Stop Trying So Hard: The Power of Living Softly with Tara Stiles

Tara Stiles

Softness isn’t the absence of strength, it’s really the absence of rigidity. And we’re all kind of taught in many different ways that rigidity is what is strength. I kind of become a wall and then I’m strong, but we all know that if you’re rigid, you can get a lot done, which is kind of the myth of strength, but eventually you’ll break down and really you’re not as strong as you can possibly be. So the first foundation of softness is allowing yourself to be mobilized so you can be moved by your breath, by your strength, by each other in conversation. You know that real, okay, I’m listening to you, you’re listening to what’s happening around you. We all want to do that, but when we’re rigid, we can’t even hear each other.

Lorne Brown

By listening to the Coherence Code Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition, either in yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast, where we explore how the mind and body work together so you can move from stress and inner conflict to clarity, calm, and alignment. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. And through my work, I’ve seen that healing happens when we remove what gets in the way and allow the body and the nervous system to do what they’re designed to do to heal. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.

Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast. I’m your host, Lorne Brown. And on this podcast, we explore how to reduce the noise and static that pulls us out of alignment so we can return to greater coherence, a state where the mind becomes clearer, the nervous system more regulated and intuition more accessible. When there’s less resistance, less stress, and less internal noise, healing, creativity, insight, and right action often emerge there naturally. Today’s guest, Tara Stiles, is someone whose work beautifully aligns with these themes. I was introduced to Tara through her good friend, Colleen Wachob, who happens to be the co-founder of mindbodygreen, and I’m grateful for this introduction and now connection. Tara Stiles, let’s talk a little bit about her. She’s the co-founder of Strala Yoga, bestselling author and wellness pioneer who’s helped make yoga more accessible by moving away from rigid dogmatic approaches toward ease, softness, and embodied connection.

She’s also the author of several books, including Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, Make Your Own Rules Diet, and Clean Mind, Clean Body. Her latest book, Living Softly, is to be published in January 2027, and it explores how softness, ease, and connection may be the medicine for a world condition toward force, over-efforting, and chronic stress. I want to let you know that Strala Yoga is now practiced in more than a hundred countries, helping people reconnect to themselves through gentle movement, breath, and awareness. Tara, welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.

Tara Stiles

Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to be able to have a conversation with you and learn so much from all your wisdom. Thanks for being here.

Lorne Brown

Well, Colleen spoke so highly of you when I asked her, “Hey, who else do you know?” And after spending time preparing for our interview by listening to so many interviews you’ve been a part of, I can see why Colleen wanted you to be on my podcast, and I’m really grateful for us to have that connection and now opportunity to see where our conversation unfolds.

Tara Stiles

Oh yeah, she’s awesome. We’ve been wellness buddies before I think we knew the word wellness. It was sort of the mind, body, spirit. We all were looking for a way to do this in a fun, fresh approach. And what she’s co-created with her husband with mindbodygreen has just been so inspirational to watch along the way too.

Lorne Brown

Absolutely. Now our listeners, what I’ve learned, and in the world, I think we’re more the same than different. So a lot of our listeners, they want peace over craziness. They want to have everything. They want to reach their potential, but this idea of over-efforting, they’ve seen that it doesn’t work. And so I thought our conversation, which will touch into your new book, Living Softly, but I want to get into this concept of living softly with you and what it means. And I want to put this part out there is when people come and they start to hear these talks about consciousness and mindfulness, a lot of them are like, “I don’t have time to go move to a mountaintop and leave my family for 40 years to become enlightened. I have kids, I have to take them to daycare. I have a job. I have staff.

How can I go have my latte still and also enjoy what we talk about, the spiritual or consciousness, what I call coherence?” And so I thought the first question to ask you is, what are you writing about in living softly? Why would somebody want to live softly? And do you see a myth around this term softness?

Tara Stiles

Oh gosh, yeah, all of that. I think probably similar to you, I’ve been not even so much looking for this language and vocabulary and action my whole life, but it’s kind of been looking for me through all the different modalities of mindfulness and yoga and the healing arts. And what I’ve really learned and learned from other people is we have this sort of aversion to really actually feeling better, actually believing that that’s a good thing. And what happens with softness, the first sort of big moment to talk about with so many people is our addiction and the culture that we’re swimming in of the no pain, no gain. And whether you’ve been taught it your whole life, like I certainly have, it’s like work as hard as you can, beat yourself up along the way, take a vacation here and there, get a good job, save money, and then die.

Somewhere along the way, you’re allowed to have a good time maybe on Saturday night or whatever, but there’s a whole lot of back and forth within that. And what I’ve learned with these practices and these foundations of softness is really having a good look at our no pain, no gain culture that we’re all kind of swimming in, whether we believe it or not, and really that internalized real idea that we have to have stress as a sign of success. And then when we start chatting about that, that’s why conversation is so great. Oh, you’re like that too. There’s nothing wrong with me. Then we can really start to take a look at these practices of, okay, how do we soften? And do we want that? How do we achieve more with less tension? How do we feel good and accomplish things in our life, not just collapse on the couch, but we really want to do things and feel good along the way, which so far in all my looking for has really not been told to me otherwise through the practices of softness and connection and things like this.

Lorne Brown

And in this idea of softness, I want us to go even deeper into it. You’re not suggesting that you are weak and not doing things in this world. It’s not that you’re not doing, but there’s a different texture or energy behind you doing this. So again, I want to just keep unpacking this because is there a power or strength to softness?

Tara Stiles

Yeah, it’s incredible. I mean, the last decades or so of workshopping this with people, the first step is mobilizing yourself. And softness isn’t the absence of strength, it’s really the absence of rigidity. And we’re all kind of taught in many different ways that rigidity is what is strength. I kind of become a wall and then I’m strong, but we all know that if you’re rigid, you can get a lot done, which is kind of the myth of strength, but eventually you’ll break down and really you’re not as strong as you can possibly be. So the first foundation of softness is allowing yourself to be mobilized so you can be moved by your breath, by your strength, by each other in conversation that real, okay, I’m listening to you, you’re listening to what’s happening around you. We all want to do that, but when we’re rigid, we can’t even hear each other.

So it’s a real trust also and practice in ourselves to allow ourselves to try on that, what does it feel like to be mobilized? Where am I carrying extra tension? And how can I keep coming back to that as a practice? And then people start to feel like, oh wow, I feel good. That’s great, but wait a minute, I’m getting more done. More things are working. I’m having better conversation with my neighbors. I have more energy. We get more and more proof in a way that softness is a path to not just rest and feel better, but also achieve more, which is what we all sort of really want at the end of the day.

