Muscle Balance and Function (MBF®)

Our modern lifestyle has many wonderful benefits. Unfortunately, it also has its downsides known as mismatch diseases. Many of the ailments we suffer from in the modern world are known as mismatch diseases as they are the result of a mismatch between the environment our bodies evolved to live in and the modern world we live in now.

Yoga was conceived and designed in a time and place where people lived very different lifestyles to how we in the West live today. Yoga came into the world before desk jobs, cars, sofas, television and comfortable mattresses existed.

Our Western lifestyle leads to muscle imbalances and our bodies lose their alignment making us prone to pain, discomfort and injuries.</p> <p>If we practice a physical discipline such as Yoga we need to correct our imbalances first. If we don’t, all our hard work often leads to us doing more harm than good to our bodies.

In order to put our bodies back into their natural fully functional states we need to able to diagnose exactly which imbalances we have in our bodies and do specific targeted exercises that address our individual problems.

Not addressing posture and alignment before beginning a physical activity is like building a house without creating a firm foundation first. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down around you! It’s also important that we keep monitoring our posture and fixing any imbalances that might arise.

The good news is that our bodies can be restored back to healthy posture without us having to give up on all the benefits of living a modern Western lifestyle.

The best method that we have found to achieve this at Sefali’s Yoga is called MBF.

MBF was designed and created by Geoffrey Gluckman, a leading pioneer in the field of biomechanics, posture and alignment as well as being a bestselling author.

MBF shares many of the same exercises as Yoga. However, MBF is a scientifically based system that allows its practitioners to give specific exercises that their clients need and gives us the means to structure a series of programs of exercises for maximum effect. This is crucial if we want to experience the full potential of Yoga in the context of our Western lifestyles.

We at Sefali’s Yoga love combining Eastern and Western wisdom. The two swans in the Sefali’s Yoga logo (one facing East, the other West) were designed to reflect our love of both Eastern and Western cultures.

MBF allows us to marry Western science with Eastern insight.

MBF® is far more than postural therapy. It restores your body back to its natural fully functioning state. This is achieved through a set of very specifically targeted exercise programmes.

MBF® exercises are effective because:

they are tailor made to your own body.
they specifically target your dysfunctions
they initiate movement that your body is lacks
you will get exercise programmes that build upon each other, all dealing with major to minor dysfunctions moving you closer to a fully functional body

How long you spend doing MBF® depends on the level you wish your body to function on. If you are an athlete and you desire a very high level of performance from your body then you will have to invest much more time then someone who wants to simply better, feel better and move around pain-free.

Unfortunately learning to be proficient at MBF takes time and there is no MBF pill we can just swallow. The next best thing is to find a qualified practitioner to create a program for you.

It’s best if you can see them in person but MBF practitioners can work perfectly well with four photographs of you standing in a natural posture showing the front, left, right and rear view of your body. You will also need to fill in a short questionnaire on your symptoms, activity level etc.

Sefali is one of the most experienced and qualified MBF practitioners in the world. Sefali is also a fully qualified Yoga teacher. She is often brought in to access new Yoga teachers because of her depth of knowledge and experience.

Sefali is the only fully qualified practitioner of the Muscle, Balance and Function system (MBF®) in the UK.

She has found MBF to be invaluable to improving her Yoga practice, all physical activities and her general wellbeing.

If you want Sefali to assess your posture to see which dysfunctions holding you back from performing and feeling your best physically then please email us for more details.

Once Sefali has assessed your posture you will get individualised exercises with videos and our personal care and attention.

We want you to be fully mobile and active now and into your old age! In the meantime we want you to be confident in any physical activity you do without worrying about whether your body can handle it.

Email: info@sefalisyoga.com

All information you provide to us will be kept fully confidential.

Best wishes,

Sefali’s Yoga team.

Dean’s story

A good example of how MBF can restore our body back to its fully functioning state is Dean’s experience before he became part of Sefali’s Yoga.

“Before I found Sefali’s Yoga I used to train boxing 3 x week regularly and loved it. Unfortunately, the intense physical nature of the sport was more than my body could handle. My knees started to hurt so much I could barely walk. Pensioners would overtake me when I was walking and I was only in my early thirties. I started to become fearful about what state I would end up in as I aged.

I decided to start Yoga classes to fix my body. To my dismay, they made me worse! I tried different teachers and different styles to no avail. I would leave the classes with my body feeling completely off balance. The last straw for me was when I overheard a group of high profile big name Yoga teachers talking about which clothes they wear to hide to all the dysfunctions in their bodies!

I then started taking a much closer look at their bodies and seeing rounded shoulders, elevated hips, rotations, counter rotations, hyper-extended elbows and knees. Their bodies were just as messed up as mine, some more so.

I had taken up Yoga in the hope that it would restore my body back to its fully functional natural state but I now realised that wasn’t going to happen.

When I reflected on it I recalled that in all the sports I had trained in over the years most of the athletes suffered from knee pain, shoulder pain, neck pain and many had undergone surgery once or more.

The exercise sceptics I knew who spent their time seated on their couch sometimes seemed to have made the wiser choice although they also suffered pain and discomfort.

I went on the internet and started chatting to as many athletes as I could who were in the same predicament as me to see if anyone had found a solution while trying anything and everything that looks promising.

Eventually one of the guys I was in contact with started MBF. He had tried every treatment under the sun as he had got himself in such a bad state he could barely get himself out of bed at times and yet he lived for his sport and desperately wanted to recover.

He made really fast progress with MBF and ultimately got his body into such good shape he was functioning better than any time he could remember!

That news got me all excited and I started MBF. There were no qualified MBF practitioners near me so I sent photos and a list of my symptoms etc via email and got a program sent back to me by email.

After my first couple of times doing the exercises in my program, my pain went away. Over time my body just got stronger and stronger until I could feel it operating as one unit. When I tried sprinting again after six months of MBF my whole body worked together in generating power and speed in a way I never remember it being able to do.

Finding MBF was one of the most important moments in my life. I shudder to think what state I would be in now if I hadn’t found it! Later I learned MBF directly from Geoff Gluckman (it’s creator) even though I am not a healthcare professional and did not intend to be. It was just that important to me for my health and future.”