The Monk's Mindset: Finding Stillness in a World That Won't Stop Moving

Sam Yo is well known as Peloton’s first Thai-Chinese instructor and fitness coach, reaching more than thirty thousand people per day. His teachings on and off the bike draw from his experience as an ordained Theravāda Buddhist monk in Thailand. In The Monk’s Mindset, he describes the lessons he learned from ancient traditions and how he adapted them to live a fuller life in our modern world.

Throughout the book, Sam shares from his own life and the ways in which he found (and continues to find) his purpose through mindfulness, meditation, and fitness. From challenges he experienced growing up as a first-generation immigrant, to his award-winning career on stage and screen before becoming an ordained monk and finally an instructor at Peloton, traveling these different paths has brought Sam to a defining lesson he is eager to share with “I am a disciple of a better me.” Each chapter of The Monk’s Mindset is tied to the belief that if we adopt the right mindset, we can bring a focused energy to all we do, enhancing all the areas of our life—our relationship to self, to others, and to the communities and world we live in.

Most fitness books are grounded in the “Let’s Do This” principle without establishing an emotional, mindful, or spiritual tether. In The Monk’s Mindset, Sam Yo reworks this principle with a radically alternative “How do we do this?”