June 2006 | Features
The Ecology of Yoga
Posing the Green Question
By Lisa Maria
Amidst the LA glitz, among the ever-growing community of yoga students who practice here, a quiet evolution is blossoming. Tiny tendrils are winding out of studio doors and stretching out across the country to families, friends and colleagues in the yoga community. Green yoga is about to reach full bloom.
Cross-pollinating yoga and environmentalism, green yoga expounds on the obvious philosophical synergies between the two traditions. Yogis practice precepts that include ahimsa (nonviolence), asteya (noncoveting), aparigraha (nonhoarding) and saucha (purity), while environmentalists prompt us to minimize consumption, conserve resources and use alternatives to toxins whenever possible.
Green Yoga traces its roots back to the genesis of yoga 5,000 years ago, when the ancient sages (rishis) first sang the praises of the natural world as a manifestation of God. But it wasn’t until 2004 that yoga teacher and doctoral student Laura Cornell formalized the movement, establishing the California-based Green Yoga Association. “I wanted to awaken and establish the idea that taking care of the planet is something we do out of love, not fear, guilt or obligation [in a] commitment [that] heals us as well as the Earth,” she explains.
When staffing the budding association, Cornell leapt at the chance to work with Christopher Key Chapple, the leading US scholar on yoga and ecology, who now sits on her board. A yoga practitioner for nearly four decades, Chapple is Professor of Theological Studies and Associate Academic Vice President of the Extension Program at Loyola-Marymount University. Along with visionary Matthew Fox and physicist Brian Swimme, he’s a former student of eco-theologian Thomas Berry.
Chapple’s role with the Green Yoga Association includes helping yoga teachers better articulate and actualize the relationship between yoga and environmentalism in their practices and classrooms. He’s also slated to co-lead the 2007 Second International Green Yoga conference: Green Yoga Taking Root, at Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville.
Cornell describes Chapple as “steady and wise.” But when discussing his greatest passion, the theologian tends to slide, trombone-like, from his otherwise professorial tone into a higher octave of unbridled excitement. “[Green yoga is] a rejoicing in the power of the human body and the senses,” Chapple enthuses, “and the beauty of the five great elements: earth, air, fire, water and space.”
Chapple despairs at watching the earth’s elemental beauty being tarnished by resource-depletion and pollution, caused by the cars we drive, our meat-based diet, our agricultural practices and our unchecked consumerism. He posits that our excesses are leading our species perilously close to extinction, as evidenced by the record number of recent natural disasters.
“In yoga philosophy, the pain that we experience now is a result of activities that we’ve undertaken in the past,” he explains. “Through the applied practice of yoga, we’re able to understand and purify our former habits and our patterning.” Chapple invokes the yogic phrase Heyam Duhkhum Anagatam (from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra), “This means that the whole purpose of yoga is to ‘avoid the pain of the future.’”
In an effort to do his part for the planet, Chapple relies on yoga precepts like ahimsa. “Nonviolence asks us to look at harm we may be causing in our lives. A beginning point for that is our diet. We know that a diet heavy on too much food does violence to our body and a non-vegetarian diet is neither good for ourselves [nor] the environment.”
Our entire culture is suffering, says Chapple, from a bad case of affluenza. “We have so much stuff, it has become almost impossible for us to receive happiness from the things we own. The yogic precept of minimizing one’s possessions (aparigrapha) actually becomes a way of experiencing joy at a much simpler level.” To practice aparigrapha, Chapple recommends activities that nourish the planet and deepen our relationship to nature—such as hiking or spending time at the beach with friends—actions ultimately more satisfying than a day at the mall.
Many yoga asanas like tree pose (vrksasana) require a rootedness that seems to extend from the Earth’s core up through the body. For yoga to branch out into concern for the environment seems like a natural unfolding.
Lisa Maria, a yoga teacher and writer based in Marin County, is currently test-driving hybrid cars.
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