Above the Fog by Brad Gibson
I started this blog way back in 2011, having no idea what it would become or where it would lead me. Originally, it was a project conceived by three of us, me, my husband, Brad Gibson, and our friend Baxter Bell. We simply felt between us we had so much useful information to share about yoga, aging, and yoga for healthy aging that we should start sharing it! (See In the Kitchen.) In the end, the blog led to a book deal for Baxter and me and quite a number of followers, some of whom I’ve been hearing from recently.Over the years, several other writers came on board, some temporarily and some permanently, and Brad kind of faded into the background, though he’s always been there when I needed advice. Then, at the end of 2018, after seven years of blogging, I decided it was time for a break. This break was interesting and productive for many of us—I got a book deal to write a new book, which I’ll tell you about below—but some of us also realized we missed sharing we what know and what we’re thinking about with all of you out there. And with this pandemic, it seemed more important than ever to provide free, helpful information about ways yoga can help you cultivate physical, mental, and emotional health as well as peace of mind. So we decided to restart the blog again. Here’s our current staff:Nina Zolotow is returning as Editor in Chief and featured contributor.Bridget Frederick is returning in new role. As our Acquisitions Editor, she’ll be in charge of selecting and posting practice videos contributed by our readers on our blog and maintaining our YouTube channel. She’ll tell you more about this soon.Beth Gibbs is returning as a featured contributor. You’ll be hearing from her soon about what she’s been up to and what she plans are for upcoming articles.Ram Rao is returning as a featured contributor. You’ll be hearing from him soon as well about what he’s been up to and what his plans are for upcoming articles.In addition to these returning staff members, we will have three new writers on our staff. Sandy Blaine, Leza Lowitz, and Barrie Risman will all be contributing articles on a regular basis. They will soon be introducing themselves to you. Finally, a number of new writers have offered to provide occasional articles (if you’d like to do this, too, contact me at [email protected]) so you can look forward to hearing some fresh voices in the weeks to come.With a different staff, the blog will be evolving. We won’t be so focused on topics related to aging or medical conditions, although they may come up. Instead, you can think of this blog as simply being about yoga for real life, with aging, of course, being an important part of that. We also plan to post just three days a week, instead of five.For those who are wondering what I was up to during the break, I’m happy to announce that my editor at Shambhala Publications asked me if I wanted to write a book for them. The idea I came up with—which I pitched to her in the summer of 2019—was a book about yoga for adapting to and accepting change. Shambahla loved the idea and in the early days of the pandemic they offered me a deal for a book tentatively entitled “Yoga for Times of Change.” By then, of course, we were all going through a big change together, so my topic, seemed more relevant than ever. At this point, I’m still deep in the midst of writing the book, but no doubt you’ll see some posts on some of the topics I’ll be covering in the book. And if you have a good story about how yoga has helped you navigate through physical, emotional, mental, or societal change, please let me know.And for those of you who were following my meditation project, after six months of regular practice and weekly reports on my daily practice on my personal blog Delusiastic, I was able to establish a daily habit of meditating that I’m still maintaining. In fact, I’m meditating now seven days a week and for longer periods of time. I think the public commitment I made to commit to this practice was actually very helpful so a big thanks to all of you who supported me. You can find posts about the first six months of my meditation practice on Delusiastic, where I also published a number of one-sentence stories and creative non-fiction pieces.I'll wrap up by saying that I'm writing this at a very difficult time. Not only is the pandemic still raging in the US, but the state that I call home, California, has been on fire for weeks. During this period, my practice has been invaluable. I meditate every single day and also practice 20 minutes of Legs Up the Wall pose daily. I also practice asanas to cultivate strength, flexibility, balance, and agility, especially on those days when the air quality is too poor for me to take a walk. I also find comfort in studying yoga philosophy. I hope you, too, are finding yoga helpful during these challenging times.
