Karma, and Choosing The Path That Brings Growth

There is a real romance attached to special forces, especially when filtered through books and movies. Discipline, brotherhood, mastery under pressure, mythic testing of the self. But that romance usually edits out the moral residue. Carrying acts that do not align with your inner compass, wars that later reveal themselves as incoherent or unjust, and the long psychic aftermath. For someone wired like me, that dissonance would not have worked for where I needed to grow. It would have been a weight. This is not a critique of the warrior path, but a way of looking at paths and trends that society puts forth. 

The artist's path does not get the same cinematic glow, but it has its own rigor. Watching Mick Jagger or Iggy Pop is not about rebellion for its own sake. It is about pushing the limits of embodiment, expression, and presence. They are not escaping discipline. They are channeling it through a different nervous system. The same is true of great guitar players, dancers, and writers. They are testing how much truth a human body and mind can carry and still stay alive.

That is the parallel with special forces that does not get named often enough. Both are about capacity. One is romanticized because it serves power structures. The other is tolerated because it does not.

Karma matters here. Karma is not about what looks noble from the outside. It is about what pulls you and what will not leave you alone. It is about what you have to do in order to become whole. A soul does not choose the path society applauds. It selects the terrain where its work actually is.

I was born to hippie parents and exposed early to art, music, and Asian philosophy. That was both a gift and a destabilization. I was not handed a single narrative and told to stay inside it. That freedom came with existential vertigo. Other kids had rails, religion, culture, and certainty. I had openness, and openness without grounding can feel like falling.

Punk rock mattered because it gave me a reset. Not truth exactly, but a refusal of false certainty. A clearing of the table. From there, it made sense to look for something older than ideology. Primitive art, early human mark-making forms that emerged from survival and meaning-making rather than doctrine.

Wood carving held that truth. The material does not care what you believe. Grain runs where it runs. Cut against it, and you pay. Follow it, and the form emerges. Every carver anywhere in the world learns the same lessons. That is an embodied truth. That is also why Tai Chi found me. The body reveals what the mind endlessly argues about.

So when I chose art because it offered the most freedom, I would adjust that slightly. It provided the most honest constraints. Freedom inside reality, not fantasy. Wood. Breath. Movement. Health. Writing. None of these lets you delude yourself for long.

Seen from that angle, my life makes a quiet, but precise sense. Carving, health promotion, Tai Chi, writing, and community work in Taos help me translate ancient nonverbal truths into modern contexts where people are profoundly disconnected from their bodies and from meaning. I did not join the army, but I still serve. I did not go to war, but I work with suffering, discipline, and repair.

The question of where the best place for me is might not be geographic at all. It might be this. Standing at the intersection of art, movement, health, and meaning, doing the work that will not leave me alone. From a karma perspective, that is not indecision. That is alignment in motion.

It isn't romantic, but it is necessary.

The Most Overlooked Wilderness Survival Skill: Tai Chi

Outdoor skills are usually framed around the same familiar categories: navigation, fire building, first aid, layering, risk management, and physical conditioning. We talk endlessly about gear, preparation, and the right tools to carry into the backcountry. But there is a missing category that rarely makes it into the conversation, even though it directly shapes how we move, think, and make decisions when the terrain changes or the unexpected happens. It has nothing to do with equipment and everything to do with the person carrying it.

That missing category is our internal skill set—our ability to regulate stress, stay composed under uncertainty, perceive subtle environmental cues, and move with stability even when tired or cold. These qualities often determine whether a situation remains manageable or begins sliding toward trouble. And one of the best ways to train them, though almost no one in the outdoor world talks about it, is Tai Chi.

Most people think of Tai Chi as a gentle meditative practice, something done slowly in a park or community center. But Tai Chi is also practical conditioning for the nervous system and the body’s mechanics. It teaches you to interrupt panic before it snowballs. It teaches your breath to stay long when adrenaline wants to shorten it. It teaches smooth, efficient movement that reduces unnecessary strain and lowers the risk of slips or missteps. And it sharpens awareness so that details in the landscape become clearer instead of fading under stress.

