Here are 100 books that Take Off Your Shoes fans have personally recommended if you like
Take Off Your Shoes.
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I’m an award-winning author of novels and magazine articles. You can find my articles—many on mind-body and spiritual topics—in Oprah magazine, Prevention, National Geographic, and more. I started doing yoga back in my twenties when a woman almost-literally floated by me at the gym. When someone said she was the yoga teacher, I got off the spin bike and followed her into the class. I’m now a certified yoga teacher and longtime meditator. I’ve studied many classic yoga treatises, but it’s so much more fun to read—and to write—books that deliver yoga’s deep philosophies in a lighthearted, easily digestible way.
This little memoir (some 200 postcard-size pages) packs so much yoga punch.
Clendenin goes through a lot of bad stuff—a lifelong drinking problem, the death of a relative, a life-altering medical diagnosis—but she relays it all in such a fun, girlfriendy way you can’t help but cheer her on.
Her saving grace is the yoga teacher training she begins as the book does, which carries her through the awful life events. My favorite is the way she summarizes and modernizes the four parts of the classic—and very obtuse—Yoga Sutras (e.g., one take: “don’t let that nasty ego tell you who you aren’t”).
“It was nothing at first. Just a little twitch. My left ring finger was twitching, slowly, almost languidly, the way fishing line does when you’ve hooked something without any strength. Like a baby perch. I hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet.
My first thought: Stress?
(Nope, think again)”
And here begins a journey that Anne Clendening never saw coming, tried to deny, avoid, postpone and otherwise reject. After all, how does a dark L.A. hippy chick who swore off booze at 22 fit an early onset Parkinson's diagnosis into a life of bartending in Hollywood rock clubs and yoga?…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m an award-winning author of novels and magazine articles. You can find my articles—many on mind-body and spiritual topics—in Oprah magazine, Prevention, National Geographic, and more. I started doing yoga back in my twenties when a woman almost-literally floated by me at the gym. When someone said she was the yoga teacher, I got off the spin bike and followed her into the class. I’m now a certified yoga teacher and longtime meditator. I’ve studied many classic yoga treatises, but it’s so much more fun to read—and to write—books that deliver yoga’s deep philosophies in a lighthearted, easily digestible way.
You’ve got to love someone who calls out those who think American yoga is a skinny white woman’s practice.
Stanley is a funny, deeply honest, large-bodied, gay Black woman who knows yoga is great for everyone—in fact, her prior book is Every Body Yoga. I love the way she weaves yoga’s philosophy and practices into this short and readable memoir of her life.
And I especially adore how she grasps yoga’s real purpose, which isn’t to pretzel up in funny poses but to slow down and calm the mind. Or, as she puts it: “Honestly, you really only need to know one pose and it’s called sitting the fuck down.”
How can you not want to recommend this book to, well, everyone?
Finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. 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. 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…
I’m an award-winning author of novels and magazine articles. You can find my articles—many on mind-body and spiritual topics—in Oprah magazine, Prevention, National Geographic, and more. I started doing yoga back in my twenties when a woman almost-literally floated by me at the gym. When someone said she was the yoga teacher, I got off the spin bike and followed her into the class. I’m now a certified yoga teacher and longtime meditator. I’ve studied many classic yoga treatises, but it’s so much more fun to read—and to write—books that deliver yoga’s deep philosophies in a lighthearted, easily digestible way.
This spunky yoga memoir came out more than a decade ago (the same time as my first women’s yoga novel), and it remains my all-time favorite fun yoga read.
When 25-year-old, death-obsessed, cigarette-smoking Morrison follows her beloved yoga teacher on a Bali retreat, she’s too cynical to believe everything she’s learning. Still, she gives it her best shot (even while occasionally feeling called to wine, brownies, and “the prana of the Prada”).
When Morrison finally stops trying to reach her unattainable ideal of enlightenment, she comes to understand that self-acceptance is a key yoga aim. If you haven’t read this laugh-out-loud book, do so now!
What happens when a coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking, steak-eating twenty-five-year-old atheist decides it is time to get in touch with her spiritual side? Not what you’d expect . . .
When Suzanne Morrison decides to travel to Bali for a two-month yoga retreat, she wants nothing more than to be transformed from a twenty-five-year-old with a crippling fear of death into her enchanting yoga teacher, Indra—a woman who seems to have found it all: love, self, and God.
