by Tara Stiles | Nov 29, 2017 | Be, Blog, Move
Is it a good idea to combine different forms - like tai chi and yoga - together in one class? This idea of fusion comes up quite a lot, and the answer might have something to do with purpose. What do we want to share with people? Why are we looking to mix things up? Strala follows a mindset, approach, and set of principles for moving well in your life. We practice this together now through a few different form vocabularies, including yoga, tai chi, traditional Chinese medicine, and also our regular human vocabulary - how we navigate through… 
by Tara Stiles | Nov 28, 2017 | Be, Blog, Eat, Move
How to handle the what's and when's and how much's of food is a hugely important topic. And good answers here are as numerous as we are. Because the good answers come from you, from each one of us. Of course, there are also a whole lot of answers out there that aren't so good. It's why diets fail without fail. They don't come from you. They come from some other place, some other person. So this is a complex issue. Just like life. At the same time, as unique as we all are, there is a structure we can… 
by Tara Stiles | Nov 26, 2017 | Be, Blog, Eat, Heal, Move
A friend of ours is doing some important work, teaching people to form a better relationship with stress, food, and health. And she wrote recently about hitting a wall. Sometimes what we see in the people we try to help isn't what they see in themselves. Sometimes what they see is that how they are is how they are. Not working. Not healthy. Not feeling so good. But not changeable. That's just how I am. It's something we all run into so much - with friends, family, people we work with, even in different parts of our selves. What do… 
by Tara Stiles | Nov 15, 2017 | Be, Blog, Move
What happens when things get worse instead of better? I'm talking with a Strala friend who stopped practicing yoga for a while. And coming back to it now, things aren't feeling so good. We've all been here in different ways. Maybe it's with yoga, the piano, or a sport. I'm aiming to get back in a scull after 20 years. And Tara always likes to remind me that boxing might be just a bit different for me now than what I remember. So I'll share a bit of our talk with you here, because we all have this experience, in… 
by Tara Stiles | Nov 9, 2017 | Be, Blog, Move
We're having a conversation in the Online Leadership Training group about getting started with your own classes. There's so much amazing feedback you're all getting, just showing people there's an easier way to do so much more, across all of life. But, it's important to remember that feedback might not always sound good at first, and this has its place in our growth too. So what happens if that feedback pushes us in a direction we don't want to go? What if people say - "Hey, we want you to be strict, push us around, and make us feel stressed and uncomfortable.… 
by Tara Stiles | Nov 6, 2017 | Blog, Move
What's the best way to teach hard things in yoga? Whether it's right-side-up or up-side-down, on foot or hand, is it all alignment, anatomy, crunches and pushups? Is there a better way? It's a good question. And since what we do in yoga is the same as what we do everywhere - probably a good answer is in finding what works well across our whole lives. If we're not too careful, we carry all our old habits that don't work so well right into our health and healing practices. Suddenly in the middle of our yoga or tai chi, we're…