A Man Caught in a Cultural Shift ( how I now see my father's life and death)

 

In the early 1960s, my father was an adopter of two things that would later become mainstream and then commodified: marijuana and crafts. He made handmade leather goods to sell. Items like jackets, bags, belts, and one small item in particular stand out in my memory: a leather pouch he called a pot stash. Bushcraft people today would recognize it as a kind of possibles bag, but his was made for weed, not flint and steel.

He was a deeply curious and active thinker. His shelves held books on Hinduism, Daoism, shelter building, and design. He was immersed in graphic design and interior design, always thinking visually, structurally, philosophically. Craft for him was not just making things. It was his worldview, identity, and resistance all rolled into one package.

During the hippie era, handmade goods were a reaction against the industrial machine of the United States. Making something with your hands was a statement of integrity. It said, "I am not just a consumer. I belong to a lineage older than factories."

But cultures shift.

When John Lennon was killed, something changed. When yuppie culture emerged, money, status, and ambition were polished into a uniform; my father cut his hair and tried to follow along. He began chasing financial success instead of craftsmanship. He leased a Mercedes-Benz. He opened a business in Manhattan that combined antiques with modern design. His heart was not fully in it, and he did not truly understand the game he was playing.

The business failed. He lost our family home. That collapse sent me down a difficult path of my own.

After that, he drank hard. He smoked heavily. Somewhere along the way, he lost his center.

For a long time, I carried resentment toward him. But now I see his life differently. I see him as someone crushed by a cultural transition he could not metabolize.

I think about early human stone tool makers that had mastered flint knapping and who understood the language of stone. Then copper arrives. Some adapt. Some do not. Some love the stone too much. They do not disappear because they lack skill. They disappear because the world moves on without caring what they were good at.

My father lived through a similar shift. Handmade leather goods were once a countercultural strength. Later, it became nostalgia, and then fashion. Then mass-produced again. Some people rode those waves successfully. Others never recovered.

He had three kids. And maybe handmade leather jackets were not the safest way to support a family under that kind of pressure. I understand that now. I have compassion where I once had judgment.

What is tragic is that not long after, handmade leather jackets came back into fashion. And even today, the bushcraft and mountain man movements never really disappeared. There has always been a quiet current of people who value hand skills, wood, steel, fire, and shelter. He could have found a way to stay rooted in his strengths. He almost did. But he did not trust them enough to endure the lean years.

That is the part that still hurts.

When I graduated high school, I wanted to be a famous painter more than anything. If there had been a devil offering a deal, I would have signed it. Instead, I took a different risk. I hitchhiked across the United States and found Taos. That changed everything.

Taos gave me space to keep my hands busy and my spirit intact. I found wood carving. I found bushcraft. I found Tai Chi. Those practices became ways of staying honest. Ways of keeping my soul tethered to something real. I still carve wood today. I am not successful as a seller. But I am still carving away. Ironically, when I arrived in Taos, I found a strong culture of sheepskin and leather goods makers. 

My father didn't have the vision or faith to look elsewhere. That is where I feel the lineage split and also where it reconnects.

My father lost his way because he could not identify what truly mattered to him as a human being. He believed money would restore meaning. It did not. He died early as a result of his drinking and smoking.

I do not tell this story to judge him. I tell it because I understand him now. He was not weak. He was displaced.

And maybe what I am doing, carving wood, practicing tai chi, and walking instead of running, is my way of staying on the narrow ridge he fell from. Not chasing success at the expense of integrity. Not abandoning craft when culture devalues it. Learning, slowly, to measure life not by applause or profit, but by whether I can still recognize myself in the work of my hands.

Humans Need Something to Do With Their Hands

 

Depression and anxiety are often talked about as personal failures or chemical imbalances that need to be corrected. But I think there’s another layer that rarely gets enough attention. For nearly all of human history, people were occupied for most of their waking hours with physical, tangible work. We grew food. We hunted. We built shelters. We made tools. We repaired what broke. Our survival depended on daily engagement with the physical world.

That reality has changed radically in a very short span of time. In the last fifty years, large portions of the population no longer need to do much with their bodies or their hands to survive. Yet paradoxically, we are more mentally overstimulated and stressed than ever.

I notice this very clearly in my own life. When I am the most anxious or depressed, it is almost always when I am sitting still, mentally spinning. My mind starts running endless scenarios, what-ifs, regrets, and imagined futures. None of it is productive. None of it is grounded. It’s just noise.

The moment I pick up a craft, something changes.

