Sara and I brought forward the ingredients of alchemy we have each cultivated over a lifetime: creativity, world culture, play, and embodiment.

To learn more about Social Alchemy currently offered in Bellingham, Washington, please see here. A unique aspect of this offering is that it is completely free for participants, and even provides a small stipend for those who complete the four-month training. Our project is sponsored by the Mount Baker Foundation to expand access across the economic spectrum and to honor our belief that everyone’s voice and healing are essential to the community, not only those who can afford services.

Original Poem by Sara Airoldi

Opening

I opened to the Earth elements

Subtle

Tiny

Earth body movements that

Became the wild energies

Of time

And ancient beauty

And rage

And how mountain is telling

A story of “as”

Rock

Tree

Water

Fire

Embodied in the me of human

That has expression

Not yet known.

The tears are of the below,

Sacred,

A listening place

Of silence

That hugs the vast

Darkness

Glowing

With forever

Letting me know

It is time to meet

The compressed

Expanse of anguish...

The compressed

Expanse of anguish

In sound

Heaving forth into

The gift of now

In the stream

Who knows of miracles.

I hear the playful around me.

Each time an old wound is touched, I descend as a pearl diver. I pry open the hardened shell that once sealed itself around a grain of pain. A stone that scraped tender flesh, or cut open the soft heart.

Sometimes, the shell holds nothing. Only emptiness or fragments of rotten death. But sometimes, through the patience of time, through the quiet waiting of the soul, the wound has done its secret work. The stone has turned into a pearl shimmering in the dark.

This song is one such pearl. The wound between father and daughter drops deeper than one lifetime. It’s a well carved by generations.

So this pearl is not mine alone. I offer it as it came to me: salt-wet, unfinished, breathing.

Recorded on a phone. Untouched by polish. Held open to you …

Falling rose

The other dad, you told me you love me

And I felt the dam I’ve built to block you from my heart

For 40 years, I’ve longed for you, I miss you and I am afraid of you

Your words once have crushed my heart, like a falling rose, frozen in the snow

Your way is strong and your heart is tough

Like a rock weathering the stormy nights

But I’ve chosen my way out of your lane, into the dark water

It’s a choice I carry like a boulder on my shoulder

Now we stand under the same roof

Reaching across but can not touch

I stretch out my arms, but can’t open my heart

I want to be close, but don’t know how

And I don’t know how

Falling rose, frozen to the ground

Waiting for the warmth of the sun

Daddy is getting old

His hair turns grey

I don’t have much time left

I don’t have much time left

[Note: I will be presenting A Daughter’s Return to the Motherland, a photo & video storytelling of my recent 75-day trip to China and its emerging culture of ecovillages. A zoom event at 10 am, Feb 14th, Pacific Time. Register here.]

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Rooted in Taoist philosophy, Tai Chi is more than a movement practice; it is an embodied way of peace-making. Its essence permeates any effort that seeks to bridge divides and harmonize polarities.

Here in Bellingham, where my partner Joe and I live, we’ve joined with several colleagues in an initiative to build bridges across the political spectrum, a different kind of “Tai Chi”, Tai Chi in the metaphysical realm.

In a time marked by deep division, we’re exploring something simple yet bold: meeting across our differences not through debate or persuasion, but through listening, speaking honestly, and staying connected.

If you are curious, you are welcome to check out our effort here: meeting.asweare.us

This poem emerged from a creative collaboration with Sara Airoldi when we co-facilitated the Badass Poetry for Social Change workshop at Lovefest Bellingham.

Sara is a consultant, culture-making artist, and passionate poet. It is an amazing blessing that we live in the same town, separated only by a 15-min drive. One of Sara’s superpowers is asking insightful questions that unlock the flow of my creativity. This poem took shape when she asked me, “What are the components of the Chinese character for ‘bad,’ and what do they mean?”

The Chinese character for “bad” (坏) is composed of two parts: one signifies “earth” (土), the other means “no” or “not” (不).

In Chinese, the word “坏” can also mean to rot or decompose. In ancient Chinese cosmology, morality isn’t seen as a fixed code, but as something woven into the cyclical rhythms of nature. What we call “bad” is not simply evil—it is what is breaking down, returning to the soil, becoming earth again.

