healing | Strala Yoga

Strala Online 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training, April 2025

Mike Taylor — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 13:42:28 +0000

Early-Bird Registration is Now Open

What: Strala Online 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training, with a new curriculum, and a whole year of live (and saved!) Zooms for sharing, practicing, and supporting each other, beginning in April 2025.

Strala shares yoga with millions of adults and kids in studios, schools, events, and homes all around the world, including through our partnerships with The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and BOKS. In an all-new curriculum for this training, we’ll share our uniquely-special approach with you here. It’s a wonderful chance to discover powerfully-enabling practices for taking good care of you, and the people you lead.

You’ll progress with a broad range of foundations and skill-sets, from healing to longevity and well-being to strengthening performance – everything you need for your own practice, as well as for leading people with many diverse backgrounds and needs, on this wonderfully magical path.

Certification: If you’re looking to lead classes in yoga, or carry new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, you’ll graduate with a 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification. And if you’ve already completed our 200, 300, or 500 hour programs, this certification combines for an advanced degree and training certification.

When: Our live Zooms together begin with meeting every Saturday in April 2025, and then once a month for the whole year, through March 2026. We’ll have these sessions at a variety of weekend and mid-week times, so everybody has lots of chances to join, whatever you schedule and time zone. Plus our sessions together are also all saved, so you can always ask your questions in advance, and watch everything on your own schedule.

This training also includes a complete library of instructional sessions and practices that are all recorded, so you can watch whenever you want, and go all at your own pace. You can begin with this part of the training as soon as you register.

Training Registration: The early-bird special for this training is $1,300, which is half the usual cost of $2,600. This special is open through April 30, 2024, and is given in two equal parts. The first $650 registers you now, and the remaining $650 can be given any time before we begin in April.

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.

Click Here to Register for the 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

Training Details

This training is a special chance for you to slow down, connect, heal, and empower across your whole life, while discovering new yoga, tai chi, qigong, and meditation practices for taking good care of you. You’ll create the ground you need to move easily, confidently and capably through all that you love doing, and a path for sharing this with your family, friends, and the people you lead.

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: Our live Zooms together begin with meeting every Saturday in April 2025, and then once a month for the whole year, through March 2026. We’ll have these sessions at a variety of weekend and mid-week times, so everybody has lots of chances to join, whatever you schedule and time zone. Plus our sessions together are also all saved, so you can always ask your questions in advance, and watch everything on your own schedule.

This training also includes a complete library of instructional sessions and practices that are all recorded, so you can watch whenever you want, and go all at your own pace. You can begin with this part of the training as soon as you register.

Begin and Watch Any Time: Everything we share here is recorded and saved, so you can begin any time after April 5, 2025, watch on your own schedule, and keep it all as a resource forever.

Private Online Training Group. For the time between sessions, as well as ongoing after this training, you’ll also have access to our private online group for everyone in this course, where we’re sharing more discussions, video sessions, and all kinds of help, as questions and experiences come up. If you’re taking this course as a teacher training, review and practice is super-important, so please go through the instructional sessions at least twice, and always you can come back for more whenever you need it.

Early-Bird Special Training Cost: The early-bird special for this training is $1,300, which is half the usual cost of $2,600. This special is open through April 30, 2024, and is given in two equal parts. The first $650 registers you now, and the remaining $650 can be given any time before we begin in April. You can click here to register.

Click Here to Register for the Early-Bird Special

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 and 500 Hour Yoga Teacher Training, is this the same?

A: We follow a completely unique curriculum, grounded in the movement and healing foundations of Tai Chi and Qigong. There’s a lot that’s truly wonderful and unique here, so what you’ll learn 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 self-care, intuition, empowerment, and this kind of connection in my life. Is this for me?

A: Absolutely. We all deserve to feel better, and what you do for yourself is so important. Always this is what we have to share with others. Fair warning, once you start walking around embodying care, connection, and ease, folks are going to start asking you to show them how you’re doing it. We’ve had quite a few scientists, moms and dads, school teachers, actors, and business leaders 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.

If you have questions or need anything, please always just email us using Help@StralaYoga.com.

What’s in This Training

Yoga, tai chi, qigong, and neigong. Personal practice and leadership, for many settings, many people, many needs. 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.

How to Enable an Always, Everywhere, in Everything Practice. We can accomplish so much by giving ourselves a little time each day to slow down, feel what we feel, and respond in a way that makes things better, right now. Imagine how powerful it is when we discover it’s possible to carry this always, into every moment, in everything we do. Even when things get tough, we can find a way to make here better, and make it better to be here. It’s the practice of a lifetime, and we’ll share the practical foundations together here.

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, Sensitivity, and Response. 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 found in tai chi in our yoga and everyday activities, 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.

We learn something valuable about ourselves, moving this way. W can accomplish much more in our lives without stress and struggle than with it. We can get to wherever we want from wherever we are. 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 and the role of stress in disease, alongside techniques for releasing stress, activating your body’s Relaxation Response, 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.

What You Get

Advanced Approaches, Practices, Skill-sets: We’ll explore many advanced practices, foundations, and applications that work in a broad range of settings, for people and groups with a broad range of backgrounds and needs. You’ll discover and enliven who and how you are, in everything you do, using Strala’s approach to yoga, tai chi, qigong, and meditation. And you’ll carry with you something both simple and straightforward enough to practice every day, right where you are, in whatever you’re doing. This is powerful enough to change everything. You are powerful enough to change everything. It all begins with you.

A Whole Year of Live Zooms for Sharing and Practice Together, plus recorded Instructional Sessions and Practices: You can join and progress through everything during this time together, or watch later whenever you want. And once we get started, you can begin whenever you like. These sessions can be completed in two or three months, or you can go entirely at your own pace. For a look at our recorded sessions and curriculum, you can click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.

Everything here is all recorded and saved, 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, video sessions, and all kinds of help. as questions and experiences come up. If you’re taking this course as a teacher training, review and practice is super-important, so please go through the instructional sessions at least twice, and always you can come back for more whenever you need it.

Community: Once we’ve completed this time together, you’ll 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 training, if you want to share what you’ve learned here in your own Strala yoga class, this is wonderful. You can also call your classes by the Strala name, for as long as you’re staying current in your practice through enrollment in Strala Home. 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 offered in our ongoing training program.

