YOGA SUTRA I.1 ATHA YOGA NUSASANAM
Now this is yoga as I have observed it in the natural world.

Yoga is here now! It can be perceived and realized in the natural world that we live in. In fact, yoga is all around us at every moment, waiting for us to wake up, to dig deeper, to look beyond the surface of things and remember what it takes to become whole. As yogis, we strive to live harmoniously on the Earth, the perfect natural world that Patanjali references.

It can be deeply upsetting to look deeper into the situation of animals in our world. We live in a culture where most people only interact with animals as products at the grocery store or as food on the dinner plate. Collectively, we are so divorced from the natural state of wild animals to the point where some actually think that they like it when we eat them! This ignorance about the natural state of being takes us farther from the goal of yoga - union with the Divine.

When we open our eyes, we come to realize that our culture is destroying the planet with global warming and killing millions of animals every day for food, clothing, entertainment and scientific experiments. As yogis, we have to become conscious of our own participation in these harsh realities and begin to create the world we want to live in. Using ahimsa as a cornerstone of our yoga practice is the way to get there.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION: THE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF EATING MEAT
* Americans eat an excess of 6 billion animals a year.
* The worldwide number of animals killed for food in 2000 was 45 billion, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. This included: 306 million cattle, buffalo, and calves, 1.2 billion pigs, 795 million sheep and goats, 42.7 billion chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese The figures exclude some small countries and 'non-slaughter' deaths, which are generally not reported. These figures do not include fish and sea creatures.
* Avian flu, mad cow disease, and other emerging diseases that can jump from animals to humans are symptoms of the spread of factory farming.
* Factory-farmed meat and fish contain an arsenal of unnatural ingredients, among them persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), arsenic, hormones, and other chemicals.
* Overuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in livestock and poultry operations, meanwhile, is undermining the toolbox of effective medicines for human use.
* Producing just one calorie of beef takes 33 percent more fossil-fuel energy than producing a calorie of potatoes.
* Eight ounces of beef can require up to 25,000 liters of water, while enough flour for a loaf of bread in developing countries requires only 550 liters.
* Only about half of all livestock waste is effectively fed into the crop cycle; much of the remainder ends up polluting the air, water, and soil.
* A California study found that a single dairy cow “emits 19.3 pounds of volatile organic compounds per year, making dairies the largest source of the smog-making gas, surpassing trucks and passenger cars.” (PETA)