Lorne Brown

Yeah, you still get to do and achieve, which is beautiful, this aspect of it. It reminds me of in 2000 when I started my Chinese medicine practice, my logo had the bamboo on it. And the reason I chose the bamboo, this is what you’re reminding me of what you’re sharing is I like the bamboo because it was strong but flexible. So you could bend it and do stuff and it wouldn’t break, but it has some strength to it because of the softness, flexibility. And in nature, if there’s a strong wind and the branches and the leaves try to hold onto the wind, the leaves fall off and the branch can snap. But if the branch has some flexibility to it, then it will touch it. The wind will touch the leaves and the branches, but they don’t break. And so I see the softness is it’s not that you’re immune to life, but it does not break you.

And it gives you the ability to tap into something where you get your strength. Am I understanding your approach to this?

Tara Stiles

Oh yeah. And that’s why, I mean, the healing arts that you teach and spread all says this. And I’ve taken tons of workshops in shiatsu and a little bit of here and there. And I keep asking the question, how do we do this when we’re not doing shiatsu? Or I’m not going to become an acupuncture person, but how can I do this in my life? And it’s exactly what you said. When you mobilize yourself and let your breath move you, suddenly your inhales carry you one way, just like that bamboo swaying in the breeze. And the inhale helps you do work, helps you get stuff done, helps your strength and your exhale. Every exhale becomes a release, a relax, sort of like a vacation in a way you can really let go with every exhale. So I was taking these healing arts workshops to secretly not become a healing arts practitioner, but to figure out how to do my life better and how to sway with the breeze better when I’m with my child and parents and work and all these things.

I want to stand alone at the airport and be that bamboo and not be one more person panicking at the airport.

Lorne Brown

Well, we all act like wifi, right? So we

Tara Stiles

So we can

Lorne Brown

Soften inside, then we’re affecting the field as well. But I think we’re similar this way because it looks like you’ve studied Tai Chi, shiatsu, qigong, yoga. I have all these certificates, like certifications. I’m a kinesthetic learner, so I don’t just want to read about it. I want to learn it and then practice it on some people. And so it sounds like you’re kind of that person too. You kind of go two feet in and really learn about certain healing arts. Is that my take from what I’ve seen from you?

Tara Stiles

Oh yeah, I love that. I mean, I grew up as a dancer and then yoga was in my ballet program. So that was my first moment of, oh my gosh, there’s something I can do physically that can help my life, not just perform with dance and things like that. But yoga for me was from a teenager on, that was sort of it. And then more and more, when you do one thing, the other people kind of find you say, oh, if you try this, if you try this. And I started learning about tai chi and qigong and shiatsu, and I thought, well, I don’t want to become a collector of many things, but there’s all of this wisdom in all of these things that can help whatever it is that I’m doing as my main thing. And my main thing, I think most people is just life.

I want to feel better and I teach yoga. That’s part of what I do. But I respect these healing arts so much that I don’t want to just take a million hours of shiatsu and then become a shiatsu person. I can do that, what I learned with the people in classes and lean on them better and lean on myself better and family members. I think that’s such a wonderful way to use these healing arts. We don’t all necessarily have to become practitioners professionally, but you can really use them in your life in many meaningful ways. I think that’s super cool.

Lorne Brown

I’ve got to set an attention here to that because I want to learn a little bit about you and Strala yoga, where you’ve come from, where you are today. And my intention for our listeners is to circle back about, okay, so how do we bring this all together to choose peace over craziness? So you have the resilience and the desire and the power to do the things, but coming from this place of softness, not over-efforting. But let’s start with Strala yoga. So you talked about you were a dancer and you created Strala yoga. And I think people need to know, I mean, I’ve heard the story, but I’d love for you to share, A, what does Strala yoga mean? What does it include? And I think it’s important people to know how it started in a living room and now it’s in hundred countries as well.

So when you get that softness, how things can unfold, the universe kind of gets your back and you get all these synchronicities happening. But what is Strala yoga and how did it start for you?

Tara Stiles

Yeah, I think my story is similar with a lot of people who found something that they really like to do. And then in whatever way that makes sense for people, the universe just kept throwing things at me to continue. And when I was dancing, I had the yoga in my program. I thought this was amazing. And my ballet teacher saw that I was really into it. And he gave me that book, Autobiography of a Yogi. And I was like, “What is this? I’m a teenager. No one’s ever given me any book before and had some kind of emotion.

Lorne Brown

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed that they’ve read that book and that was a big change for them. So you as well. Okay. Say it again so people know. Everybody, pretty much 50% of the people that I’ve interviewed, that was the turning point for them. So you might as well just read that book. Go ahead. Tell it again.

Tara Stiles

Yeah, just read the book. It’s called Autobiography of a Yogi. It’s like 600 pages. It’s ridiculous. But it’s just one of those books that you can just go through and hear the life story of that of Yogananda. But then it’s kind of through his awakening and bringing yoga to the West. And that’s happened a bunch of times that you can see yourself in. And I was a teenager and I read the whole thing because no one ever gave me a book. I said, “I have to read the whole thing and take this seriously.”\ \ Lorne Brown

You’re an overachiever back then. I got it.

Tara Stiles

Well, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to follow the rules.” And then I even went to the center on the back in San Diego on Christmas break. I said, “I’m going to find my way there.” I took the train or something and went there. And that was my first moment of saying, “Okay, yoga is just like everything else. There’s so many things happening.” But I kept thinking, “Why aren’t my friends going to this?” At that time I was a teenager. Where are the young people? It seemed like there was a lot of people there who had had a lot of life experience and were coming after a lot of tragedy happened in a way. And it felt to me that movie Girl, Interrupted was popular then. I was like, “This looks like Girl, Interrupted.” A lot of people just kind of wandering around and I need to find my people or maybe invite more people here.

Maybe this can become something really for everybody. So I think that idea –

Lorne Brown

We have to put this in context. So you’re a teenager, you’re saying, where are the people yoga? Yoga wasn’t like it is today. So what year was this, just so people get a little context?

Tara Stiles

Yeah, this was the mid to late ’90s. So obviously yoga’s very old. Everybody’s like, “Don’t you know yoga’s a lot older than that?” The

Lorne Brown

Ones that are on every street corner.

Tara Stiles

Yeah. It wasn’t a thing in studios really so much. There was the institutions and these old places that magically owned a building or hundreds of acres of land and nobody really knows why there’s people there doing things. But it’s not like now where you can go to any city and you roll into a place and you get a gift bag and a selfie. And that definitely wasn’t happening at all. So I wasn’t really looking for the gift bag and a selfie, but I was looking for a reason why more people weren’t doing this. This was amazing. This can help your stress and your life and your back pain and whatever’s going on, it can help a little bit. So I think that was my original idea. And then when I started leading yoga, I took a bunch of workshops that were there and it was kind of the beginning of teacher trainings and I took some of those, but I wasn’t interested in really teaching in what I saw as more of a dogmatic or rigid approach.

