Tara Stiles on intuitive, unconventional yoga practice and teaching
Yogaland Podcast
Andrea Ferretti
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, I’m talking to Tara Stiles, co-founder (with her husband Michael Taylor) of Strala Yoga in NYC. We cover a lot in this interview -- from how she started sharing yoga on YouTube 12(!) years ago to Strala's humble beginnings in Michael's apartment, to how it has grown and evolved into a practice that integrates Tai Chi, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qigong. Equal parts artist and entrepreneur, Tara has carved her own path and followed her intuition to create a successful career and a vibrant community.
Show notes: http://www.jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode223
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti and this is episode 223 of Yoga Land. |
| 0:09.2 | Today my guest is Tara Stiles. I was so excited to talk to Tara for a few reasons. First, |
| 0:16.3 | I don't actually know her personally and that makes the interview a little more nerve-wracking |
| 0:20.4 | and a little more exciting. And it also meant that I had to do a lot of research about her. |
| 0:26.4 | And when I did the research, I mean, of course, I had heard of her, but I just didn't know |
| 0:30.2 | her personally. When I did the research, I found out that she is such a multifaceted, |
| 0:35.5 | interesting person. So if you're not familiar with Tara, she's the founder of Strala Yoga. |
| 0:40.8 | She has well before COVID. She's had a successful yoga studio in New York, by the same name, |
| 0:47.7 | Strala Yoga. She co-founded it with her husband, Mike Taylor. They have a little girl named Daisy. |
| 0:54.0 | And she's always had a really strong online presence. She started a YouTube channel, I want to say |
| 0:59.8 | 12 years ago. She just started it before anybody really knew what the possibilities were there. |
| 1:06.8 | So she has 327,000 YouTube followers. She's the author of, I think now seven books. We talk about |
| 1:15.2 | her latest book on the podcast today. It's called Clean Mind. Clean Body, a 28-day plan for physical, |
| 1:22.3 | mental, and spiritual self-care. She was a former dancer, turned model. The modeling kind of |
| 1:29.6 | happened. Just it was just happenstance. It helped support her early career in the arts. |
| 1:34.8 | And then she found yoga didn't really necessarily think she was going to pursue it as a career. |
| 1:40.4 | But here she is all these years later. And it's just a huge part of her life and her family's life. |
| 1:48.5 | You know, one of the things that's interesting about her is she's kind of always done her own |
| 1:52.4 | thing in the yoga world. So like I said, she was early on in YouTube. And as I was researching her, |
| 1:59.1 | you know, she got a lot of flak for that. People just weren't really ready for it. And she got a lot |
| 2:06.9 | of flak for not, quote unquote, following the rules and following a tradition to a T. And that |
| 2:13.7 | takes a lot of courage. I think, you know, 10, 15 years ago when she started that took a lot of |
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