We have a special online course that covers these foundations and practices, specifically for healing back pain.  And it works for all kinds of muscle and joint troubles, so if you need some extra help with pain relief, as well as preventing pain from returning or finding you in the first place, you can find help right here in our Strala Training for No More Back Pain.

And in case it can help right now, I’ll share some more stories with you here, that begin with a few challenges in how I’ve approached my strength and endurance training.  My guess is you might find some of this familiar.

When it comes to fitness training, there’s a problem with “Be here now.”  It’s not really possible. In particular, it’s not possible if where we want to be isn’t here. And even more, it’s not possible if we don’t really like here all that much. After all, that’s the whole point of why we’re trying to get someplace else. It’s better there than here.  But somehow we’re asked to stop trying to get where we think we should be, and instead get into where we are.  It’s complicated.

So, this has to do with a bit more than yoga or tai chi, running or climbing, or whatever our fitness and wellbeing practices might be. It has to do with how you move around always. And it has to do with how you think – about moving, about going where you want to go.

Simple everyday everywhere movement for pain-free fitness

Let’s begin very basic, with very simple everyday movement. It’s easier to be here, to practice here, than to go right for our mindset about achievement, about life. How we move is always the same as this mindset. So we can work from very simple, very small, to change things that are very complex, very big.

Walking, heading up and down stairs, standing and sitting, all of these things are very important. Because usually we spend more time here than in practice. Until we’re just all the time practicing, which is one of the things I love about tai chi, it helps make this a little easier.

Now what happens when we have some pain, some difficulty, when we run up against a challenge? A friend asked recently about pain on the inside of her knees when she’s moving. So I’ll try to walk around this a bit and see where it can go, in a way that’s also a bit broader.

To begin, I’m wondering if pain comes when you’re standing or walking, climbing stairs or getting up and down from the floor? Or does it come along only when you practice?

There’s always a chance that how you do yoga or tai chi is the cause of trouble. There’s also a chance that how you do everything is the cause, in creating what’s happening for you. Often it’s this. And then how you do the yoga or tai chi just carries the same habits you have in the rest of life, both good and bad.

And next, I’m thinking about where you’re experiencing pain, on the insides of your knees.

Understanding causes of pain and injury

Difficulty in general often happens when we carry too much tension, too much immobility, into our movement. So this creates some strain and awkwardness, some lack of coordination and grace that has us working too forcefully, which can lead to inflammation and injury.

Pain on the insides of knees can have a few different sources. Often some torsion under tension, some twisting while the knee is carrying too much weight and tension, can lead to difficulty here.

For yoga practicers, awkward poses also play a role. For example, holding a long, low warrior 2, with the back foot perpendicular to the front, puts some unwanted pressure and strain on the inside of your back knee. Over time this can produce some unwelcome lengthening of supporting tendons. From here, the insides of your knees will start hurting when you try to move.

So it might not be the moving right now that’s your problem. It’s longer-term destabilization that creates a difficulty, wherever you are. And of course moving around more will highlight this.

If something hurts, don’t do it

There are many solutions to begin exploring. To start, if something hurts, don’t do it. There’s always a way to move better, using your whole body in harmony, with less tension, less disconnection, less forcefulness, and more ease. This can have a profound and rapid impact, both for healing injury as well as for enabling performance.

Body position is a good beginning here. Rather than long, unstable workout or yoga poses – where it’s not possible to move well either in or out – you can remake the forms you’re practicing to something more stable, and more movable. From here, you get to practice moving well, around a better form.

But this isn’t the entire solution. Just repositioning my feet to a wider or shorter stance doesn’t solve all my movement habits. Often there’s a good deal of tension in old ways of doing things. I might use a lot of force to go from one place to the next. It’s the long-term result of my body not working as well as it can, and getting too used going wherever I need to go by force.

The thing is, using the force that’s available to one or another strong part of my body, this works a lot of the time, for a lot of smaller challenges. But there’s a problem here. The most interesting challenges out there are always the ones that are bigger than us – at the very least, bigger than the limited versions of ourselves. Those big challenges, they need all of you, working together as all of you. So here’s a good fitness goal, that you can put into practice.

Posture, position, and whole-body movement

When our body isn’t working as a whole connected body, efficiently, in harmony, force can become the only option. Everything is difficult when we’re out of harmony. Even things that aren’t difficult are difficult. So we either have enough force to overcome the resistance, or we don’t. Either way, when there’s so much resistance first inside of our own bodies, we get hurt.

