Become the Leader You Are

STRALA YOGA TRAINING

Lead with Freedom and Ease

Strala Yoga is a way of being, moving, and healing, that helps people release tension and handle challenge with ease. When you find ease in effort, your body and life become very capable and strong. You become an expert at creating space in your life for peace, creativity, inspiration, and all-around feeling great.

Strala Yoga Training empowers you to find this easy capability whether on your yoga mat, leading a class, or living your life.

Upcoming Yoga and Tai Chi Teacher Training Schedule

In Person

The Longevity Formula Book Launch with Avanti Kumar Singh (moderated by Tara Stiles) and a Strala Holiday Yoga Workshop with Tara Stiles

Chicago, Illinois

December 16, 2024 - December 17, 2024

Online

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

Online Any Time

January 4, 2025 - December 31, 2025

Global Guides

200+Hour Training with Anna Rampf and Julia Kupke

Munich, Ya Wali Healing and Meditation Center

April 18, 2024 - October 27, 2024

training types

All our yoga trainings and immersions have a unique curriculum that’s different from what’s covered in other 100, 200, and 500 hour yoga teacher training programs. So what you learn will be all new approaches, practices, and skill-sets, and makes a nice continuation from any previous studies with Strala Yoga 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.

Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra, as well as Harvard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi. You receive a top-tier education, that is applicable for everyone.

Online Yoga Teacher Training

We have several Online Training Events each year, which include daily live video sessions, all recorded so you can watch and review whenever you like. These trainings provide both 200+Hour Certification, as well as specialized advanced certification in a variety of topics, including healing and leadership. 

We also have a variety of trainings in our online library, which you can begin at any time, and include a complete Strala Online 200+Hour Yoga Training Certification. All our trainings cover a wide range of topics including movement, breath, energy, meditation, safety, health, healing, nutrition, and leadership, through the practice of yoga, tai chi, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine – just like our in-person trainings.

These courses give everything you need get started and keep progressing, in both your personal practice and your leadership – with yoga, work, relationships, and across your whole life. And we’ve designed it all to give you the experience of being here, together and sharing with a group. You’ll work through instruction and practice in a wide variety of topics, and we’ll share with you the common challenges, questions, and solutions that always come up in our in-person trainings, and give loads of daily practical guidance to create a structure for inspiring progress. It’s all here you to get started when you like, and go all at your own pace. And once complete, everything remains yours to keep using for ongoing review and practice, whenever you need it.

You don’t need to take time off to learn yoga, or to become a teacher.  In fact, learning alongside your life has a way of creating something wonderful that carries across everything you do, and everything you share. If you have an hour each day, this is perfect. For some people it’s more, for some it’s less. Most important is you do something that’s good for you, every day. We’re excited to get started with you soon.

Intensive Yoga Training

What you have for yourself is what you have to share with others. For our 2-day intensive course, we get into the Experience: How to uplift and enable yourself in your yoga, and your life.

People mostly respond to how you are, far more even than what you say. So we begin by getting into your own way of being and moving through yoga, along with an introduction to tai chi, as practice for how you want to be and move in your life. You’ll leave with a Strala Intensive Yoga Training Certification, ready to inspire yourself and everyone around you.

200+Hour Yoga Leadership Training and Retreat

All this begins with you, for you. What we have for ourselves is always what we’re able to share with the people we lead, the people all around us. So to begin, this is a place to connect with your self, release stress, and discover practices for creating harmony and ease in your body and mind, and your life.

These trainings can be taken simply as a retreat, just for you. And if you’re looking to share this as a teacher of Strala or any kind of practice, we also have additional sessions for you during the week. Each week gives 100 hours of material and credit, so you can take two weeks for a Strala 200+Hour Yoga Training Certification, or three weeks for a Strala 300+Hour Training Certification.

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.

Get ready to make space in your life for inner peace, and unlock your energy for creative power and inspirational leadership.

300+Hour Advanced Leadership Training

In this training you’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, meditation, and both Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine. 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.

We are each like a river, not hardwired but softwired. How we move through our lives rewires our neurology and rebalances our microbiome every single day. It changes our gene expression, makes our chromosomes healthier, and even alters what we pass along to our children. We create our lives, our health, and our world, in this way.

The choices we make matter deeply, first to ourselves – how we choose to take care of ourselves and navigate through each day. It matters to the people we care for – how we are able to support each other, what we are able to give. And it matters to the whole world. Because this is what we create, through the choices we make, every day.

This course gives you a Strala Yoga 300+Hour Advanced Training Certification. Most important, it helps you discover choice in each moment, and share this on a professional and profoundly transformational level with the people around you.

