ABSTRACT
As major cultural exports of India in the last several decades, yoga thought and practice are well positioned to have significant positive, practical, therapeutic and maturing influence on contemporary ethics discourse with respect to human interaction with animals. This chapter sketches basic contours of how yoga can effectively address what is arguably a severe condition of worldwide human blindness to the plight of animals, whether free-roaming, farmed or domesticated, focusing on the first two of the eight ‘limbs’ of classical aṣṭāṅga-yoga – namely, yāma (restraints) and niyāma (observances). Yoga's traditional combination of philosophy and practice serves well to effect transformative experience that – according to the classical Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali – begins with and is rooted in nonviolence (ahiṃsā), as obligatory for all persons. Through the lens of therapeia, we may see how this and related foundations of yoga culture may contribute to comprehensive ethical relations with animals.