Trying to overcome ourselves by force is never really our best strategy.

And maybe worse, we hold onto all this force, all this tension. Even when we have a chance to rest, we don’t. It’s not our habit. Tai chi, qigong, neigong, all can highlight this quite a lot. Rolling your center from side to side while standing, allowing your arms to swing – it’s a very simple way to practice many things. Softness, posture, connection between breath and body, moving from your center, unweighting one leg at a time, learning to use what’s working and rest what’s not.

So if your knees begin to hurt in an exercise like this, there can be a few causes. Overarching in the lower spine is a common habit, which puts too much tension in knees, and makes it impossible to move well from your center. And continuously carrying excess tension and strain – even in the parts of you that are not currently working – this is also so common. It takes some practice, to learn how to give ourselves a rest.

We need a body in some harmony – soft enough to be movable, body and breath connected, moving all together from center. Without this, it’s arms and legs, hands and feet, doing all the work in their own separate corners. Knees go one way, feet and thighs another, upper and lower body not together.

Disconnection, disharmony, makes everything much more difficult. It’s how we wind up using so much force in our movement. We’re moving against ourselves. Which leads to injury and pain. It also leads us to be able to do much less than we can. Everything is harder here, without connection, without harmony.

How to get fit and feel great without pain and injury

So now I’m thinking about how to change. How do we practice connection, harmony, ease? In some ways, it’s not an easy or quick practice. Learning to let go of old habits – like using stress and tension as our strategy to get where we want to go – takes some effort. It takes many times making a choice to move differently, using a different strategy. It’s not easy creating harmony, learning to move with our whole self all together. But, you’ve probably experienced at one time or another that it’s possible to open this door, to feel a very substantial difference, right away. So this is where we want to begin.

Whether you’re practicing in yoga or tai chi, or just walking around in your life, begin where it’s easy for you to begin. Not thinking so much of poses or forms, where you should or should not be, how you should or should not look. These ideas make things hard from the start. They invite old habits back in. So instead, try this

1) Begin where you’re comfortable. Maybe it’s sitting or standing, on hands and knees or lying down. If you’re not in a comfortable position and posture right from the start, it’s tough for things to go better from not comfortable. So give yourself a good start.

2) Soften up, so your whole body is easily movable. This means when you try to move, you’re not fighting against tension and strain in your muscles and joints, just to get moving. Trying taking some deep breaths, jump up and down a bit, and give your whole body a good wiggle from your center (more belly than hips). Then walk it off, and get ready to begin.

3) Connect your breath and body together, so your breath moves you. Take a long deep inhale. So deep that your breath lifts up and expands through your whole body. Hold for a moment at the top of your breath. Now let it go, with an even longer exhale, letting your whole body release, relax, and settle down. Go through a few of these breaths. When you breathe in, wait for the feeling of lift to be real in your body, then let it lift, arms included. Same thing when you breathe out. Wait for the feeling of easing down to be real, then let your whole body ease down.

4) Move your whole body as one whole body, starting from your center. When we spend too much training time isolating and working with one body part at a time, whatever it is we really want to do gets that much harder. Because doing is something that requires coordination, both literally and figuratively. From an Eastern perspective on both marital arts and healing, you want harmony in your whole body – so every part helps every other part. It’s your best way to bring everything you are into every challenge, and that’s a very good thing to practice, in everything you do.

Once you’ve gone through these steps, keep repeating them.  Right from the start, remember it doesn’t work well to begin in a bad form or position, and then try to fix it. I can work on one part at a time if things don’t look quite right – move my feet a little, adjust my shoulders, repoint my knees – and this might fix how things look. But it doesn’t quite fix the reality of where I am.

To borrow again from an Eastern perspective, where you are is created by how you get here. If my form and posture for my workout, yoga, or tai chi practice isn’t so good – maybe my knee is out of line, or I’m holding too much strain and tension in some muscles and joints – I can’t fix this by fussing with one part at a time. Because where I am right now was created by how all of me got here. So my solution also needs to be more holistic. If I want to be more capable where I am, I need to be more capable along my way here. I need to move better, all the time, in everything I’m doing.

