By Emily, Belgium
Table of Contents
What if...
“What if illness isn’t just about the virus?”
Not so long ago, when people spoke of illness, they would simply say, “a virus entered me.” That was it. There was little questioning beyond that. But slowly, over the past few decades, something began to change. More and more people started to question not only the virus, but themselves. What made me vulnerable? What can I do to strengthen my body, my immunity?
These are important questions which slowly will bring people to see behind the physical dimension. Health is not just the absence of disease. It is not something to be fixed when it goes wrong. Health is the natural expression of something deeper: completeness. That is what is called holistic health because it relates to the whole of you, not just the body.
To explain this, I would like to bring your attention to one aspect of life that touches us every day, and reflects this truth with astonishing clarity: food. Because food is one of the major daily inputs and a huge factor that shapes our body, energy and mind. And it is something we can easily engage with, influence, and realign, once we understand it properly. It’s a first doorway to transformation, practical and accessible to all. And it is often one of the very first habits we need to revisit if we wish to stay healthy.
The illusion of eating right
Let’s start with a simple but essential question: what does it really mean to eat healthy?
Today, there is so much discussion and different approaches around this topic. So many trends, rules, and conflicting ideas. People follow the latest diets, count nutrients, cut sugar, and eat more greens. Yet despite all these efforts, many still feel tired, imbalanced, or even develop new deficiencies. Something doesn’t quite add up.
Something still feels missing… but what? Here lies a truth about health, one that applies across all aspects of life: health is not only about what we eat. There is another layer, just as important, perhaps even more, that is rarely spoken about: the quality of food, it’s very essence. Not just what it contains, but what it carries. In Yogic understanding, this quality is called Sattvic. It refers to that which is pure, balanced, whole, and life-supporting. And that leads us to a deeper question: What do we mean by quality or Sattvic?
What is quality, really?
We use the word “quality” often, but rarely stop to ask what it really means. Quality is not a standard, a type, a recipe, or a label… The true value of anything depends on its integrity as a whole. Quality means completeness. And here is why…
When we speak about refined foods, it’s easy to see that they are not complete. That is why all processed foods are not truly healthy. They are the opposite of Sattvic food: disconnected, fragmented, and devoid of life. Take refined foods like white sugar, for example. It has been stripped, cleaned, and reduced until only sweetness remains. But in that process, everything else is removed: minerals, fiber, and the living qualities of the plant. What’s left is just a fragment, a taste without life, sweetness without wholeness. It becomes disconnected from life itself.
But to go one step further, let’s consider something we often assume is healthy but might not always be: vegetables. A tomato, for instance.
A tomato is not just a red fruit that magically appears. It is the result of a process, a combination of energies that form into matter. For a tomato to grow, it needs rich, living soil full of microorganisms, insects, and earthworms. It needs rain, sun, time, and balance. Its quality depends on how deeply it is connected to the elements that created it. A tomato is the outcome of a whole process. Its completeness becomes its essence. In fact, the more connections it has with other elements of nature, the more complete it becomes… because to be complete means to contain all the others, to carry within it the full presence of nature. And the more complete it is, the higher its quality, and the healthier it becomes, the more Sattvic it becomes.
Today, many tomatoes are grown in artificial environments, called hydroponic, on walls of plastic, fed through tubes with nutrients made in factories. The soil is gone. Sunlight may be replaced with artificial lights. Pesticides keep insects away. The tomato might still look like a tomato, but it lacks life. Because it is no longer connected to the natural elements that would have formed it, no longer nourished by nature, but by things that do not carry life: plastic, pesticides, artificial inputs. What we see on the plate is just a form. But its quality, its very essence, is missing. The tomato is no longer made of the complete nature. It is disconnected, fragmented, and lifeless. It becomes a shadow of what it could have been. But even when a tomato is grown organically, we must ask: is that enough?
Controlled-climate container farms
Natural way of growing where growth is a result of interaction with the whole ecosystem
Completeness goes beyond label
Many believe that eating organic is enough. But completeness goes beyond labels. Today, the word organic has become almost synonymous with health. It’s a reassuring label, and many people lean on it, trusting that it means “good for me”. But we must look a little deeper. Yes, organic means the ingredients were grown without synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, or GMOs, and that’s a good beginning. But organic doesn’t always mean whole, alive, nourishing, or Sattvic. A cookie made with organic white flour and organic cane sugar is still a processed cookie. It may be better than one filled with chemicals, but it’s still far from the kind of food that carries the pulse of life, that the body can truly recognize and absorb.