I thought, “Well, my friends aren’t coming to this. This is what’s already offered. Maybe I can lean into what I’m learning with dance and some meditation and keep it more easygoing.” And I didn’t really understand softness back then, but I thought there’s simple things I can do where if somebody’s in a forward bend and they can’t touch their toes instead of telling them that’s the goal, I can say, “Well, just bend your knees and roll around a little bit.” And things I sort of knew about the body from dance I was bringing into yoga movements and forms. And suddenly without trying to be so obviously different, a lot of my age people were coming and then other ages as well and saying, “Well, this feels good. I can do this and I’m achieving more and I’m not feeling like I have to be dogmatic or rigid or going in, like you said before, to a mountaintop and all these old stereotypes of yoga.” So it really started as an idea of how to move well and connect to yourself and really have the yoga practice feel like you instead of you coming to this sort of practice that’s in a way outside of yourself.

So that was just the idea in my head. And like you said, one thing keeps leading to another when you have an idea that can be helpful. Now we have partner studios and people like to do it in this way. Some people do, and it’s kind of spread around the world pretty nicely.

Lorne Brown

We went from living room to now you have studios and teachers trainings and apps.

Tara Stiles

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s nice. But it really is the same intention of moving well, connecting with yourself. Still, a lot of yoga feels. Yoga’s come so far. When I was starting out, I mean, this sounds strange now for most people listening, but I would play some kind of soft music, like a little classic rock or Eddie Vedder or anything that sounded nice, but familiar in a way. I wanted people to relax. And that was almost seen as sacrilege to my yoga friends. They were like, “You can’t do that. That’s not allowed.” And I was like, “Well, let’s maybe open up a little bit the rules and see what we can do.” And so things like that I would do. And I would describe the movement sort of frame by frame, step by step. And I wasn’t trying to not say the Sanskrit names of the poses necessarily, but I just suddenly realized that I wasn’t doing that because I was describing step-by-step how to get there.

And again, my yoga friends were saying, “You’re not saying the Sanskrit names.” And then I thought about it, said, “Well, my friends that are coming, they’ve never done yoga. And it may be nice for them just to hear how to get into the pose instead of another thing that they have to process mentally.” So we were just breaking the rules, but in a way that had good intentions, I suppose.

Lorne Brown

A nice, respectful way. And people gravitated to it. Look, you’re in a hundred countries now.

Tara Stiles

Yeah, it’s nice. And again, I think yoga also has come a long way. I meet young people now that don’t necessarily know anything about me, and they say, “Yeah, I’m never going to force myself in a yoga pose. I do it in a way that feels good for me.” And I play music, and so I’m like, “Hey, maybe I had a little something to do with that.” But I think we were trying to go in this direction maybe all together as well.

Lorne Brown

Full transparency. I don’t practice yoga, but maybe your app will help me. So I did try. I went to, I bought a month session, this is years ago. And the reason I stopped was one is I just did not look as good in all the Lululemon clothes as everybody else in the room. And two was when I sit on a 90-degree angle, that is a stretch for me so I felt like such a failure. And just trying to do a few of the poses, I was just sweating so much because it took so much effort. And I just felt like, actually, I need a kindergarten course first before I go to a yoga class. So can Strala yoga meet somebody where I’m at where, and now I’m that much older, even less flexible. Putting on my socks could be an effort. That’s not a good sign, by the way, everybody. I have some fascia issues that I’m starting to work on, but because we’re interviewing as I was listening and preparing, I was like, maybe it’s time to give this another effort or attempt at least. And I’m curious, here’s somebody coming to your class or asking you, “Hey, I can’t even touch my toes. Actually, sitting at a 90-degree angle is a stretch. Where would you meet me?

Or do you think maybe I should go somewhere else?”

Tara Stiles

No, you’re fine. I mean, that’s been my whole goal all along, just everybody’s included. So we’ve got a lot of people, a lot like you, just sitting on the ground leaning back however is comfortable for you. And I think that’s a real shift in belief system that sitting up at a 90-degree angle doesn’t need to be the goal for you or for anybody. It’s noticing how you can be in a comfortable position and move around step by step and see what happens, notice how you feel, all of that stuff. And I think that’s what’s always been different about what we offer with Strala is people really are all different just like the forest, but everybody’s basically doing a similar thing, but really the pose is not the goal. So it just is set up in the environment, but I’ll set you up with the videos online to see how it goes.

But you’ve got tons of people with all kinds of different bodies doing their own thing. But when it’s really about the movement and connecting to yourself, then it does open the door for the pose or the position not to be the goal. It’s connecting with yourself while you’re still moving really well along the way. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of people just starting laying down like, “Okay, that feels okay. What can you do from there? A little side to side, a little board and back.” So we’ve had people in the studio coming, a girl that’s become a good friend of mine, she had cancer and had her foot removed. And she came in the beginning and she said, “I’ve heard about you guys and I don’t want anybody to treat me differently.” And I went to a few places and everybody treated me special and brought over a chair.

And she’s like, “I don’t want that. I can get around in my life.” And I said, “Well, if you can get around in your life, if you walked in here, you’re fine.”

So she just did the regular classes and she didn’t need any special instruction from me. She just adjusted herself. And she came for years and years and years, and hardly anybody at the studio even noticed that she didn’t have a foot because nobody really looks down. And I think that was her favorite part about being in our community. She said, “Everybody treated me the same because you just left me alone and treated me like everybody else.” So we do what we can. And then suddenly you look around and you’re like, “Hey, this is just like life. Everybody’s doing their best. There’s no, oh no, I can’t do that or my outfit’s not as good or whatever.” That just doesn’t need to be a part of it for sure.

Lorne Brown

And part of your journey, did you end up creating an outfit line? Was it with Reebok anyhow? Did you not change the clothing a bit for yoga as well to be more authentic for you?

Tara Stiles

Yeah. Well, I always felt like it was nicer to just be comfortable and even not to wear things. I mean, when Lululemon came out, I thought that was kind of interesting because it was sort of Spanx before Spanx. Even their advertisement was like, suck it in. Be different than you are. And I always like to wear just sweatpants and T-shirts and things like that. So when Reebok approached me, I thought, well, first of all, this is a great opportunity to just do more and maybe earn a nice paycheck along the way. But I said, if I’m going to do this with you guys, I’d love to create clothes that don’t say there’s something wrong with you, that don’t say you need to do something better. Just comfy clothes. We made a shirt that said, who made the rules? I can’t believe they let me do that.

So that was our first shirt. We had knitted rainbow pants that were kind of a tary color and lots of cozy sweatpants and T-shirts and for the guys as well. So that was a real fun time. I mean, obviously it’s clothes and it’s not the most important thing, but it really did. I kind of look back at the apparel history that was the early 2010s and it was just kind of Lululemon back then and a few smaller indie brands doing nice things. And really that whole sort of comfy athleisure wear has developed out of that. But also some of that is kind of silly in my opinion, overpriced sweatpants. You can just go to a regular store and get any sweatpants and it’s fine. So I like doing that with Reebok and that was a nice time. But I really wanted to just show the message of it’s okay to be comfortable.

It’s actually better to take care of yourself and choose whatever you want to wear that helps you feel good and cozy. So go for that.