Certification: We provide a 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification upon graduation, and if you’ve previously completed any of our 200, 300, or 500 hour programs, you’ll receive a combined advanced degree and certification. Just like our in-person trainings, these hours include our instructional sessions, repetition, and practice. You’ll receive a formal 200 Hour Diploma (or an Advanced Diploma), and a profile on our website that documents all your hours, coursework and degrees completed.

Strala is credited by the Professor of Neurology at Harvard, Director of the Genetics Research and Aging Unit and Co- Director of the Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals.

Continuing Education Credit: This training provides you with 200 hours of credit, which also counts toward the additional study and practice components in our additional Leadership Trainings.

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 to kids, 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.

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.

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.

EARLY-BIRD REGISTRATION

Training Registration: The early-bird special for this training is $1,300, which is half the usual cost of $2,600. This special is open through April 30, 2024, and is given in two equal parts. The first $650 registers you now, and the remaining $650 can be given any time before we begin in April. 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 for the Early-Bird Special

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.

The post Strala Online 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training, April 2025 appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Yoga Festival – Practice Yoga, Practice Life, Metzingen Germany, July 6 – 7, 2024

Mike Taylor — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:01:54 +0000

Strala Yoga Festival – Practice Yoga, Practice Life, Metzingen Germany

Strala Yoga connects and so, over all the years of practicing and practicing together, a global community has emerged – a community for exchange, development, collaboration and shared learning and being. We would like to give this gathering a very special meaning this weekend and so we are really looking forward to the first Strala Yoga Festival on July 6th and 7th, 2024 in Metzingen.

The focus of the weekend is on having fun with the practice, connecting with one another and, of course, constantly replenishing and connecting with the values and possibilities that practice on the mat gives us for our lives. In addition to the valuable experiences in the yoga classes, the weekend is inspired by exciting talks and content about Strala Yoga as a life practice. Tara Stiles, Mike Taylor, Anna Rampf and Julia Kupke will guide you through the weekend with various sessions.

Save Your Space Here

Where: Metzingen Kanalstrasse 6, The Gallery, Kanalstraße 6 in Metzingen

When: Saturday July 6 and Sunday July 7 2024. 9am – 6pm Saturday. 9am – 5:30pm Sunday.

What to bring: Comfortable clothes for moving, a yoga mat if you’d like one, and after-class snacks.

Who is this for: Anyone who wants to feel better, hang out with a wonderful group of friends, and enjoy this time together with community.

Cost: EUR 130.00 per day (Early Bird price until May 31st, 2024, then EUR 180.00)
EUR 200.00 for the whole weekend (Early Bird price until May 31, 2024, then EUR 290.00) By reservation only, please sign up in advance.

Please understand that reservations are not refundable or changeable.

Save Your Space Here

About Strala

Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the practice forms of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, as a way to help people release stress, heal, and move more easily through all kinds of challenge.

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. It’s an inspiring group of leaders in business and government, art and architecture, schools and families.

Questions

If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Mike@StralaYoga.com.

Thank you so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.

– Tara & Mike

The post Strala Yoga Festival – Practice Yoga, Practice Life, Metzingen Germany, July 6 – 7, 2024 appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online 50+Hour Training, Tai Chi for Yoga Teachers

Mike Taylor — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 18:10:32 +0000

Registration is Now Open

Yoga gives a spark to tai chi. Tai chi gives ease to yoga. We can be so hard on ourselves, in so many ways. When we make things easier, we feel better. Maybe especially when we learn to be easier in the midst of challenge. It’s what tai chi gives to our yoga. When we feel better, we do better8

Have you been teaching yoga for a long time? Or practicing yoga for a long time? How would you like to discover a whole new set of poses, and a whole new set of movements, that are easy to share with a much wider variety of people – kids and adults, older and younger, healthy and needing help, experts and brand-new to practice – in a much wider variety of settings – studio, office, conference, park, indoors, outdoors, anywhere?

That’s tai chi, and qigong. A new world of practices to carry into your yoga, your work, your caregiving and whole life.

Whether you’re just beginning or looking to begin again, this training gives the foundations, skills, and practices you need, to have the extraordinary benefits of tai chi in your yoga, and to share this meaningfully with others as a yoga teacher. It’s your way to feel better and do better, in everything you love.

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The cost for this course is $900, please click here to register now. We also have scholarship help and easy installment plans available. If you want to be here and need help, please just let us know (email Mike@StralaYoga.com).

You can get started with this training any time now, and go all at your own pace. Also once complete, everything remains yours to use a resource for ongoing practice, whenever you want. Please understand that once a reservation is made, we are not able to give refunds.

Our program is backed by the Chair of Neurology at Harvard, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, as well as by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra. Strala is also a Registered Yoga School (RYS) with Yoga Alliance Professionals.

Click Here to Register Now

What You’ll Find Here

I’ve practiced both yoga and tai chi for many decades. I’m a beginner in so many ways, but there’s one thing I know for sure. When yoga and tai chi come together, something magical happens. We learn how to be good to ourselves.

Even when we’re getting so much done and going through so many big challenges, the foundations of tai chi teach us how to go through it with harmony, some ease and peace in our bodies and our minds. In tai chi practice, this way of harmony in our posture, position, how we move, means that everything in us, and everything around us, is coming together to support what we’re doing. We learn how to live with ease, in all our moments. When this magic comes into our yoga, we grow this wonderful ability to heal and empower our lives, and to share all this together, with the people we teach and support.

Tai Chi is a way of being, connecting, and moving, that creates a harmonious, peaceful relationship with our bodies, our minds, and our world. It’s our everyday ordinary path to extraordinary life. Yoga is union with all that you really are, the whole amazing unblocked unlimited version of you.

Yoga and tai chi together create a tremendous and immediately-accessible way of transformation – the ability to make it better to be where you are, and to make where you are into something better. It’s something truly wonderful to have in your life. And it’s something so important to share with the people you teach, lead, and support.

What You Get

Begin Any Time. Whenever you start throughout the year, we’ll always be here practicing and sharing together, right alongside everyday life.

Watch: 18 Instructional Sessions, sharing the building blocks and forms of tai chi, and their direct application to yoga poses, position, alignment, movement, and teaching. These sessions are all recorded, so you can watch any time, and support your practice for many years to come.

Watch: 6 Group Training Sessions, for working through teaching and practice questions and experiences, as we bring yoga and tai chi together. These sessions are all recorded, so you can watch whenever is good for you.

