Robert R AbbottRobert Abbott, or Bud, as he prefers to be called, grew up in San Diego surfing, fishing, waterskiing, and having a dream childhood playing in the water. As a young teen, he was very temporarily "saved" by Billy Graham at a tent revival rally. He attnded colleges in Mexico, Switzerland, Chile, Missouri, and California, focusing on biological studies before eventually, 12 years or so after high school, earning a PhD from the University of Washington with a focus on marine biology, fisheries, and especially the bioacoustics of salmon. During graduate school, he marched with Martin Luther King in a voter registration drive in the Deep South, and then served in the Peace Corps in Nigeria, to stay out of Vietnam, a war he opposed. He taught biology at a government school in Warri before he was forced out of Nigeria at gunpoint during its ugly, protracted civil war. He then drifted around and went fishing on a variety of vessels before buying his own and becoming a charter boat skipper in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, targeting giant blue marlin and yellowfin tuna. All the while he was leading a dissolute life, in keeping with the times-the 1970s. After a doomed, drug-infused romance-the one that got away-he pulled himself out of this tailspin around the time he met his future wife Cynthia. Still in Hawaii, the couple started a family, adopting two children from Thailand. Bud's marine biology career took him all over the world; he worked in Nigeria, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Myanmar, Thailand, Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Philippines, and the Marshall Islands. His penchant for travel includes 55 countries, among them five Provinces in China. Wherever he was assigned, he learned as much as he could of the local language and customs, and also studied local religious practices. He is an enthusiastic, if not quite accomplished, musician, especially with the acoustic guitar, and has a large repertoire of remembered songs, including a few that spontaneously came to him over a lifetime. He has participated in performances in Davies Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. He is also an enthusiastic performer and loves to lead sing-alongs. He has practiced Tai Chi Chuan for over 40 years and became a certified yoga instructor in order to participate in the Prison Yoga Project. As well, he is the author (along with Zochi Young) of a previous book, "TRANSFORMATION: The 90-Second Practice Integrating Tai Chi and Yoga to Manage Stress and Unlock Your Potential" (2021). He has also published numerous scientific and technical reports. At 82 he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is a practicing marine biologist and expert witness. He is the cofounder of Lighten Up Retreats, where he teaches movement-focused meditations such as Tai Chi, Qigong, and Vipassana walking as vehicles to learn mindfulness, non-duality, and the sacredness of the movement of chi as an attribute of the Life Force. Read More Read Less