Lorne Brown

Going back to the softness topic now as well, I want to do this bidirectional because we’re talking about the clothes being comfy and we were talking about my inflexibility. I’ll tell you one of the reasons why I’m motivated to look into your yoga, for example. So I’m aware I’m very inflexible. And because I practice Chinese medicine, I understand how not good that is for your health long-term, right? Flexibility. And you talked about the bamboo and softness. I’m also aware that everything’s bidirectional. So the mind and the emotions and the physical. So I work a lot and do the mind work of becoming soft. And if the mind becomes soft, the body becomes softer and vice versa. It’s bidirectional. So when I see how inflexible I am, I sometimes question, maybe I’m not as far on this journey as I think mine in the mental perspective, but I think it’s really important.

And with your Strala yoga, what I read about it is it seems to have an integrative approach, which is often how I like to approach things in my clinic. And integrative as in, so there’s yoga, it’s in the name, yoga. It sounds like there’s a Tai Chi component, maybe a little bit of TCM and even

Tara Stiles

Qigong

Lorne Brown

Which is part of TCM. So that’s what I’ve read about it. So what is in the name of Strala? What was the intention? And is that what is included in your yoga? Yoga, Tai Chi, TCM, Qigong? The reason I was like, “Oh, this is really interesting,” is one of my teachers in Qigong said something that always stuck with me, and it’s how I look for types of body work or movement, like your background in dance. She said her style of qigong included three things because you need this for energy, movement. So she said movement, breath and intention. Qigong includes movement. So there’s a movement to it. It wasn’t a sitting qigong. There’s a form of breathing with it and intention. And we discussed about a magnet. To create energy, you have to have movement or a windmill. There’s got to be movement to generate that energy.

And so when your body work has some movement to it, breath and there’s intention or mindfulness, things can happen. And so I was curious, does that align with Strala then? Movement, breath, and intention?

Tara Stiles

Yeah. I mean, we should get you to write the copy for the website. That’s all it. And really what you were saying about flexibility, what I love working with, how we work with people with Strala is looking for that harmony. So it’s not about more, more, more in any direction, really strength or flexibility. It’s doing the movements which are set up to be healthy for you anyway. There’s some movements within the wonderful vocabulary of yoga that will unravel your hips and aren’t that good for you, that have been historically for street performers. And we don’t need to be putting both feet behind our head.That’s not something. We can look at that one and say, okay, it’s actually a good idea to evolve and to look at the past and say, there’s a lot of things in here that are great and there’s some things that we don’t need to be looking for more and more and more to unravel your hips and knees and be super duper flexible.

So what I love about the healing arts that you teach and explore with Tai Chi and Qigong, they have that written in the movement is looking for harmony, whole self-harmony. So always sort of looking around each position of how is this helping my strength? How is this helping my flexibility? And really noticing how you feel along the way. So if you’re just going for the pose and say a runner stretch or whatever it is, and the pose is the goal, you ignore how you feel or that intention really kind of gets squashed and you’re just trying to sort of make the shape happen. I always thought that was a really big miss in a way. And you do get more when you move well, focus on that whole harmony, which Tai Chi and Qigong teaches you. It’s all about moving well because the movements are essentially so simple.

Especially with qigong, you stand, you shake your arms. But you’re looking at your body position and really that all the time alignment. And I think yoga historically has gotten some of that wrong where it just Just looks at the position and then you forget about how you get to the next position and then you look at that position. But really with sort of modern yoga and the movement of yoga, it’s really nice to lean into these wise healing arts of all the time alignment and the harmony of Tai Chi and the harmony of qigong. And really what happens when you allow your breath to move. If you’re hanging out in a warrior two, instead of clenching every muscle or really fidgeting with yourself, which you can do with yoga, you can choose to mobilize yourself and then tap into that whole body harmony, let your breath take you outward and then bring you inward.

Then suddenly that way, not that it’s a competition, but you can stay longer and get stronger than a version of you that’s really trying to sort of just power through the warrior two and be really overly rigid about it. So all of those, not just philosophies from Tai Chi and Qigong and Shiatsu are wonderful, but how do we put them into practice in the movements? And that’s kind of what we’ve done really in a sneaky way with Strala because we don’t really talk so much in the classes about, okay, this is from Shiatsu, this is from Tai Chi, but you just do it. And then maybe if you come to a workshop or a training, we get into it and people are like, “Oh, that’s why it works.” But really I just want people coming to classes to say, “Oh wow, I’m doing this.” And suddenly they’re talking in a Tai Chi way.

I feel more harmonized. I feel more connected with my intuition, but nobody told you necessarily to connect to your intuition. You’re doing that with the physicality of the movement step by step by step. So that’s what’s so great I think about the healing arts because you can do them without any sort of language that can be misconstrued as pretentious or dogmatic. You just do the thing and then suddenly you become tai chi at the airport. You become more harmonized at the grocery store.

Lorne Brown

Well, I think the fact that you didn’t have that as the goal, then people did not become attached to it.

And so they were just doing the practice. You become tai chi, and then there’s no resistance. I have this process, which I’m going to briefly, my listeners know this, but for you it’ll be the first time hearing it. It was kind of like a download. It’s called Notice, Accept, Choose Again. So when you were talking about the poses, noticing how you feel, that is the first key step. Notice, make the unconscious conscious and start to just observe what you feel without judgment, without analyzing it, just become aware of it. And I got the sense that you’re sharing that. And the whole goal of notice, accept, and the notice, accept, choose again, is to allow the resistance to drop because when you have resistance, you’re blocking the flow and receptivity that comes through you, which I think people would call intuition, feeling that authenticity inside of yourself.

Tara Stiles

Yeah. I mean, I think I got lucky in that because I didn’t feel sort of like an authority. I mean, I still don’t. I would feel silly if I got in the front of the room and started talking about giving a big lecture on tai chi, because somebody’s going to be there that knows more than me about it. It’s going to happen. So I might as well just do the best with what I know. And I think because I started so young, I’ve just always had that real approach. But yeah, I think it is kind of a nice, not that it’s sneaky, but a great way to get people to experience and enjoy that practice without thinking, okay, now I’m doing tai chi. If somebody really read on our website, because we have it on there, it incorporates tai chi and shiatsu. Sometimes these people come to workshops and they say, “I’m here to do tai chi.” And I’m like, “Oh gosh, you’re going to do it, but you’re probably more of an expert.” I’ve done a lot of it too, but we’re not necessarily.

Tai chi is just less popular than yoga, so it just hasn’t had a chance to be as dogmatic yet. The form is so wonderful and the foundations I think are even more wonderful because tai chi, a lot of people physically just get their knees hurt because a lot of the forms are standing. So if you’re doing it incorrectly or if you have knee problems to start off with, then that’s the first thing to go. But I love this real practice that you can do the tai chi, you can do the shiatsu in your yoga, which is what I’ve just. I was like, “Why wouldn’t we just put it in here?” But you can do it in your gardening, you bring your shovel closer, then you don’t hurt your back. You can do it when you’re talking with somebody. I learned how to have better conversations, not because I became a better speaker, but I figured out, oh, I can move my body a little bit more in a comfortable position.

