Yoga and Animal Ethics

“By decentering our anthropocentric presuppositions on horizons of continuity across divine, human, and animal domains, we may yet be able to recover our fundamental kinship with the presence of personality in the world. In this work, animated both by  careful textual scholarship and by deep spiritual sensibility, Valpey evocatively situates therapeutic practices of re-yoking under a spiritual canopy that would shepherd an all-inclusive freedom.”

—Ankur Barua, Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies, University of Cambridge, UK

This open access book offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on several dimensions of animal-related ethical reflection and action. "Yoga" has become a household word in recent decades and, increasingly, has drawn physical yoga practitioners to explore its philosophy; significantly, classical yoga philosophy and praxis are deeply grounded in realizing the self in relation with all beings as non-material selves. Therefore yoga provides an ideal entry-way into contemporary animal ethics discourse, contributing particularly in its appeal to the experiential dimension of human self-understanding in relation to nonhuman animals.

Kenneth R. Valpey is a research fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, UK.