MBS and YOGA: Finding the Heart of the Practice 

Maxi Roedl, a yoga instructor and MBS Practitioner, has found that the principles of Moshe’s teachings have influenced her instruction within her yoga classes. Instead of adding anything extra on to her classes, she finds that the influence of MBS has helped her students to better understand their asanas and to connect with the fundamentals of their yoga practice.

“What I’ve stopped completely is saying ‘Do more this, go more there.’” Instead, Maxi is asking questions and prompting students to better sense for themselves when a movement is working.

“It’s more, ‘Feel your neck. Does it really feel nice?’ And then, ‘What could you do to make this more pleasant?’ I use this sort of phrasing. It’s a different way of teaching. It’s more about empowering the students’ own resources, rather than giving fixed instructions. It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

“It’s more about empowering the students’ own resources, rather than giving fixed instructions. It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

Maxi doesn’t consider the change in approach to be anything novel or foreign to traditional yoga. “Of course, I teach the postures and how they’re supposed to be,” she explains. As students can better identify for themselves the quality of ease in their movements, they become more engaged and skillful yogis.

“In the old yoga scriptures from 2000 years ago, the instructions were never written in the way that they typically describe things today. The focus was not so much on the body, but more on awareness. It wasn’t on ‘relaxation’ at all, but on consciousness and awareness, on increasing your capacity to breathe and on spreading your own life energy. One of the most important Patanjali sutras says that posture should be steady, firm and pleasant.”

In the sutras themselves, one can recognize the same kind of phrasing one often hears during an MBS lesson: “Is this movement pleasant? What could I do differently to make it more pleasant?”