I was reminded of all this on a recent winter hike in the Rio Grande Gorge. It’s a trail I’ve done many times, a descent into the canyon and a climb out along a steep and rugged slope. But with a fresh layer of snow, the trail vanished. The familiar markers were gone, and the terrain suddenly felt foreign. Even though I had the right gear, water, a knife, fire starter, and layers, there was still a moment where my stomach tightened and that subtle, disorienting whisper crept in: “You might be lost.” It wasn’t a dangerous situation yet, but it was enough to trigger the early stages of poor decision-making—the very thing most survival incidents are built on.

Instead of pushing forward blindly, I stopped. I found a patch of sunlight, took a moment to warm my hands, and settled my breath. Then, almost instinctively, I began moving through a few Tai Chi patterns. Slow rotations. Shifting weight. Feeling the ground beneath me instead of fighting it. The more I moved, the more the anxiety dissolved. The land stopped feeling like an adversary. My senses widened. I began noticing small landmarks I had overlooked a few minutes earlier—the way a cluster of rocks opened in one direction, the faint rise of a ridge I recognized, the subtle indentation of the path beneath the snow. Within minutes, the terrain reorganized itself in my mind and the trail appeared again, almost effortlessly.

It struck me afterward how natural that sequence felt. Tai Chi wasn’t something extra I added to the hike; it was a built-in reset button. It prevented me from compounding a small problem into a real one. The practice didn’t “save me”—the situation wasn’t extreme enough for that—but it absolutely corrected the direction of my thinking before it slid into unnecessary risk. And that is the essence of internal survival skill.

When adrenaline hits outdoors, people tend to move faster, breathe shallower, and narrow their awareness. Tai Chi trains the opposite pattern. It teaches you to slow down just enough to see clearly again. It reminds the body how to generate warmth without burning energy, using rotation and breath to bring circulation back into your hands and feet. It keeps your joints soft instead of rigid, which dramatically reduces the likelihood of small but consequential injuries. And it cultivates a wide, open form of attention that lets you read terrain instead of fight it.

None of this requires mystical thinking. These are practical, testable qualities. They translate directly onto icy trails, steep scrambles, loose scree, snow-covered switchbacks, and long climbs. Anyone who spends time outdoors knows that panic, rushing, and missteps cause far more emergencies than rare dramatic events. Tai Chi is one of the few practices that directly conditions the internal mechanics behind those mistakes.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s accessible. You don’t need to be flexible or athletic. You don’t need equipment. You don’t need decades of training. A handful of simple motions can help you breathe deeper, move smarter, and reset your nervous system when the environment becomes challenging. You can practice it at a trailhead, during a rest break, or in the middle of a canyon when the snow makes the world look unfamiliar.

Outdoor participation is higher than ever, and so are preventable incidents caused by panic, poor footing, cold, and decision fatigue. At the same time, athletes across disciplines are embracing breathwork, somatic awareness, and mobility training. Tai Chi exists right at the intersection of these trends, yet it’s rarely discussed in the outdoor community.

It should be. Because ultimately, survival is not just about what you carry in your pack. It’s about the clarity, stability, and awareness you bring to the moment things don’t go as planned. Tai Chi strengthens those qualities. It makes the outdoors feel not just safer, but more alive. It changes how you read the land, how you move through it, and how you respond when the unexpected happens.

It’s not simply a practice—it’s a skill. And for anyone who spends time in wild places, it’s one worth learning.

Don’t Die With Your Sword in Its Sheath

 

One of the saddest truths we face in life is unused potential. We feel it when we see a young person lose themselves to addiction, or worse, when a life ends before it even begins. What hurts isn’t only the event itself — it’s the weight of all that could have been. The paths not taken. The possibilities never lived out.

This ties directly into one of my favorite teachings from Miyamoto Musashi:
“You should never die on the battlefield with your sword in its sheath.”

Musashi wasn’t talking only about combat. He was speaking to the idea that each of us carries a unique weapon — talent, strength, purpose, creativity, spirit — and the real tragedy is leaving this world without ever drawing it. Not using what we were given. Not stepping into the fight that is uniquely ours.

