at your own pace. Everything here is all recorded, so you can start any time, watch on your own schedule, and keep it all as a resource forever.
Private Online Training Group. During and after this training, you’ll also have access to our private online group specially created for this training, so we can share questions and experiences together just like our in-person courses, and our daily instructional video sessions, which are also recorded, so you can watch and review whenever you like.
Community: Once we’ve completed this time together, you’ll also have access to our other private online community, this one for Strala graduates worldwide. It’s our way to keep connecting with each other, and with Tara and Mike, for ongoing questions, sharing experiences, and progress.
Teaching Foundations: Following this intensive, if you want to share what you’ve learned here in your own Strala yoga class, you can call your classes by the Strala name. Of course there’s always more to learn and share as we keep growing together, so if you’re inspired for more, it’s wonderful to progress from here with more detailed guidance, approaches and practices in our longer training programs.
Certification: We provide a 25+Hour Yoga Leadership Training Certification upon completion of this training. These hours include our instructional sessions, repetition, and practice, just like our in-person trainings. You’ll receive a formal 25 Hour Diploma, and a profile on our website that documents all your hours, coursework and degrees completed.
Strala is credited by the Chair of Neurology at Harvard, and Director of the Genetics Research and Aging Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals.
Continuing Education Credit: This training provides you with 25 hours of credit, which also counts toward the additional study and practice components in our 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training, and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training.
Lifetime: Inspiring and uplifting leadership – creating the space for ground-breaking achievement in your own life and the lives of the people you lead – is the practice of a lifetime. When you learn to release stress, find harmony in your body and peace in your mind, heal what needs healing, and accomplish challenge with ease, you have something amazing to share.
Who Is This For
Everything we do is designed to help people begin where they are, and develop the concrete practices that carry us where we want to go. So wherever you are is a perfect place to begin. This is true for all of our courses, including this online training.
The people joining our trainings and retreats are a wonderfully diverse and inspiring group. They range from 16 to over 80. They’re from dozens of countries worldwide. They are entrepreneurs and chief executives, professors and librarians, scientists and researchers, studio owners and fitness instructors, yoga teachers of every style, psychologists and physiotherapists, life and health coaches, doctors and lawyers. They are moms and dads, daughters and sons, and lifelong friends.
Some are relative beginners, some are long-time practicers and teachers. Some want to teach, and some want to progress with their own yoga. Wherever you are now is a great place to begin. We’re lucky to have this rich diversity, it makes wonderful ground for real-world learning and sharing.
You might join for your profession, for teaching yoga or tai chi, or you might join just for you. Whatever your purpose, we have this time to share a set of holistic skills and practices, that carry across your everything you do.
How It Works
All our trainings and retreats have a unique curriculum that’s different from what’s covered in other intensive, 100, 200, and 500 hour programs. So what you learn here will be all new approaches, practices, and skill-sets, and makes a nice continuation from any previous studies with Strala or anywhere, without repetition. You’ll always discover new ways to take good care of yourself, find harmony and ease in your body and life, and give this to the people you lead.
All this begins with you. You’re always leading what have, how you are, in everything you do. It’s in how you get around a room, how you get around your life, that people follow. Much more than what you say.
And it’s wonderful, magical, when what you say agrees with what you do. So we’re coming together here to share this as a practice. To create the ground we all need to be how we want to be, first in our selves, and then for each other.
It’s not always complicated, but it’s also not easy. It takes some slowing down, simplifying, subtracting the noise around us and in us. From here we see where we are, and discover who it is we’re meant to be. What are you good at? What do you love? It’s in these simple practices to find this, and grow stronger, more capable, in who we really are.
The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.
FACULTY
Strala Trainings are all led entirely by the founders, and every member of our faculty has more than 20 years of practical experience, and between 4 and 10 years of advanced education at top institutions, including Harvard, Oxford, and University of Edinburgh. Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi.