When I start carving wood, cooking, fixing something, or engaging in physical movement, the mental clutter quiets down. My attention narrows. The hands take over. The mind no longer has the bandwidth to spiral. It isn’t forced into silence; it is occupied.

Occupation as Regulation

This isn’t about productivity or hustle. It’s about regulation. Humans evolved to regulate their nervous systems through physical engagement with the world. Making, moving, lifting, shaping, walking, tending. These activities give the mind a place to rest because attention has somewhere to go.

I often think about autoimmune disease as a loose metaphor here. In overly sterile environments, the immune system sometimes loses its appropriate targets and begins attacking the body itself. I am not saying all autoimmune disease works this way, or that everyone with autoimmune illness is idle. But I do think the pervasiveness of sterile, low-engagement environments has consequences for biological systems that evolved in a very different context.

The mind may not be that different.

When it has nothing meaningful to do, it often turns inward and begins attacking itself. Rumination, self-criticism, catastrophic thinking. Not because the person is weak, but because the system is under-used in the way it evolved to function.

A World That Doesn’t Need You, But Still Stresses You

We now live in a strange contradiction. The world does not require much from our bodies, yet it demands constant mental vigilance. Emails. Deadlines. News cycles. Financial anxiety. Abstract stress with no physical outlet.

Unless you have Zen-level mental discipline, this is a brutal setup.

I wish my mind were strong enough to simply will its way through this. I do believe that kind of training is possible, and I work toward it. But I also think it’s important to be honest about what humans actually need. For most of history, we didn’t meditate our way out of stress. We worked it out through physical engagement.

We whittled. We cooked. We built. We repaired. I honestly don’t know if there has ever been a time when humans weren’t doing this, until now.

Keeping Your Head Together

This isn’t about the root cause of depression. It isn’t about dismissing therapy, medication, or deeper psychological work. It’s about something much more basic.

Keeping yourself occupied in a tangible way is a form of mental hygiene.

Using your hands calms the mind. Moving the body organizes attention. Making something creates feedback, satisfaction, and a sense of completion that abstract tasks rarely provide. Sometimes that turns into gifts. Sometimes it turns into skills. Occasionally, it even turns into a career. But that’s not the point.

The point is simpler.

Staying human in a world that increasingly asks you to be disembodied requires intention. Craft and physical activity are not hobbies in that context. They are stabilizers. They are ways of staying sane. They are ways of keeping your head together.

And for a species that evolved by doing, there might not be a better way to stay grounded.

Carving a Spoon and the Importance of Listening

Spoon carving has taught me a lot about balance—specifically, the balance between direction and intent.

When you decide to carve a spoon, certain things are non-negotiable. It needs a cavity. It has to fit comfortably in the mouth. It has to feel good in the hand. It needs to be light enough to use, not clunky or awkward. In that sense, form really does follow function. There are clear outcomes that have to be met.

But within those constraints, there’s another force at work: the wood itself.

Most of the time, I don’t get to choose the “ideal” carving wood. I work with what I have access to. Right now, that’s Russian elm, a beautiful but stubborn wood that doesn’t shave easily and doesn’t forgive mistakes. It doesn’t like symmetry. It doesn’t like being forced. Because of that, I have to compromise my original vision. I have to let go of perfection. The grain, the knots, the tension in the fibers all start to dictate the direction.

The wood tells you how it wants to be carved, if you’re willing to listen.

That’s one reason I don’t always connect with highly detailed carvings made from very soft, cooperative woods. They can be impressive, even technically masterful, but when the material is so malleable that you can impose anything onto it, something gets lost. My preference is to work in collaboration with the material, not domination over it. I like hearing what the wood has to say.

What’s interesting is how closely this mirrors the way I like working with people—especially kids.

I don’t believe in dictating outcomes or forcing people into a shape that fits my idea of success. I prefer guidance over control. Structure with flexibility. Listening over imposing. This feels especially important to me as a non-Native person working with Native American children, given the history of boarding schools and the horrific attempts to erase culture by making children “malleable.” That history matters. It demands a different approach.

There are still goals. There are still outcomes. But they come second to agency. The kids guide the process more than we often allow in institutional settings. Just like the wood, they aren’t raw material to be shaped; they’re active participants in becoming.

Spoon carving reinforces that lesson every time I pick up a knife.

I love carving spoons because they’re functional. They aren’t abstract objects. They have a purpose and a set of criteria they must meet. And yet, within those limits, there’s infinite variation. A handmade eating spoon carries character. You feel it while carving: the feedback between your hands, the blade, and the grain. Every small decision matters.