1 Year Membership in our online Tai Chi and Qigong Practice Group (normal cost is $600). This group is part of our longer 500+Hour Tai Chi and Qigong training. We get together on Zoom once or twice each month, share some practice, and work our way through all kinds of practical applications that bring these ancient practices into everyday life.

Practice: More than 30 Classes, giving a complete set of yoga sequences and classes you can lead, including detailed instruction for weaving the transformative foundations of tai chi together with your yoga practice and teaching.

Connection and Community. Join our special online group for sharing questions and experiences with Mike, Tara, and everyone in training. Always we’re here each day, to support each other along the way.

Forever resource. There’s no need to complete everything within a year, this entire course will all be right here for you as an ongoing resource, for many years of practice to come.

Certification: We provide a Strala 50+Hour Training in Tai Chi for Yoga Teachers Certification and formal diploma upon completion, and list your degree and certification on our website.

Our program is credited by the Chair of Neurology at Harvard, and the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, as well as by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra. We’re also accredited by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals.

Continuing Education Credit: This course counts for 50 hours of continuing education and practice credit, including for our online and in-person 200+Hour Yoga Teacher Training, 300+Hour and 500+Hour Advanced Leadership Trainings.

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When you make a home for harmony in your self, you make a home for peace, sustainability, and miraculous accomplishment, everywhere.

Topics and Practices Include

– The Foundations of Tai Chi and Qigong,
applied to yoga practice of all kinds

– How to simplify yoga poses for people with a wide range of backgrounds and needs,
using the foundations of qigong

– Pose-by-Pose Yoga Library
The Tai Chi way of using and modifying a complete set of yoga poses

– Pose-by-Pose Tai Chi Library
A complete set of tai chi forms for yoga classes

– Creating a tai chi bridge from yoga practice to everyday life use and needs

– Never Suffer a Bad Position – The Tai Chi Shift from Enduring to Transforming

– Bringing the all-day-everywhere portability of tai chi into yoga practice

– Moving in Circles – the Tai Chi Way of Sustainable Movement in Yoga

– Teaching mobility and feeling through relaxed-form tai chi

– Yoga for Kids (and adults) with tai chi focus on balance, agility, endurance, and fun

Who Is This For

Everything we do is designed to help people begin where they are, and develop the practices that carry us where we want to go. So wherever you are is a perfect place to begin. This is true for all of our courses, including this training in tai chi for yoga teachers.

One of the great things about tai chi is its sustainability. You can be better when you’re 40 than you were at 20, and again at 80 than you were at 40. Brought together with yoga, it’s a practice for enduring mobility, balance, healing, and well-being, that lets us keep doing whatever it is we love doing, at any age.

Our community is a wonderfully diverse and inspiring group of people. They range from kids in school to over 80. They’re from dozens of countries worldwide. They are entrepreneurs and chief executives, professors and librarians, scientists and researchers, studio owners and fitness instructors, yoga teachers of every style, psychologists and physiotherapists, life and health coaches, doctors and lawyers. They are moms and dads, daughters and sons, and lifelong friends. It’s so wonderful if you can be here to share with us now.

Common Questions

Q: Can I call my yoga class Strala after taking this training?

Q: I’m not interested in teaching but I want more ease in my life, is this for me?

A: Absolutely. We all deserve to feel better, and bringing sustainable ease into your life is a perfect reason to join in. Fair warning, once you start walking around embodying ease, folks are going to start asking you to show them how you’re doing it. We’ve had quite a few scientists, moms, school teachers, actors and performers join these programs for personal reasons, and end up sharing yoga in creative ways with those around them. A big part of our goal is de-mystifying leadership, in tai chi, qigong, and yoga alike, as something for a select few. Just like cooking, once you know and love the recipe, it’s impossible not to share.

You can always email us any questions through info@stralayoga.com.

FACULTY

Strala Trainings are all led entirely by the founders. Every member of our faculty has more than 20 years of practical experience, and between 4 and 10 years of advanced education at top institutions, including Harvard, Oxford, and University of Edinburgh. Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi.

Mike is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles, and climbs a few mountains in his spare time. Tara and Mike live in the Berkshire Mountains with their daughter Daisy.

Tara Stiles is the founder of Strala. Thousands of guides are leading Strala classes around the globe in partner studios, gyms, and clubs.

Tara partners with W Hotels on FIT with Tara Stiles — a global program bringing Strala Yoga classes and healthy recipes to W properties around the globe. She collaborated with Reebok to design their Reebok Yoga lifestyle range, and has authored several best-selling books including Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, Yoga Cures, Make Your Own Rules Diet, Strala Yoga, and Guiding Strala, all translated and published in several languages. She has been profiled by The New York Times, Times of India, The Times (UK), and featured in most major national and international magazines. Tara is a sought after speaker primarily on topics of business building and health & wellness. She has lectured to sold out audiences and internal conferences around the world including Fortune’s Most Powerful Women’s Conference, Epsilon, Happinez, and Hay House events.

Tara supports The Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the American Heart Association initiative to combat childhood obesity, as well as BOKS, which together are bringing Strala classes to more than 30,000 schools around the United States and Canada.

Tara studied classical dance with ABT Principal Rory Foster, and choreography with Paul Taylor original member and world renowned master Eileen Cropley.

When Can You Begin

You can begin any time throughout the year now, and go all at your own pace. Also once you’ve completed everything, it’s all still here for you. Whenever you need it, just keep coming back for more.

Please Click Here to Register

About Strala

In our Strala Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.

Questions

If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Mike@StralaYoga.com.

Thank you so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.

– Tara & Mike

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We need a practice that’s practiced always, in all the hours, in all the places, that carries us into a world where we are sustainable, connected, harmonious, and at peace in our selves. This is how we get there together.

–

Please Click Here to Register!

The post Strala Online 50+Hour Training, Tai Chi for Yoga Teachers appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training in Tai Chi and Qigong, 2024

Mike Taylor — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 15:44:49 +0000

Registration is Now Open

Whether you’re just beginning or looking to begin again, this training gives the foundations, skills, and practices you need, to have the extraordinary benefits of tai chi and qigong in your own life, and to share this meaningfully with others as a teacher. It’s your way to feel better, and do better, in everything you love.