What parts of ourselves do we deem “bad”? What do we cast as “bad” in others? Can we stay present to the slow decay, participating in the decomposition and witnessing the rot not as failure but as a passage through which new life is born? Can we render our very being as the ground, so others may find their footing?

Earth Says No

No—

I am not a thing to measure,

not a specimen to study,

nor a ledger to balance.

Would you dissect your own eye, in an effort to understand the beauty of the sunset?

Would you dam up your own throat to stop the river of tears from flowing?

Would you bulldoze your own heart down to an empty lot,

claim ownership to occupy it,

and cast away the secret of love it keeps?

No—

I am not outside you.

I breathe within your breath,

pulse beneath your skin.

I am the Earth inside your body—

the sparks in your cells

that are 14 billion years old,

that remember being stardust,

drifting through the dark,

whirling through galaxies

to dive into this velvet blue dream.

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In this time of intensifying political chaos, many narratives are crafted to stir our deepest fears and wounds—trapping us in the old patterns of separation, domination, and conquest.

The culture of capitalism and extraction normalizes violence, conditioning us to respond to force with more force, to answer division with deeper division.

But on this Earth Day, I choose to stand for something else.

I stand for the Spirit of the Compassionate Warrior—a path rooted not in conquest, but in connection. Not in reactivity, but in presence, presence as old and enlivened as Earth herself.

Together with my colleague Daelinar, cofounder of the Dancing Tao Tai Chi School, we offer this Tai Chi sword performance as a living prayer—a celebration of the Compassionate Warrior spirit. This performance will be part of the multicultural Earth Day service at Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship.

May it be a reminder that strength can be tender, and that true courage arises from compassion.

In the ancient traditions of the East, A warrior’s journey begins with a sword—but ends with a mirror.

At first, the warrior sees their enemy as someone outside of themselves.
They train to strike, to defend, to conquer—driven by fear, by pride, by the lust for victory.

But in time, the warrior matures.
Through struggle and solitude, they begin to understand:
The fiercest battles are not fought on battlefields, but within the heart.

A true warrior learns self-mastery.
They no longer react from impulse, nor fight to dominate.
They respond—with presence.

When they face an opponent, they do not see an enemy.
They see a reflection.

Beneath the clash of difference, they feel the stillness of common ground.
Beneath the armor of separation, they sense the thread of oneness that binds us all.

The sword becomes a symbol—not of violence, but of clarity.

A warrior still fights, but not for a display of power over, but power with.
Not a call to arms, but a call to heart.

A prayer,
not to win,
but to awaken.

Not to conquer the other
But to dissolve the illusion that we are separated.

Joe and I, along with a few friends, visited a small island called Decatur in the San Juan archipelago. While hiking through a place known as the Enchanted Mossy Forest, a friend paused beside a tree stump and pointed out an unusual pattern. Several patches of bark had grown together over the top of the cut, forming a gentle dome—almost as if the stump were being embraced.

Our friend said softly,
“This tree suffered a trauma. But it’s still deeply connected to the others through the underground mycelial network. So the surrounding trees sent it energy, helping it grow bark to cover the wound. This is the wisdom of the forest as a whole being—it tends to its own, shielding the wounded and protecting the forest from further harm.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. In that stump, I saw the girl inside of me—the one who has carried the imprint of collective trauma since the age of ten, frozen in a place too deep for words.

And yet, like the forest, I had not been alone. I had been held and nourished by the unseen care of my family and ancestral lineage. Even though my parents never fully understood the nature of my work, even though no one in my family could speak the language of healing or articulate the big picture, I’ve been protected by their blessings, their presence, their quiet love.

After visiting the stump, Joe and I sat down in the soft, moss-covered forest floor. Together, we wrote this poem.

In the Womb of the Forest

A stump carrying scars,
its bones carved with forgotten stories,
wrapped in a hush of moss-green breath—
unwept tears, unheard cries,
held in its weathered silence.

