Registration is Now Open
Whether you’re just beginning or looking to begin again, this training gives the foundations, skills, and practices you need, to have the extraordinary benefits of tai chi and qigong in your own life, and to share this meaningfully with others as a teacher. It’s your way to feel better, and do better, in everything you love.
The cost for this training is $3,600, given in three equal parts of $1,200. It gives you a full year of live practice sessions together with our online group for this training, as well as forever access to the complete course. Even once your year is complete, everything remains here for you as an ongoing resource, for many years of practice to come. The first $1,200 registers you now, and your two remaining payments can be made any time throughout your year. Please click here to register now.
We also have scholarship help and easy installment plans available. If you want to be here and need help, please just let us know (email Mike@StralaYoga.com).
This training begins on January 6, 2024, and once it launches you can get started any time throughout the whole year, and go all at your own pace. Also once complete, everything remains yours to use a resource for ongoing practice, whenever you want. Please understand that once a reservation is made, we are not able to give refunds.
Our Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong trainings and classes are accredited by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, and Strala is a Registered Yoga School (RYS) with Yoga Alliance Professionals. Our program is also backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and the Professor of Neurology at Harvard, Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, and Co-Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital.
For a long time we’ve wanted a way to share enough of what’s in these practices, when there’s so much here to share. It feels wonderful to have this chance now, for a whole year of training and practice together, right along with all our everyday lives. Thank you so much everybody, for supporting each other and being a part of this now.
Click Here to Register Now
Create harmony on every level of your life
Tai Chi is a way of being, connecting, and moving, that creates a harmonious, peaceful connection with our bodies, our minds, and our world. It’s our everyday ordinary path to extraordinary life.
This course gives the perfect foundation for your own tai chi and qigong practice, as well as for teaching and sharing this way of moving, connecting, and healing with others.
Join a full year of tai chi and qigong learning and community. We’ll share across all aspects of tai chi and qigong, including healing, martial, and everyday wellbeing. We’ll also include partner practices, and the “tai chi way of yoga and leadership,” led by Tara Stiles, so you can carry all this into your other practices and professions. There’s a lot we can cover, and a year gives the perfect amount of time to build something truly meaningful together.
– More than 100 Instructional Sessions. All recorded, so you can watch any time, and support your practice for many years to come.
– Live Sessions on Zoom. For practice and progress together, on all different days and times throughout the year. So we have many chances to share and practice together, whatever you schedule.
– More than 100 Practice Classes. In Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, and Yoga, all here for you to move through at your own pace.
– Connection and Community. Join our special online group for sharing questions and experiences with Mike, Tara, and everyone in training. Always we’re here each day, to support each other along the way.
– Begin Any Time. We’re recording everything we share, so you can start whenever you want, and watch all on your own schedule.
For a 1,000+Hour Advanced Certification in Wellbeing Practice, you can combine this training with our online or in-person 500+Hour Yoga Teacher Training.
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When you make a home for harmony in your self, you make a home for peace, sustainability, and miraculous accomplishment, everywhere.
Topics and Practices Include
– The Foundations of Tai Chi and Qigong: Being Better at Being Human
– How to Learn Tai Chi and Qigong: Beginning, and Beginning Again
– How to Instruct: Teaching Others, Teaching Yourself
– Listening and Learning through Healing Connection
– Opening the Gates to Tai Chi with Qigong
– Tai Chi Chuan, The Classic Sequence
– Making a Good Relationship: The Practice of Sensing Hands
– Tai Chi Meditation
– The Tai Chi Way of Yoga and Leadership – Across Practices and Professions
– Sustainable Tai Chi and Qigong Practices for All Groups, Kids to Over 80
– Everyday Human Movement and Opportunity
– Connecting with Nature: Returning Circle of Energy
– Practical and Healing Applications of Tai Chi and Qigong
– Qigong Practices for Parkinson’s
– Qigong and Tai Chi for Healing Trauma
– Tai Chi for Weight Weight Loss, Weight Gain, Weight Wellbeing
– The Defensive Application of Tai Chi: Real-Life Guide to Martial Practice
– Tai Chi and Awareness Practice with Kids
– The Tai Chi Way of Yoga practice and Leading Yoga
– The Tai Chi Way of Tennis, Cycling, and Running
– Case Study Method: Real World Challenges and Solutions
What You’ll Find Here
This online training gives a perfect way to get started and advance with your practice and leadership in tai chi and qigong from wherever you are, right now. It also provides a wonderful complement to our in-person and online 200+Hour Yoga Leadership and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Trainings, which also follow the foundations of tai chi for movement and healing, leadership and life.