Set new fitness goals

Goals are important for progress, and always I want to make sure the goals I’m setting point me in the direction I actually want to go. In an older way of thinking about fitness, I might set more isolated goals – how much weight I can lift, what pose or drill I can perform. But the problem with isolation is, nothing is ever really isolated.

We all know this from our workouts. I was a rower for a long time, which means strong thighs. But no matter how strong I can be on the sled, if my focus is all on training this isolated part, things aren’t going to go well for my knees. It’s that next link in the chain that suffers, from isolated goals and practices. And when one part suffers, every part suffers. It doesn’t matter how strong one or a few parts can get. What matters is everything. So you can set new goals to match.

1) Be soft enough to be movable, so you’re not moving against yourself. 

2) Keep your breath and body connected, so your breath moves all of you.

3) Move every part of you together, beginning from your center. No parts left behind, every part helping every other part.

Staying relaxed enough to move easily, especially when things get hard, is a lifelong practice. So is developing a moving energizing relationship between your breath and body, and learning to move all of you as one you. The good news is, all these practices work for pretty much everything. And they don’t cause injury.  Practice this way, and you get to keep doing what you love doing, better, for a very long time.

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Practice here can also decrease the likelihood of injury, and support faster healing when injuries do happen. You can even work your way out of chronic injury and pain, where traditional approaches haven’t worked so well.

Following are some resources to get you started.

Background

a) Strala program and approach for athletes : read here

b) The Science of Strala, by Harvard Neurology Professor Dr. Rudolph Tanzi : read here

Introductory Reading and Practice

a) Runners Guide to Training : reading and practice videos here

b) Healing for Hamstrings and Whole Body : read and practice here

c) Healing for Knees and Whole Body : read and practice here

d) Healing for Chronic Injury and Pain : read and practice here

e) Mobility Training Videos : practice here

Advanced Training and Practice

a) Online Practice Videos. Yoga, tai chi, and qigong here, as well as the Runner / Athlete Guide to Training. Videos Here

b) Online Training Course. This one gives a good structure and support for healing practice. Reading and Videos Here

c) Back pain course. The focus here is on back pain, but the movement principles have the same application to releasing stress and general healing. Reading and Videos Here

When you stop fighting with obstacles inside of you, there is much more energy for obstacles outside.

-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

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This is so common. And we might have a way out that’s common to all of us. I’ve been hearing about sacrum injuries quite a lot lately, so I’ll talk about that here. But you can carry these concepts throughout your whole body.  Probably your life too.

–

So you’re doing everything you can do, and everything still isn’t enough. My quick guess is, you might be doing a bit too much.

Maybe your life is full of activity, strengthening, training, therapy. Sometimes the result of so much can be ongoing aggravation. So for some injuries there won’t be much help, and for others it will just get worse over time.

Sometimes our bodies will heal themselves in spite of everything we’re doing. But sometimes they need our support. Which oddly enough could involve doing a bit less, to accomplish much more.

This brings us to the kitchen sink. There’s a mathematical theory called “random walk” which proves that if you throw many solutions at a problem, the whole kitchen sink, the result is net zero. You get stuck essentially right where you are, with no sustained progress in any direction.

Healing works a bit this way as well. Throwing too much at a problem can just lead to irritation, without a good net effect. So the trick is to do a bit less, find the simplest right approach for you, and take it easy. Give your body a chance to do what it does best. Heal. With your support.

So on the therapy front, I’d leave off any tension-inducing approaches that challenge too much what’s hurt, and head for simple. From wherever you’re comfortable and supported – not working hard to be where you are – follow these three steps:

1) Soften

2) Create a connection between your breath and body

3) Move, easy, in every direction.

This could be from sitting or standing, on hands and knees (especially good in this case) or lying down. When you discover a place that feels good to linger and breathe, linger and breathe here. When it feels like it’s time to move on, move on.

This process of slowing down, tuning in, and responding to what you sense in your body is extremely valuable. On the healing front, it moves us away from uniform prescriptive approaches that don’t often work well with more difficult challenges.  It guides us instead to making unique treatment decisions based on how we feel.

So this tends to make the healing process go a bit better.  Simply breathing and moving in this way creates the chemical conditions we need to stimulate our body’s optimal healing state.  And learning to respond to our selves – this creates everything else.

On the life front, it’s probably about the same.