The importance of freshness in living food
In fact, food that is truly complete and alive remains in a state of process, it continues ripening, moving, fermenting, and living, even when separated from its roots. Any food that can be stored for a long time has essentially been cut off from life. That’s exactly why it can be preserved, because the process of life itself has been stopped. When a product’s natural process stops, it is dead. Such foods, instead of giving energy and merging with the life of our body, actually require energy to be digested and eliminated. The truth is that our body receives life in the form of nutrients, but dead food contains no life.
And when we choose to eat food that is alive, we also need to be careful not to consume food that has passed its peak freshness. Once food starts to spoil, it becomes invaded by other forms of life, like fungi, molds, or bacteria, that begin breaking it down and decomposing it. This means the food is in a process of decay rather than growth. It makes perfect sense that if we want to be truly alive, we need to consume living elements, not dead ones, and not those already in decay.
From tomato to human
Now that we clearly understand what makes a healthy Sattvic tomato, one that holds quality and life, let’s explore how this applies to the human body. The story of the tomato’s health is not just about the tomato itself. It reflects a universal truth about holistic health and life itself. Just like the tomato, which is a living process, continuously shaped and formed by its environment and the quality of what it receives from nature, our body too is shaped by what we take in. But beyond food and perception lies a bigger question: what is our state of connection with life itself? How deeply are we connected to the living world around us? How complete and whole are we? As we’ve seen, being complete means being made up of others, being rich in diversity and connection. It means how much we are woven into everything beyond ourselves, how much we carry the life of the whole within us.
When we nurture ourselves as an integrated whole, aligned with life, true health naturally unfolds. The journey to holistic health is, at its core, a journey of reconnecting with the wholeness of life. And that is Yoga.
Yoga: The path of wholeness
This is where Yoga enters. There is a widespread misunderstanding about Yoga across the world. Many people practice it for the body, to stretch, to reach, to challenge themselves, to become strong, or to stay physically healthy. But this is a very superficial and limited understanding of this vast science of Yoga. Authentic Yoga Asana practice begins, when through the body, a state of wholeness with life is awakened, when all that was fragmented, lost, or disconnected begins to come back together. Not only in the physical dimension but also in all other dimensions: energy, mind, wisdom and soul. Yoga is a practice, yes, but more than that, it is a way of realigning with the totality of life. It reveals how to live in such a way that we no longer act from separation, but from unity, from integrity, from oneness. And from that space, life, health, and true quality arise naturally. They are not a goal, they are a natural expression of inner alignment.
Practically, how it works…
This all sounds beautiful in theory, but how does it really work? How can we, through the body, realign to life? It’s a big question. I remember being in Yoga classes, hearing these profound ideas, but not always seeing the practical link. Many will say, “Bring oxygen to every organ,” or “Movement increases blood flow.” And yes, this is true, but that alone does not guarantee health. The body might remain fit for a while, but as we’ve seen, true health is not just physical and it is not something to attain. Health is our natural state when we are in a state of connection. Rebuild the connection, restore the unity, and health arises by itself. Effortlessly. Contrary to common belief, people do not die from illness. Disease itself is not the real cause of death. Take the example of a heart attack, it is not simply because the heart is weak. If you were to transplant that same heart into another body, it might function perfectly. The problem is not the heart. It is the loss of coherence. Coherence is when all the systems in the body, and all the layers of our being, are functioning in harmony. It’s not about isolated parts performing well, but about the wholeness working together as one. When coherence is lost, life begins to fragment. Illness, then, is just a symptom. Disconnection is the root.
Let’s take cancer for instance. At its core, cancer is a loss of unity. It’s when certain cells in the body begin to act as if they are separate from the whole. They stop following the intelligence of the full body system and start operating under their own rules, multiplying uncontrollably. Cancer is not just a disease of the body, it reflects a deeper disconnection from the order, balance, and unity that sustain life.
Effort divides, unity heals
Again and again, when we look more closely, we begin to see that holistic health is, at its core, about unity. And that unity must begin within the body. To be healthy, we have to rebuild coherence, to restore the body’s ability to function as a single, harmonious whole. That’s why, in Yoga, reaching a posture is never the goal. Postures are not destinations; they are tools. Tools to rebuild coherence.