But things don’t go quite as expected. Once in Bali, she finds that her beloved yoga teacher and all of her yogamates wake up…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I’m an award-winning author of novels and magazine articles. You can find my articles—many on mind-body and spiritual topics—in Oprah magazine, Prevention, National Geographic, and more. I started doing yoga back in my twenties when a woman almost-literally floated by me at the gym. When someone said she was the yoga teacher, I got off the spin bike and followed her into the class. I’m now a certified yoga teacher and longtime meditator. I’ve studied many classic yoga treatises, but it’s so much more fun to read—and to write—books that deliver yoga’s deep philosophies in a lighthearted, easily digestible way.
I loved Bechdel’s amazing graphic memoirFun Home, so I had high expectations for this book about her lifetime love affair with exercise and, eventually, yoga—and she doesn’t disappoint.
The captions to some 200 pages of her fantastic cartoon drawings are honest to a fault, covering repressed emotions, relationship difficulties, and the fear she doesn’t deserve the good things in life.
In more recent years (time-bound events like Trump’s ride down the escalator appear in background scenes), Bechdel strives to forge coherent meaning from her life history and her infatuation with Jack Kerouac and other deceased spiritual authors.
The Best Graphic Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly | A New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021 | A New York Times Notable Book | An Autostraddle Best Queer Book of the Year | A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year | A St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of the Year | NPR, 12 Books NPR Staffers Loved | Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021
From the author of Fun Home, a profoundly affecting graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times
I am a recovering Big 5 consultant and healthcare administrator, while others portray me as a transformational healthcare executive who has a passion for cultivating talent and driving change to enable sustainable results. I am a visionary and collaborative team builder and servant leader who views issues/opportunities from all perspectives, turns data into information, the complex into simple, and chaos into focus. I have led transformational consulting projects, a $180M technology implementation, and a team of 1,500 people. I enjoy serving on non-profit boards, mentoring others, and co-leading a team of four at home with my wife, Hilary.
Before reading Off Balance, I always felt that my one of my biggest weaknesses was that I took too much personal satisfaction from work.
In Off Balance, Matthew Kelly shares the differences between personal satisfaction and professional satisfaction (a new concept to me). With these concepts, he provides ideas and tools to improve both types of satisfaction so you can be the best version of yourself at home and work.
The prescriptive follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Dream Manager.
One of the major issues in our lives today is work-life balance. Everyone wants it; no one has it. But Matthew Kelly believes that work- life balance was a mistake from the start. Because we don't really want balance. We want satisfaction.
Kelly lays out the system he uses with his clients, his team, and himself to find deep, long-term satisfaction both personally and professionally. He introduces us to the three philosophies of our age that are dragging us down. He shows us how to cultivate the energy…
I have read a ton of self-help books. A ton. I have a whole library of them – a bookcase of "shelf-help." And I have now written 7 of them as well! I love it when a little or a lot of the author’s story is woven into a self-help book as it demonstrates the author’s personal growth. I don’t need more self-help tools or trite suggestions. I want to feel emotionally connected and moved in a way that encourages me to reflect on and enhance my one precious life. For me, reading a well-written self-help memoir is one of life’s greatest joys.
The author's story is heart-wrenching yet uplifting, excruciating yet freeing, and extremely personal yet spoke to me in volumes. It is hard to pick out the wisdom I loved the most but from 'doing love' to busting out of 'just-a-box' to 'come back,' it is all that I needed to hear in these banana-pants crazy times. I have put on my bucket list to attend one of the author's retreats one day. Can't think of anything better than yoga, writing, and wine.
An inspirational memoir about how Jennifer Pastiloff's years of waitressing taught her to seek out unexpected beauty, how hearing loss taught her to listen fiercely, how being vulnerable allowed her to find love, and how imperfections can lead to a life full of wild happiness.
Centered around the touchstone stories Jen tells in her popular workshops, On Being Human is the story of how a starved person grew into the exuberant woman she was meant to be all along by battling the demons within and winning.
Jen did not intend to become a yoga teacher, but when she was given…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I’m deeply passionate about us all being happy and healthy at work. I’ve been this way ever since I was old enough to realise just how much time we would spend there! I grew up in a time filled with images of stressed out, chain-smoking professionals, where the word ‘executive’ was synonymous with ‘burnout’. I knew there had to be a better way. I’ve worked in mental health for twenty years and corporate wellbeing for over a decade and I love to combine those experiences to help people have their best day at work every day.
This may seem a ‘wild card’ recommendation as this book has nothing to do with work.