Tai chi has this wonderful line, never suffer a bad position. And I’m like, oh, that’s the opposite that I learned in grade school. You learn to sit up straight and just pay attention, but you can still pay attention. But if you move yourself around a little bit when you get uncomfortable to be comfortable again, suddenly you’re more receptive to listening and learning. And I’m like, “This stuff is just so good. I have to keep doing it and share it however I can.”

Lorne Brown

With your living softly or living, what is the actual title going to be? Do you know

Tara Stiles

Yet?

Lorne Brown

Is it set firm?

Tara Stiles

Yes, it’s called living softly. All right.

Lorne Brown

So I want to use the right term. Living softly. It’s something that you take into your life. And where I really connected to listening about this with you is I heard you once say something that really resonated with me on the yoga mat, off the yoga mat. And I’m going to ask you to unpack it a bit, but I want to share my experience because I have this approach, NAC, and somebody once asked me, “Do you meditate?” And I didn’t know how to answer it because I actually don’t, although I do sometimes sit and meditate, the word I would say is I’m in meditation.

So throughout the day, I’m notice, accept, and choose again. I don’t have to go and sit for 20 minutes in the morning or afternoon. People don’t have to be like, “I’m going to meditate.” I could be in the worst experience and go into this NAC. So I would share that, yeah, I guess I meditate, but really it’s in meditation. And so I’m not meditating, then I am meditating. I am unaware, and then I am aware throughout the day. And maybe I missed the boat here, but when I heard you talk about it, but it didn’t get really unpacked, so I want to unpack it. On the yoga mat, off the yoga mat, I thought we were talking the same language there, but now I want you to confirm or not that I understood you correctly.

Tara Stiles

Yeah, I think it’s exactly the same. In the book, I have these little practices that I’ve been workshopping for the last decade or so, and I just call them softness breaks, which I think is the same thing as your NAC. And they’re little things you can do, but the idea is to, same kind of thing, slow down, soften, notice how you feel, and respond with care. And there’s some physicality, but I completely love that I have a friend now and at least practicing all the time meditation whenever we remember. I have a softness break in the book on cutting carrots. And it’s like I could be cutting carrots in the kitchen with my shoulder tense or I can find my center, wiggle a little bit, and then let my center move the knife. And then suddenly the carrots are being cut and I’m hardly doing any work.

And I love putting those softness breaks, same as your NACs in moments of the day when I can remember to do them. And then if I can have a chance at that, I can be doing them really more of the time or I can notice more when I’m freaking out and then come back to another softness break or NAC, same kind of thing. So I love that.

Lorne Brown

And what you’re teaching is so simple, right? It’s so simple.

Tara Stiles

So simple.

Lorne Brown

To me, that is the biggest risk of the whole process because when something simple, people dismiss it.

Tara Stiles

100%.

Lorne Brown

Yeah. And that’s part of the training. We’ve been trained that it has to be complicated, it has to be hard to have value. But this is one of those things that small actions done daily lead to massive results over time. And so it becomes that practice. And when I was hearing you talk about living softly, I think the people’s biggest fear is that how am I going to keep my big position? How am I going to write my books? How am I going to do all this? But you’re not saying that you’re going to sit on the couch and just be, are you?

And in Chinese medicine, yin and yang in relationship means you need the yin to have the yang. Yin is receptivity, it’s stillness. yang is activity. I think you go back several hundred years, it was important to have a yang, and I’m purposely not using masculine feminine because they already have a charge. Really, you should just use what the terms are, yin and yang, because a woman could be masculine, yang, and a man can be yin feminine. So it’s just yin and yang, the relative terms. So several hundred years ago, we needed a yang culture, otherwise we’d still be living in the dirt and nobody would’ve vented the wheel or the fire. We would just be dying at the age of 10. In 2026 when we’re recording this, we are so yang. Yang and yin are out of relationship, so we have so much disease in our society and in our bodies.

So now we need the time of yin time. We need actually more quiet stillness. We’re so good at the yang, but when yang is excessive, it becomes disease. Just so you know, when yin is excessive, becomes disease and they’re constantly waxing and waning. So we’re in a time where we are thirsting for yin and living softly is a yin aspect. However, it doesn’t mean there’s no yawn to it. The yawn comes from the yin. So you will actually be more productive most likely, and you’ll do it when you’re being called to do it versus you think you should because society’s telling you or somebody else is telling you. But this is again, that yin aspect is coming through you and then you’re being called into action. And I get the sense, although there was stress with any growing business, it wasn’t like we’re going to become billionaires.

It was kind of like, we’re going to be powerful good. We’re going to change things. It made you feel good. And how do we monetize it? I’m guessing that you didn’t ignore the money, but the money wasn’t the priority, but money does get considered. It was more about, this feels authentic to me. I’m excited to bring this out into the world and how can we monetize it versus I need an idea to make me lots of money. And so can you touch more on that? Because people are afraid to lose that aspect that I’m going to be poor, I’m going to lose my job. And it’s counterintuitive, but my sense is you actually have more and get more by doing less.

Tara Stiles

Exactly. And I mean that literally is the subtitle. It seems crazy. I mean, my mom even looked at the. I showed her the cover and the subtitle is How to Achieve More by Doing Less. And she’s been knowing about what I’ve been doing since I’ve shared with her. And she says, “Well, I don’t want that. I want to get more, but I want to also do more.” So my mom and I have a little bit of a relationship anyway, but it’s meant to be thought-provoking in that way because essentially I share that fear. If I relax, am I going to achieve? And I think the most incredible thing about working with people over the years is say you take yourself as a high achiever. If somebody sits you down that you respect and they say, “You’re doing 30% of what you could possibly be doing in your life financially, emotionally, impact-wise, that’s all you got.

You’re running on 10 out of 10 energy, but you’re only getting 30%. What if I could show you how to get 80, 90, 100%?” You would all say, “Okay, how do I do that? This is how you do it.”

Lorne Brown

This is how you do it.

Tara Stiles

This is how you get more because we’re all addicted. We think when you’re running on 10 out of 10 energy, you feel like there’s no way I could possibly do anything more. I’m maxing out. I’m working so hard. There’s a lot of that guilt and that virtue of stress being entangled with doing a good job or doing something good for society. There’s that I’m depleting myself in order to provide good for somebody else. And a lot of us have that kind of stuff tangled up or if it’s just pedal to the metal, crush it, that kind of 5 AM culture, you can still get up at 5 AM and achieve if that’s what you want to do. But we’re talking about with living softly, achieving more with less tension. So it’s not achieving less. That line, if you like that line on a graph, that’s going to go way up.

