I just stumbled on this site and thought I'd check it out. About 5 years ago, I sold my house in New York and all of my material possessions and went to India with a suitcase, a backpack and a one way ticket. My wife had died from cancer a few years earlier. My kid graduated from college and my career pretty much screeched to a halt. I was 63 at the time and I formally retired. The sale of my house and possessions allowed me to pay off all of my debts and didn't leave me much else (I'll spare you the details), and I really didn't want to work anymore so I left with the intention of pursuing life as a yogi. My Hatha Yoga, and Buddhist practices had been the glue that held my life together for about the last 30 years and I felt the universe was trying to tell me something. I found an amazing yoga teacher in Mysore India, and I stayed there for the next 3 years. At the same time I met a martial arts teacher who started teaching me qiqong and it quickly blew my mind. I had dabbled in Tai Chi a bit during the time my wife was sick, but didn't really have time and energy to pursue my interest with everything else that was going on in my life.
So the last few years I've pretty much devoted my life to practicing. Yoga, Taoist yoga, and qiqong are all extremely complimentary and I find that the synergy between these practices is totally amazing. While traveling to Bali, I met an Indonesian woman, fell in love and moved here. I am finally beginning to travel and teach and to teach privately over the internet, this is all happening by word of mouth, even though I have not been actively putting energy in this direction. I can't teach here in Bali because it is very hard to work in Indonesia, if you are a foreigner and the market is flooded is flooded with bendy young yoga teachers, which is not really what I do.
So that's it in a nutshell, except that when I left the US i started using dharmabum as a way to distinguish me from the millions of other David Lees in the world. This was an homage to Gary Snyder and the book that help bend my mind in this direction when I was in high school. I felt like Tao Bums might be kindred spirits.
much love and good vibes...