The cost for this training is $3,600, given in three equal parts of $1,200. It gives you a full year of live practice sessions together with our online group for this training, as well as forever access to the complete course. Even once your year is complete, everything remains here for you as an ongoing resource, for many years of practice to come. The first $1,200 registers you now, and your two remaining payments can be made any time throughout your year. Please click here to register now.

We also have scholarship help and easy installment plans available. If you want to be here and need help, please just let us know (email Mike@StralaYoga.com).

This training begins on January 6, 2024, and once it launches you can get started any time throughout the whole year, and go all at your own pace. Also once complete, everything remains yours to use a resource for ongoing practice, whenever you want. Please understand that once a reservation is made, we are not able to give refunds.

For a long time we’ve wanted a way to share enough of what’s in these practices, when there’s so much here to share. It feels wonderful to have this chance now, for a whole year of training and practice together, right along with all our everyday lives. Thank you so much everybody, for supporting each other and being a part of this now.

Click Here to Register Now

Create harmony on every level of your life

Tai Chi is a way of being, connecting, and moving, that creates a harmonious, peaceful connection with our bodies, our minds, and our world. It’s our everyday ordinary path to extraordinary life.

This course gives the perfect foundation for your own tai chi and qigong practice, as well as for teaching and sharing this way of moving, connecting, and healing with others.

Join a full year of tai chi and qigong learning and community. We’ll share across all aspects of tai chi and qigong, including healing, martial, and everyday wellbeing. We’ll also include partner practices, and the “tai chi way of yoga and leadership,” led by Tara Stiles, so you can carry all this into your other practices and professions. There’s a lot we can cover, and a year gives the perfect amount of time to build something truly meaningful together.

– More than 100 Instructional Sessions. All recorded, so you can watch any time, and support your practice for many years to come.
– Live Sessions on Zoom. For practice and progress together, on all different days and times throughout the year. So we have many chances to share and practice together, whatever you schedule.
– More than 100 Practice Classes. In Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, and Yoga, all here for you to move through at your own pace.
– Connection and Community. Join our special online group for sharing questions and experiences with Mike, Tara, and everyone in training. Always we’re here each day, to support each other along the way.
– Begin Any Time. We’re recording everything we share, so you can start whenever you want, and watch all on your own schedule.

For a 1,000+Hour Advanced Certification in Wellbeing Practice, you can combine this training with our online or in-person 500+Hour Yoga Teacher Training.

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When you make a home for harmony in your self, you make a home for peace, sustainability, and miraculous accomplishment, everywhere.

Topics and Practices Include

– The Foundations of Tai Chi and Qigong: Being Better at Being Human

– How to Learn Tai Chi and Qigong: Beginning, and Beginning Again

– How to Instruct: Teaching Others, Teaching Yourself

– Listening and Learning through Healing Connection

– Opening the Gates to Tai Chi with Qigong

– Tai Chi Chuan, The Classic Sequence

– Making a Good Relationship: The Practice of Sensing Hands

– Tai Chi Meditation

– The Tai Chi Way of Yoga and Leadership – Across Practices and Professions

– Sustainable Tai Chi and Qigong Practices for All Groups, Kids to Over 80

– Everyday Human Movement and Opportunity

– Connecting with Nature: Returning Circle of Energy

– Practical and Healing Applications of Tai Chi and Qigong

– Qigong Practices for Parkinson’s

– Qigong and Tai Chi for Healing Trauma

– Tai Chi for Weight Weight Loss, Weight Gain, Weight Wellbeing

– The Defensive Application of Tai Chi: Real-Life Guide to Martial Practice

– Tai Chi and Awareness Practice with Kids

– The Tai Chi Way of Yoga practice and Leading Yoga

– The Tai Chi Way of Tennis, Cycling, and Running

– Case Study Method: Real World Challenges and Solutions

What You’ll Find Here

This online training gives a perfect way to get started and advance with your practice and leadership in tai chi and qigong from wherever you are, right now. It also provides a wonderful complement to our in-person and online 200+Hour Yoga Leadership and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Trainings, which also follow the foundations of tai chi for movement and healing, leadership and life.

One advantage of tai chi and qigong practice is in its simplicity. Anyone can practice, wherever they are, with whatever time they have. While the foundations for qigong and tai chi are much the same, qigong takes this simplicity a step further, with movements that don’t require any special memorization. If you’ve ever shivered when you’re cold, jumped up and down to wake up, or let out a big exhale to release stress, you’ve practiced qigong. It’s simply written into our human biology and design, to breathe and move in a way that supports us to be healthy, and get things done. Qigong’s simple movements give us a way to enable this design.

Most of us have been taught an incredibly self-limiting myth. It’s called no-pain-no-gain. At the heart of this myth, there’s a belief that if I’m not suffering, I’m probably not doing anything important.

Tai chi presents a very different world view, grounded in a very different way of being. It says that we accomplish most – that everything truly inspiring and magical in this world is accomplished – through harmony and peace. And it gives us a clear structure to work this out. Clinical research has strongly supported both tai chi and qigong practices for boosting your energy and mood, sleeping better, reducing chronic pain, improving strength and mobility, creating an overall sense of well-being, and even healing from the neurological impacts of trauma.

Tai chi gives us an effective antidote to no-pain-no-gain not only because it sounds better. It also works better.

Who Is This For

One of the great things about tai chi is its sustainability. You can be better when you’re 40 than you were at 20, and again at 80 than you were at 40. So it’s a practice that lets us keep doing whatever it is we love doing, at any age.

Tai chi and qigong are known for a wide array of well-documented health benefits, including strengthened immunity, reduced inflammation, lower blood pressure, improved balance, mobility, bone density, cardiovascular and pulmonary function, stress-reduction, healing trauma, and support for stress-related and other ailments, including cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

For athletes tai chi is a proven way to increase agility and endurance, while avoiding injury and recovering faster. It also works wonders for our wellbeing, and our whole health. Stress is at the heart of so many challenges today, from obesity and heart disease to all kinds of chronic pain and ailments. Tai chi helps us move from a chemical state of stress into our optimal conditions for both healing and performance.

Simply and profoundly, tai chi is a way to feel better and do better, in everything we love.

What You Get

Begin Any Time: Whether you start in January or any time throughout the year, we’ll always be here practicing and sharing together, right alongside everyday life.

Watch: Over 100 instructional sessions, that cover a wide variety of topics and uses, opening the gates in your body and mind for a fulfilling tai chi and qigong practice. All recorded, so you can watch any time, and support your practice for many years to come.