– by 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 Yoga 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

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This came up in our online training group recently, and it’s such a good and common question.  As a start, always do what’s in you, what you’re comfortable doing. This is the most important thing.

When you’re comfortable people feel this. More is possible from here. When you’re uncomfortable, people feel this too, and less is possible.

Forming a positive connection with the people in your class – and with people in general – happens in so many ways, one of which can be touch. And of course you want a positive connection with yourself – moving well, in harmony with your whole self – first. So there’s a whole lot for all of us to work on, many many years of practice, to get really good at all of this.

Touch can be an important and useful part of connection, support, and healing. But before bringing this into class, or trying to connect out in the world with people you don’t know so well, give some attention to you. It’s good to get plenty of practice first with how you’re connecting and moving in your own body. Then carry this practice into how you’re moving and connecting with some friends and family, outside of your classes.

From here, when you connect with someone in class, or someone you don’t know so well, you’ll have a much better chance of it being a positive experience for you, and for everyone. It’s through this experience that you can begin to replace old habits and impressions – from something that doesn’t work so well – to something positive, supportive, and uplifting.

This always begins in you. And what’s in you flows inevitably out to the people around you.

– by 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 Yoga 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

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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 Trainings, 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.

Taking good care of yourself is the starting point for everything. So we begin by trading an old belief that doesn’t work for a new one that does.

The old belief tells us to forget our uniqueness, and work really hard to become a copy. Someone else’s ideas, someone’s else’s body.  The new belief is that what we feel is uniquely our own, and uniquely important.

When your body opens a door, move through. When your body closes a door, ease off and find another way. This is a radical choice to make. Very different from using force when you encounter an obstacle.

Choosing peace, practicing harmony in your body over disconnection, is a radical way to move. It also opens every door there is, even where you never knew there was a door.

Strala offers yoga trainings and retreats all around the world that help us keep progressing and expanding together, and each covers its own unique material – from the shorter 2-day introductions, to longer trainings and retreats where we share from one to three weeks together.

As for the order of things, people have gone in all different orders, and this works really well for everyone. Each course has its own unique curriculum, its own set of practices and skill-sets, its own feeling.  So just to pick whatever works best for you, and get started.

2-Day Intensive Yoga Training, a Weekend of Ease

In the 2-day intensives we focus on getting comfortable, releasing stress, and practicing a new mindset for life, that says our best way to get wherever we want to go by feeling good every step along the way.

200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training and Retreat

What you have for yourself is what you have to give.  People follow who and how you are, what you accomplish in this life, much more than what you say.  And, there is tremendous power when what you say agrees with what you are, what you are doing. So always your first job is taking really good care of yourself.  With this training, your own yoga will transform into a practice of moving with harmony, always in alignment with your self, through both the most simple and most difficult of moments.

This training is a retreat for rest, renewal, discovery of new practices for taking good care of you. If you’d like to join for the additional teaching sessions during the week, it’s also a training which provides a 100-Hour Degree for one week, or you can combine two or three of these weeks for a Strala 200+Hour Training Certification or a Strala 300+Hour Training Certification.

Whether you are craving some time for yourself, a jump start to your passion, some 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 this time of ease and connection.

Learning to move with ease in your body and life is an extremely rewarding challenge. It gives you inexhaustible energy, and tremendous physical and life ability. Best of all, it gives you a radiant, happy, and inspired you. From here, you get to support other people in finding their own way, and creating their own inspiring lives. You gain the tools you need to become the leader you’re meant to be, to yourself, those nearest you, or to millions of people around the world.

300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training

Here we expand the exploration into five additional vocabularies for practice:

Tai chi and Qigong, so we learn how much is found about ourselves in the simplest moments

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Shiatsu, so we learn to form a positive connection with both ourselves and others, and heal through our movement

Our human vocabulary – how we navigate through our lives each day – so everything we do becomes practice for everything we want to create.

So now through six vocabularies – yoga, tai chi, qigong, TCM, shiatsu, and everyday life – we learn to connect with our selves, trade in the old habits that don’t work so well for new ones that do, and create from here.

200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training (online)

“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 – Harvard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital

Just like our in-person trainings, this course gives everything you need get started and keep progressing, in both your personal practice and your leadership – with yoga, work, relationships, and across your whole life.

This training comes in two parts, and provides a complete 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Certification and Diploma.

