The Ojai Post

As twenty-first century yogis, our greatest challenge is to live our yoga, which begins with ethical inquiry into every aspect of our life. Our challenge is to wake up and see what is unfolding in our lifetime, under our very noses. For this reason I believe that Green Yoga, co authored by renowned yoga scholar and author Georg Feuerstein and his wife Brenda Feuerstein, is one of the most important yoga books in print today.

The Feuersteins have distilled into one slim powerful volume the essential wisdom of yoga , with its reverence for life and recognition of universal consciousness, with facts and figures gleaned from hundreds of resources on the environment. Green Yoga connects the vital interrelationship between self-transformation and the preservation of our natural environment. The core values and practices of yoga coincide with the values of the green movement and deep ecology.

At its core, yoga is a spiritual practice that fully acknowledges the interdependence of all living things. Green Yoga is a clarion call to translate yogic wisdom into a truly viable, sustainable lifestyle, one which treats the environment with reverence.

Green Yoga makes the point that traditional yoga philosophy is deeply respectful of all life and therefore inherently environmentally friendly. The first of the eight limbs of yoga, the yamas, are universal moral commandments and ethical principles. These include ahimsa, non-violence -- not harming any living beings, and aparigraha, not stealing, accumulating or consuming more than we need.

If traditional yoga is inherently green, one is compelled to ask, “Why then, do we need to speak specifically about green yoga?

We may not like the answer the Feuersteins put forth: because much of contemporary Yoga is anything but green.

Modern yoga practitioners are caught up in the consumer society like everyone else. We are addicted to driving everywhere; aspiring yogis stop for hamburgers after class and fly around the country to yoga conferences. Yoga publications promote products that are causing havoc on the planet. "Yoga cruises" regularly dump oil and hazardous chemicals as well as waste water and sewage into the ocean.

The yoga lifestyle has become thoroughly commodified.

The Feuersteins define green yoga as “Yoga practiced responsibly at a time of unprecedented peril affecting the entire biosphere of our planet.”
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So what does an aspiring green yogi do?

First, we must change our priorities—our values, our philosophy, and then our attitudes and behavior. We must make our yoga practice rigorously green and ask ourselves: “If a yogi is not aware of environmental issues, who will be? If a yogi is not aware of the immense suffering on this planet, who will be? If a yogi does not make an unselfish and thoughtful use of resources, who will? If yoga practitioners won't respond to this unique and perilous crisis, who will?"

Green Yoga is the perfect book for teacher training programs. I wish that every yoga center in Ojai and rest of the world would purchase Green Yoga for each of their students, in honor of Earth Day and all year around! Green Yoga will help us to truly take our practice "off the mat” and into the world!

For inspiring book excerpts and more information on green yoga, visit the Feursteins web site:
http://www.traditionalyogastudies.com/green_yoga.html

Green Yoga Video http://www.traditionalyogastudies.com/videos/green-yoga_video.wmv

Georg Feuerstein has authored more than thirty books. Georg and Brenda's forthcoming books are Green Dharma and Green Yoga Workbook.

Green Yoga is pubished by Traditional Yoga Studies, 2007