by Nina Zolotow, author of Yoga for Healthy Aging

Because the sixth anniversary of the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog is coming up next week, I thought I’d check to see what our nine most popular—or at least most viewed—posts were over all time. (Nine seems like a random number but for some reason that’s the number the Blogger uses.) Here are the results!

I don’t know about you but I’m always surprised when I look at this list. Some of it surely has to do with how people search for “yoga and xxxx” when they are surfing the web, but I think it also has to do with shares on Facebook.

In case you’re interested in checking any of these posts out (some are quite old and you may have missed some), I'll tell you a bit about each one and provide a link to the post.

1. In New Tricks for Old Dogs: Working with Bunions, Baxter shared both Donald Moyer’s and JJ Gormley’s techniques for working with bunions as well as giving some own advice. Fun photos taken by Nina include one of Baxter's feet with a can of beans and a rubber band.
2. In How Yoga Helps with Pain, I provided an overview of the three different ways you can use yoga to help reduce pain and/or eliminate it entirely: asanas, breath work, and relaxation. If this is a topic that interests you, I also wrote Yoga for Pain Management: The Big Picture, which provides an overview of all the posts we have on pain on the blog.
3. In Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis: Proof of the Benefits!, Ram provided background information about MS and then discussed several research studies that "discuss the benefits and potential role of yoga as an alternative treatment of symptom management for individuals with MS and describe how yoga can improve the patients’ quality of life."
4. In Plank Pose vs. Sit-Ups for Core Strength, I wrote about how the US military are replacing sit-ups with Plank pose (the forearm version), even going so far as to say that sit-ups are “an antiquity of exercise best left in the dustbin of fitness history.”
5. In Featured Pose: Legs Up the Wall Pose, Baxter provided detailed instructions for practicing four different versions of Legs Up the Wall pose (Viparita Karani). I'm pleased this is our most popular pose description because it’s absolutely invaluable for stress management as well as for improving your circulation.
6. In Yoga Helps Both Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis, I reported on a study that showed that eight weeks of yoga classes and home practice was associated with “clinically significant improvements in physical and mental health, fitness, psychological function, and HRQOL, with no adverse outcomes.” Although the study is not available to the public, I was able to get my hands on it, providing information about the type of yoga used for the study.
7. In Two New Studies on Yoga and Parkinson’s Disease, I reported on two studies that concluded that yoga provided “an alternative method” both for treating reversible symptoms that affect physical functioning and for improving psychological well-being in people with PD.
8. In Practice As Many As You Can: T. Krishnamacharya’s Yoga, I discussed the history of modern yoga and how in the 20th century T. Krishnamacharya developed many of the yoga poses we practice today. I wrote this in the hopes of encouraging people to practice at home without worrying too much about doing it “right” and recommended getting started by following Krishnamacharya’s advice to “Practice as many as you can.” 
9. In Arthritis of the Hip Joint, Baxter and I described in detail exactly what arthritis of the hip joint is and provided recommendations for how to get started adding yoga to your healing regimen.

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Nina Zolotow is editor-in-chief of the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog. She is a yoga writer, certified yoga teacher, and longtime yoga practitioner. Her special area of expertise is yoga for emotional well-being (including yoga for stress, insomnia, depression, and anxiety). She completed the three-year teacher training program at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, CA, 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 teaches workshops and series classes on yoga for emotional well-being, yoga for stress, yoga for better sleep, home practice, and cultivating equanimity. Nina is the coauthor, with Rodney Yee, of two books on yoga: Yoga: The Poetry of the Body and Moving toward Balance.