Legs wobbly from making the most of the crisp bluebird day on the Saanerslochgrat ski mountain, I was about to tuck into my heaping plate of bolognese. Then, Mike von Grünigen, the four-time Olympian and Gstaad local saddled with guiding my mom and I on our half-day of skiing, asked what was next on our itinerary.
While most people head to Gstaad for hitting the slopes or shopping, I was there for something else entirely.
“I’m going yodeling,” I said, sheepishly. “Or at least, I’m going to try.”
As fate would have it, not only was von Grünigen an expert on the slopes, he was also an avid yodeler. “I’m in a yodeling group,” he told me. “I started yodeling when I turned 50, but as a farmer’s son, it has always been part of my world.”
Seeing my eyes light up, he continued: “Farmers would go into the Alps with their cows in the summertime—obviously they didn’t have cell phones—so yodeling across the mountain range was a way to say to each other, ‘I’m still alive.’”
That sentiment was exactly what had brought me there. Seeing as I have no musical talents and am very much tone deaf, my quest to learn how to yodel wasn’t an aesthetic pursuit but rather a spiritual one. After a particularly tough year, I was enchanted with the idea of finding my voice. Specifically in a tiny chalet, on the Swiss mountainside, and preferably after a Toblerone chocolate fondue.
It turns out all of that was possible at Le Grand Bellevue in Gstaad. This winter, the historic hotel launched a series of heritage-inspired experiences, including a Swiss chocolate spa ritual and a traditional decoupage workshop, bolstering the hotel’s existing arsenal of year-round cultural programming. (In the summer, hotel guests can participate in the Gstaad ‘Züglete,’ a traditional cattle procession complete with flower-adorned cows, folk music, and traditional dress that brings the herd down from the mountainside through the driveway of Le Grand Bellevue.)
Delighted to have a yodeling expert in front of me, I asked Mike my most important question. “What do you wear?” With a flourish, he pulled out his phone to show me a photo of his smartly dressed group, which quickly made me realize that, among my numerous potential yodeling deficiencies, I simply did not have the right clothing.
Luckily, I knew that the handcrafted alpine fashion brand, Annina, was stocked just down the road at The Flower Shop. With an explanation of my predicament, they generously loaned me a linen Janker jacket, a true work of sartorial art lined with green piping, hand-embroidered flowers, and stag horn buttons, so that I would be better equipped for the occasion.
Dressed for success, I headed back down the cobblestoned path to Le Petit Chalet, the quaint log cabin in Le Grand Bellevue’s garden that was to be tonight’s amphitheater. Typically serving as the setting for fondue tastings, the intimate restaurant’s gingham-clad tables were dressed perfectly for our occasion. Roping my mom and the marketing manager at Le Grand Bellevue into coming with me, I hoped they might take center stage.
As the clock struck 4 p.m., our yodeling instructor, Anita Hefti, and her translator, the historian Claudia von Siebenthal Fust, arrived with typical Swiss punctuality. Anita was beautifully dressed in the traditional outfit of the canton of Bern, her ‘tracht’ consisting of a heavy silk crimson and onyx-striped apron paired with a billowing white blouse underneath a handmade black velvet corset. She also donned a shiny pair of black buckled shoes. In her arms, a small wicker basket and the Schwyzerörgeli, an ornately embroidered Swiss accordion, were at the ready.
Coincidentally, Mike had guessed that Anita would be our instructor. (She and her husband are in the same weekly yodeling group as Mike and his wife.) “It’s a small village,” he had said with a laugh. “We always say that Gstaad has 11,000 people and 11,000 cows."
Stepping into the timber-walled chalet, we began our warm-up exercises underneath the pitched ceiling lined with antique cowbells, working (with some surprising success) to match Anita’s clear voice at different pitches. She urged us to isolate our “head voice” from our “chest voice,” but I’ll admit I had a different priority: simply preventing my voice from cracking.
And then it was time to show us how it was done. Settling into the sheepskin-lined benches, all eyes were on Anita, whose sonorous song filled the tiny house. As she continued to sing in a language I couldn’t speak but deeply felt, the guttural sound stirred something deep within me. I imagined all the people before us, standing alone on the mountainside, calling out to the vast expanse of nothingness as they boldly proclaimed “I’m here” with their song.
When she concluded, we burst into applause, and my mom wiped at her eyes. “I don’t know why I'm crying,” she said with a laugh. I didn’t know why I was either.
Anita was not surprised at the reaction. “Yodeling is very spiritual, because the voice comes from the inside. You can hear how someone feels,” she said, Claudia translating for us. “To sing is a very emotional thing.”
This I knew to be true. I’m no stranger to the power of vocal release. The first time I lived in New York City eight years ago, I became absolutely obsessed with The Class by Taryn Toomey, a sound-based, somatic exercise method. I would gladly pay whatever it costs to jump around and make noise in a soundproof room for an hour and then leave the studio feeling completely new.
“Emotion is energy in motion. If you consider it that way, making sound is simply moving energy from inside your body, out,” explained Toomey when I asked her why vocal release is such a powerful tool for mental health. From a scientific standpoint, singing and humming are also thought to engage the vagus nerve, which has been found to help regulate stress and kickstart the body’s parasympathetic nervous system.
When I asked Mike what benefits he sees from his weekly yodeling practice, he echoed a similar sentiment. “It helps me reduce stress, reconnect with myself, and bring a bit of joy to my heart and passion into every day of my life,” he said. “I’ve also noticed clear benefits: better breath control, improved lung capacity, and an overall sense of well-being. But above all, yodeling gives me a grounding, uplifting feeling—something both simple and profoundly meaningful.”
But yodeling isn’t just about health—it’s also about heritage. With 12,000 active yodelers in Switzerland and over 700 different yodeling groups, it’s much more common than one might expect.
“Twenty years ago, it was really old-fashioned to yodel, but nowadays—because we as people are so proud of our traditions and culture—it’s growing much more popular,” said Claudia. “We’re committed to keeping our traditions going.”
This echoed what Daniel Koetser, owner of Le Grand Bellevue, had said about the decision to offer yodeling as part of the hotel’s offerings. “This is not Disney,” he said. “This is about connecting our guests to the makers, farmers, and artists who are preserving traditions and culture and letting that speak for itself.”
As we hit the last notes and started to wind down, I reflected on what a beautiful thing it was to spend the hour among that small group of women finding our voices. I could relate to what Mike had meant when he said that yodeling was a way of saying you’re alive.
It’s singing, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s taking up space, standing proudly, hands at your sides, feet anchored into the ground, and boldly proclaiming your presence. It’s rooting yourself in time and tradition and sharing in the immense sense of pride that the Swiss people feel in their culture.
In just an hour of yodeling, I felt as though I’d found my voice. And like all the people before me who had cried out to the mountains, I joined in their song. My voice wavered, and sometimes it cracked, but I too sang out: “I’m alive.”