WHAT MAKES THE STRALA YOGA TRAINING PROGRAM UNIQUE?

  • Reputation: Strala Yoga is one of the top training programs in the world.
  • Education: Top-tier faculty. Each member has more than 20 years of practical experience, and between 4 and 10 years of advanced education at top-tier institutions, including Harvard, Oxford, and University of Edinburgh.
  • Worldwide Appeal: Strala Yoga is the most widely-reaching style of yoga in the world, with a wonderfully diverse audience.
  • Results: Get healthy, happy, and create a life that reaches beyond your dreams.
  • Leadership: The only mainstream yoga teacher training program led entirely by its founders, Tara Stiles and Mike Taylor.
  • Not a generic training: You graduate with a unique set of skills that people love all around the world, which makes it much easier to find work.
  • Highest Standards: Part of the global Yoga Alliance Professionals, holding higher standards than the American alliance.
  • Science: Our program is backed by mind-body medicine pioneer Dr. Deepak Chopra and Harvard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi.

Why does Strala Yoga feel so special ?

We get asked this one a lot. Mostly we talk about how it feels great. People get happy! They get super-healthy. They make their own rules, and their own yoga. They make their own incredibly inspiring lives. But where does all this begin? It’s in our minds. Strala Yoga psychology is extremely expansive, freeing, creative, intuitive, never stuck. It’s in our bodies. We’re everything we are – body, mind and spirit, all one whole – and we care for all of it happily & intuitively. It’s in our world without rules or “correct” ways. It’s people finding their own ways into their own bodies, and into a world without limits. The magic is in the breath, movement, ease, and fun.

You’ll learn the tools to deliver an inspiring and energizing experience, whether you’re leading Strala Yoga, or simply adding what you love about Strala to the style of yoga you already lead. Feeling great in your body and calm in your mind is the goal. With this process, hard things become easy. Challenging poses and movements become simple. When you can lead these concepts by example, with clear instruction and class structure, you’re all set to inspire a lot of people, beginning with your own personal journey.

Take care of yourself to take care of everyone. Your main job as a Guide 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 with practice in the training. 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.

Get ready to deliver magic and help people feel fantastic!

This is important work you’re choosing to do. Helping people feel great helps yourself and the world.

FACULTY

tara-strala-bio

Tara Stiles is the founder of Strala, the revolutionary approach to being, moving and healing.  Strala teaches yoga, tai chi, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, to help people release stress, let go of bad habits, and move easily through all kinds of challenge.

Strala is practiced in more than 100 countries, and thousands of Guides are leading Strala classes daily around the globe.  Even more Strala training graduates bring what they learn into their office work, healing practices, and 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 Yoga CuresMake Your Own Rules Diet, and Strala Yoga, 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 on topics of entrepreneurship, health, and wellbeing. 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, an initiative with the American Heart Association and Clinton Foundation, to combat childhood obesity. This brings Strala classes to more than 30,000 schools around the United States. She also supports the BOKS program, which delivers Strala classes and wellbeing resources to educators across North America.

Tara is married to Strala co-founder Mike Taylor. They live in Brooklyn with their one year old daughter Daisy.

mike-strala-bio

Mike Taylor is the co-founder of Strala, with focus on East Asian movement, meditation, health, and healing practices.

Named “Best Mover” by MindBodyGreen he’s practiced Eastern movement and healing techniques, including tai chi, qigong, and shiatsu, for more than three decades.

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 happily become more interested in supporting bodies than disrupting them, and 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. He worked at a steel mill for a while, joined a web company, and then founded a few more.

Now Mike has found his way back to health care done right, helping to create a system of yoga that draws on his martial and healing experience. Unbound by rules and guru-traditions that don’t work, Strala is helping people let go of stress in their bodies and minds, become their own best caregivers, and live happy capable lives.

Mike is married to Strala co-founder Tara Stiles. They live in Brooklyn with their one year old daughter Daisy.

 

sam-strala-bio

Sam Berlind is a member of the Strala Training Faculty, with primary responsibility for Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine. Sam is an Ohashiatsu teacher and practitioner living in NYC. While studying Comparative Religion and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in 1981, he began to practice Iyengar yoga. Sam continued to practice and teach yoga after moving to NYC. Eager to learn more about the relationship between the healing properties of yoga and traditional Asian medicine, he began studying with Wataru Ohashi. Sam fell in love with shiatsu, began teaching Ohashiatsu in 1987, and has since taught in NYC, Omega Institute, and throughout the US and Europe. Sam also teaches enhancement workshops and seminars based on his study of Feldenkrais Method, Gestalt therapy, Zen Shiatsu, TCM, and other modalities. His understanding of the healing arts is deeply influenced as well by his study and teaching of martial arts since 1988.