Live Sessions on Zoom. For practice and progress together, on all different days and times throughout the year. So we have many chances to share and practice together, whatever your schedule.

More than 100 Practice Classes. In Tai Chi, Qigong, Shiatsu, and Yoga, all here for you to move through at your own pace.

Connection and Community: Join our special online group for sharing questions and experiences with Mike, Tara, and everyone in training. Always we’re here each day, to support each other along the way.

Forever resource. There’s no need to complete everything within a year, this entire course will all be right here for you as an ongoing resource, for many years of practice to come.

Read: A comprehensive Guidebook that gives additional direction and detail alongside of regular practice and homework assignments. You’ll dive into the foundations of tai chi and qigong, how to learn and progress, how to stay safe along the way, and how to create a practice that is both healing and empowering on every level of your life.

Progress: A 12-Month and ongoing training and practice plan. Everybody learns in their own way, at their own pace, and this training is yours to go through in your own time. We follow an adult learning model with all our trainings, and we’re here to support everyone individually.

Community for Graduates: You’ll have access to our private online training community of Strala graduates worldwide, so you can connect with each other, and with Tara and Mike, for ongoing questions, sharing experiences, and progress.

Certification: We provide a Strala 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training in Tai Chi and Qigong Certification and formal diploma upon completion, and list your degree and certification on our website.

If you’ve completed our Strala 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training, or our 300+Hour or 500+Hour Advanced Yoga Leadership Training, or Yoga Leadership Training, 300+Hour Advanced Yoga Leadership Training, you’ll receive a full 700+Hour, 800+Hour, or 1,000+Hour Advanced Degree and Certification in Wellbeing Practices, which is listed on our site and documented with a formal diploma.

Continuing Education Credit: This course counts for 500 hours of continuing education and practice credit, for all our longer in-person trainings, including both the 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training.

Common Questions

Q: Can I call my tai chi or qigong class Strala after taking this training?

Q: I’m not interested in teaching tai chi or qigong but I want more ease in my life, is this for me?

You can always email us any questions through info@stralayoga.com.

FACULTY

Mike is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles, and climbs a few mountains in his spare time. Tara and Mike live in the Berkshire Mountains with their daughter Daisy.

Tara Stiles is the founder of Strala. Thousands of guides are leading Strala classes around the globe in partner studios, gyms, and clubs.

Tara studied classical dance with ABT Principal Rory Foster, and choreography with Paul Taylor original member and world renowned master Eileen Cropley.

When Can You Begin

This training is ready to begin any time, and our live sessions together start on January 6, 2024. You can begin any time throughout the whole year, and once you’ve completed everything, it’s all still here for you. Whenever you need it, just keep coming back for more.

Click Here to Register Now

About Strala

Questions

If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Mike@StralaYoga.com.

Thank you so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.

– Tara & Mike

–

We need a practice that’s practiced always, in all the hours, in all the places, that carries us into a world where we are sustainable, connected, harmonious, and at peace in our selves. This is how we get there together.

–

Please Click Here to Register Now!

The post Strala Online 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training in Tai Chi and Qigong, 2024 appeared first on Strala Yoga.

How to Be Fit Without Pain and Injury

Tara Stiles — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 11:32:57 +0000

On my way to being fit while steering clear of pain and injury – from high altitude mountaineering to martial competition, skiing to running and cycling, I’ve had more than my share of challenges. The good news is, tai chi has given me a way to heal problems like back pain and joint injuries faster and more completely, as well as prevent injury along the way. It’s something I love to share now in all our online Strala Yoga classes in tai chi, qigong, and yoga, as well as in our Strala Yoga teacher trainings online and in person.

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.

The post How to Be Fit Without Pain and Injury appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online 100+Hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training

Mike Taylor — Fri, 13 May 2022 21:39:41 +0000

Registration is Now Open

This is your registration for the Strala Online 100+Hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training. You can get started now whenever you like, and watch on your own schedule. The cost for this course is $1,295, installment plans and scholarship help are also available, just email Mike@StralaYoga.com.

Strala has been sharing yoga with hundreds of thousands of kids in schools, studios, and homes all around the world, including through our partnerships with The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and BOKS.

In this training we’ll share our uniquely-special approach with you, giving all the foundations, skill-sets, and sequences you need for your own practice, as well as for leading kids on this wonderfully magical path, wherever you are.

If you’re looking to lead kids classes in yoga and tai chi, or carry these new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, this also provides you with a 100+Hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training Certification and continuing education credit.

Please click here to register

The most important lesson I’ve learned in leading these last two decades – that especially applies to leading kids, from the time they’re in the womb through all their growing stages – is that how we are is much louder and clearer than what we say. Kids feel everything, and respond accordingly. They’re our best teachers, and honest mirrors of how well we’re doing in connection both with our selves, and with them.

To lead a child successfully in yoga is to create a good connection of harmony with yourself first, and continually. This is a constant every day everywhere practice, and there’s never a final check box for self-care. In this program you’ll learn:

– Self-Care for Teachers and Parents. How to be in harmony with yourself as an every day, everywhere, in everything practice.

– Awareness and Giving. How to extend your awareness to others, and pay attention to their needs.

– Class Structures and Requirements. Across each stage and context, the structures, forms, movement vocabularies, and sequences you’ll need to have a wonderful sharing, learning, and growing experience.

– Communication and Language. How to clearly describe and share what it is that you are doing. What you say is very important, and needs special care and skill especially with children – communication and language can be harmful, if it doesn’t match and support how you are.

– Approaches and Skill-Sets across roles and settings. Gain the skills for empowering yourself and the children in your life, whether in a yoga class setting, family gathering, as a parent, a teacher, or a healthcare provider.

Making a positive impact on a child is one of the best things we can do with our life. We all have the capacity to do this. This is an opportunity for anyone to gain the skills for empowering yourself and the children in your life, whether in a yoga class setting, family gathering, as a parent, a teacher, or a healthcare provider. You’ll gain comfort and awareness of how your actions affect others, all the time, as a teacher, and as much in every role you play, in all the moments of your life. And you’ll have a process and practice for shaping this all into something wonderful, for you, and the kids you have a chance to teach.

This training is focused on empowering kids, to create a life experience of connection, caring, and trust in themselves. What we’re sharing together here is quite different from many kids trainings, that focus mostly on story-telling, game-playing, and fixed sequencing as the starting point. We will absolutely focus on how to design sequences that create a range of emotion, but entertainment of children isn’t what we’re doing here. We have a different kind of chance, for something big.

