Environmental Conservation through Yoga Practice and its Relevance to Contemporary Society

Abstract

Environmental conservation is being discussed in various platforms in the 21st century. Every religion in society has many environmental concerns and ecofriendly philosophies in their doctrine related to describing cosmology, creation theories, the interconnectedness of gods and the nature, creatures and human. Yoga has eight ethical principles to stimulate human activities and safeguard the environment. In this way, religions and yoga help produce ideas that can lead to the protection of the natural environment. Humankind is spiritual, and their negligence or failure to follow the religious faith properly due to their busyness in their day to day activities leads them to exploit and pollute the natural environment. Yoga is an ancient religious wisdom. Practicing yoga is becoming a viable means to consoling the human mind, physical fitness and happy life in contemporary society. Protecting the environment through the philosophy of yoga has not been communicated to the present world by the researchers even though much research is carried out on environmental protection from various angles. Therefore, this research aims to demonstrate the yogic perspective of environmental conservation and recommend basic principles emphasing the importance of observing yoga. Thus, yoga practices will lead the individual towards attitudinal and behavioral change and control the adverse effects of human activities on the environment. This research analyzed data related to the literature on yoga sutra, textbooks, journals, research articles on environmental issues, and reached the conclusion that practicing yoga would be a useful way to minimize the environmental hazards due to human activities and optimizing environmental conservation through changing the individual mindset.