Still rooted though severed,
it listens to the mycelium’s hum.
From nearby trunks, quiet love flows—
sap shared across unseen veins,
a slow stitching of bark over wound.

The girl inside remembers.
Frozen at ten,
she curled inward like a fern at dusk.
Yet even then,
the forest never turned away.
It whispered her name through the roots,
sent care in shadow and shelter.

In the womb of the forest,
a dream planted by shooting stars
takes root in the ache of sleeping pain.
Ancestors stir beneath her skin—
a longing so deep,
it echoes in the hollow rings of time.

She is not alone.
Every scar speaks in wooden grain.
Every silence is a song unfinished.
And in the soft, green hush,
a cradle forms around the wound.

Not healed, but held.
Not whole, but heard.
Always becoming
beneath the canopy of care.

Naked Heart is a translation of a Chinese phrase 赤子之心. It means a level of authenticity and boldness that a small child has, free of any disguise, defense or pretense. It is where the original wisdom of the heart resides. As adults, when we burn off the burdens of success and failure and pierce through the illusions of achievement and loss, we can restore the original wisdom of our Naked Heart.

This song came through during a class I taught, where a Chinese woman expressed a passionate longing to restore her Naked Heart.

Lyrics:  

Every moment, every breath

Tides coming and going

Welling up, falling down

Perfection and imperfection

Are eternal lovers

Let me have a good cry

Let me fall in love without care

When the river of life

Washes away dregs and dirt

What’s left is my naked heart

Every achievement, every loss

Moon waxing and waning

Taking charge, and letting go

Success and failure

Both are precious experience

Let me swim in the sea of flowers

Let me wander under the moonlight

When the river of life

Washes away dregs and dirt

What’s left is my naked heart

Click here for more of my music.

Read my story of discovering my voice and music at age 41: Rebirthing the Lost Songs of Ancestors

Living Song Mentorship: Discover Your Voice and Music as a Pathway to Restore the Original Wisdom

Lyric

Leadership is not about domination 

Good leaders thrive on collaboration      

Leadership is not about grabbing control

Good leaders help others to grow 

And there is the Tao, the Way, the Great Flow    

Good leaders listen to the people

 Every voice counts, every voice is welcomed    

 When all of us sing, our voice is the power

Unleash your mojo and open to the Flow    

Express your joy and sorrow too  

Leadership is you and me, and all of us    

We are the people we are waiting for 

We are the people we are waiting for

Credits

Composed by: Spring Cheng

Produced by: Paul Kwiecinski

Vocals: Spring Cheng, Judi Neal and Paul Kwiecinski.

Narrators: Broderick Rodell, Amali Morning Song, Antonio Nunez, Marshall Goldsmith

Guitars and bass: Paul Kwiecinski

Come and Sing with Us!

Free Masterclasses: Unleash Your Mojo Through Your Songs . No prior experience of music or singing is required to attend.

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Watch this and other Taiji teaching videos on YouTube.

Taiji is the ancestral language I inherited

A language through which my body speaks to the water, fire, wood and earth elements dancing within

When my gait moves like a mountain

The cells of my body remember the time when they slept in the caverns deep inside the dark belly of the mountains

When my hands wave like clouds

The cells of my body remember the time when they arose as mists from a glistening alpine lake under the morning sun

Every time my palms turn toward each other

“Embracing the ball” – that’s what my Sifu called it

I feel as if I am receiving a child born out of the void

With reverence and utmost care

I embrace the child

And then let it go

Silkworms spin cocoons to protect themselves before they hatch into moths. The cocoons are made of a single continuous silk thread. Incredibly strong and resilient, silk can withstand significant stretches without breaking. When considered as strength-to-weight ratio, silk is stronger than steel!

Tai Chi is a practice featuring slow and intentional movements coupled with breath and awareness. To practice Tai Chi is to practice “silky awareness”, threading awareness through each movement, step, turn and breath. Through practice, our awareness becomes strong and resilient and as smooth and soft as silk.

One chapter of the Tao Te Ching says, the soft overcomes hard. The slow overcomes fast. This seems counterintuitive to the modern mind fixated on being harder and faster. But being fixated on being harder and faster will eventually break us, or bind us to a dead-end, exhausting competition that saps vitality out of life. Time is always on the side of slow and soft. That is how a little tender seedling can split huge rock. 