However, Beth Kempton uses the Japanese concept of ‘Wabi Sabi’ to help us come to terms with being imperfectly perfect. Life may not always go to plan and we can face disappointments. Perhaps your project fell through, or your pitch failed, or you realised you are on the wrong path or on a pathway that no longer serves you.
This book offers very gentle wisdom to overcome and accept these challenges in life, and therefore in work, providing the reader with comfort and knowledge to embrace their perfectly imperfect life.
The definitive guide that teaches you how to use the Japanese concept of wabi sabi to reshape every area of your life and find happiness right where you are.
Fed up with the exhausting challenges of our fast-paced, consumption-driven existence, millions of people around the world are turning to timeless cultural traditions to find true meaning. In this transformative handbook, Beth Kempton introduces you to wabi sabi (”wah-bi sah-bi”), a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics that offers a whole new way of looking at the world.
With roots in Zen and the Way of Tea, wabi sabi teaches you to…
On reaching my late 40’s, the topic of ageing and dying raised its head with a clarion call. This wake up call led me to draw upon my 25 years’ experience as a scientist to research why we age, how we die, and what (if anything) we can do about it all. I also looked beyond the physical into the social and emotional aspects. These book recommendations reflect my journey to understanding that a life well lived is about doing things you like with people you love, rather than swallowing vitamin pills.
This book completely changed the way I thought about aging and death. I listened to this book whilst walking along the Cornish Coastal Path in January. I was in the process of writing my own book about aging and had been focusing on biology but not humanity.
The warmth of the writing, the emotional journey that Gawande undergoes, the brilliant advice, and the wisdom from an expert all combine to make a wonderful life (and death) changing book.
'GAWANDE'S MOST POWERFUL, AND MOVING, BOOK' MALCOLM GLADWELL
'BEING MORTAL IS NOT ONLY WISE AND DEEPLY MOVING; IT IS AN ESSENTIAL AND INSIGHTFUL BOOK FOR OUR TIMES' OLIVER SACKS
For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's…
As a kid, I dreamed of becoming a California beach lifeguard. Considering I grew up in Michigan, this was a rather aspirational choice. To my parents’ relief, my career goals shifted over time, as I realized my gift for writing. I became a journalist then went into marketing. But after years of cranking out corporate content, I (sadly) burned out on it, dropped everything, and became a recruiter. Within months, I missed writing – so much so that I started a career-related blog, which became a thriving business dedicated to helping people move their careers forward. Gratefully, this work led to an amazing assignment, writing Do This, Not That: Career.
It’s hard to not want instant gratification, especially in our “get what you want, and now” culture. We see the shiny objects and opportunities for a quick win, and we chase them. Unfortunately, as Dorie Clark maps out in The Long Game, this frenetic behavior isn’t helpful if you want to achieve big goals.
I discovered this book when life was starting to feel like a giant game of Whac-a-mole. Sure, I was achieving success, but I could never seem to find the time to get to a couple of long-range projects that really matter to me.
The Long Game gave me several tangible tips for staying focused on my long-term goals in a world that pushes me, and all of us, to grab for those immediate, more shallow victories.
It's no secret that we're pushed to the limit. Today's professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. So we keep our heads down, focused on the next thing, and the next, without a moment to breathe.
How can we break out of this endless cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives we all seek?
Just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives. We need…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I’m a South African author and avid miner of trivia nuggets. Psychology has always fascinated me and for the past decade, I’ve been lucky enough to make a living writing about the odd and the puzzling, most notably at Listverse.com. I love sharing the most jaw-dropping facts about the human mind, plainly to change the notion that psychology is a dry academic topic. I hope you’ll enjoy the books I’ve suggested - there is something for everyone; from fiction, trivia, and well-being, to a book that puts Batman on the therapy couch!
What sets this book apart from others on the topic is that the author doesn’t drown you in background information.
She focuses on practical steps which even helped a lazy individual like myself (a natural hygge person?) to stick to habits that consistently bring more joy and positivity into my life.
The “Danish coziness” philosophy is fast becoming the new “French living” in terms of aspirational lifestyle books and blogs. There are countless viral articles comparing the happiness levels of Americans versus Danes. Their homes are more homey; their people are more cheerful. It’s an attitude that defies definition, but there is a name for this slow-moving, stress-free mindset: hygge (pronounced “hoo-ga”). Hygge values the idea of cherishing yourself: candlelight, bakeries, and dinner with friends; a celebration of experiences over possessions, as well as being kind to yourself and treasuring a sense of community.