To “die with your sword in its sheath” is to go through life never expressing your potential, never taking your shot, never revealing your true capability. It isn’t about winning or losing — it’s about showing up fully.

Life is unpredictable. Time moves fast. And none of us know how many chapters we have left. But we do know this:
Your gift doesn’t serve anyone if it stays unused.

So whatever your “sword” is — your creativity, your discipline, your voice, your compassion, your wisdom, your strength — draw it. Use it. Let it leave a mark.

The real tragedy isn’t failure.
The real tragedy is the potential that never sees the light of day.

Karma, the Five Bodies, and What Rock Art Taught Me Today (part two)

 

Standing in Sego Canyon today, looking at these ancient pictographs that once inspired me back in art school, something clicked. Some people like to describe these figures as “aliens,” but what if they’re early depictions of the energetic body — the subtle forms that ancient people sensed, felt, and lived with every day? When you see them in person, that possibility feels real. It’s like staring at an imprint of internal experience painted on stone.

That reflection tied directly back to what I’ve been learning about karma.

One of the most powerful lessons I’ve taken from Sadhguru is that karma doesn’t disappear through escape, not even through suicide. Ending this life only carries your unresolved patterns forward, with even more weight. In other words, the pain we avoid becomes the debt we carry. That understanding alone is a massive incentive to stay, to endure, and to grow.

I’ve felt that in my own life this year.
People have yelled at me more than they have in decades, and at times, I have resisted the lessons beneath it. I feared change. I feared losing parts of myself I had grown attached to. And when people sensed that fear, some tried to take control or twist the dynamic, especially when I stepped into the role of “teacher.”

But I now see that as karma, too.
When someone glimpses a path that could change them, and they’re not ready, they often retreat deeper into their own maze. They choose the comfort of familiar suffering instead of the vulnerability of transformation. That’s the “bartering” of karma: trading future freedom for present safety.

I’ve done it.
I’ve watched others do it.
And it’s always sad, because the maze only grows thicker.

Distractions as Karma Avoidance

Another trap: distractions.
Football games, Super Bowls, politics, endless entertainment, even worthwhile things, become escape routes when they pull us away from the deeper work. Nothing wrong with them by themselves, but if they become a substitute for introspection, then they feed karma instead of dissolving it.

Tai Chi showed me this clearly.
Once I stepped into real internal practice, I realized how many things I had used to avoid my own evolution.

Practicing Tai Chi in Sacred Places

One thing I’ve committed to is practicing Tai Chi in sacred places.
It feels like a way of accelerating the shedding of karma, like sweeping my past patterns out into the open air, allowing them to burn away under the sky and on the stone. Today, moving under the canyon walls, those pictographs watching over me, I felt a kind of alignment inside that I haven’t felt in years.

I felt unconstricted.
And that’s rare, society squeezes people into certain shapes, certain behaviors, certain expectations. I’ve long believed that this compression is one reason our country struggles with obesity: we lose our natural connection to the body. We store fear of our true selves as weight. We let norms dictate posture, breath, movement, appetite, everything.

But Sadhguru talks about something deeper, something I’m just starting to explore.

The Five Bodies: A Map for Karma and Growth

According to Sadhguru, each person has five bodies:

1. Physical Body (Annamaya Kosha)
   The flesh-and-blood shell, shaped by food, habit, movement, and environment.

2. Energy Body (Pranamaya Kosha)
   This is the field Tai Chi directly works with breath, flow, vitality, circulation, Jing/Qi.

3. Mental Body (Manomaya Kosha)
   Thoughts, memories, interpretations, a major container of karma.

4. Intellect / Discriminatory Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha)
   The part that can discern truth from illusion, the tool that cuts through the maze.

5. Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha)
   The quiet, inner core untouched by karma, the destination of all spiritual work.

When these bodies fall out of harmony, life becomes heavier.
When they align, transformation begins.

Tai Chi, practiced deeply and sincerely, works on all five.
And I think that’s why I felt the pull to practice here, because places like Sego Canyon remind me that humans have always known the depth of the inner world. They carved and painted what they sensed. They documented the invisible.