Silk is soft, but it can overcome steel.

Turtle is slow, but it can outrun the hare.

In eastern Asian traditions of martial arts, Tai Chi, and similar practices like Aikido, are hailed as higher expressions of a more mature form of the art, which can overcome a more overt display of force. When one reaches the highest realm of this art, one realizes that all enemies are projections from the inner, secretive chambers of one’s own psyche.

To practice Tai Chi is to cultivate our awareness as resilient and as smooth as silk. For Tai Chi class with Spring, please click here.

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[Songwriter’s Note]

Several years ago, when I saw the picture of a desperate polar bear struggling on the brink of extinction, I started to imagine what it would be like to die as the last members of a species. It dawned on me that it is a much weightier experience than to die as an individual.

This awareness plunged me deep into a “grief trance” that oddly felt heavy and expansive at the same time. I realized that this grief opened a portal to an area of my psyche I had not visited before. I started to imagine what it must feel like to be a soul that consciously chose this destiny, to be the one who says goodbye to Earth on behalf of the entire species! As I imagined that, feeling into a pain and sorrow larger than my personal ones, a new dimension of life, beyond Earth, beyond what we know as life, began to open to me…

This song describes this psychic journey I took, riding on a big wave of grief.]

Click here to listen or purchase Last Song on Bandcamp

[Lyrics]

Water, coming in from all directions
Towards the ice I am standing on
I am the last of my kind
To tell the story to the end
As I promised my ancestors
To say goodbye to the Earth
That we loved and called home

I haven’t eaten for days, perhaps weeks
There is no food within sight
One by one my friends are fading away
I look forward to joining them
When the northern light is dancing again
It is the time when my Spirit
Will fly to the star where I belong

Fire is burning underneath the ground
Sun is blasting messages through the air
Soul of Earth is waking up
A new dawn is drawing its first breath
My story may end but life goes on
As it always do as it always do

Cry for me, let the tears flow
Swing the gate wide open
Fire will burn off the illusions
Earth is weaving a new story
Open your heart to the music in the air
To the music in the air
To the music in the air

This might be my last song
I think I am ready for DEATH
Death is not the end of life
It is just another passage of journey
I can feel the weight of gravity
I think it’s time to say goodbye

I love you all and I always do
I love you all and I always do
I love you all and I always do
I love you all and I always do
I love you all and I always do
I love you all and I always do
I love you all

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I composed this song over a poem selected from the Classics of Poetry, the oldest poetry collection in China, dating from 1100 BCE to 700 BCE. This recording becomes the outro musical score for the documentary Dancing with the Dead, featuring Red Pine, a renowned writer and Chinese classic poetry translator.

In the tradition of Chinese poetry, “beauty” or the “loved one” is often used a metaphor for the Inner Self, our truest essence, often masked by our attachment to worldly identities, desires or possessions. In the tender longings expressed by this poem, I was reminded that it is an ongoing journey to live our life in alignment with our truest essence.

If you would like to purchase this song or support me as an artist, you can may click here.

lyrics

By the river bank lush reeds grow,
covered in dew white as snow;
The beauty I want to know,
is somewhere along the river flow;
Wading against the running water,
along a tough and windy path I go;
Swimming down the river flow,
I find her right in the middle.

By the river bank dense reeds flourish,
covered in dew so fresh;
The beauty I want to search,
is somewhere along the sandy beach;
Wading against the running water,
a tough and strenuous path I pick;
Swimming along the sandy beach,
I find her on a shoal within reach.

By the river bank thick reeds multiply,
covered in dew reflecting light;
The beauty I want to find,
is somewhere along the water line;
Wading against the running water,
a tough and long path I tried;
Swimming along the water line,
I find her right on an isle.