Forget about that line. Focus on everything you’re doing where there’s extra tension. So for a lot of people who like to think about exercise, you can hold a plank pose for as long as you can. And if you put in the maximum amount of effort in that, which people mostly do right away, okay, I’m going into my plank pose. Boom, here I go. They do that. You can time yourself to see how long you can do that. Give yourself a little rest. Do it again. Get yourself in a good body position, mobilize yourself, let your breath move you. And then from there, look for the same as you call it, woo-wei. Look for using only what you need, resting what you don’t. So bringing maybe more of that yin in, but you’re still containing the yang energy. You’re there doing it, but look where you can do less.

And that plank pose isn’t any less valuable than the crazy plank in the beginning or the forceful plank, but that one you can hold so much longer. I do this with big, strong guys just to make a point. I’m not very competitive like this, but I’m like, “Okay, let’s do a plank post. Let’s see who wins.” And I’ve got these, compared to them, scrawny body. And I always win. I’m not going to win the heaviest weight, but I can always win in this one thing because I can control myself and calm down and be there and use my own energy the best that I can. And I won’t win any Guinness Book of World Records holding a plank pose, but it’s one way to show yourself that, oh my gosh, there’s one little proof that I got more. Whether you’re writing a book or sending an email, where can you relax while you’re doing that mentally, physically, emotionally?

Where are you holding extra tension? There’s a softness break in the book where this is a practice from shiatsu where you crawl down to the ground or on your desk even pick up a pencil with the least amount of effort and then put it back down. And then do that 10 times and see if you can improve at how much energy you use and how much energy that you don’t use just picking up that pencil. Because most people just pick it up and they’re like, “I’ve got the pencil. Ready to go.” But do you need to do that? Do you need to waste all the energy? You can think about efficiency in any other way of life, like space exploration. They have to be efficient in that little capsule in Artemis two. In Artemis three, they have to figure it out. So somehow in our lives, because the stakes are not visible, they’re not so high in just daily life.

We get tired or burned out. We’re not really looking at that efficiency or how to relax more while you’re doing the hard thing. So that’s really the sort of meat of how softness works. And it’s just so exciting to me.

Lorne Brown

And I like how you brought up the term wu-wei. In today’s modern day, they would call it work smarter, not harder. And wu-wei, there’s so many definitions of it, but one that I always talk with is you’re not forcing it. It doesn’t mean no effort.

It’s just, as you put it, you’re being efficient with your effort. And when I was a young guy, I’m in my late 50s, so when I was a young guy and people were doing things and I was in more of a competitive versus a cooperative collaborative energy, so as a young guy, I was never worried about anything because I said, “I can outwork anybody.” I had such a work ethic. I’ll outwork. They won’t last because I can outwork anybody. And I realized why older people get into, “Hey, they’re going to love your book because we don’t have the resources to outwork everybody. We burn out.” I went through that once badly and then almost a second time where you need to live softly where, hey, I still want to live with purpose. Our listeners, they want to create, they want to participate, but they don’t want to burn out and they don’t want to suffer.

And they want to enjoy the expression, enjoy the journey, not just the destination. And so this is what I get from the book that you’re about to publish is that you can be in this material world and create and do things and you can enjoy it and you can do it in an efficient way so you’re not in crazy, you’re in that peace state versus crazy. And that’s why I can’t wait to read it.

Behind me, that’s a real library. That’s not a Image, whatever, green screen. But in front of me is bookshelves of all the people I’ve interviewed, signed books.

Tara Stiles

So we’ll have to figure out a way.

Lorne Brown

I can’t wait to read your book when it comes out. That will be a lot of fun.

Tara Stiles

Oh my gosh. Yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, I’m hoping it, I know it just from people I’ve talked to just in our community, they’re doing this. But also with younger people, I think there’s that challenge as well. They’re sort of more interested in self-care, but there’s this, maybe for some of them, I don’t want to get in trouble for this, but some of the work ethic is lacking a little bit that we had maybe growing up.

Lorne Brown

Yeah. No, I have children in their 20s and it’s different.

Tara Stiles

It’s different. But I think because they’ve responded to us banging our heads against the wall, and that’s a pendulum swing. So I think a lot of young people like doing yoga with us because we’re not the no pain, no gain yoga, but they still kind of say, “Wow, I’m actually working hard and I’m okay with that. I’m working hard and I’m not destroying myself.” So I’m hoping to help find some age group healing along the way.

Lorne Brown

And I mean your market for sure are going to be those in the 40s and beyond because what happens is, “Hey, I got the job, I got the money, I got the partner, I got everything, and I’m still not happy.”

And then people are turning inward saying, “Okay, what do I need to do?” And that’s been for thousands of years millennia where they say that the material can’t fill you up. It’s temporary, it’s pleasure. Everything that you get on the outside is a form of pleasure and pleasure doesn’t last. But this connection to yourself, this becoming authentic and knowing who you are is something that doesn’t. It’s there whether you’re making money or not making money, whether you’re in a relationship or not in a relationship, whether you have a disease or don’t have a disease, that part is there. And Eckhart Tolle wrote the book, The Power of Now. It stuck with me. He says, “You can be at peace in an unhappy situation. External world doesn’t match what you would like. It’s not part of your desire, but still you’re able to tap into this aspect where there’s this underlying peace and joy.” And again, that’s what I think your book is going to provide us.

Do you think so?

Tara Stiles

Yeah, I hope so. That your attention, right? I hope so. Yeah. I mean, it’s a lot of practicality things too, practical things too. I mean, noticing how you feel and responding with care is that same thing of the power of now. It’s, okay, whatever’s going on, what can you do about it? What can you do about it for yourself? How can you move around yourself? I mean, I opened the book with a story sitting next to my dad with Parkinson’s, and he had come to a lot of my yoga classes and seen me do things in the world and been proud and experienced that. But I was sitting next to him saying, “Well, okay, this moment is really hard for him. He’s suffering. I can move myself in a better position instead of taking on his suffering or worrying or raising my shoulders.” So I did that and I just took his hand and did the.

A lot of people know this one just from flying. You just press your thumb into the center of the palm and it’s meant to calm down that point. But I just did this simple thing. And after a few breaths, he turned to me and I could see in his eyes, and we spoke about it. He said, “I’m having an experience. Is this what you show people? This is what you share with people. This is really good. This is awesome.” So even in a moment of a challenging moment for him, definitely, but a challenging moment for me in a different way, I was able to feel better and make a good connection. And so was he. It wasn’t like, okay, this is just for me or this is just for him. It was a together project in a way. And I think the healing arts say that so well.

Healing doesn’t happen by manipulation, somebody doing something to somebody else. If there’s healing, it’s a response to a good relationship or a reaction to something that’s happening. And I think that’s really wonderful how you describe that within your check-ins. But that same idea of checking in with yourself, noticing how you feel, responding with care. And then maybe there’s a reaction. You’re not forcing it, you’re opening the door for it. You’re not trying to. I always think of things, I’m like, how can I understand this? If my friend’s coming to pick me up, I can’t get in the car before they’re there. So why am I anticipating where my hand’s going to go on the door handle? It’s like you wait for them to come, you open the door, you get in. We can either anticipate and control how we feel about everything and imagine all the situations or be in the now, the power of now.