That’s very different from a mass-produced spoon. Whether it’s metal or wood, machine-made utensils are dictated, repeatable, and anonymous. They work, but they don’t speak.

As we move deeper into an era of AI, CNC machines, and automated design, that distinction matters to me. Spoon carving is a moment-to-moment conversation. It requires attention, humility, and responsiveness. You adjust constantly. You listen. You make thousands of tiny decisions based on feel, resistance, and feedback.

At least for now, that kind of listening still belongs to human hands.

And maybe that’s the deeper wisdom of spoon carving, not just making something useful, but practicing how to pay attention, how to compromise without giving up purpose, and how to work with the world instead of trying to overwrite it.

Why I Loved Born to Run Without Loving Running

 

Born to Run is an incredibly insightful book that opens a window into a world I have bumped into on trails but never fully explored. At first glance it seems to be about different types of running, but it is really about the challenge of human endurance and the drive to reach human potential, with many other nuggets of knowledge woven throughout.

As a Tai Chi practitioner and slow hiker, this kind of extreme activity is not really my thing. I am more of a forest bather and meditator than an endurance athlete. That said, there is no denying that long distance running is a significant part of human history and human capability. The book explores ultramarathons, the birth of those races, and the colorful characters who helped create them. While I no longer run long distances, I do love hiking, and I am deeply interested in the barefoot and minimal shoe movement that the author discusses. I did some trail running when I was younger, but over time I became far more drawn to Tai Chi and the internal arts.

Whenever I am hiking, I inevitably cross paths with trail runners. From my perspective, it often feels like they are missing the beauty of the landscape around them. At the same time, they are clearly challenging their own limits and endurance, and there is something meaningful in that pursuit, even if it is very different from my own.

One aspect I found particularly interesting is the way the author touches on the sensationalism of endurance sports and how perfectly they fit into a capitalist dream. The gear, the excess, and the dramatic races themselves are all easy to write about with excitement and flair. From the viewpoint of a Tai Chi practitioner, it is hard not to notice how the internal arts lack that same allure for the general public. They are almost the opposite of excitement. They are quiet, slow, and often unremarkable to watch. Still, the author is an excellent storyteller, and I found myself drawn along, eager to see what would happen next. He does rely on familiar literary tropes, and by the end I noticed the pattern where doubts are raised only to be neatly resolved a paragraph later, but it did not take away too much from the overall experience.

The section I found most useful was his discussion of modern running shoes. I am firmly in favor of flat soled shoes and cannot stress enough how important they are for proper walking mechanics and foot strength. The author clearly explains the benefits of barefoot running and minimal footwear, and how overly cushioned shoes interfere with natural movement.

In chapter twenty five, he references research from the American Journal of Sports Medicine showing that runners wearing more expensive shoes actually experienced higher injury rates. The research also suggested that older shoes performed better than newer ones. He explains how thick soles and modern shoe design can worsen foot problems by dulling the body’s natural feedback.

A large portion of the book focuses on the Tarahumara people of Mexico, who are famous for running extraordinary distances in thin soled sandals. The author spends a great deal of time exploring their culture and at times clearly idealizes them. Still, their role in the book is compelling, especially the way running is woven into their daily life and how outsiders tried to bring them into American races. Those same outsiders often tried to change their footwear, even though the Tarahumara run on simple sandals made with tire rubber soles. As someone who has worn thin soled shoes for nearly a decade, I especially appreciated their influence on the development of footwear designed for people like me.

Their diet also plays an important role in the book. One of their staple foods is pinole, a simple mixture of toasted cornmeal, chia seeds, natural sugar, spices, and water. It can be eaten as a porridge or baked into a small cake that can be carried while running or hiking. Its simplicity and effectiveness fit perfectly with the broader themes of the book.. (Recipe below from the one ingredient chef)

Tarahumara Pinole Energy Bars

Natural endurance bars inspired by the Tarahumara runners

Makes: 3 energy cakes/bars

Prep Time: ~10 minutes

Cook Time: ~15–20 minutes

Total: ~30 minutes

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Ingredients

• 1 cup masa harina (cornmeal treated with lime; regular cornmeal works too) 

• 1/4 cup chopped dates

• 2/3 cup water

• 3 tablespoons brown rice syrup (or other sticky sweetener; brown rice syrup helps bars hold together) (I used maple syrup)

• 2 tablespoons chia seeds

• Dash of cinnamon
  
  

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Instructions

1. Preheat Oven:
   Preheat to 350°F (175°C).
   Toast Dry Ingredients:
   In a dry skillet over medium-high heat, add the masa harina and chia seeds. Toast 5–8 minutes, stirring constantly, until lightly fragrant and golden. (Important: don’t let it burn.)