Seeing these pictographs today, truly seeing them, made me realize that what I’m working through isn’t new. People thousands of years ago were wrestling with the same internal bodies, the same energetic movements, the same karmic patterns.

Change is hard.
Growth is uncomfortable.
Karma demands participation.

But standing there today under the canyon walls, feeling the wind move through the gap where ancient hands once painted their inner world onto stone, I felt something like gratitude.

This trip is shedding something.
A layer, a weight, a pattern,  and more importantly, I see a way out of the maze instead of deeper into it.

Karma, Change, and the Light I Finally See (part 1)

 

2025 has been a year of extremes for me — highs, lows, and more confrontations than I’ve had since high school. Some of that was on me. I’ve been resisting the next stage of my own growth, standing in denial because change is uncomfortable, and fear can be a quiet anchor.

In Karma by Sadhguru, he writes that many people “barter their karma.” They accept negative experiences as a kind of payment for not changing. I saw myself in that. I kept choosing the pain I knew over the transformation I needed. And that resistance had consequences — tension with others, fear, hesitation. But it also gave me clarity. A light at the end of the tunnel finally appeared because I stopped running from the lesson.

I’m starting to understand that adversaries aren’t obstacles; they’re catalysts. They push you to places you wouldn’t choose, but often need. Whether someone tries to take advantage of your fear or simply reflects it back at you, the direction you turn — negative or positive — is always your own responsibility. That, to me, is the essence of karma.

Today I’m wandering through Moab with the red rock breathing around me. I practiced Tai Chi on the arches this morning, feeling every movement reconnect me to that deeper current inside. And for the first time in a long time, I feel grateful. Grateful for the lessons, the discomfort, the people who challenged me, and the clarity that followed.

Karma isn’t punishment. It’s an invitation. And I’m finally saying yes.

When All Falls Away

 

When All Falls Away

When all things fall away,
and no one remains,
I return to the breath.

The body remembers
what the heart forgets —
discipline,
silence,
the pulse between worlds.

The dragon coils within me,
its fire now water,
its motion the whisper of wind.

Each cell opens and closes —
a gate of Heaven,
a rhythm of the Way.

Even in my foolishness,
the form continues.
Even in shame,
the current flows.

Kung fu is my temple,
my sutra of motion.
In its stillness,
I vanish —
and am carried
into the endless flow.

---

The Microcosmic Orbit and the Future of Tai Chi

 

After years of studying the esoteric aspects of the microcosmic orbit and Taoist internal alchemy, I often felt like I was chasing a mirage. Books spoke of luminous energy cycles and celestial alignments, but my own experience never quite reached those heights. So I stopped worrying about it. I simply practiced Tai Chi for what it gave me—clarity, coordination, balance, and calm.

Then something changed.

When I began cutting wood and practicing two-handed sword cuts (shomenuchi) in Kenjutsu, a bulb flipped on, I realized the microcosmic orbit wasn’t just a mystical energy loop; it was a very real, physical rotation of the torso that generates power. You see it in deadlifts, kettlebell swings, the right cross in boxing, and in the rhythmic fall of the axe. It’s everywhere power and grace meet. 

As I kept training, I saw that the rotation could shrink until it was almost invisible. That’s where the Tai Chi ruler revealed everything, the subtle, continuous cycling of the body’s center, the true orbit underlying all movement.

Modern Tai Chi and much of Chinese martial arts seem trapped in mimicry. Western practitioners talk about going to China as if that’s where the secret still lives. But I think we’re in a long phase, from the 1950s to now, of trying to replicate something done hundreds of years ago. Copying photos and films of old masters isn’t preservation, it’s decay. Each reproduction loses a little more of the essence.

I used to believe the key was in lineage; if I could just trace back to someone who knew Yang Chengfu or another great name, maybe I’d finally touch real Tai Chi. But that’s an illusion. The masters are gone, and the path backward is a dead end. Every culture mythologizes its origins to preserve identity, and that has its beauty. But Tai Chi’s vitality depends on rediscovery, not reenactment.