Tara Stiles is the founder of Strala. Strala is practiced in more than 100 countries, and thousands of people are leading Strala in studios, gyms, and schools worldwide. Even more Strala training graduates bring what they learn to their office, team, healing practice, and across all of life. The mission we share is to help people accomplish far more, through softening and connecting with our creativity and purpose.
Tara has authored several best-selling books including Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, Yoga Cures, Make Your Own Rules Diet, Strala Yoga, and Guiding Strala, all translated and published in several languages. She has been profiled by The New York Times, Times of India, The Times (UK), and featured in most major national and international magazines. Harvard profiled Tara‘s work in a case study, and she has spoken with students at Harvard and New York University about her experience, and approaches to creativity and leadership.
Tara supports The Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the American Heart Association initiative to combat childhood obesity, as well as BOKS, which together are bringing Strala classes to more than 30,000 schools around the United States and Canada.
Tara studied classical dance with ABT Principal Rory Foster, and choreography with Paul Taylor original member and world renowned master Eileen Cropley. She is married to Strala co-founder Mike Taylor.
Mike Taylor is the resident healer and co-founder of Strala. Named “Best Mover” by MindBodyGreen, he’s practiced Eastern movement and healing techniques, including tai chi, qigong, and shiatsu, for more than three decades.
In his younger years, Mike challenged centuries of reasonable and well-tested martial traditions in hundreds of competitions, by applying unruly imagination to a world where rules were unbreakable. As he got older, he continued on to medical applications of the mind-body connection in university. Mike studied mind-body medicine at Harvard, and complementary medicine at Oxford. After running into walls with standard medical practice, Mike left his healthcare roots and turned to mountaineering. He worked at a steel mill, joined a web company, then founded a biotech software company.
Now Mike has found his way back to health care done right, helping people let go of stress in their bodies and minds, and become their own best caregivers. Mike still climbs a few mountains in his spare time, and is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles.
Comparing Courses
Intensive Training & 200+Hour Leadership Training
Our 3-Day Intensive Training gives a good introduction to Strala, with a first focus on your own practice of being and moving. And of course, you always give what you have for yourself, in your own practice and life. So people begin sharing what they learn in these 3-day intensives, everywhere they go.
We also provide longer 200+hour Leadership Training, and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training, which covers more breadth and depth than the intensives. This includes comprehensive guidance in approaches and practices for movement, with focus on releasing stress, creating connection and harmony in your body and mind, overall health and nutrition, injuries, diagnosis, healing.. These longer courses also give more time for building confidence and competence, through guided practice and feedback with the group.
All our trainings have a unique curriculum that’s different from what’s covered in other 200 and 500 hour programs. It works well to go in any order you like, and whichever course you pick, what you learn will be all new approaches, practices, and skill-sets, and makes a nice continuation from any previous studies, without any repetition.
Take care of yourself to take care of everyone
Your main job as a Guide or teacher is to take great care of yourself. From here you can begin to help others. You’ll sharpen your tools, your skills, and your delivery. What you are truly sharing is the experience of how you feel about yourself. We’ll dive into exploring self care through mindfulness, thoughtful movements, and clear language, opening up multiple paths for you to be of service to yourself and others.
REGISTRATION
Training Registration is $595. This includes two instructional video sessions each day and two additional Q&A sessions, all recorded so you can watch any time and keep them forever, plus forever-access to the private group for sharing with everyone in this course.
You can click here to register.
Installment plans and scholarship help are available, just email Mike@StralaYoga.com.
Please understand that all payments are final, and this is non-refundable, except if you are not admitted this time. Admission to training is solely at Strala’s discretion.
About Strala
Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.
It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.
In our Strala Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.
Resources
We have an online library of classes, retreats, and trainings with Tara and Mike, which includes weekly live classes and workshops. New videos added regularly, and always we’re here to help.
Questions
If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Help@StralaYoga.com.
Click Here to Register
Open the door to a whole new way of connecting, sharing, and growing with everyone in your life.
These trainings are an incredibly rewarding life-long adventure of mutual support, and inspiring accomplishment. We’re lucky to have this in our lives. Thank you everybody, it’s so exciting to get started with you here.