100+Hour 7 Secrets of Leadership (online)

Learn the secrets and practices to be an uplifting and inspiringly capable leader. Whether in schools or yoga trainings, corporate retreats or healing conferences, with your sports team or your family, this course powers up your ability to lead this approach and practices everywhere you go, with everyone you lead.

We’re all leaders. How we are, how we move through our lives, is what we share and give to everyone around us. We change the world by changing our selves.  This course also includes specific guidance that opens the door to leading your own Strala 2-day Intensives, or adding a Strala component to whatever form of training you give.

100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine (online)

Learn the principles and practices of Shiatsu, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Traditional Japanese Medicine, to create healing through positive connection with yourself and others.

We’re all healers, constantly moving through health and illness, losing and finding balance in each moment of our lives. How we feel and act inspires and influences everyone around us.

Whether practicing with family and friends, leading people through movement and everyday life, or in your profession as a bodyworker or therapist, this course gives you the ability to connect with other people naturally and powerfully.

More Info

Strala Faculty and Approach

The Science of Strala, by Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, Harvard Neurology Professor and Chair of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital

Strala Yoga Teacher Training and Retreat Schedule

There’s something worth remembering about how we move in our lives, and the habits we carry each day. Knowing doesn’t change them. Knowing doesn’t trade old habits that don’t work for new ones that do. Even if we want it to, it doesn’t alter our neurology this way. But moving does. Change is something we need to practice. When the door opens, move from here.

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Tara and I are about to begin our course in Amsterdam, and we’re thinking of everyone coming together to share this experience. We’re lucky to have people from so wide a range of backgrounds and experience – beginners and long-time practicers, teachers of all styles, people looking to run faster or strengthen their game, perform better at work, heal what needs healing, and just all-around feel amazing.

The diversity makes good ground for learning from each other. We look different, speak different languages, come from different places, work different jobs. And we’re all in this community together, supporting each other in a belief, a way of shaping our lives and this world.

Drop the stress and suffering
as our best way to get where we’re going.
Practice harmony and ease with ourselves.
And with everything.

It sounds wonderful. It feels wonderful. And it happens that it’s our best way to support our bodies and minds for healing and optimal health. It also happens that it’s our best way to break past the glass ceiling of tension and rigidity that limits our potential, and open into a much larger universe of what we can do.

So this is what we get to share and practice together, through the vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and even our human vocabulary – how we navigate through everything in our everyday lives. And we’re lucky to have so many inspiring people supporting us in all of this.

Mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, Harvard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, both support our program. Rudy even wrote the foreword for our training manual which we published for everyone earlier this year, I’ll copy it for you below.

Ready to get started?  We have trainings coming up in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and New York, with more always on the way. We also just launched our online leadership course, so you can get started whenever you want from right where you are.

–

Foreword to Guiding Strala, by Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, Harvard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital

In the last 20 years, we’ve made some astonishing discoveries. We know now that our neurological make up is dynamic and plastic, every day recreated in response to how we each move through our lives. We know that our genetic activity, called gene expression, is also soft-wired, not hardwired, equally responsive to our daily activity. And we know more than ever that stress, both physical and emotional, is central to the ailments we struggle with most. It leads to faster aging, obesity, anxiety and depression, autoimmune and digestive disorders, chronic pain, heart disease, cancer, and neurological disorders. Stress also produces chronic inflammation, which compromises many of our body’s critical systems, and plays a key role in Alzheimer’s disease.

Maybe most important in all this: we know that we are each in the driver’s seat of our own lives, in control of our personal destiny. We know we can change our own health, and our entire life experience—on chemical, neurological, and genetic levels—through the choices we make each day. Our lives are our own to create.

So how do we get on this path to creating what we want? Many modern approaches to fitness and self-care actually increase our stress burden, often in an attempt to address what we see as wrong with our bodies. Since stress isn’t a sustainable health system, this might not be our best strategy.

Strala is a powerful and revolutionary approach to self-care that decreases our stress burden, supports what’s right with our bodies, and leads to astonishing levels of both health and fitness. It accomplishes this in two steps.

First, Strala gives us a keen sense of perspective, a mindset that readily disposes the stress-inducing attitude of no-pain-no-gain, replacing it with something that works much better. Strala allows us to realize that we can accomplish far more in our bodies, and in our lives, by feeling good every step of the way, by becoming whole in body, mind, and spirit. The resulting sense of balance and harmony carries us further than aggression, right down to the level of our nervous system and genes.

