meet maxi

ideally, our meditation teacher is a person that we can relate to easily - someone we vibe with.

I grew up in a small town in 1980’s Germany and learned to meditate as a teenager. Drawn early on to the fundamental questions of life and existence, I went on to study Law, Cultural Sciences, and Physics in Berlin, and today I’m a parent to a teenager myself.

I’ve been teaching meditation for about 15 years, and today I practice and share Vedic Meditation in the Shankaracharya Tradition of Northern India. With over 3,000 hours of advanced training in the Himalayas under my teacher Thom Knoles, I bring a grounded depth of experience to my work.

these are my teachers

  • SHRI 1008 MAHAMANDALESHWAR MAHARISHI VYASANAND GIRI MAHARAJ

    This is Thom Knoles, my teacher who taught me everything I know about Vedanta and Vedic Meditation and by whose standard and example I am sharing my knowledge.

    He is my North Star in practical and philosophical questions and a storyteller and teacher like no other.

    I highly recommend his podcast »The Vedic Worldview«

  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

    My teacher’s teacher, under whom he learned a good 25 years. Maharishi is famously known as the founder of the Transcendental Meditation Movement and teacher of many public figures like the Beatles and David Lynch. He is the one who introduced the style of meditation that I am teaching to the west.

    I am teaching exactly the same thing that Maharishi was teaching, but as an independent teacher of meditation and in no way associated with the Transcendental Meditation Organization that Maharishi founded and left behind years ago.

  • Jagadguru Shankaracharya Swami Brahmananda Saraswati

    We mostly call him Guru Deva - a Shining Teacher. He lived on his own in the forest for most of his life, until accepting being elected Shankaracharya of Jyothir Math in his 70’s; he held this highest spiritual position in (Northern) India for 13 years.

    During these years Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to be his disciple and student.

A word about tradition

Nowadays, there are a lot of opinions about religious traditions in itself, meditation as neoliberal self-improvement, westerners appropriating eastern culture, straight older men sharing their version of what’s right and wrong, and so on and so forth.

That being said, the main reason Vedic Meditation is so effective lies in the body of knowledge that supports it, the standardized teaching protocol, and the dignified perspective of it’s current teachers towards the tradition of Masters of all genders that upheld it for millennia. Our approach is one of cultural appreciation and respect.

The wisdom we teach dates back at least 5,000 years and has been preserved through an unbroken lineage known as the Shankaracharya Tradition - passed down from teacher to student generation after generation. Each teacher in this tradition has been entrusted not to innovate, but to keep the teaching intact while making it relevant to the needs of their time.

All people who embodied mastery in understanding Veda have honored this role: not as inventors of knowledge, but as its faithful and timely expression.

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my relationship with transcendental meditation

I teach Vedic Meditation and was trained to teach this form of meditation by Thom Knles. Thom was trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation (‘TM’) by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (‘Maharishi’) and taught it for over 25 years with organizations affiliated with Maharishi. Since 1997, Thom has continued to teach this meditation as he learned it from Maharishi, and has done so independently and separately from the TM organization using the terms ‘Vedic Meditation’. Thom Knoles trained me to teach meditation as Thom was trained by Maharishi. I teach Vedic Meditation independently and separately from TM organizations, and am not affiliated with those organizations.