Jessamyn 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.