Happy Anniversary! Two Years of Yoga for Healthy Aging

by Nina

It’s our two-year anniversary today! Celebrate with us again this year by listening to "Float," one of my favorite songs by Flogging Molly (I love the video, too). I still think that the chorus for this song, “Ah but don't, don't sink the boat/That you built, you built to keep afloat,” works perfectly as a theme for this blog. That, and the ending to the song:

A ripe old age,
A ripe old age,
A ripe old age,
Just doing the best I can!

We’ve had a very productive second year! We now have 492 posts on the blog, covering a wide range of topics, including asana practice, pranayama and meditation, stress management, aging theories, medical conditions, ayurveda, and yoga philosophy. If you are interested in reading earlier posts, you should know there are three different ways you can search the blog for particular topics (or authors). In honor of our anniversary, I’ve just added a new page to the blog that describes the three different ways to search the blog, and when to use which type of search function. Click the How to Search tab at the top of the blog to access it.

We also have well over a thousand subscribers now! If you’d like to become a subscriber, you can sign up to receive each post via email by entering your email address into the “Follow by Email” box on the right side of the blog. After you click the Submit button and fill in the Subscription request, you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription request. If you don’t see one after 24 hours, check your junk mail folder. Or, if you have a Google account, you can become a Google follower by clicking the Join this Site button.

We’ve also gained a new regular contributor, a copy editor, and a photographer! Our new writer is Ram Rao, Ph.D. He is a Research Associate Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where he studies various aspects of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. And he is also a certified Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist and a registered yoga teacher! Because he grew up in India in a family of Vedic scholars, he brings a different perspective to blog, which I think is invaluable (and I confess, I often consult him privately behind the scenes). And, of course, we all love the story of his grandfather teaching him to meditate in a train station (see Achieving Stillness in Turbulent Times).

Our copy editor is Bridget Frederick, a yoga teacher and writer. Although I curate and edit every single post on the blog, I don’t take the time to proofread (well, I do have other projects that I’m working on as well). So when Bridget offered to take on this task, I was thrilled. In Bridget’s defense, I must confess that while she often edits a post before it is published, there are some days like today that I publish a post before she can get to it and she only edits it after the fact. So if you see an error, it’s probably my fault.

Melina Meza, a yoga teacher who is also a passionate amateur photographer, has been generously contributing her beautiful photographs. I often hear from people on how well the photographs complement the text, and I couldn't make that happen without people like Melina (and Brad, Michele, Joan, and Philip) who are willing to share their photographs with us.

Our blog isn’t “monetized” so this means that all three of these new contributors, as well as our original staff (Baxter, Brad, Timothy, and Shari), are doing this work out of love. I’m so grateful to be working with such an extraordinary group of people!

“Tomorrow smells of less decay
The flowers quick just bloom and fray
Be thankful, that's all you can” —Flogging Molly