But how do we do that with the practices of getting in a good body position, softening yourself, noticing how you feel? There’s a real action to doing this. It’s an action to keep coming back to, not just a mental, okay, I can read a nice book about it, but how do I bring this into my life physically?

Lorne Brown

Yeah, the value is not in the knowledge. The value’s in the application of the knowledge. And so I was that guy that read all the books and could preach it, but wasn’t living it. And people got well because you can become enlightened from an unenlightened master. Yeah,

Tara Stiles

It works just the

Lorne Brown

Same.Because they did the work. They did the process work. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom that I had to do the work. There’s an effort behind this softness. It’s not like you’re just

Tara Stiles

Soft. Oh, yeah.

Lorne Brown

There’s an effort. And what I share, I have that left brain, right brain trying to integrate them. I’m a past life CPA, chartered accountant, bachelor of science and math. So I got the left brain. And when I started doing this work, and I think we have a connection, because one of the very first spiritual teacher. Actually, we’re going to go on a tangent everybody. This could go weird. This may get edited out. I was into the diet and lifestyle. That’s how I found this when I was sick in the ’90s and when I was studying to be an accountant. And somebody who was working with me gave me a polarity therapy, and I got to a place where I could not train more or eat better. I was just clean, good, and there was still something missing. He says, “It’s time to go spiritual basically.” And he gave me a book by Osho, Bugwe Tree Westees.

And I remember, I’ve heard somewhere, but you also read one of his books. Were you ever into the Osho stuff?

Tara Stiles

Oh yeah, all of them. I loved how Osho was just so wild and contradicted himself. And if you look into the things, it’s all very. There’s a lot of crazy things that aren’t so nice that happened too, but that’s where I got the name Strala, just combining strength and balance and awareness. I thought those were nice things that yoga gave you. And then I found out a few months later, a Swedish journalist came to interview me about strala. She said, “So great you created this yoga studio called Strala.” And I said, “Well, it doesn’t really mean anything. I just strengthen, balance, and awareness from some Osho books.” And she said, “Well, in Swedish, it means to radiate light and to beam brightly and to smile broadly and to beam from within.” And I was like, “Well, that’s perfect. I’ll take that.” It’

Lorne Brown

Already there, right?

Tara Stiles

It’s already there.

Lorne Brown

E equals MC squared. Nothing’s new. We’re like filters, you tap into it. So you came up with Strala and then you found out it actually had meaning in Swedish. I love that. And again, that connection with Osho. So the efforting to get into that beingness that we talked earlier is I realized my practice was there’s a bit of doing. I bring in psyching to my practice, EFT, clinical hypnosis, all the trainings that I have are brought into my treatment room with the acupuncture, but there’s a doing this that gets you into the beingness. So it’s not fully no action. There is some effort to get you into the beingness. And then from that beingness, there’s new action. But remember, the right action follows the right thinking. So it’s kind of like a do, be, do, be, do. And then I had a psychotherapist, a young gentleman who’s realized Ellie Reck on the podcast, and he once said, “It’s not a doing that’s happening.

It looks like a doing, but it’s an undoing.” And again, getting to know you, Tara, I think your softness is an undoing process to get people to get rid of the noise, drop the resilience so they’re fully in touch with who they are, and that’s powerful. And then they are authentic in this world and life moves through them. And that’s why it feels effortless or woo way because it’s not something they’re forcing anymore. It’s like there’s this energy coming in through them that is supporting them on this process.

Tara Stiles

Yeah. Isn’t that awesome? That’s why I love being in community doing this with people because suddenly you don’t have to be good at doing it, you just start doing it and then suddenly everybody has their own cool ideas about life. People start getting more successful or changing jobs or finding a better relationship. And then when you have friends or people that you know that are doing that, you learn so much from everybody. Everybody becomes sort of their, it’s kind of corny, but their unique, most awesome self in a way. And we’re all trying to get there. But these practices really do get you on that path to having those ideas more spontaneously and then having the energy to act on them. So that’s one of the things that I sort of, it’s really the conclusion of the book. It’s like, well, I mean this is a little bit corny, but there’s a lot of people I can pull from examples that are living these amazing lives by doing these foundations and these practices.

And it’s not necessarily the life that they thought in their 20s they were going to live, but it’s kind of like you had one career and then you’re like, wait a minute, I could do this and still be all the same feelings that I was looking for, but even better and serving more people and feeling better, more connected in yourself. And that’s just so cool when you can achieve and sustain an awesome life, not just in one narrow path, whether it’s work or family or be fulfilled in one area, but really all the areas of life, it really becomes possible with these practices. And even if it’s not working, you know what to do, the actions to do, how to way in your walk, how to move with less tension. And when something is challenging, how to figure it out in a sort of more efficient way and keep that effort going without the rigidity.

Lorne Brown

Love this, love this. And now I have a question for you because I want to share some experiences and see how this resonates with you. This is what I think could be happening. This is the weird part. I think when you do these practices, and again, I call it notice exceptions. Again, I bring in many tools. And what I think is happening is when you start to become aware of your feelings and start to really notice them, you’re tuning into the witness consciousness. And the witness consciousness very nature is peace and joy. And it’s what metabolizes these uncomfortable feelings and old programs, not ego Tara, not ego Lorne. For example, here’s my metaphor that kind of hit me one day is when I bite an apple, you take a bite of an apple, you don’t think I got to release salivary enzymes from my mouth.

You don’t think, okay, nobody talked to me. I’m focusing because I’m acid, acid. Your partner, is it Mike?

Tara Stiles

Yeah.

Lorne Brown

Mike, I can’t go on a bike ride with you because I’m absorbing the B vitamins in my intestines right now. And holy crap, it’s 10 o’clock. I really want to go to sleep, but I could die because I haven’t digested the apple. You don’t think any of that. Why? Because all you have to effort in, the ego part is you have to choose to pick up the apple and bite and chew.

After that, your autonomic nervous system, a whole other aspect of you metabolizes that apple, whether you’re asleep, whether you’re doing yoga, no matter what you’re doing, that part of you metabolizes the apple. When you do the tools in your book that you’re going to release on softness or what you teach in your Strala yoga, what I do in my clinical practice, we are tuning into another aspect of us, and that aspect of us does the metabolism.That’s why I say we let go of shit. I don’t let go of anything. These emotions, but now the common word is you got trauma. Everybody has trauma. In Chinese medicine, it’s just qi stagnation. It’s really simple. Energy stuck in your tissues, which often is from emotions. It gets stuck in your tissue. It’s emotion, energy in motion. It’s in the name of emotion. And so when you soften, this is why sometimes when I do acupuncture and somebody out of nowhere just starts to cry cathartically, they don’t even have a thought.