Empowering young people to form a strong connection with themselves, to trust their intuition for a lifetime, so they have their best chance at a safe, happy, and fulfilled life – this is important work for teachers, care givers, and anyone who spends time around young people.

Click Here to Register

What: Strala Online 100+Hour Intensive Kids Yoga Teacher Training. In this training we’ll share our uniquely-special approach with you, giving all the foundations, skill-sets, and sequences you need for your own practice, as well as for leading kids on this wonderfully magical path, wherever you are.

Certification. If you’re looking to lead kids classes in yoga and tai chi, or carry these new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your work, this also provides you with a 100+Hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training Certification (we’re accredited by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals, as well as by the Chair of Neurology at Harvard), 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.

When: You can begin now whenever you like. These sessions can be completed in one week, or you can go entirely at your own pace.

Begin and Watch Any Time: Everything here is recorded and saved, 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. If you’re taking this course as a teacher training, review and practice is super-important, so please go through the instructional sessions at least twice, and always you can come back for more whenever you need it.

Training Cost: $1,295. This includes forever-access to the private group for everyone joining this course, you can click here to register.

“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 training?

Q: I’ve already done my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training, or a Kids Yoga Teacher Training. is this the same?

A: We follow a completely unique curriculum, grounded in the movement and healing foundations of Tai Chi and Qigong, and more than a decade of experience with teaching kids, including in more than 30,000 schools through our work with The Alliance for a Healthier Generation and BOKS. There’s a lot that’s truly wonderful and unique here, and 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 kids yoga, but I want more self-care, intuition, empowerment, and this kind of connection in my life. Is this for me?

A: Absolutely. We all deserve to feel better, and what you do for yourself is so important. Always this is what we have to share with others. Fair warning, once you start walking around embodying care, connection, and 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 Training

We’ll share two instructional sessions each day for seven days, from 9:30am to 1:30pm New York Time, with a break in between sessions. For the time between sessions, as well as ongoing once our sessions are complete, 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.

Topics Include: Creating an All-The-Time Self Care Practice – Creating a Safe and Calm Learning Environment – Movement Vocabulary for Kids – Sequencing and Practices for Kids at All Stages, for Care Giver and Baby, Toddler, Young Children, and Teens – Using Visualization and Imagery to Spark Imagination

– Self-Care for Teachers and Parents. How to be in harmony with yourself as an every day, everywhere, in everything practice.

– Awareness and Giving. How to extend your awareness to others, and pay attention to their needs.

Teaching isn’t only telling someone what to do. It’s clearly showing something you know and understand a great deal, enough to extend your awareness beyond the topic, to how someone else is able to learn. To teach, we need to know what we’re doing so well that our attention isn’t caught too much in what we’re doing. It’s how we can fully be available to who we’re teaching. And kids, they know the difference between someone who really understands what they’re teaching, and someone going through the motions.

Compared with leading adults, leading kids presents its own unique experience, with unique approaches, doorways and opportunities. Adults often need more time and work to learn and connect the physical and mental aspects of the yoga forms. We’ve lived longer, developed more solid imprints and habits, and need our own kind of process and patience for undoing the stress, strain, and unsupportive habits that can build up along the way.

Our work with kids is in part a practice of creating and recreating our own better habits. It’s how we avoid layering our own issues – with yoga and everything – on top of this wonderfully open opportunity for connection and growth. It’s also about supporting and enabling habits as they form in kids. We’re here creating a space and path for new strong connections to the self, for building confidence, intuition, and the most valuable tools someone can have for a successful, happy life. This is knowing how to take care of yourself, and knowing how to know yourself.

Kids pick up on your emotional state, what’s real in you, and reflect accordingly. The focus becomes on organizing yourself, creating useful sequences, and appropriate language, designed to empower each child. There’s so much you can do here, to help kids create a strong connection with themselves. It’s setting them up for a successful, happy, and healthy life. Caring for your self is important. How you are is important. Your language, leadership, attention, how you notice, respond, and create, there’s so much opportunity for good here.

This training is focused on empowering kids, to create a life experience of connection, caring, and trust in themselves. Empowering young people to form a strong connection with themselves, to trust their intuition for a lifetime, so they have their best chance at a safe, happy, and fulfilled life – this is important work for teachers, care givers, and anyone who spends time around young people.

What You Get

Approaches, Practices, Skill-sets: Gain the skills for empowering yourself and the children in your life, whether in a yoga class setting, family gathering, as a parent, a teacher, or a healthcare provider.

Instructional Video Sessions: Begin whenever you like, these sessions can be completed in one week, or you can go entirely at your own pace. Everything here is all recorded and saved, 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. If you’re taking this course as a teacher training, review and practice is super-important, so please go through the instructional sessions at least twice, and always you can come back for more whenever you need it.

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, this is wonderful. You can also call your classes by the Strala name, for as long as you’re staying connected in your practice through enrollment in Strala Home. 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 100+Hour Kids Teacher Training 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 100 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, by mind-body-medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and by the global Yoga Alliance Professionals.

Continuing Education Credit: This training provides you with 100 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.

Who Is This For

How It Works

FACULTY

In his younger years, Mike challenged centuries of reasonable and well-tested martial traditions in hundreds of competitions, by applying unruly imagination to a world where rules were unbreakable. As he got older, he continued on to medical applications of the mind-body connection in university. Mike studied mind-body medicine at Harvard, and after running into walls with standard medical practice, Mike left his healthcare roots and turned to mountaineering. He worked at a steel mill, joined a web company, then founded a biotech software company.

Now Mike has found his way back to health care done right, helping people let go of stress in their bodies and minds, and become their own best caregivers. Mike still climbs a few mountains in his spare time, and is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles.

REGISTRATION

Training Registration: The training cost is $1,295, including all the instructional video sessions, all saved so you can watch any time and keep them forever, 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

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.

Please click here to register

Open the door to a whole new way of connecting, sharing, and growing with everyone in your life.

The post Strala Online 100+Hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online 25+Hour Intensive Yoga Training, Healing and Teaching Support for Trauma

Mike Taylor — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 15:27:41 +0000

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

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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.

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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.

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: $595. 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.

“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?

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.

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.

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.

