‘Green’ Yoga Returning to Its Roots
- Yasmin Prabhudas
- Dec 21
- 6 min read
Global Movement Aligns Mindfulness, Ecology, and Climate Healing
Yoga began in South Asia about 5,000 years ago. It has grown in popularity, especially in the US, India and China, and today, some 300 million people around the world practice yoga.
Yet the key principles of the tradition may be neglected. Yoga is about living a purposeful life in balance with nature. However, it has evolved into a huge, money-making industry. The yoga market today is worth $370 billion worldwide, according to Wellness Creative Co., which tracks market trends. US citizens, for example, spend $16 billion on yoga equipment, classes, and accessories every year, says Goa Yogashala, a respected teacher training school in India.
Some yoga practitioners and centers are determined to keep the attention on yoga’s philosophical roots, which emphasizes each person’s ties to nature and minimizing harm to other living beings.
Yoga Principles Are Eco-friendly
Yoga practice and philosophy are outlined in the ancient Sanskrit texts of the Upanisads and epic poem Bhagavad Gita, but the basis for much thinking is taken from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, which is believed to date back to the first century CE.
The “eight limbs” of yoga in the Sutra are guidelines on how to live a meaningful life. They include the Yamas and the Niyamas.
Helen Clay, who lives in Sheffield, UK, has been practicing yoga for 40 years and teaching for 30 years. She says of the Yoga Sutra: “The Yamas and the Niyamas are the first and second of the eight limbs’ arsenal. The postural work, the physical or meditative work […] rests on those first two foundations, which should infuse all yoga.”
Clay has a master’s degree in yoga and meditation and has learned Sanskrit. She established the Yoga and Climate Action Network to explore how yoga goes beyond individual health and well-being and toward planetary health and well-being.
[Clay] established the Yoga and Climate Action Network to explore how yoga goes beyond individual health and well-being and toward planetary health and well-being.
“The five Yamas,” Clay explains, “relate to how you behave in relation to other people in the wider world. Ahimsa, which means “nonviolence,” refers to “thought, word, and deed, and it’s like the bedrock of every other aspect he [Patanjali] talks about.”
“Satya means truth, so […] seeing what is real.” This could mean acknowledging the many concerns about climate change.
Clay continues: “Asteya is not stealing. […] And brahmacharya […] meant celibacy. And aparigraha is nonhoarding.”
“The idea is that people are subject to anger, desire, lust, […] acquisitiveness, or power, and these restraints are really important to be able to live happily with yourself and within the world.”
The five Niyamas, she explains, are about personal conduct. Saucha is cleanliness and purity but can include not polluting the world. Santosha is about contentment, restraining individuals from overconsumption. Tapas is self-change, and isvara phanidhana means “surrender to the Lord or something bigger”—for example, seeing oneself as part of nature.
“Those qualities […] are a training that has a link to sustainability and climate. If you start from ahimsa, then you’re thinking about your actions in the world,” explains Clay.
Commercialization
Clay states that, while millions of people practice yoga now, she doesn’t think knowledge about the Yamas and Niyamas is as well-known as it should be.
“People see it as just a physical practice,” she says. “It just becomes part of what you buy. Yoga leggings, yoga clothes, yoga equipment [that] have to be changed to keep up with fashion. It’s just the opposite of what it’s about.” And yoga tourism means “people are flying all over,” which can contribute to pollution.
But it’s challenging to promote the underlying teachings, Clay says. “The philosophy is quite complicated, and if you don't have somebody to explain it to you, it's really difficult to wrap your head around.”
Gaining an Understanding
Dr. Vikas Chothe, who cofounded the Swasti Yoga Center in Pune, India, with his partner, Dr. Shwetambari Chothe, reiterates Clay’s concerns: “There is a great amount of resistance to any academic studies as far as the yoga fraternity is concerned globally because mostly it is considered like a skill set, which can be used for your bread-and-butter living. […] You will find people who are teaching yoga for 20–30 years who themselves are not very well versed or aware about the fundamentals of the texts of yoga.”
“The philosophy of yoga wants you to connect with nature.”
Chothe’s advice to yoga instructors who want to go green is to gain an understanding of yoga’s scriptural basis.
“When you understand, you will start getting answers helping you to connect with nature and the universe. The moment you see why is there a mountain pose, why is there a tree pose, why is there a lion pose—the reason is because the philosophy of yoga wants you to connect with nature.”
Green Yoga
The center has been training yoga teachers over the past 10 years. Its green yoga corporate program teaches instructors how to integrate yoga and align their activities with, for example, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. They also work on their environmental and social governance by helping employees to reduce their consumption and carbon footprint.
The green yoga instructor program blends traditional yoga training with eco-friendly practices so participants can “lead holistic, sustainable lives and teach others to do the same.” The training covers a person’s food, daily routine, activities, thinking, and work–life balance.
There is also a yoga and sustainability literacy course, promoting the connection between the practice and living an environmentally friendly life.
Sustainability
Eco-friendly products are available at the center. They include chanting beads made from cow dung, bamboo tissues, biodegradable cups, and upcycled pouches. This helps generate employment locally and recycles waste material.
Vegetarian and vegan diets are important too. “If I consume 1 kilogram of meat,” Chothe says, “it takes 80,000 liters [21,000 gallons] of water, because you must have the corn to feed the cattle. So, if I shift to […] a vegetarian meal and consume rice or wheat, that takes 8,000 liters [2,100 gallons] of water. From 80,000 you’re immediately coming down to 8,000.”
"If I consume one kilogram of meat, it takes 80,000 liters of water, because you must have the corn to feed the cattle."
Yet more water can be saved if rice is replaced with millet (a grain high in carbohydrate). One kilogram of millet requires only 400 liters (105 gallons) of water, which is especially beneficial in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where water is scarce.
While it’s hard to measure the environmental impact of the center’s activities, it shares its “yoga and sustainability toolkit” with more than 4,000 students across 35 countries.
Dealing with Climate Anxiety
In the forests outside Portland, Oregon, lies Vernonia Springs, the site of the Terra Vida Academy, an “eco-campus” combining yoga with agroforestry, permaculture, and “natural building.” It is set in 28 acres of parkland and has a 1.5-mile nature trail.
Founder Jeff Walton says the yoga classes are designed to help people with their mental health when dealing with the world.
He himself suffers from climate anxiety. “I believe the yoga we offer—allowing people to be in nature—is the biggest part of the solution because I think we live in such a digital age that they […] are really so disconnected and afraid of nature,” he says.
He explains: “The yoga helps them work on their mindfulness while they’re out here and they get that environmental connection.”
Participants can also take part in other ecologically beneficial activities, such as hempcrete building courses.
Participants can also take part in other ecologically beneficial activities, such as hempcrete building courses. Hempcrete is a mix of hemp plant hurd (the plan’s woody inner core), a lime-based binder, and water.
Making a Difference
“I believe we cannot have individual health and well-being without planetary health and well-being, and that yoga has much to offer in both respects. This requires extending yoga practice beyond awareness to what the Bhagavad Gita calls ‘skillful action.’ We can all make a positive difference, however small, within our own spheres of influence ... especially when we band together,” Clay says.
*Yasmin Prabhudas is a freelance journalist working mainly for nonprofit organizations, labor unions, the education sector, and government agencies.
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