One advantage of tai chi and qigong practice is in its simplicity. Anyone can practice, wherever they are, with whatever time they have. While the foundations for qigong and tai chi are much the same, qigong takes this simplicity a step further, with movements that don’t require any special memorization. If you’ve ever shivered when you’re cold, jumped up and down to wake up, or let out a big exhale to release stress, you’ve practiced qigong. It’s simply written into our human biology and design, to breathe and move in a way that supports us to be healthy, and get things done. Qigong’s simple movements give us a way to enable this design.
Most of us have been taught an incredibly self-limiting myth. It’s called no-pain-no-gain. At the heart of this myth, there’s a belief that if I’m not suffering, I’m probably not doing anything important.
Tai chi presents a very different world view, grounded in a very different way of being. It says that we accomplish most – that everything truly inspiring and magical in this world is accomplished – through harmony and peace. And it gives us a clear structure to work this out. Clinical research has strongly supported both tai chi and qigong practices for boosting your energy and mood, sleeping better, reducing chronic pain, improving strength and mobility, creating an overall sense of well-being, and even healing from the neurological impacts of trauma.
Tai chi gives us an effective antidote to no-pain-no-gain not only because it sounds better. It also works better.
Who Is This For
Everything we do is designed to help people begin where they are, and develop the 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 training in tai chi and qigong.
One of the great things about tai chi is its sustainability. You can be better when you’re 40 than you were at 20, and again at 80 than you were at 40. So it’s a practice that lets us keep doing whatever it is we love doing, at any age.
Tai chi and qigong are known for a wide array of well-documented health benefits, including strengthened immunity, reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure, improved balance, mobility, bone density, cardiovascular and pulmonary function, stress-reduction, healing trauma, and support for stress-related and other ailments, including cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
For athletes tai chi is a proven way to increase agility and endurance, while avoiding injury and recovering faster. It also works wonders for our wellbeing, and our whole health. Stress is at the heart of so many challenges today, from obesity and heart disease to all kinds of chronic pain and ailments. Tai chi helps us move from a chemical state of stress into our optimal conditions for both healing and performance.
Simply and profoundly, tai chi is a way to feel better and do better, in everything we love.
Our community is a wonderfully diverse and inspiring group of people. They range from kids in school 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. It’s so wonderful if you can be here to share with us now.
What You Get
Begin Any Time: Whether you start in January or any time throughout the year, we’ll always be here practicing and sharing together, right alongside everyday life.
Watch: Over 100 instructional sessions, that cover a wide variety of topics and uses, opening the gates in your body and mind for a fulfilling tai chi and qigong practice. All recorded, so you can watch any time, and support your practice for many years to come.
Live Sessions on Zoom. For practice and progress together, on all different days and times throughout the year. So we have many chances to share and practice together, whatever your schedule.
More than 100 Practice Classes. In Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, and Yoga, all here for you to move through at your own pace.
Connection and Community: Join our special online group for sharing questions and experiences with Mike, Tara, and everyone in training. Always we’re here each day, to support each other along the way.
Forever resource. There’s no need to complete everything within a year, this entire course will all be right here for you as an ongoing resource, for many years of practice to come.
Read: A comprehensive Guidebook that gives additional direction and detail alongside of regular practice and homework assignments. You’ll dive into the foundations of tai chi and qigong, how to learn and progress, how to stay safe along the way, and how to create a practice that is both healing and empowering on every level of your life.
