Registration is Now Open to Begin Any time
How do you help someone with trauma? This is a complex question with a simple beginning. 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. In this course we’ll share practices and approaches for you, and for you as caregiver and teacher, to give support when things are hard, heal what needs healing, and move together into something better.
Believe that what you feel is worth responding to, and respond. Make each moment your opportunity to heal. You deserve to feel better now, and I’m so grateful we get to share in this path together.
Click Here to Register
–
This is a place to find stability in yourself, in how you create space, how you move, and how you organize sequencing. When we create calm in how we relate with ourselves, we open up processing power to bring our attention to others. From here we have the opportunity to create space and provide a steady structure for people to process emotions, and to heal.
Without mindful attention, the way we hold ourselves can be distracting and chaotic to ourselves, and to those around us. We will look at our habits of body position, breath-body connection, and how we move through everything, so we can point toward creating calm for ourselves, and for those around us. Whether you’re in a leading role, caregiving for yourself or others, you’ll have the foundations and practices you need, to feel safe and supported along this healing path.
It’s important to process your role as a leader, as a space-holder, and as someone responsible ultimately for your own health and wellbeing. We need each other in so many ways. And at the same time, we need connection with what exists inside of us, to be capable of receiving and giving truly supportive and healing connections with other people. We cannot give to others what we don’t have ourselves. This is a wonderful opportunity to hold space for your own emotional processing, so you can offer a hand up to those you want to help.
We’ll workshop sequence-creating, specifically focused on emotional processing and trauma. It’s so easy to slide into vigor and tension when wanting to break through struggle, or submit to a passive position and become immobilized in rigid stillness. We will explore the feeling and quality created through poses, strung together in movement phrases with variations in rhythm.
From here you’ll grow an artistry of sequencing and maturity of leading, that includes the emotional as well as physical experience of the practice. The goal is to design an experience that helps you and anyone you’re guiding safely through a class that offers the potential to process emotions, heals what needs healing, and gives both a gentle and energizing whole-self experience.
–
What: Strala Online Intensive Yoga Training, Healing Trauma. This yoga and tai chi training is a special chance for us to connect together now, for understanding, healing, and supporting each other through all kinds of trauma.
We’ll create a path for sharing, listening, and connection, through yoga and tai chi practices that uncover what’s here within us, and all around us, to support healing, renewal, peace, and joy.
If you’re looking to lead classes in yoga, tai chi, or carry these new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, this also provides a 25+Hour Intensive Training for Trauma Certification and continuing education credit.
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.
Private Online Training Group. During and after this training, you’ll also have access to our private online group, specially created for everyone in this training, where we’re sharing more discussions and video sessions as questions and experiences come up. And 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.
Training Cost: $695. This includes two live video sessions each day, all recorded so you can watch any time and keep them forever, two additional Q&A sessions, plus forever-access to the private group for everyone joining this course. You can click here to register.
Installment plans and scholarship help are always available, just email Mike@StralaYoga.com.
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 accredited by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, and is 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
You can begin this course any time, and go all at your own pace. If you’re planning for a long-weekend, we share two instructional sessions each day for three days, plus two Q&A sessions to cover all that comes up in our group together. For the time between sessions, we have a private online group for everyone in this course, so we can share in the questions and experiences we’re all having right now.
Understanding Trauma. Trauma has many kinds and causes, and caring for others can be challenging whether or not you’ve shared in the same experience. We’ll uncover ground for communicating, practicing, and supporting each other less from a place of what’s different about us, and more from what’s the same, creating safe ground we can all share.
Breathing. We each have a power inside us that’s written into our biology, our design as a human being. We’ve all experienced this design working miracles for us in every moment. And this power is always here. But sometimes we feel like it’s missing, and sometimes, our bodies and minds can use our help. Your breath tells your body, your mind, everything that you are, when it’s safe and not safe, when we need to fight, when we can heal, when we can open into creativity and joy again. So we’ll begin right here, with practices we can all share, to reset for where we want to go now.
Connection. Connection with ourselves and each is something much more expansive than touch alone. We’ll explore how these connections are made, and practices for making them safe, supportive, and always healing.
Communicating. How we communicate with each other is important for creating trust, and a possibility to move toward something better. It’s in our words, and even more, in our entire being, how we are in everything we do. In a trauma setting, people can become even more perceptive and sensitive to this complete range of communication. There isn’t a script to follow, but there are some consistent foundations for listening, professional referral, giving support, and sharing practice, that we’ll work through together here.
Practice for Healing. There are ways we can find to feel better, that work for a little while, to help some parts of who we are. And sometimes we need targeted therapies, just to make it through, or address right away what needs critical care right away. But we also need something bigger, ways to feel better than can work for all the time, in all the places, with all of who we are. Doing this work for all of you to help all of you, is where practice comes in. Because now we’re dealing with the truth of who you are, what’s inside you, all around you, all the time, that is profoundly healing, uplifting, and joyful. Getting to this place is why we’re here together, why people throughout all time have shown us it’s possible through practice. These practices exist in yoga, tai chi, meditation, and we’ll share in them together with you, and for you as a caregiver.
Tai Chi for Trauma. There are many foundations and teachings in tai chi for healing trauma, that are always here for us, and become even more important when things get hard. Maybe first in all this, never suffer a bad position. This is not a time to practice enduring something that isn’t right, we’re too good at this already. When something hurts, get to safe ground. Find a better place to be, right now. From here many practices can begin, for sensing what’s in you, and all around you, discovering all that is here to support you, responding to what’s here, communicating, understanding, healing, moving into hope, and joy. Tai chi transforms these ideas into concrete practices, that make what we need most into something real in our lives. From both a personal and care-giving perspective, we’ll share in these practices together.
What You Get
Approaches, Practices, Skill-sets: In this course we’ll share practices and approaches for you, and for you as caregiver and teacher, to give support when things are hard, heal what needs healing, and move together into something better.
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.
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 each day we can share questions and experiences together just like our in-person courses, and our daily live 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 Intensive Training for Trauma 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, and by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra. Strala is also accredited by the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association, and is a Registered Yoga School (RYS) with 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.
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 ACTQA 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 ACTQA accreditation and certification, in addition to YAP. You can also join ACTQA 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, 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.
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: Training cost is $695. This includes two instructional video sessions each day, all recorded so you can watch any time and keep them forever, two additional Q&A sessions, 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.