蒹葭苍苍，白露为霜。所谓伊人，在水一方。

溯洄从之，道阻且长。溯游从之，宛在水中央。

蒹葭萋萋，白露未晞。所谓伊人，在水之湄。

溯洄从之，道阻且跻。溯游从之，宛在水中坻。

蒹葭采采，白露未已。所谓伊人，在水之涘。

溯洄从之，道阻且右。溯游从之，宛在水中沚。

Watch Ghost, a dancing poetry on YouTube

Ghost

[This is a piece of work created eight years ago, in collaboration with Christian Swenson and Tim Malone, at Studio Current in Seattle.

Tao Te Ching says, there is a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe, a time for being in danger. In life, there is a time to celebrate and rejoice, and there is a time to surrender to grief and loss. This piece of performance honors many years of grief when I was deprogramming myself from the influence of colonization and capitalism.]

In the blasting thundering of gun shots
I am dead.
Blood splashes on the wall
Brain stains the dirt below
Flesh and broken limbs splatter around.

For a long time
I am a mere ghost
Too shocked to accept that I am dead
Floating over the grey, forlorn land
Mourning over my rotting body
Worms and snails feasting
Fungi and bacteria swarming
Breaking it apart bit by bit into the black matter of earth

As shock lifts its iron curtain
A searing grief creeps into the empty space
My ghostly self stumbles upon
The gun that killed me and others like me

A nimble and powerful machine
Made to destroy
A machine forcing itself upon any virgin territory of its desire
A machine hoarding resources away from “others”
A machine dispensing pain and death to those who defy it

Not long ago
Someone envisioned the machine in their imagination
Knowledge and rigor brought the vision down to the plane of reality
Precision fits the trigger, the barrel, the hammer and the cylinder together
Will and persistence
Perfected it through countless experiments

What would happen if I extract the
Imagination, knowledge, rigor and persistence from the gun?
And merge them to my soul?
My soul that loves, instead of kills
Unites, instead of divides
Trusts, instead of fears
Empowers, instead of conquers
Creates music that bathes the world in its loving songs
Instead deafening the ears with its mindless blasts?

Can I invent an apparatus that celebrates life instead of kills?
Can I ferment the instinct to destroy into the joy to create?
Can I shoot myself back to life?

I take the gun apart
I study what makes it a gun
I dive into the pool of imagination
My thinning ghostly body feeds on the knowledge
Fortified by the discipline required to weld an indestructible will

I experiment the new inventions on myself
Since I am already dead
I am free to shoot myself again and again
With rounds and rounds of failed attempts

I wait.
I wait.
And I wait.
I wait for the time to come
When the changing tides of the season
Polishes the sharp, cutting corners of my offering
When the ample sunshine of the never-ending summer
Ripens the green fruits of my labor
When the fuel gushing from the deep chasm under the ocean
Tends the cauldron of my creation

I wait.
And wait.
When death’s anguish
Throbbing pain of the wound
And rage towards the enemy
Decompose into rich humus
Replenishing the soil
I wait.
And wait.
When the memory of my old life
Releases its haunting grip on my diaphragm
So that I can draw in a full belly of fresh breath

The message of another spring
Gently falls as a warm rain
Wakes up the ground
Still steeped in its wintery dream
I feel I am ready
To be born again
As a new baby
Eager
To embrace the world
In a new life

Afterword

Many “ghosts” are living among us, walking aimlessly on the streets and singing silent songs into our ears. In the modern culture, we are told to shut our eyes, close our hearts and deafen our ears to them. “Dare you listen to them, a psychiatric sentence of mental disease and heavy-duty drugs will be waiting.” The warning says.

Among these “ghosts”, there is the spirit of the ancient Chinese oracle book, Book of Change (also known as I- Ching). As the western reductionist, materialistic-centered world view conquered the land where this book used to be loved and revered, it has been reduced to an empty shell of what it used to be and forgotten by its own people.

When its grief-stricken ghost came to knock on my door, I first rejected it out of a mortifying fear. As it insisted on coming in, I challenged it with my doctorate degree trained, scientist’s logic. It persisted. When I realized that it had sunk deep into my heart and started eroding away the castle of fear where I hid, I wrestled with it. It persisted. Eventually I surrendered, swinging the door open and invited it in to dance with my buried desire, secret impulse and latent gifts. In this dance, we are giving each other a whole new life.

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