Second, Strala gives us a breath and movement practice, that puts our bodies and minds where they need to be in order to do away with suffering and foster healing. It puts our destiny in our own hands, catapulting us beyond our dreams. This practice allows us to let go of struggle, find inner balance, and move with grace and coordination in everything we do. Most importantly, it teaches us how to release stress and tension from our minds and our bodies, no matter what challenges we face. We find ourselves more flexible and adaptable not only in body, but in mind and spirit. In this way, we’re able to create the body and mind we need, to thrive in this world.

I’ve had access to all kinds of yoga, and all kinds of approaches for handling stress and illness. There are many possible benefits, but also some common missing elements. And when it comes to yoga, most of what’s missing is connected to a pattern of rigidity, that limits the potential of yoga to heal and enable us. In fact, nearly every mental illness can be categorized either by the presence of chaos, or rigidity. So when we find rigidity in yoga—in our healing practices—we know it’s time to make a change. What I love about Strala is it creates this change by making us free to live dynamic and infinitely adaptable lives, in which mental and physical well-being reciprocally strengthen each other on a daily basis.

The key is to release ourselves from stress and the prison of rigidity, learning to live a different way. We have an astonishing power to rewire our bodies and minds, through how we choose to live. The result is that we end up accomplishing much more, creating the ideal conditions to promote self-healing on all levels.

What I’ve experienced in Strala is that this system gets it right. It fills in the missing elements. Strala is a highly effective self-care method for releasing the tension that inhibits our health and our lives, on every level that matters, right down to our neural networks and programs of gene expression.

I’ve seen how it also allows us to accomplish far more, by creating a new physical reality of who we are. It’s 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.

Guiding Strala provides an exciting and impeccable road map for leaders of all backgrounds and pursuits. It gives a clear process we can readily embody, for releasing tension and getting back into the flow. We learn to mobilize and empower ourselves through a mindset mindset and practice that leads to accomplishing more with less effort. And most importantly, we form a positive connection with our most radiant self, which, in turn, allows us to form a positive connection with the people around us. Whether you’re leading a yoga class or a business, supporting your team or your family, Guiding Strala will uplift and enable your life, in everything you do.

My own work led to Super Brain, then Super Genes. Strala leads us to a Super Self, which enriches the lives of all around us. The more people incorporate the practices of Guiding Strala into their everyday lives, the more relaxed, inspired, and uplifted our world will become. The physical and mental freedom gained from Strala allows us to maximally enjoy our own existence while enhancing that of those around us. And, it all begins with what we can visualize and create, within each and every one of us. Let Strala guide your way.

– Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, PH.D., New York Times best-selling author of Super Brain and Super Genes

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 Yoga 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

The post The Values We Share appeared first on Strala Yoga.

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In the last 20 years, we’ve made some astonishing discoveries. We know now that our neurological make up is dynamic and plastic, every day recreated in response to how we each move through our lives. We know that our genetic activity, called gene expression, is also soft-wired, not hardwired, equally responsive to our daily activity. And we know more than ever that stress, both physical and emotional, is central to the ailments we struggle with most. It leads to faster aging, obesity, anxiety and depression, autoimmune and digestive disorders, chronic pain, heart disease, cancer, and neurological disorders. Stress also produces chronic inflammation, which compromises many of our body’s critical systems, and plays a key role in Alzheimer’s disease.

Maybe most important in all this: we know that we are each in the driver’s seat of our own lives, in control of our personal destiny. We know we can change our own health, and our entire life experience—on chemical, neurological, and genetic levels—through the choices we make each day. Our lives are our own to create.

So how do we get on this path to creating what we want? Many modern approaches to fitness and self-care actually increase our stress burden, often in an attempt to address what we see as wrong with our bodies. Since stress isn’t a sustainable health system, this might not be our best strategy.

Strala is a powerful and revolutionary approach to self-care that decreases our stress burden, supports what’s right with our bodies, and leads to astonishing levels of both health and fitness. It accomplishes this in two steps.

