In the small, mountain town of Eldora, Colo., nestled between towering pines and shimmering aspen trees, sits a modest log cabin. Here, Ken “Bear Hawk” Cohen lives and works in unpretentious surroundings that belie the complexities and accomplishments of his life. Cohen is Jewish by birth and Native American by adoption. He is also a world-renowned qigong master and Chinese scholar, inter-faith minister, university professor, Haiku poet, doting father and loving husband.

Ping Lee’s training as an engineer comes in handy when he’s explaining the concept of energy. “Conceptualize the word air,” he says. “The Chinese have a lot of expressions with the word air. It sounds insignificant, so when you say something is air, what type of thing is it? Can you picture a steam locomotive, do you know how powerful that is? When we use the word steam we think of a cloud, but it is only a condensation of air — energy. What I teach in class, when we talk about energy, is seeing the word air as energy. You can feel a person’s presence, that’s energy.