Progress: A 12-Month and ongoing training and practice plan. Everybody learns in their own way, at their own pace, and this training is yours to go through in your own time. We follow an adult learning model with all our trainings, and we’re here to support everyone individually.
Community for Graduates: You’ll have access to our private online training community of Strala graduates worldwide, so you can connect with each other, and with Tara and Mike, for ongoing questions, sharing experiences, and progress.
Certification: We provide a Strala 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training in Tai Chi and Qigong Certification and formal diploma upon completion, and list your degree and certification on our website.
If you’ve completed our Strala 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training, or our 300+Hour or 500+Hour Advanced Yoga Leadership Training, or Yoga Leadership Training, 300+Hour Advanced Yoga Leadership Training, you’ll receive a full 700+Hour, 800+Hour, or 1,000+Hour Advanced Degree and Certification in Wellbeing Practices, which is listed on our site and documented with a formal diploma.
Accreditation: Our Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong trainings and classes are accredited by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, and Strala is a Registered Yoga School (RYS) with Yoga Alliance Professionals.
Our program is also backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and the Professor of Neurology at Harvard, Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, and Co-Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Continuing Education Credit: This course counts for 500 hours of continuing education and practice credit, for all our longer in-person trainings, including both the 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.
Common Questions
Q: Can I call my tai chi or qigong class Strala after taking this training?
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’m not interested in teaching tai chi or qigong 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 our goal is de-mystifying leadership, in tai chi, qigong, and yoga alike, 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.
ACCREDITATION AND CERTIFICATION
Our Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong classes and trainings at Strala Yoga are accredited by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, as well as by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals. You can find our ATCQA page here, for all kinds of helpful details and benefits.
When you graduate from any of our yoga, tai chi, or qigong trainings, as well as when you accumulate class hours with us on the Strala Yoga App, you’ll have ATCQA accreditation and certification, in addition to YAP. You can also join ATCQA to access all their member benefits, and a worldwide community of practitioners.
The ATCQA has received wide recognition from the federal government and a variety of health agencies, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It also connects us with the North American Studio Alliance (NAMASTA), which among many benefits, gives access to affordable liability insurance for yoga, pilates, tai chi, and qigong teachers.
FACULTY
Strala Trainings are all led entirely by the founders. 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 Professor of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi.
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 and qigong, for more than four decades.
In his younger years, Mike learned tai chi and other martial arts, with a practical military perspective guided by his grandfather. He later studied with Ken van Sickle, one of Cheng Man Ching’s original students on Broadway in New York City. Mike also explored the medical applications of these arts, studying mind-body medicine at Harvard. After running into walls with standard medical practice, Mike took up mountaineering, worked at a steel mill, and founded a software company in the healthcare industry. Now Mike has found his way back to tai chi, as a practical everyday way to help people be safe, and transform wherever they are into a better place.
Mike is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles, and climbs a few mountains in his spare time. Tara and Mike live in the Berkshire Mountains with their daughter Daisy.
Tara Stiles is the founder of Strala. Thousands of guides are leading Strala classes around the globe in partner studios, gyms, and clubs.
Tara partners with W Hotels on FIT with Tara Stiles — a global program bringing Strala Yoga classes and healthy recipes to W properties around the globe. She collaborated with Reebok to design their Reebok Yoga lifestyle range, and 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. Tara is a sought after speaker primarily on topics of business building and health & wellness. She has lectured to sold out audiences and internal conferences around the world including Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s Conference, Epsilon, Happinez, and Hay House events.
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.
When Can You Begin
This training is ready to begin any time, and our live sessions together start on January 6, 2024. You can begin any time throughout the whole year, and once you’ve completed everything, it’s all still here for you. Whenever you need it, just keep coming back for more.
Click Here to Register Now
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, 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.
Questions
If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Mike@StralaYoga.com.
Thank you so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.
– Tara & Mike
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We need a practice that’s practiced always, in all the hours, in all the places, that carries us into a world where we are sustainable, connected, harmonious, and at peace in our selves. This is how we get there together.
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