Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance

nJessamyn Stanley's first book, Every Body Yoga, with 59,000 copies in print, taught us how to do yoga. Now, in Yoke, she tells us why. Writing about what she calls the yoga of the everyday--which is not just about poses but about applying the hard lessons we learn on the mat to the even harder daily project of living--Yoke presents a series of deeply honest, funny, gritty, thoughtful, and largely autobiographical essays that explores the issues of race, self-love, capitalism, sex and sexuality, cannabis, and more.

Drawing its name from a literal translation of the Sanskrit root yuj, from which the word yoga derives, Yoke, invites every reader to find their own authentic yoga of the everyday, and learn to handle life's toughest moments with the same flexibility, strength, grounding energy, and core awareness found in a headstand or Tadasana or cobra pose. n nFinding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. n In Sanskrit, yoga means to yoke. To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of yoke is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday--a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living. n In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it's a full-time job loving yourself, all through the lens of yoke. She calls out an American yoga complex that prefers debating the merits of cotton versus polyblend leggings rather than owning up to its overwhelming Whiteness. She questions why the Western take on yoga so often misses--or misuses--the tradition's spiritual dimension. And reveals what she calls her own whole-ass problematic Growing up Bah��, loving astrology, learning to meditate, finding prana in music. n And in the end, Jessamyn invites every reader to find the authentic spirit of yoke--linking that good and that bad, that light and that dark. n nFinding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. n In Sanskrit, yoga means to yoke. To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of yoke is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday--a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living. n