The simple story is, Tara was doing what she does, I was doing what I do, and Strala happened. It’s a bit because of who we are. It’s a whole lot because of all of you around us, supporting us along the way.

Tara wants people to have fun in their lives. She wants people to find their inspiration and inspire others. To live with expansive space around them and in them. This is how we all create a beautiful world. We can all create a beautiful world. We can all support each other to get there.

Without space, we have tension. With tension, no room for creativity. Without creativity, we make choices, without realizing we have choices. We get stuck in a box. We lose our power. The world is what we make it, but we’re making it not what we want. Our lives are what we make them, but we’re making them not what we want.

We can turn that around, in any moment.

I want people to be healthy. Not just free from diagnosed disease, but really radiantly healthy. Healthy feels good. Feeling good, we get to tune into feeling rather than tune out of it. Tuned in, we get to see what’s possible, and respond to that. We live inspiringly capable, creative lives. We support others to do the same.

Not feeling good, the lives we live, the work we do, creates a world we don’t want. It creates a world where we protect and defend against our fears, rather than build our hopes. All around the world, we have so much power in our hands, and so much choice what to do with it all. It’s important we see the choices we have. It’s important we make those choices from healthy.

We’re in a health crisis. Our medical system is exceptionally good at handling infections and broken bones. We’re getting better every day at repairing damaged tissue throughout our bodies. Emergency care is constantly miraculous. But for most people, every day, health care isn’t helping. For many years I intended to practice medicine. I turned away because for so many people right in front of me, it just wasn’t getting the job done, and I wasn’t confident that it could. We’re filled to the top with stress. It’s normal to have chronic pain and disease. It’s normal to take multiple drugs that treat symptoms not causes, and create their own cascade of additional health dilemmas. It’s normal to be obese.

We can’t afford to live this way. As much as we’re getting used to it all as our new normal, nobody wants to live this way. It doesn’t feel good. When we’re not healthy, it’s so much harder to feel, because so much is painful. So we tune out of feeling. Without feeling, we lose sight of choice. Without choice, we don’t create what we want. We create what we don’t want.

We can turn that around, in any moment. It doesn’t need to come from doctors. It can come from right where we are. It can come from you.

Tara and I came together in creating Strala because we see a way to help people shape their lives: fun, happy, healthy, inspiring. We see a way to help. People can help themselves. Much more than anyone can fix anyone, people have tremendous power to heal, and to create their lives as they want them to be.

We created Strala to get people breathing and moving. We designed Strala to get people feeling. This isn’t about exercise moves, although it gets people extremely fit. Strala is designed to open up people’s minds. It’s designed to replace stress with calm. It gives people the space to feel, to get sensitive to themselves. That’s the base of people’s power. Sensitivty, feeling. First to you. Then on to helping and inspiring everyone else.

From a medical perspective, this kind of calm, easy sensitivity is not something that exercise generally does for people. Predictably, it’s not something you get pounding on a stationary bike, shouting manic manifestations in group calisthenics, or jumping up and down in a weightlifting class. If you like these things, that’s great! It’s extremely important for people to find physical activity that they enjoy, and do it. Strala is one path to that. But it’s also more.

In Tara’s sense of the world, Strala is a direct path to fun, happy, inspiring life. In my sense, it’s a direct path to health. We took Tara’s expertise in movement, and her innate connection to space, feeling, and living an expansive, creative life. We took my practical work with East Asian movement and healing, along with Mind-Body Medicine studies at Harvard and Oxford. We saw a way to put challenging movement together with calm mind. We created Strala to release stress and put ease into people’s bodies and minds, in a way that people could hold through easy and challenging circumstances alike. We created Strala to help with how we all live.

With all the Mind-Body Medicine research in progress now around the globe – at Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Stanford – it happens that this is the single unifying criteria that solves the health crisis. It creates happy. It creates healthy. Chronic pain, gone. Chronic disease, gone. Incurables, cured. You have to replace stress with ease, and you have to move everything you’ve got in every direction you can. You have to bring these things together in your life. You have to get into you. You have a body, you have to move it. And you need to find your ease, in everything you do.

That’s what Strala is. It’s practice for health. It’s practice for living a super-fun, expansive, free and happy life. That’s why we do what we do. At the studio. At our trainings. Online. We want this to get to everyone who wants it. Whether you live in New York or not, whether you can fly someplace or not. We want to be right where you need us, so you can be right where you want to be.

Thank you for supporting us in all this. It’s because of you we got to find our way here. What we’re doing is the game of a lifetime. We’re so happy to be playing this one with you all.

xo – Tara & Mike

About Strala Yoga Training

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, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. 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.

Who’s What’s and When’s of Strala Yoga Training