Mark: Alright, Michelle. Jessamyn Stanley's Yoke. Give it to me in five words. Michelle: Yoga's not about the leggings. Mark: Ooh, spicy. I like it. Mine is: "Embrace your inner beautiful mess." Michelle: I like that. It already feels like this isn't your typical self-help book. Mark: It's definitely not. Today we’re diving into Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance by Jessamyn Stanley. And to understand this book, you have to know who she is: a queer, Black, fat yoga teacher who looked at the mainstream, predominantly white yoga world and basically said, "This isn't for me, so I'm going to build my own table." This book is her manifesto for doing just that. Michelle: A manifesto. I love that. So it's less about how to do a downward dog and more about... how to live? Mark: Exactly. It's about the "why" of yoga, not the "how." And her whole philosophy, this radical self-acceptance, really crystallizes around a single, mortifying typo.

Michelle: A typo? Okay, you have to tell me this story. I live for moments of professional humiliation. Mark: It’s a fantastic story. So, Stanley has just published her first book, Every Body Yoga. It’s a huge success. She's feeling on top of the world. Then, late one night, she gets an email from a stranger, a freelance copy editor, who very pointedly informs her that in the book, she defined "yoga" as coming from the Sanskrit root meaning "to yolk," like an egg yolk. Michelle: Oh no. Oh, that is brutal. The universe really has a sense of humor. Mark: A cruel one. The correct word, of course, is "to yoke," as in to join or unite. And Stanley describes this wave of shame washing over her. It wasn't just about the typo; it was this trigger for her deepest imposter syndrome. She felt like a fraud. A fat, Black, queer woman who dared to teach yoga, and now she's been exposed as someone who doesn't even know the basic definition. Michelle: Wow, the shame spiral is so real! One tiny mistake and suddenly you question your entire existence. I think everyone has felt that. So what did she do? Mark: Well, her first instinct was defensiveness, anger. But then she did what she teaches: she went to her yoga mat and just breathed. She sat with the discomfort, the "smelliness" of her own fear and self-doubt. And in that moment, she had a revelation. Michelle: Which was? Mark: That the typo was a gift. It forced her to confront what she calls the "distraction" of imposter syndrome. But more than that, it led her to a much deeper understanding of what "yoke" truly means to her. It’s not just some ancient, sterile definition. Michelle: Okay, so how does she define it then? What does "yoking" look like in real life, beyond a Sanskrit root? Mark: For her, yoking is the practice of everyday life. She says, "You yoke when you find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. You yoke when you peel yourself off the pavement after your heart’s been broken (again). You yoke when you manage to keep moving in spite of being completely overwhelmed." It’s the joining of the light and the dark. The triumph of publishing a book, and the humiliation of a typo. You have to embrace both. Michelle: That’s a much more powerful definition. It's not about achieving some perfect, balanced state. It's about the messy act of holding the opposites together. It’s the verb, not the noun. Mark: Precisely. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about being whole. And that means accepting the parts of yourself you’d rather hide. She has this incredible quote: "All wounds need to breathe, no matter how painful or smelly." The typo forced her wound of self-doubt into the open air. Michelle: That idea of embracing the "smelly" parts of life is so refreshing. It feels like the exact opposite of the curated, perfect, wellness-influencer vibe. Mark: It is. And that leads directly to her next major idea, which is about the difference between the curated self and the real self. She calls it the Mask and the Instrument.

Michelle: The Mask and the Instrument. I like that. It sounds like a fable. Mark: It feels like one. Stanley says that practicing yoga, for her, feels like "digging an instrument out of myself." It's this raw, personal, unique thing that only you can play. But we spend most of our lives constructing and polishing a "Mask" to show the world. Michelle: That makes so much sense. It's like our professional 'LinkedIn' self versus our '3 AM scrolling on the couch' self. We all have those masks, right? Mark: Exactly. She says her own mask is "Jessamyn"—the Black, fat, queer, femme, artist, yoga teacher. It's a collection of labels. And the danger is when we start to believe the Mask is the real thing. She says we confuse the Mask for the light that lives inside us. Michelle: And then we get angry at ourselves when we don't live up to the Mask's expectations. Or we get angry at other people when they don't fit the mask we've assigned to them. Mark: You've got it. And she tells this beautiful, revealing story about her mother to illustrate this. For her whole life, her mother, Tangela, wore the mask of a respectable, non-drinking Southern woman. The family never talked about alcohol. Michelle: Okay, I feel a secret coming. Mark: A great one. They're on a family vacation, and her dad's best man is there. He's telling old stories and casually mentions a time when Tangela made him a "delicious blue motorcycle"—which is a very alcoholic cocktail. Michelle: Whoops! Mask, meet reality. Mark: And her mom gets flustered, denies it, but the mask slips. In that moment, Stanley sees her mother not as the "breadwinner, champion, and protector," but as Tangela. A human being with a past, with a story beyond the role she played. It was a glimpse of her mother's "instrument." Michelle: Wow. And seeing that in her mom gave her permission to see it in herself. That's powerful. But isn't it terrifying to drop the mask? To play your 'instrument' if you don't even know what it sounds like, or if you think it sounds awful? Mark: It's terrifying. But Stanley's advice is uncompromising. She says, "The trick is to play your own instrument, not somebody else’s. Dig it out no matter the cost and play it like nobody’s watching." It’s about unlearning who we thought we were supposed to be. Michelle: "Play it like nobody's watching." That's easy to say, but hard to do, especially in a world that's always watching. And that brings up a huge part of this book. Stanley argues that in the yoga world, a lot of people are playing an instrument that isn't theirs. This is where the book gets really sharp, right? Mark: It gets razor sharp. This is where she moves from personal self-acceptance to a full-blown cultural critique.