For me, the microcosmic orbit is not an esoteric mystery, it’s the universal rotation of being alive on Earth. Every culture before industrialization tapped into it through daily movement: cutting wood, digging, hoeing, rowing, fighting. All of it expressed the same coordination between gravity and the human body.

Gravity is the true teacher. Every object, animal, and human is shaped by it. When we move in harmony with it, we are strong, balanced, and efficient. When we resist or ignore it, through disuse, poor movement, or metabolic imbalance, we suffer. Even obesity, joint pain, and heart strain are expressions of losing that relationship with gravity. Staying metabolically and mechanically aligned with Earth’s pull keeps us vital.

So the microcosmic orbit isn’t some magical energy loop, it’s the pattern by which we inhabit this planet effectively. It’s the spiraling, gravitational rotation that life itself depends on. Tai Chi, at its best, teaches this. The alchemy lies in reawakening what evolution already gave us, a body that knows how to rotate, yield, and return power without waste.

Maybe there is a more subtle layer, an energetic resonance that grows once the physical understanding is embodied. I sense it sometimes, but it’s not the point. What matters first is the clear, explicit connection between body and gravity.

When we move in tune with that orbit, we become stronger, faster, less injury-prone, and more aware of the living Earth beneath us.

That’s not mysticism. That’s Tai Chi returning to its roots.

The Shoulder: How Humans became The Most Lethal Animal on Earth

Before humans hurled spears, drew bows, or threw fastballs, our ancestors were tree-climbers. The freely rotating joint in the shoulder, which we take for granted every time we reach overhead or cast a stone, began as a brake system, not a weapon.

I’ve come to appreciate that more personally in recent months. A lingering shoulder injury pulled me into studying how this joint actually works — not just as a hinge of strength, but as a delicate instrument of balance and control. The more I learned, the more I realized that every ache or strain in my shoulder is a whisper from the past, reminding me that this joint carries the story of how we survived as a species.

According to research from Dartmouth College’s Department of Anthropology, our ancestors’ shoulders and elbows evolved to control descent from trees, not merely to climb up them. When an ape descends, gravity becomes the enemy. To lower a heavy body without falling, an animal needs tremendous rotational range, eccentric control, and flexible joints. The study showed that chimpanzees extend their shoulders and elbows far more when climbing down than monkeys do. Their joints act as shock absorbers, a living suspension system.

Once our ancestors left the forest, that same anatomy, shallow shoulder sockets, mobile scapulae, shortened elbow levers, was repurposed for something far more lethal: throwing.

The shoulder that once eased us down tree trunks became capable of storing and releasing explosive energy.

No other animal can generate such coordinated rotational torque across the torso, shoulder, and arm. When you throw, you’re using a 2-million-year-old arboreal braking system in reverse: winding it up, loading elastic energy through the fascia, and snapping it forward with devastating speed.

That shift from climbing to throwing was the beginning of distance killing.

A shoulder adapted for controlled descent made humans the first primates able to strike from afar. Spears, stones, and projectiles allowed early hunters to kill without risking close contact. That changed everything.

For the first time, food could be obtained and enemies neutralized from a distance. The survival advantage was enormous. Evolution didn’t need claws or fangs; it had found something subtler: precision and power through motion.

Every time a baseball player throws a pitch, a boxer throws a straight right, or a child hurls a rock into a lake, they’re channeling that same lineage. Even in Tai Chi or weight training, in the controlled rise and fall of the shoulder, the spiral through the elbow, you’re engaging an ancient system designed to modulate gravity.

To move well is to respect that ancestry. When you train the shoulder through full range, not just pressing up, but lowering down, stabilizing, and rotating, you awaken the ghost of the climber who once learned to descend, without falling to its death.

Our shoulders made us what we are: a species defined not by tooth or claw, but by motion. It is the joint that lets us descend safely, hunt effectively, and eventually shape the world.

What began as a brake became a weapon.
And it remains, to this day, the most adaptable and dangerous articulation in nature, the point where balance, force, and intelligence meet.