What causes the body to break into separate parts? Effort. Effort has an end, and then divides. It means something within the system is no longer moving with the whole, and that tension is what we feel as effort. The more we enter a “difficult” posture, the more effort is naturally created. But postures are not meant to be achieved, they are meant to reveal where effort arises, where connection is lost, and to guide us in rebuilding unity.
Take a simple example: when you bend your knees to lower yourself, you may feel strong effort in your thighs. They tighten, harden, and suddenly carry the entire weight alone. Blood flow is restricted, energy is blocked, and the rest of the body becomes passive. Coherence is lost. But there is another way. You can make the same movement by engaging the whole body, by spreading the action across every part, so each cell contributes. This is what Yoga calls “oneness of all body parts.” It is the art of moving without losing wholeness.
In this way, the body’s intelligence begins to realign, learning how to adapt and remain whole in any position. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the movement is or which posture you’re in. If your practice is in the right direction, you are evolving in every posture, not by learning the shape, but by re-educating the body to remain in unity. The goal is not to master postures, but to awaken a way of being where the body naturally organizes itself in coherence, no matter the form. So even if you’ve never practiced a specific asana before, if your body has learned this language of unity, it will know how to enter it, not by memory, but by intelligence. Yoga becomes a re-education of how to stay whole, responsive, and alive, qualities that support us not only on the mat, but in every conversation, decision, or life situation.
Body and mind are same
Just like ice, water, and steam are different forms of the same substance, from gross to subtle, our body, energy, and mind are also expressions of the same essence. Coherence in the body reflects as coherence in the mind. When the body learns to remain whole and unified, the mind too learns to stay unified and connected to life.
Often, when we face a new or challenging situation, psychological effort arises, a tightening, a resistance. In that effort, we separate ourselves from life. We become disconnected. We no longer hear the birds, we don’t feel others around us, we lose direction. In extreme psychological effort, even memory can fail. The more effort, the more separation. But just as we rebuild coherence in the body, we can retrain the mind to remain connected, even in difficulty. With practice, the mind learns to enter any moment without breaking its link to the whole, without losing touch with life or others. Fear, anger, frustration, or sadness might arise but the connections will not break.
Last words
In the end, the story of the Sattvic tomato is not just about food. It is about us. It is about the forgotten truth that holistic health is not something we chase or fix, it is our natural state, our very essence. Health is not found in the next superfood or in perfect posture. It is found in wholeness. In reconnecting what was separated.
The health of a tomato, its quality, is no different from the health of our body. And the state of our body is not separate from our state of life. Through the food we eat and through our practices, we are simply walking towards life, regaining every lost connection. And that naturally brings us to a state of highest quality, a state of limitless connection with the whole.
At the peak of that union, we no longer experience ourselves as separate from life. We merge with it. We become it. And that is Yoga. Yoga works on the very architecture of our being. It teaches us how to return to connection, to coherence, to completeness, so that whether we are in a posture, in a conversation, or facing the unknown, we remain whole.
And when we live from that truth, in unity, health is no longer something we need to gain. It becomes a natural expression of who we are. That is what holistic health truly means.
About the author
For as long as she can remember, Emily was drawn to understand life, its hidden architecture, its unfolding process, and the deeper reason we are here. Questions about existence and the meaning behind it all quietly lived within her. So she left. She travelled the world, carrying those questions like a compass. And somewhere along the way, she met Vincent, who became her husband, a French cook whose way of preparing food wasn’t just delicious, it was alive. Through him, Emily rediscovered what it truly means to nourish the body. It wasn’t just about ingredients; it was about presence, passion and love. He gently reopened the door to a healthy way of eating, and a healthy way of being.
A few years later, they met Sage ViGo together, a guide whose presence and knowledge gave form to the answers Emily had been searching for all along. His teachings brought everything together: health, life, and the Self were not separate threads, but one single tapestry.
Since then, Emily and her family stay in India, at Yoga Gita Ashram. She’s immersed herself in multiple 200-hr and 300-hr Yoga Teacher Training Programmes, the deep purification process of the Pancha Kosha Meditation & Detoxification Retreat, and many other programmes and courses from this living Yoga School and Ashram.
And for all that life has gifted her, she walks on, with great gratitude.
