Simeon Den is "Dingo" to his family and friends in Kalihi.

He's "The King" in the "The King and I" to the many who have seen him in productions of the popular musical.

He's kumu — in the ballet and modern-dance sense — to a generation of students who studied with him at DanceWorks studio.

He's a photographer, a yoga and meditation instructor and a trained practitioner of feng shui and Integrative Quantum Medicine to his clients in Hollywood.

To people who are HIV-positive, he is one of their number — and has been for more than 20 years.

And now, at 55, he's an author.

And it's all connected — every job, every passion, every life circumstance has led him to this place: sharing "8 Meditations on Urban Life," a self-published collection of essays ($16.95). The book began with an article he was asked to write for a California magazine about being healthy, happy — and HIV-positive. The response encouraged him to try a book.

"8 Meditations" was penned during a hectic tour with a traveling company of "The King and I" (as writer, trainer, masseur and bit player).

The young cast would try to draw him into their interpersonal backstage dramas, he said, and he'd find himself inwardly rolling his eyes and chuckling, recalling himself at that selfabsorbed stage. "Gotta go. Got some writing to do," he'd say.

In that simple response is contained all that Den has learned since the hedonistic days of his '70s acting and dancing career: self-knowledge and self-deprecation, humor and a keen sense of irony, and the ability to choose the positive, to go about his own work while blessing and releasing others to go about theirs.

He took the job as a way to write while still getting paid — all those hotel rooms with just him and his laptop.

Den's book is really two: the eight "ruminations" on common city-life stressors followed by meditations designed to help you deal with them.

"By way of meditation, you can support anything you choose to do," he said, whether it's managing time or losing weight (and, yes, even he confesses to a weakness for junk food and vegging out in front of the TV).

Den's approach to meditation doesn't involve sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting "om" — though you may, if you like. You need only a quiet place, a chair, some time and — Den's interesting addition — something to write in, a journal.

"Journaling is actually the practice that helped me get into meditation, because you have to internalize when you write, you explore your internal life ... I use that as a preparation for meditation," he said in a phone interview from California. (He'll be in Hawai'i briefly this weekend for book signings and appearances.)

"There are maybe three or four times in my life when I was really stuck, and I'd literally hole up for three days and just write. It's so 'unstucking,' " he said.

Den suggests you first prepare the body with yoga or the exercise form he has developed called yoga qi, integrating elements of hatha yoga, Pilates and Chinese qi gong. He doesn't describe it here; that's his next book.

Sit and journal for a while. Breathe, go inward.

The ruminations incorporate stories of enlightening moments (and some hilarious ones) and musings on the connection between quantum physics and spirituality (they're both about energy; the universe as energy, God as energy). And though some of what Den posits is hard to understand, or swallow, he isn't particularly invested in changing anyone's mind, so doesn't try hard enough to turn the reader off.

"I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm saying, 'This is what you could do. I've done it and it worked for me. Try it, you might like it. And if you don't like it, it will open a door to something else,' " he said.

Den said the concept of writing for the "city dwelling mystic/pedestrian/warrior" came about because that's the life he has lived. "Living in a city, you've pretty much got blinders on, you're just dealing with what's in front of you — and those things are stress and money and relationships," he said, "but you lose touch with yourself."

"I really just want people to start their own conversations with their spirit."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.