Who Is This For

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

FACULTY

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 $595. 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

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.

The post Strala Online 25+Hour Intensive Yoga Training, Healing and Teaching Support for Trauma appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Refresh & Renew You

Tara Stiles — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:35:24 +0000

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The post Refresh & Renew You appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online Event, 100+Hour Connect and Heal Training, September 2020

Mike Taylor — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 15:03:06 +0000

Registration is Now Open

What: Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal Training. This training is a special chance for renewal and discovery of new practices for healing what needs healing – through the secrets of shiatsu, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and holistically, by taking really good care of you.

And if you’re looking to lead classes in yoga or tai chi, or carry new approaches, skill-sets and practices into your healing work, it’s also a Leadership Training which provides a 100+Hour Healing Leadership Certification. You’ll graduate with a formal diploma, and your hours and degrees are all confirmed on our site.

Every year 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.

When: Scheduled sessions from September 12 – 18, 2020.

Plus forever access to the complete online training, so you can go all at your own pace and keep coming back whenever you like. This includes all the video sessions, reading, practice notes, multi-month practice plans, and our private online community for graduates.

Schedule: We’ll have a daily video session scheduled for 9:30am to 11am New York time, led by Sam and Tara, plus added video sessions and sharing with Sam, Mike, and Tara throughout the day as new questions and topics come up, all in our private online group for this training. Also these sessions are all recorded and saved in this group, so you can always watch on your own schedule, and review whenever you like.

Training Cost. You can register now for $1,295, which is your complete amount. This gives forever access to our Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine Training. And for nothing extra we’re adding all the daily live video sessions from June 12 – 18, along with the private group for everyone joining during this time, so we can all share here together, just like our in-person trainings. You can click here to register.

If you’ve already enrolled in the Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and TCM Training, and would like to join and have forever access to all these daily video sessions, the cost is just $395, and you can register here.

Click Here to Register

“You are in a position, starting now, to adopt the role of self-healer. By going deeper into the power of awareness, you can achieve the hidden potential of the healing system that you already depend upon every day.”

– Dr. Rudolph Tanzi – Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital

What’s Here

This training gives you the Strala 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine Training in our online library, including more than 50 instructional and practice sessions, a comprehensive Guidebook to lead you successfully through this course, and a Final Video Exam, so we can share direct feedback for progress just like we do with all our in-person courses. You’ll also get membership in our private community for graduates, so we can all keep sharing and growing together here.

It also gives you access to our private online group specially created for this training time, so we can share questions and experiences together just like in-person, and our daily live instructional video sessions, which are also recorded, so you can watch and review whenever you like.

A forever resource. This is all yours to use before, during, and after our training time together here. Even once you complete everything, it doesn’t go away. Everything remains here for you to keep using as a resource for practice and support, whenever you need it.

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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.

It’s a curve back to your most natural self, a way of supporting your body to keep from harm, and heal what needs healing. You’ll discover a path to feel better, and do better, with all that you love.

How It Works

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.

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.

I’ve seen in everything we do, with friends, co-workers, and family, that this ability to heal – both yourself, and the people connected with you – keeps growing more and more important. So if you’re just beginning on this path and exploring for your self, you’ll find the guidance and groundwork you need here. And if you’re a professional who is teaching or practicing in related field, this will enrich and expand your vocabulary of techniques and diagnostic principles.

You might join for your healing profession, for teaching yoga or tai chi, or maybe 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

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.

Complete Online Training Access: This training gives you our Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine Training, including more than 50 instructional and practice sessions, a comprehensive Guidebook to lead you successfully through this course, and a Final Video Exam, and membership in our private community for graduates, so we can all keep sharing and growing together here.

Daily Live Video Sessions: During our time from June 12 – 18, we’ll have a scheduled instructional video session each day led by Sam and Tara, shared live in our private group for everyone in this training. And throughout each day, Sam, Mike, and Tara will share more with live videos, questions, answers, and experiences in the group. All of these video sessions will be recorded, so you can also watch and review on your own schedule, whenever you like.

Private Online Training Group. From June 12 – 18, you’ll also have access to our private online group specially created for this training time and group, so 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, Mike, and Sam, for ongoing questions, sharing experiences, and progress.

Exam. We have a not-scary video exam for reviewing what you’ve learned and sharing some direct feedback with you, just like our in-person trainings.

Certification: We provide a 100+Hour Healing Leadership Certification upon completion of this training. You’ll receive a formal 100 Hour Diploma, and a profile on our website that documents all your hours, coursework and degrees completed. Also the yoga alliances are now accepting online certification. Harvard, Stanford, so many top universities have long been offering really wonderful online education, it just makes good sense to learn from the top people in each field, from wherever you are. So it’s nice that the alliances are supporting this now.

Continuing Education Credit: This training provides you with 100 hours of credit, which also fulfills the additional study and practice components in our 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training.

FACULTY

Sam Berlind leads this training, and is supported along the way by Strala founders Tara and Mike. Sam is on the faculty at Strala, led and created the curriculum for the Ohashi Institute in New York City for 20 years, and practices shiatsu in NYC.

Sam graduated from the University of Edinburgh, studied Zen Shiatsu, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional Japanese Medicine, and martial arts, and began practicing yoga in the 1980s.

In his younger years, Mike challenged centuries of reasonable and well-tested martial traditions in hundreds of competitions, by applying unruly imagination to a world where rules were unbreakable. As he got older, he continued on to medical applications of the mind-body connection in university. Mike studied mind-body medicine at Harvard, and complementary medicine at Oxford. After running into walls with standard medical practice, Mike left his healthcare roots and turned to mountaineering. He worked at a steel mill, joined a web company, then founded a biotech software company.

Topics, Concepts, and Practices

You’ll discover here the secrets and techniques that experienced teachers and healers use in their practice. And much more significantly, you’ll learn how to make these abilities a real part of your entire life.

We’ll share the specific structures and practices you need to practice Shiatsu and healing with touch, whether in a family and friends situation or in a professional healing office.

Shiatsu is a traditional Japanese bodywork method, based on the principles of acupuncture. It has evolved into an innovative healing modality that incorporates movement, meditation, and connection. Incredibly effective for the treatment of common injuries, as well as chronic pain, disability, and disease, shiatsu skills provide a great complement to yoga practice and leadership.