First, Strala gives us a keen sense of perspective, a mindset that readily disposes the stress-inducing attitude of no-pain-no-gain, replacing it with something that works much better. Strala allows us to realize that we can accomplish far more in our bodies, and in our lives, by feeling good every step of the way, by becoming whole in body, mind, and spirit. The resulting sense of balance and harmony carries us further than aggression, right down to the level of our nervous system and genes.

Second, Strala gives us a breath and movement practice, that puts our bodies and minds where they need to be in order to do away with suffering and foster healing. It puts our destiny in our own hands, catapulting us beyond our dreams. This practice allows us to let go of struggle, find inner balance, and move with grace and coordination in everything we do. Most importantly, it teaches us how to release stress and tension from our minds and our bodies, no matter what challenges we face. We find ourselves more flexible and adaptable not only in body, but in mind and spirit. In this way, we’re able to create the body and mind we need, to thrive in this world.

I’ve had access to all kinds of yoga, and all kinds of approaches for handling stress and illness. There are many possible benefits, but also some common missing elements. And when it comes to yoga, most of what’s missing is connected to a pattern of rigidity, that limits the potential of yoga to heal and enable us. In fact, nearly every mental illness can be categorized either by the presence of chaos, or rigidity. So when we find rigidity in yoga—in our healing practices—we know it’s time to make a change.

What I love about Strala is it creates this change by making us free to live dynamic and infinitely adaptable lives, in which mental and physical well-being reciprocally strengthen each other on a daily basis.

The key is to release ourselves from stress and the prison of rigidity, learning to live a different way. We have an astonishing power to rewire our bodies and minds, through how we choose to live. The result is that we end up accomplishing much more, creating the ideal conditions to promote self-healing on all levels.

What I’ve experienced in Strala is that this system gets it right. It fills in the missing elements. Strala is a highly effective self-care method for releasing the tension that inhibits our health and our lives, on every level that matters, right down to our neural networks and programs of gene expression. I’ve seen how it also allows us to accomplish far more, by creating a new physical reality of who we are. It’s 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.

Guiding Strala provides an exciting and impeccable road map for leaders of all backgrounds and pursuits. It gives a clear process we can readily embody, for releasing tension and getting back into the flow. We learn to mobilize and empower ourselves through a mindset mindset and practice that leads to accomplishing more with less effort. And most importantly, we form a positive connection with our most radiant self, which, in turn, allows us to form a positive connection with the people around us. Whether you’re leading a yoga class or a business, supporting your team or your family, Guiding Strala will uplift and enable your life, in everything you do.

My own work led to Super Brain, then Super Genes. Strala leads us to a Super Self, which enriches the lives of all around us. The more people incorporate the practices of Guiding Strala into their everyday lives, the more relaxed, inspired, and uplifted our world will become. The physical and mental freedom gained from Strala allows us to maximally enjoy our own existence while enhancing that of those around us. And, it all begins with what we can visualize and create, within each and every one of us. Let Strala guide your way.

– Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, PH.D., New York Times best-selling author of Super Brain and Super Genes

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 Yoga 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

The post Guiding Strala – Foreword by Dr. Rudolph Tanzi appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Here’s a practice for this. It’s not yoga or tai chi, qi gong or traditional healing. It might use these forms, but it’s not a form. It’s just you, arising out of you. Which is what we’re doing here.

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Practice Being Here

Begin wherever you’re comfortable, right now. It can be sitting or standing, lying down or on hands and knees.

Now create a connection between your breath and your body. Long unhurried inhales to expand and feel into your whole body, holding for a moment at the top, to give a little extra time to feel around, to sense you. Then even longer unhurried exhales, to soften and release some of what you find, that needs softening and releasing.

Keep this breath going, and from wherever you are, allow your body to move gently and easily in whatever direction feels good to move. When you find a good spot to linger, linger and breathe here. When this spot is no longer interesting, move easily and gently along to the next. Give yourself a few breaths to connect with you, where you are. And then make your decision to stay, or to go, from how you feel here, now.

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Do this many times each day. Gradually it becomes your new normal. A way to always connect with you, in the simplest of moments, right now. When you learn to connect this way with here – the simplest and smallest moments, the simplest and smallest movements – everything gets a little easier. Even the big things start to seem smaller.

Right now is never as big
as the massive problems and challenges
we project in front of us, something that isn’t right now.

Right now, we can always do.
If we practice it, right now.

-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 Yoga 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

The post A Practice that Makes it Easier to be Here appeared first on Strala Yoga.