I bet you have done yoga for yourself or your clients and they’re doing a stretch and all of a sudden anger or tears come up. Why? The softening, the resistance drops, emotion, energy emotion. The emotion is no longer being stuck in your tissues and now it can complete its resolution and move up and out because emotions’ nature is to move up and out. So when we do work like your softening or your Strala yoga, we are tuning into another aspect of ourselves that metabolizes these old emotions, these old programs. And the softening, all it does is opens and then this energy that never wanted to get stuck anyhow finally can move through you. And that’s where it comes out in tears and anger. So I think we’re tuning into our witness consciousness and another aspect of ourselves, which we can’t really measure, understand beyond our five senses, beyond the ego does this.

That’s how I make myself sleep at night because I’m like, why is this working? But I’m wondering, because you’ve had these experiences as a young girl and because of the work you’re doing, you write about it. I can only guess that you’ve tapped into something I’m discussing that you may have something to say on this for the first time maybe, or maybe you’ve said this many times publicly. I don’t know.

Tara Stiles

Well, I love all that that you shared. And I see sort of glimpses of that in so many places in life. And I love pop culture in a way for some of these examples, but there’s this incredible movie, The Green Mile, at the end of it with Michael Clarke Duncan, and it kind of shows that release or that stagnation. It’s a cinematic moment where he just opens his mouth and tons of bees just fly out of his mouth. And he’s released from this false accusation. He’s this big giant guy and he just softens in a way. And I’m like, I remember seeing that movie when I was a kid and being like, “Yeah, that. That’s what I feel. That’s what I feel.” And that’s what I felt when I was a little kid. And I think a lot of people have similar kinds of experiences, some moment where you’re like, “Oh wow, these glimpses of how good it can be or how good I can feel.” For me, it was always an experience of I have this choice that I can actually use my energy for good.

I can do big things essentially. And I think we all feel that in some way. And maybe we go on to do big things or maybe it’s different big things than how we feel. And somewhere along the way we say, “Oh, wait a minute, that’s not the thing at all. I need to shift gears or change something.” And that idea that you can soften, notice how you feel, and suddenly you’re released, you’re off to the races. It’s so contagious. It can become, I mean, I don’t want to use the word addiction, but it’s sort of like a healthy addiction in a way. I love when people get hooked on that feeling of, or at least understanding, okay, that’s what happens. When I drink water, I feel better. Nobody’s hopefully addicted to water, but maybe that’s a better analogy. But we are addicted to stress. I mean, there’s all of these interesting and boring at the same time studies that show how we’re chemically addicted to the cortisol and all that stuff.

And there’s plenty of people that talk about that all day long. But I love how we can understand that addiction and then kind of gently guide ourselves back to softening, back to having that release, back to having that feeling where we’re connected and having that notice of, oh wow, when I do this, more happens. When I do this, I get more. When I do this, I connect more. When I move in this way, I not only feel better, but more is happening in my life more harmony.

Lorne Brown

Synchronicities happen, right?

Tara Stiles

All of a sudden things just

Lorne Brown

Go up on your lap, right?

Tara Stiles

Yeah. Synchronicity is all over the place. I mean, I stopped for myself. I keep trying to find better words like synchronicity or luck or all these things happening sort of spontaneously. And they’re easy to mysticize or kind of give away their power. But I think all of this is so empowering that we can say, okay, the universe, God, whatever your beliefs are, it kind of doesn’t matter. You just do the thing like water, like eating the apple like you’re saying you do the thing. And it happens. It doesn’t really matter. We don’t have to understand why mechanically it’s happening behind those scenes, but we know how to do it. And the right way to be, it’s sort of not up for a debate. Force, struggle, and rigidity are not the best way for achievement. And maybe that’s the sort of masculine, dudely way or the young way of saying that you guys, you’re wrong.

If I was a better marketer, I’d be like, you’re wrong. It’s not working. The force, push, and struggle method is just not giving you your best output in a way. And like you share, when you soften, notice how you feel, do these practices, you feel connected and you get so much more. So it is awesome.

Lorne Brown

And yin and yang is movement. And so there is a place for the yang and

The yang comes through the yin. So it’s both, but we have to bite the apple. So as we close, there’s an effort required. There’s process work, meaning that check out Tara’s new book, Living Softly. Check out Strala Yoga, her app, because don’t be like I was a couple of decades ago where you knew it and you could talk it, but you weren’t doing it. The value is not in the knowledge, the value’s in the application. So developing the practice in this new habit, you called it addiction. Basically, it’s just a new habit. You had a habit that gives you crazy. Now you want to create a habit that gives you peace. And so this is the invitation, I think, Tara, that you have offered through your books. She has multiple books through her app, Strala Yoga. There’s ways to learn these processes, these tools that give you that softness.

And then you can choose, there’s my choose again. Then you can choose to take action or you can just sit in stillness and be happy. But you can choose to take action at this point because your beingness has changed. Tara, where do they find you so they can learn more about you?

Tara Stiles

Oh my goodness, you’re so great. Yeah, so StralaYoga.com has everything and more information there. Also, TaraStiles.com. And for social, I’m basically on Instagram and Facebook, and I haven’t migrated to TikTok and I hope I don’t have to.

Lorne Brown

I deleted my Facebook off my phone

Tara Stiles

Oh, good for you.

Lorne Brown

A month ago.

Tara Stiles

Nice. Good for you

Lorne Brown

I still go on it. I’m on the computer and my team helps me with that, but yes. So you’re on Instagram, you’re on Facebook. Instagram, just Tara Stiles. Facebook’s Tara Stiles?

Tara Stiles

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s some YouTube videos out there as well. I started that early on, so that’s all still out there, just Tara Stiles on YouTube as well.

Lorne Brown

Perfect. You’re definitely on the social media. I had a great opportunity to do my prep work and listen and watch. So before you even came on, I felt like I kind of knew you got to watch you. So check out our website, check out her social media. When that book is released, I’m not sure when you’re listening to this episode, but it’s to be published in January 2027, Living Softly. Do pick up a copy of that. Tara, we have to connect because when I want to sign copy, so I want to know where I. I don’t want to purchase it from a bookstore. I want to purchase it from you so I can get my signed copy, please.

Tara Stiles

I’ll get you all set up for sure. And I’m going to get you doing the yoga and everything on the app, so excited for that. Yes.

Lorne Brown

We’re going to see if we can get me. I’m chronologically almost 58. I want to get back to biologically 45. That’s my goal here.

Tara Stiles

You’re good. You’re perfect.

Lorne Brown

Thank you for spending this time with us on the Coherence Code podcast. I’m Dr. Lorne Brown, and I will see you next week for another conversation on coherence and healing. If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe, or follow the show, and also share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. Remember to take a moment to breathe, reflect, and stay connected. Welcome to the Coherence Code Podcast.