Yoga Alliances,
Certification & Work

Strala is part of the global Yoga Alliance Professionals / Yoga Alliance UK, and they certify our 200+hour program. They don’t certify shorter programs, although our standards and approach are the same, and they count our intensives toward continuing education.

We joined this alliance because they’re working to evolve and adopt much higher standards than their American counterpart. They don’t think all trainings should have uniform generic content, led by people without much experience or practical ability. Instead, they’re looking to evolve certification that supports the best leaders in the world, to share what they know. This is important to us.

Some employers look for alliance certification, but it’s worth remembering that getting a job doesn’t have so much to do with alliances, and YA in America particularly is just a marketing organization. It’s not able to provide standards or exams for qualification like medical school. So just like any kind of work, getting a job relates mostly to being excellent at what you do, and lining up well with the person who is hiring.

People are leading Strala all around the world following these trainings, in all kinds of places – including independent studios, gyms, health clubs, community centers, dance studios, apartment complexes, hotels, and even their living rooms. There are so many opportunities out there, and Strala connects especially well with a very wide range of people. This makes it easy both to find and create your own work.

Of course it takes time and practice to get really good at anything – much more than a few weeks or months of training. So long after our core time is complete, Tara and Mike remain available to help everybody keep progressing. We want everyone to be really good at this! It’s why we do what we do.

Resources

Online Classes

 

We have weekly live classes and workshops, plus a library of classes, trainings, and retreats, all led by Tara and Mike.
Online Trainings

 

We have several online trainings all covering a wide range of topics, including movement, breath, energy, meditation, safety, health, healing, nutrition, and leadership – just like our in-person trainings.

Strala Yoga is a revolutionary approach to being, moving and healing. It breaks through tension and stress in your body and mind, that keeps you working much harder than you need, to achieve much less than you can.

You’ll learn to move powerfully through your life and handle challenge with ease, using a proven structure that combines the rich vocabulary of yoga, with the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi.

The result: you get radiantly healthy, free, inspired, and happy from the inside out, and learn to create your destiny on every level that matters.

FAQ

Q: Are there any pre-requirements for training with Strala?

All our trainings have people from a wide range of backgrounds and experience. Some people are relatively new to yoga and just want to jump in, some are long-time practicers exploring the connection between their yoga and the rest of life. Many existing yoga teachers are also bringing the ease, freedom and expansiveness of Strala into their own leading practice. If you’re looking to teach yoga in the near-term, at least two years of practice is required. The diversity matches well with real life, and makes great ground for training!

Q: What’s the time breakdown for your 200+Hour Immersion?

Strala Trainings follow an adult-learning model, which combines structured and unstructured time, with focus on practical application. This works well for people’s learning process, and counts toward your 200+hours. All contact time with our faculty adds up, above the core training hours. Some people are at the studio a great deal of time every single day, so they get more hours in a more concentrated timeframe. Some people spread their time with us over a longer period. Both approaches work fine, we’re here to support what’s best for each person. In addition, each person will spend a good amount of time in classes, both with Tara and Mike, as well as online for people who don’t have every day with us. The online component can include Tara’s videos, our course on MindBodyGreen, as well as our online training program. This is all great to do before training as preparation, and after training as ongoing review. On top of this, there are several study and practice items (outlined in the welcome material) that you can do in small groups and on your own, supported by our faculty. Some people concentrate this effort during the training, and some people begin early, and continue for several months after our core component is complete. Strala follows a graduate school rather than grade school approach, so we’re here to support rather than police people’s time. Much more than a certificate, the point here is to become really good at what you do! This takes some ongoing time, and we remain available to help people keep developing on the right track, and specialize in the topics that are most interesting to them.

Q: What's the difference between your 200+Hour Immersion and Intensive Training?

Both trainings focus on applied rather than theoretical yoga: not much time on academic study of mythology, ancient texts or languages – and substantial focus on hands-on direct work with leading, touch, health, and healing. Both trainings cover the same general topics. The main difference is we have a good deal more time in the longer training to cover these topics in depth. You also have a lot more time to gain competence (and confidence) through practice and feedback with the group. If you’re looking to lead classes, or just get really into your own yoga, the longer trainings are wonderful if you have the time. If you’re wanting a good introduction to Strala’s primary elements, which you can add both to your own practice and your classes, the intensive trainings are perfect. Either way, you’ll have a great time, and get ready to lead and inspire a whole lot of people.

Q: I'm not local, where can I stay during training?

All our trainings have travelers from all around the world. People have had good experiences using the sites Air B&B and VRBO for affordable short-term rentals.

Questions?