Zukav returned to the U.S. in 1970 and moved to San Francisco, California. He recounts this period as an emotionally volatile time of sexual addiction, motorcycles, anger and drug-abuse. This continued until 1975 when an unexpected introduction to quantum physics by his roommate, Jack Sarfatti, who took him to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory initiated changes in his experience. This led to his first book, "Dancing Wu Li Masters", written with extensive help from Jack Sarfatti and other physicists he met through Sarfatti, as described in David Kaiser's book "How the Hippies Saved Physics". He later described this book as his "first gift to Life". In 1987 he moved to Mount Shasta, California, where he lived in a cabin as a self-described "secular monk" and spent extensive time in the surrounding wilderness. In 1993 he met Linda Francis. They co-founded the Seat of the Soul Institute in 1998 and moved to Ashland, Oregon, in 2000.