Musings from the Mountains

What is Yoga?

by Svetlana Negashova

Yogi & Trip Leader on our Switzerland Hike, Spa & Yoga Retreat:

I found myself back in one of my secret power places to practice, high in the Swiss Alps above my home. To reach it, I hiked barefoot on high alpine flowers through snow and icy glacier streams. There was still much snow left here at 2400 meters. I began practicing without restrictions, total freedom. Just flow.

Things always flow. Everything changes. We don’t need to make anything flow. We need to release stagnation, open up and there is flow there already. We don’t need to create it. The only way to integrate it into our lives is through practice. 

Why must we do so much practice? What’s the purpose of it? The words hatha and yoga mean effort, control, hard work. Qigong means intensive work with Qi. Gongfu means hard effort over a period of time.

Continuous, uninterrupted, joyful, stable effort over a period of time in yoga and qigong will change you. It will alter the functioning of the endocrine system, then the nervous system, the energy flow, the electromagnetic signature of the whole body-mind, the cells, and the ability to receive and send information.

A healthy body, well-functioning organs, long life, strength, power, flexibility are only side effects of a balanced practice.

Stillness, quietness, and detachment of the mind release a huge amount of energy into the system. Your intention guides that energy wherever you wish.

Yoga and qigong are just tools for fine-tuning. As the patriarchs of Taiji say: “All movements are motivated by I (mind-intention), not external form.” 

Everything in nature takes time to grow and mature. The same is valid for the practice and its results. The longer and deeper the practice is the longer and deeper the results will be.

I am eternally grateful to the countless generations of the masters who passed along these practices through so much effort and hard work.

I don’t know how it works. I only know that it does work. I trust the practice completely.

We live the lives we create ourselves.