2. Mix:
   Transfer toasted mixture to a food processor. Add the chopped dates, water, brown rice syrup, and cinnamon. Pulse until there are no large chunks of dates and the mixture forms a thick paste. If it’s too crumbly, add a little extra water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

3. Form Bars:
   Shape the paste into 3 flat rounds (about 3/8″ thick and ~5″ in diameter). 

4. Bake:
   Place on a non-stick or lined baking sheet and bake 10–12 minutes until the outside forms a solid crust and shows small cracks.

5. Cool:
   Remove from oven and let cool completely. Bars can be eaten immediately or stored in the refrigerator for several days.
   
   

Wintering the body

 

The end of the year has a way of asking us to slow down, whether we listen or not. The days are shorter, the light is softer, and the body naturally wants more rest. When we allow ourselves to follow that pull instead of resisting it, something important happens: healing begins quietly in the background.

Over the past few days, I’ve been resting more than usual. Not pushing. Not fixing. Just letting the nervous system settle. At first, I felt guilt, but then I realized that I would get sick if I resisted. Now, looking back, it was preparation. In traditional seasonal wisdom, winter is not about productivity but conservation—protecting the deeper reserves so there is something real to draw from when spring arrives.

Healing doesn’t always look dramatic. Often it’s subtle: better sleep, steadier breathing, fewer unnecessary reactions. It’s the body regaining trust in itself. This kind of restoration creates clarity, not through effort, but through stillness.

As the new year approaches, I’m less interested in resolutions and more interested in readiness. Readiness comes from being well-resourced—physically, emotionally, and mentally. When we take the time to restore what’s been depleted, we enter the next cycle with integrity rather than urgency.

In Chinese Qi Gong, there are five elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, each with a corresponding season and emotion. Knowing these has helped me adapt to the changing weather. Sometimes I forget to do it, or a season tricks me with unseasonable weather. This is what happened this winter solstice. It has been hot, and I forgot to rest. I pushed it hard with lots of hikes, then my body spoke, and I listened and restfully carved the bear in the picture, in between naps.

Winter reminds us that growth begins underground. What we nourish now determines what we can sustain later.

Addendum: Winter Proofing

Winter-proofing the body can be simple. Eat warm soup. Take a nap. Make some art. Slow down enough to reflect on the year behind you and the one ahead. These small acts conserve energy, support healing, and help you enter the new year steady rather than depleted. 

I also like to cook pasta fagioli when I am relaxing. Recipe here

Tai Chi is primarily about somatic transformation

 

Much of how we understand change is shaped by our beliefs, insights, intentions, and explanations, but a prerequisite for sustainable change begins in the body.

This is what I mean by somatic transformation: a lasting shift in how the body organizes itself in the world, how it breathes, balances, responds to stress, and moves through space. When this changes, thoughts and emotions follow naturally without force or self-management

For those who are not familiar with somatic, let’s break it down:

• Somatic = of the body (muscles, breath, posture, nervous system, sensations)
  
  

• Transformation = a durable shift, not a temporary technique or mood

So somatic transformation means:

Rewiring how your body experiences and responds to life, especially stress, emotion, and threat. Additionally, it is having your body open to deeper sensations that people who rush through life can’t feel. 

For me, Tai Chi is one of the most effective ways to cultivate this kind of transformation.

I believe that people who stick with Tai Chi don’t practice it as a hobby but as something that is fundamentally being addressed only at the level of the body.

In contrast, Buddhist meditation sharpens awareness and reveals how the mind creates suffering through clinging. These insights are valuable and necessary. Yet insight alone does not always change how the body reacts.

A person can understand non-clinging intellectually and still brace under stress. They can grasp emptiness conceptually and still live with chronic tension, shallow breathing, or a nervous system locked in fight or flight. This is not a failure of understanding. It is a limitation of cognition as the primary vehicle of change.

Tai Chi addresses this gap directly.

Rather than arguing with the mind, Tai Chi trains the body to experience stability without rigidity, power without force, and responsiveness without panic. Through slow, attentive movement, the nervous system learns, physically, what safety, balance, and adaptability feel like.

This learning does not require belief. It requires practice.

Movement as Embodied Wisdom

Tai Chi is often described as meditation in motion, but that description understates its depth. It is a method of reorganizing posture, weight transfer, and breath so that effort is distributed efficiently and excess tension is released.

