Early-Bird Registration is Open Now
What: 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training. This training is a special chance for you to slow down, connect, simplify, and discover new practices for taking good care of you. You’ll create the ground you need to move easily, confidently and capably through your whole life. And if you’re looking to lead classes in yoga, tai chi, or carry new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, it’s also a Leadership Training that provides a 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification.
Every year this program has a totally new curriculum, that also doesn’t overlap or repeat what’s covered in other 200 and 500 hour yoga teacher trainings. 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: EDEN*****, Breite Straße 43, 13187 Berlin / Pankow. A beautiful sunny open space with a wonderful cafe.
When: Monday 18 November – Sunday 1 December 2024. If you’re joining as a retreat for you, you’re welcome to arrive early or late, depart sooner or stay longer. If you’re joining as a leadership training for certification, you’ll want to be here each day. Also it’s always fine to join these trainings one week at a time, if this is easier for your schedule.
Schedule: We’ll meet all day each day with weekend days a bit shorter, along with breaks for lunch and plenty of relax time.
Guides: This program is led by Strala Founders Tara Stiles and Mike Taylor
Cost: The early-bird special is open now through Tuesday April 30, 2024. The early-bird cost for two weeks is $700 less than the usual cost of $3,600, so your special total is $2,900 (given in two installments of $1,450). The early-bird cost for one week is $300 less than the usual cost of $2,200, so your special total is $1,900 (given as one installment of $1,450, and one of $450). Please click here to register now.
Space in this training is limited, so please reserve as soon as possible. Enrollment will move to a waiting list when full.
Accommodation: There are many good hotel and Airbnb options all within easy walking or train distance.
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.
Please click here to reserve your Early-Bird Special
“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
In Person Is Magic
I’m craving time for coming together. A place where we can take the pressure off as easily as we do our shoes. A place where we can let go the tension and step into our real, most authentic selves.
It gives an immediate invitation to soften, breathe deep and connect to yourself and the nature around envelops your being. Tensions drop, and after a few moments to steep, a personalized blueprint on how to proceed most gracefully in life emerges. We need this space to breathe, live, feel and thrive. We will lean on each other. Breathe deep. Reconnect with ourselves and each other.
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 are craving some time for yourself, jump start your passion, gain insight for your practice or leading, entering a new phase of life, or just feel the urge to come 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, and can’t wait to be with you to experience this transformation.
Love, Tara
What You’ll Find Here
All our trainings and retreats have a unique curriculum that’s different from what’s covered in other 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.
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 week-long 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.
What You Get
Strala is moving with ease during restful and challenging circumstances alike. When you find ease in effort, your body and life become very capable and strong. You become an expert at creating space in your life for peace, creativity, inspiration, and all-around feeling great.
Helping people release stress and tension from their bodies and minds, learn to move with grace and coordination through all kinds of challenge, and heal all kinds of injuries and ailments is important work. You’re empowering everyone you reach to become creators of their own destiny, on the level of their health, and their whole life. It’s a wonderful thing to share.
People are leading Strala all around the world following our Leadership and Advanced Leadership courses. You gain a unique set of skills, for living and sharing this way of being, moving, and healing, that people love everywhere you go.
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.
Community: Leading up to this training, you’ll have access to our private online meet-up community, so you can connect with us and each other before our time together begins. And once you’ve completed this time, you’ll access to our private online community of Strala graduates worldwide. Connect with each other, and with Tara and Mike, for ongoing questions, sharing experience, and progress.
Certification: We provide a Strala 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification upon completion. You’ll receive a formal 200 Hour Diploma, and a profile on our website that documents your hours, coursework and degrees completed. Also this program progresses with new topics, concepts, and skill-sets each year, so you can keep connecting and growing with ongoing education and practice together.
Strala is credited by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, as well as Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics Research and Aging Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi. We’re also accredited by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals.
Continuing Education Credit: This training provides you with 200 hours of credit, which also fulfills the additional study and practice components in our 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 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’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.
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 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.
Certification, 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training
Our program is credited 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. We’re also part of the global Yoga Alliance Professionals. Upon graduation, you receive a formal diploma and 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification.
All this begins with you, for you. What we have for our selves is always what we’re able to share with the people we lead, the people all around us. So to begin, this is a place to connect with your self, release stress, and discover practices for creating harmony and ease in your body and mind, and your life.
You’ll learn to understand and lead a Strala experience from the ground up, whether it’s in a class, at your work, or in whatever you share with the people in your life. You’ll discover our Vocabulary of Movement, designed to harness your breath-body connection, and get you moving easily through any challenge. We’ll explore sequencing, pace, flow, psychology, language and music. You’ll learn how to create space, to support positive connection, healing, and inspirational accomplishment. You’ll also learn to be incredibly capable in your own body, and in your life.
We begin with breath, getting into your natural flow. You connect to creativity and intuition. You get happy. And you get to help everyone around you find their own way to energized, inspired, and all kinds of feeling great.
TOPICS
Movement, breath, meditation, sensitivity, alignment, experiential anatomy and physiology, touch, support, safety, strength, flexibility, stability, mobility, injuries, stress, healing, chronic pain and ailments, disease, psychology, anxiety, depression, therapy, health, nutrition, spirituality, history, language, voice, sequence, pace, music, position, body language, attitude, adults, children.
Softness, Movability, and the Breath Body Connection: Your Neurophysiological Reset Button. 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.
Foundations of Movement: Tai Chi, Qigong, 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
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. You’ll also learn how to create a safe place for feeling, so you’re able to connect fully with where you are, right now.
Healing and Support for Trauma. When you’re in a caregiver role, remember to care for yourself. Everything you can do for someone else will come from what you’re doing also for you. It’s an understanding that exists in the foundations of tai chi and Traditional Chinese Medicine practices. And there’s an approach for trauma in the tai chi and yoga healing practices we’ll share together here. Trauma might not be something we can heal right away. But through these practices, we create emotional and chemical change that does help, right away.
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.
Connection: Touch and Support for Healing. 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.
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.
EARLY-BIRD REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
Space in this training is limited, so please reserve as soon as possible. Enrollment will move to a waiting list when full.
The early-bird special is open now through Tuesday April 30, 2024. The early-bird cost for two weeks is $700 less than the usual cost of $3,600, so your special total is $2,900 (given in two installments of $1,450). The early-bird cost for one week is $300 less than the usual cost of $2,200, so your special total is $1,900 (given as one installment of $1,450, and one of $450). Please click here to register now.
Installment plans and scholarship help are available, so if you need help, please 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.
Please click here to reserve your Early-Bird Special
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 of an online library of classes and trainings led by Tara and Mike, which includes daily live video classes and workshops in yoga, tai chi, and qigong.
We also have have many online intensive, 100 hour, 200 hour, and 500 hour teacher trainings, in yoga, tai chi, qigong, shiatsu, and healing support for trauma. These can all be helpful for specializing in the areas you want most, and also give wonderful ground for ongoing progress from wherever you are, if you’re not able to join us yet in person.
Questions
If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Help@StralaYoga.com.
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 so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.
– Tara & Mike
Please click here to reserve your Early-Bird Special