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– Responsibility for Health and Healing
– Right Mindset to Learn, Improve, and Achieve
– Common sense approaches to Health
– Taking charge of our lives: power and knowledge
– How to evaluate advice
– How we heal ourselves
– Principles and Practice of Shiatsu
– Movement patterns
– Coordination vs Strength
– Avoiding injuries
– Setup and organize practice space
– How Environment affects your partners/clients
– Key Concepts of Traditional Asian Medicine
– Meridian and Point Location
– Detailed Practice Instruction

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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 and healing through mindfulness, thoughtful movements, and clear language, opening up multiple paths for you to be of service to yourself and others.

REGISTRATION

Training Registration: You can register now for $1,295, which is your complete amount. This gives forever access to our Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine Training. And for nothing extra we’re adding all the daily live video sessions from September 12 – 18, along with the private group for everyone joining during this time, so we can all share here together, just like our in-person trainings. You can click here to register.

Already Enrolled. If you’ve already enrolled in the Strala Online 100+Hour Connect and Heal with Shiatsu and TCM Training, and would like to join and have forever access to all these daily video sessions, the cost is just $395, and you can register here.

Payment plans 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

Resources

We have an online library of classes, retreats, and trainings with Tara and Mike, with live weekly 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.

The post Strala Online Event, 100+Hour Connect and Heal Training, September 2020 appeared first on Strala Yoga.

Strala Online 25+Hour Intensive Training in Tai Chi Chuan, The Classic Sequence

Mike Taylor — Tue, 05 May 2020 12:13:29 +0000

Registration is Now Open to Begin Any Time

This Tai Chi Chuan intensive training is a step-by-step guide to learn and progress with the Classic Tai Chi Chuan Sequence, both for practice on your own, and together with a group.

You can take this course as the foundation for your own tai chi practice, or as preparation for the comprehensive Strala Online 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training for Tai Chi and Qigong. Please click here to register.

Create harmony on every level of your life

As with most things tai chi, this begins very simply. How you are in one place is how you are in every place.

How do you move across a room? What kind of relationship do you have with yourself? When you run into challenge do you uncover the best way forward, or push through to get it done? The pathways you follow in your work and relationships, your physical endeavors, your health and wellbeing, your whole life, are all unavoidably consistent. You are always the same.

There’s a very simple outcome to this idea, written into the foundations of tai chi. You can practice who you are, and how you’d like to be, first where things are simple. From here, when things get harder, more complex, you have something better to work with. It’s in your wiring. It’s you.

One of the great things about tai chi is its sustainability. You can be better when you’re 40 than you were at 20, and again at 80 than at 40. It’s this way simply because it trades self-depleting practices for ones that replenish and last. And it’s an effective antidote to the no-pain-no-gain way of living not only because it sounds better. It also works better.

The Classic Tai Chi Sequence gives the daily foundational practice you need, to see clearly where you are, and go where you want to go.

Click Here to Register

Who Is This For

What You Get

Watch: Everyday Qigong Practice to open the gates in your body and mind for a fulfilling tai chi practice, detailed instruction in the Classic Tai Chi Chuan Sequence divided into 6 manageable sections for practice, and the complete sequence given slowly for practice of positions, and again for practice of flowing with your whole body in harmony.

Read: 45+Page Study Guide detailing the foundations of tai chi and qigong, how to learn and practice the classic sequence, how to stay safe along the way, and how to create a practice that is both healing and empowering on every level of your life.

Detailed session notes to guide every practice session both while you’re learning, and for many years to come.

Structure: This workshop follows a watch : read : practice : review path for learning, which combines instructional videos, detailed practice notes for every session, a written study guide, and daily practices to create a 30+hour workshop experience, just like our in-person courses.

You can follow this workshop through 7 sessions, over the course of a few days or a week, to gain the philosophical and usable ground for practice in qigong and the classic tai chi sequence. And you can return for months and years to come, to keep progressing with the foundations and applications of tai chi across your whole life.

Progress: Everybody learns in their own way, at their own pace, and this training is yours to go through in your own time. We follow an adult-learning model in all our courses, and we’re here to support everyone individually. Also once you complete everything, it’s all still here for you, and you can keep coming back whenever you need it.

Continuing Education Credit: 25 hours of practice credit, including application to our 500+Hour Advanced Teacher Training in Tai chi and Qigong, as well as our 200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training and 300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training.

Continuing Education Registration: Document your completion of this workshop and continuing education credit hours in a sharable profile on our site. This profile records all your educational programs, hours, and degrees completed here, so if you’ve already completed some of our online or in-person trainings, you’ll find everything in one place here.

Common Questions

Q: Can I call my class Strala after taking this Intensive?

Q: I’m not interested in teaching tai chi or qigong, but I want more ease in my life, is this for me?

You can always email us any questions through info@stralayoga.com.

FACULTY

Strala courses are all led entirely by the founders. Every member of our faculty has more than 20 years of practical experience, and between 4 and 10 years of advanced education at top institutions, including Harvard, Oxford, and University of Edinburgh. Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Chair of Neurology at Harvard and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi.

In his younger years, Mike challenged centuries of martial traditions in hundreds of competitions, by applying unruly imagination to a world where rules were unbreakable. As he got older, he continued on to medical applications of the mind-body connection in university. Mike studied mind-body medicine at Harvard, and alternative medicine and psychology at Oxford. After running into walls with standard medical practice in the U.S. and England, Mike left his healthcare roots, took up mountaineering, worked at a steel mill, and later founded a software company in the healthcare industry. Now Mike has found his way back to health care done right, helping people let go of stress in their bodies and minds, and become their own best caregivers.

Mike is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles, and climbs a few mountains in his spare time. Tara and Mike live in Brooklyn with their daughter Daisy.

When Can You Begin

Registration is open now, the cost is $495 for this course, and you can always begin any time you like. Also once you’ve completed everything, it’s all still here for you. Whenever you need it, just keep coming back for more.

Click Here to Register

About Strala

Questions

If you have any questions or need something, it’s always fine to reach us directly, using Mike@StralaYoga.com.

Thank you so much everybody, we’re excited to get started with you here.

– Tara & Mike

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We need a practice that’s practiced always, in all the hours, in all the places, that carries us into a world where we are sustainable, connected, harmonious, and at peace in our selves. This is how we get there together.

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Click Here to Register

The post Strala Online 25+Hour Intensive Training in Tai Chi Chuan, The Classic Sequence appeared first on Strala Yoga.