Over time, practitioners stop forcing balance and begin allowing it. They stop bracing against gravity and begin working with it. The body learns to yield without collapsing and to issue power without aggression.

These are not metaphors. They are somatic facts.

This is why Tai Chi pairs so naturally with Buddhist principles. Where Buddhism clarifies the nature of the mind, Tai Chi trains the body to embody those insights. Non-attachment becomes the ability to let go of unnecessary muscular effort. Equanimity becomes a stable center under changing conditions. Presence becomes literally felt through the feet, the spine, and the breath.

Grounding Through Action

Somatic transformation deepens when movement is connected to activities that have grounded humans for millennia, walking long distances, working with the hands, preparing food, shaping materials, and spending time in natural environments.

These activities anchor awareness in necessity and consequence. They provide feedback that is immediate and honest. They prevent practice from drifting into abstraction or performance.

This is also where Tai Chi distinguishes itself from purely symbolic or ritualized systems. While any tradition can become decorative or performative, Tai Chi continually returns the practitioner to functional realities, balance, structure, timing, and adaptability. If these are absent, the practice simply does not work.

In this sense, Tai Chi is not about cultivating an identity or performing a role. It is about becoming more inhabitable, learning to live inside the body with less resistance and more coherence.

Somatic Transformation as the Point

Somatic transformation does not eliminate thought or philosophy. It integrates them. When the body changes, reflection becomes clearer and ethical action becomes less reactive. Decisions arise from grounded awareness rather than compulsion or avoidance.

This is why Tai Chi has endured not as a belief system but as a practice. It offers a way for the body to learn what the mind often understands too late, how to move through the world without unnecessary struggle.

In that sense, Tai Chi is not a supplement to insight. It is its embodiment. And for those drawn to it over a lifetime, the transformation it offers is no mere accident. It is the point.

Your Body Is Not Broken It Is Stuck in Survival Mode

In my line of work, community health promotion, I occasionally see people who work out hard but then end up in the hospital. It took me a long time to understand why health is much more than lifting heavy weights and running marathons. It is also how your nervous system responds to a hectic environment.

Your nervous system runs on autopilot. This is the autonomic nervous system, and it is always working in the background, whether you are aware of it or not. It has two primary modes. One is sympathetic, which most people know as the fight-or-flight response. The other is parasympathetic, which is largely regulated through the vagus nerve. Neither system is bad. Both are necessary. The problem shows up when one dominates for too long.

Fight or flight is designed for short bursts. It raises heart rate, tightens muscles, sharpens focus, and redirects energy away from digestion and long-term repair. This is precisely what you want when danger is real. The body is doing its job.

The issue is that modern life keeps triggering this response without ever letting it shut off. Work pressure, trauma, poor sleep, constant stimulation, and unresolved stress all send the same message to the body. Stay alert. Stay ready. Over time, the autonomic system gets stuck in survival mode. The body never receives the signal that it is safe to stand down. Eventually, survival becomes the default state.

The vagus nerve represents the opposite side of this equation. It is the main pathway of the parasympathetic system, and it connects the brain to the heart, lungs, and gut. At its core, it is always asking a straightforward question. Are we safe enough to relax?

When the vagus nerve is engaged, heart rate slows, breathing deepens, digestion resumes, inflammation lowers, and the body can finally shift into repair mode. Stored stress and tension can begin to unwind. This transition cannot be forced through thought or willpower. The body has to feel safety before it will allow relaxation.

This is where Tai Chi becomes especially powerful. Tai Chi works because it speaks directly to the autonomic nervous system rather than trying to override it. Slow continuous movement reduces threat signals. Upright posture improves breathing and circulation. Rhythmic motion steadies the nervous system and supports healthy heart rate variability. Attention stays in the body instead of spiraling through anxious thought loops.

Unlike intense exercise, Tai Chi does not keep pushing the body deeper into fight or flight. Unlike passive relaxation, it does not lead to collapse or spacing out. It teaches the body how to move out of survival mode and into vagal regulation smoothly, repeatedly, and safely.

Healing does not happen while the body is braced for impact. Trauma, inflammation, digestive issues, and chronic pain tend to persist when the nervous system believes danger is ongoing. Tai Chi creates a controlled environment where the body can relearn safety through movement, not by forcing calm, but by restoring balance.

Fight or flight keeps you alive. The vagus nerve teaches you how to recover. Tai Chi is one of the most practical ways to retrain the autonomic nervous system by using slow, intentional movement to signal safety, restore rhythm, and allow healing to happen naturally.