This first chapter of Yoga and Animal Ethics begins with a brief explanation of why animal ethics discourse is appropriately coupled with a discussion of yoga. Yoga philosophy is becoming a subject of increasing interest among yoga practitioners, many of whom readily pursue ethical practices that resonate with those stipulated in yoga texts. This book is largely text-based, focusing mainly on two widely known works—the Yoga Sūtra of Patañjali and the Bhagavadgītā, the former representing “classical” Yoga and the latter the early expression of devotional (bhakti) yoga, which is in turn elaborated in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Yoga is in all cases a process of self-transformation, in this book argued to be a necessary foundation for setting human relationality with nonhuman animals on enduring and all-beneficial ethical grounds.