Nina Zolotow, RYT500, MFA, is Editor in Chief of the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog as well as a contributing writer, and is the author of the book Yoga for Times of Change, which is widely available. A long-time yoga writer and certified yoga teacher, her special areas of expertise are yoga for emotional well-being (including yoga for stress, insomnia, depression, and anxiety) and yoga for healthy aging. She completed the three-year teacher training program at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, California, has studied yoga therapy with Shari Ser and Bonnie Maeda, and is especially influenced by the teachings of Donald Moyer. She has studied extensively with Rodney Yee, and is inspired by the teachings of Patricia Walden on yoga for emotional healing. She has taught workshops and series classes on yoga for emotional well-being,  stress, anxiety, better sleep, and healthy aging, and on home practice and cultivating equanimity.

Nina is also the co-author with Baxter Bell of Yoga for Healthy Aging: A Guide to Lifelong Well-Being and co-author with Rodney Yee of Yoga: The Poetry of the Body and Moving Toward Balance.

Brad Gibson, Ph.D. is our behind-the-scenes scientific consultant, who still writes very occasionally. As a former Professor at UCSF in Pharmaceutical Chemistry (now emeritus), Brad’s work focused on providing a molecular-based understanding of processes that drive neurodegenerative to infectious diseases.  When he joined the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in 2000, his studies became more focused on the intersection of biological aging and various age-related diseases. Brad is currently Director of  Proteomics and Protein Analytics at Amgen where his group works to advance new therapeutics in oncology, cardiometabolic disorders, and inflammation. Brad received his PhD in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984, and then took a postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry at Cambridge University in England before taking his first acad3mic position at UCSF in 1985.

Sandy Blaine, MAPP, is a longtime yoga practitioner and yoga teacher, who trained at the Berkeley Yoga Room and taught in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. She is also an expert wellness consultant who works with the deep connection between physical health and emotional well-being. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has worked with high-profile tech and wellness companies on well-being curricula and wellness program development. She is the author of two books, Yoga for Healthy Knees and Yoga for Computer Users, and is currently writing a third book on mind-body integration and happiness.

Sandy earned her Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. While at Penn, she was one of four graduate students selected to work on an in-depth consulting project for the country of Ireland’s national health service, and spent a semester advising them on incorporating positive psychology concepts and resources into the country-wide Healthy Ireland Initiative in development at the time. She specifically worked within her specialty, mind-body integration, developing and proposing scalable positive-psychology-based wellness recommendations. Being invited to work on a project with the potential to positively impact the well-being of an entire country was the opportunity of a lifetime and is one of Sandy’s proudest and most fulfilling accomplishments. For more about Sandy‘s work, see www.sandyblaine.com.

Beth Gibbs, MA, is a certified yoga therapist and faculty member at the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy. Her classes, workshops and writing focus on the benefits of yoga, meditation and self-awareness to help others (and herself) find clarity, contentment, and resilience in a complicated world. She has published a children’s book, Ogi Bogi, The Elephant Yogi  and a personal growth book for adults titled Enlighten Up!. Read her blog and sign up for her newsletter at www.bethgibbs.com

Bridget Frederick is a graduate of The Berkeley Yoga Room Advanced Studies Program. She mainly teaches at The Yoga Room, and at the North Berkeley Senior Center. With a strong focus on anatomy, balance and core strength, her classes aim to make yoga accessible to anyone who is interested in finding the relief, strength or stillness that yoga can offer. In addition to yoga, her interest in aerial arts led to an exploration of yoga wall ropes, first developed by BKS Iyengar, who used them as a prop to support and intensify his asana practice. She has been teaching ropes wall classes and workshops since 2017. Inspiration for her teaching comes from current and former teachers Donald Moyer, Mary Lou Weprin, Julie Gudmestad, JinSung, Gay White, Ada Lusardi, Sandy Blaine and Herta Weinstein. Find information on Bridget’s current classes here.

Leza Lowitz, MA is the Founder and Director of Sun and Moon Yoga in Tokyo (www.sunandmoon.jp), which she opened in 2003 as an act of Seva. Leza is credited with introducing many styles of yoga in Japan, including Restorative Yoga, Yin Yoga, Vinyasa Flow, Partner Yoga, Tibetan Heart Yoga, Tibetan Bowl Sound Healing, and Community Charity Yoga. She also helped spread the practice of Loving-Kindness meditation in Japan.

She completed her first yoga training at the White Lotus Foundation in 2000, and graduated from further teacher trainings with Shiva Rea (Vinyasa Krama), Paul Grilley (Yin Yoga), Jonas Westring (Thai Massage), Judith Lasater (Relax and Renew), Haidar Ali (Thai Massage), Sarah Shivani (Rolling Restorative Yoga), Asian Classics Institute (Buddhist Thought and Principles), Ted Lafferty (Tibetan Heart Yoga), Eric Brinkman (Sanskrit Language Studies), Daphne Tse (Mantra and Kirtan), Gina Sala (Mantra and Kirtan), and more. She is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher through the Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Her main teachers were Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Leza’s passion is Tibetan Buddhism, which she has been studying for 35 years. She graduated from a seven-year intensive program in Vajrayana Buddhism in 2013.

​Leza is also an award-winning,  best-selling author of over 20 books, including Yoga Poems, Yoga Heart, Sacred Sanskrit Words, In Search of the Sun (A Yoga Memoir), and Up from the Sea, a novel in verse for young adults. She has written for the New York Times, Yoga Journal, Yoga Journal Japan, The Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, Elephant Journal. Her writing appeared in Best Buddhist Writing.

You can read more about Leza’s writing at www.lezalowitz.com and about her yoga studio and classes at www.sunandmoon.jp.

Rammohan Rao Ph.D., AP, RYT, holds a doctorate degree in Neurosciences and presently serves as a Principal Research Scientist at Apollo Health. His research focus is in the area of age-associated neurodegeneration with special emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease. Ram has 20+ years of research and teaching experience in Neuroscience and has published more than 75 peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and chapters in a couple of text books. Ram has supervised, trained and mentored several high school students, college interns, research technicians and post-doctoral fellows.

Ram is also a board certified Ayurveda practitioner (C-AP) and a registered yoga teacher (RYT). He teaches Ayurveda and Yoga at the California College of Ayurveda. He is also the author of a recently published best-selling book Good Living Practices—The best from Ayurveda, Yoga and Modern Science For Achieving Optimal Health, Happiness and Longevity.

Barrie Risman, E-RYT-500, is an internationally-recognized yoga teacher, public speaker, and author. Her best-selling book, Evolving Your Yoga: Ten Principles for Enlightened Practice, is a guide for teachers and continuing students to deepen, expand, and integrate the benefits of yoga in their lives.

Barrie was a Senior Anusara Yoga teacher and teacher trainer from 2003-2012 and has been a dedicated student of Iyengar Yoga for more than 25 years. She teaches yoga around the globe through her ongoing classes, workshops, and trainings, both online and in person. She serves on teacher-training faculties in the US and Canada and leads professional development courses as well as mentoring programs for yoga teachers.  Teaching since 1999, her events weave together the technical precision of alignment-based practice with the wisdom of yoga philosophy distilled from decades of intensive study and practice.

She is also a regular contributor to Yoga International and has been featured in Yoga Journal, Elephant Journal and La Presse, and on CBC television.