Baxter Bell - Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being

When we got together to go over the list of people who had helped us with this book, we were amazed, humbled, and ever so grateful. There were so many of them! We are very fortunate indeed to know so many people who have a solid expertise in science, medicine, or health care combined with a deep appreciation of yoga.

We need to start first by thanking Dave ONeal, senior editor at Shambhala Publications, for discovering us. It really was like the movies. At the end of our first Yoga for Healthy Aging intensive, one of the attendeeswho we only knew at that point as Daveapproached Nina with his business card saying that if she really did want someone to pay her to write a book (something she had joked about during class), hed be interested. Thank you so much, Dave, for appreciating our work and believing in us!

Special thanks are also due to Bradford Gibson, PhD, and Rammohan Rao, PhD, both from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Brad was there for us from the beginning, helping us to create our blog and teaching us about what is knownand what is not knownabout aging. And when it came time to write the book, Brad helped Nina write the first chapter and reviewed the entire book for scientific accuracy and clarity. Ram, a neuroscientist, joined our team on the blog in year two as our expert on brain health as well as on several aspects of yoga. Our chapter on brain health wouldnt have been possible without him, as it is partly based on information we learned from him. He also reviewed the chapter after it was written for scientific accuracy.

Besides Brad and Ram, we had a whole team of experts who helped us out with their careful reviews of chapters that focused on their areas of expertise. So thanks to: Dilip Sarkar, MD, for reviewing the chapter on heart and cardiovascular system health; Laurie Baccash, physical therapist, for reviewing the chapters on strength, flexibility, balance, and agility; Matthew J. Taylor, physical therapist, for reviewing the chapters on strength and flexibility; Wayne Diamond, physical therapist, for reviewing the chapters on balance and agility; and Daniel Libby, PhD, for reviewing the chapter on stress management.

Thanks also to Anita Carstensen, MD, who took the time to review our long chapter on yoga for medical conditions, which, in the end, we could not include because, well, we were a bit overambitious about the initial scope of this book.

We also need to thank all our friends and members of the Yoga for Healthy Aging community who contributed their personal stories to our book, helping us to vividly illustrate how powerful yoga is for real life. We appreciate your openness and honestythe fact that you were willing to tell the unvarnished truth is what made your stories so compellingand the time you took to write for us. Here they are in alphabetical order by first name, with the name they wanted us to use: CJ Keller, Veterans Yoga Project Ambassador; Anita; Dan Libby, Veterans Yoga Project (for forwarding two veteran stories); Debbie Cabusas; Ellen Pechman; Elizabeth D.; Elizabeth Ann Gibbs; Evelyn Zak; Jill Satterfield; Mary Ann Avallone-OGorman; Melitta; Nina Rook; and Victor Dubin.

Thanks also to Bonnie, Carol, Jim, Judie, Krista, and Ramona for their stories about how yoga helped them with various medical conditionswe loved all those stories, though we couldnt use them in the end. Were saving them up, though!

Although our colleagues Dr. Timothy McCall and Shari Ser did not contribute directly to the book, we have learned so much from them over the years that we want to thank them for all they taught usthe book wouldnt be the same without you. And words cannot express our gratitude to our longtime teacher, Donald Moyer. Donald, so much of this book reflects knowledge that we gained from you, both about the asana practice and about what being a yogi really means.

Whew! All that was just about the words in the book, but a yoga book is pretty useless without photographs. Our photographer, Melina Meza, who is also a longtime yoga teacher and a certified Yoga for Healthy Aging teacher, really put her heart and soul into our project! Thank you so much, Melina, for taking such care to get each photo of every pose exactly rightsome angles were quite tricky. And thank you to our model, Sandy Carmellini, who, like Melina, is a longtime yoga teacher and certified Yoga for Healthy Aging teacher. Thank you, Sandy, for the beautiful work you did in performing the poses, for your enthusiasm for our four different versions of every pose, and your patience throughout a demanding photo shoot.