“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

— Khalil Gibran

Sifu Paul Wang with Dai Sifu Klaus Brand at 2014 Spring Camp in the Marin Headlands, California.

Have you noticed that, for all its vast benefits, technology feels draining at times? Perhaps you are better adapted to it than me. I admittedly have a limited capacity for digital distractions.

Then I begin longing to roam sun-speckled trails, especially those decorated with carpets of spongy moss and fungi-rimmed logs felled to earth by lightning. For me, an elemental elixir of sun, wind and dew must occasionally pour into my pores. Otherwise, without this primal nutrition, my modern existence insidiously fades to robotic routine.

It is easy to forget that we are humanimals possessed of powerful intellects that nonetheless often distance us from our biological selves. Our minds can virtually abstract us from the animal immediacy of our senses and surroundings. This creature instinct starves if it is not unleashed to range freely once in a while. In fact, left confined too long in the claustrophobic boxes of civilization we have built ourselves, this part of you may perish without you even realizing the loss. A sort of inner mass extinction parallels the worldwide decline in ecosystem biodiversity. Continue reading →