Neal Pollack's hilarious memoir Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude about his transformation from overweight, balding, failed rock star yoga skeptic to reborn, healthy, blissful yoga fiend.

Neal Pollack was overweight, the hair on his head was thinning, and the hair on his face was pretentious-all of which a New York Times critic helpfully pointed out while panning his second book. The nasty review, combined with the complete failure of his attempt to become the front-man for a rock band, left Pollack lying facedown in a puddle of his own tears, pounding the mattress and sobbing into his pillow.

Pollack was desperate enough to try anything to get his life back on track-even yoga. And to his surprise, as he struggled to master the "alligator pose" and keep from kicking other yogis in the face, Pollack began to feel better. So he immersed himself in the "weird and circuslike" culture of yoga, taking part in a 24-Hour Yogathon, volunteering at his neighborhood yoga studio, attending a "yoga Olympics" in an airport hotel ballroom, going to yoga conferences and yoga rock shows, becoming a reporter for Yoga Journal magazine, going on a two-week yoga retreat to Thailand, and, finally, teaching yoga himself.

In Stretch, Pollack tells the story of his profound personal transformation-all the while mercilessly lampooning the bizarre and omnipresent yoga culture of which he is now an enthusiastic proponent.

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photos by Phoebe Wong