Michelle: Right. Because if yoga is an instrument, it's one that comes from a specific cultural orchestra—South Asia. And Stanley, as a Black woman, is hyper-aware of how that music is being played, or rather, co-opted, in America. Mark: She tells this incredibly vivid and uncomfortable story from her 200-hour yoga teacher training. The teacher, a white woman, puts on a film made by the founders of Jivamukti, a very famous American yoga lineage. The film is full of white people in South Asian clothing, talking about yoga. Michelle: I'm already cringing. Mark: Stanley is, too. She's looking around the room, expecting her fellow trainees to be as horrified as she is by this blatant cultural appropriation. But everyone is just blissed out. They love it. When she finally works up the courage to ask the teacher about it, the teacher just says, "Huh. I've never thought of it that way." Michelle: Oof. That is such a perfect, crushing example of privilege. The ability to just not have to think about it. It puts the burden entirely on the person who is being erased. Mark: Exactly. And this experience is a cornerstone of the book's argument. Stanley says that for many white practitioners, taking on a South Asian "identity" is a way to "skirt the shame of their own ancestry by appropriating someone else’s." It's a spiritual costume. Michelle: This is a really charged topic. The book got a lot of praise for this, but it's also where it can be seen as controversial. How does she talk about this without just alienating the very people who probably need to hear it most? Mark: That's the brilliance of her approach. It's not just about pointing fingers. She turns the lens on herself. She talks about the "Yoga Journal" cover controversy, where the magazine put her on the cover but also released a second cover with a thin, white yoga icon, effectively hedging their bets. And she admits her initial reaction was a desperate need for that mainstream, white-run institution's approval. Michelle: So she’s admitting to her own complicity in the system she’s critiquing. She has a "colonizer within" too. Mark: Yes. She's not claiming purity. She's saying this is a mess we are all in. Her call to action isn't for white people to "fix" racism. It's for everyone to first accept the reality of it. She has this killer line: "Don’t try to change it. Don’t try to rationalize it. Don’t try to fix it. Just accept it. Then we can all move forward together." Michelle: Just accept it. That feels so counterintuitive. We're taught to solve problems, not just stare at them. Mark: But her point is that you can't solve a problem you refuse to truly see. The "coconut water etiquette," as she calls it—all the "namastes" and performative spirituality—is a way of not seeing it. Acceptance is the first, most difficult step. It's the ultimate act of yoking the pleasant idea of unity with the painful reality of division.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, it's a pretty radical roadmap for... well, for being a person. Mark: It really is. It's a three-step process, in a way. First, you have to redefine your practice—whether it's yoga or just life—as an act of "yoking" the good with the bad, the beautiful with the messy. You have to stop chasing perfection. Michelle: Then, you have to find your own authentic "instrument" by shedding the "Mask" you've built for the world, and for yourself. You have to be willing to sound a little off-key. Mark: And finally, you have to do the hard work of making sure the instrument you're playing is actually yours. That means confronting the cultural baggage, the history, the power dynamics. It's a journey that moves from the deeply personal to the profoundly political. Michelle: It makes you question every practice we engage with, not just yoga. In our careers, our relationships, our hobbies... What 'masks' are we wearing, and what 'instruments' have we been told to play because they're more acceptable or popular? Mark: That's the question she leaves you with. True self-acceptance isn't just a private, internal job. It demands that we look outward and see how we fit into the world, and how the world has tried to shape us. Michelle: It's a full-time job, loving yourself. That's one of her chapter titles, and it feels like the perfect summary. It's work. Constant, difficult, necessary work. We'd love to hear what you think. What does your 'yoga of everyday life' look like? Let us know on our socials. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.