About
Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner in nonviolence and restorative justice with over 25 years of experience in social change work. He is a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network and founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective. Haga has authored Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. His work integrates spiritual practice, trauma healing, and nonviolent action. He is based at Canticle Farm community in Oakland, California, and is affiliated with Spirit Rock.
Teaching focus
Kazu Haga's teaching focus sits inside the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield, with insight meditation (vipassana) as the working ground. The Insight Meditation lineage carries forward the Burmese vipassana teaching as it took root in the West through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. That means mindfulness held at the center, with metta and the broader brahmaviharas as steady companions, and a household-friendly framing that doesn't require ordination or extreme retreat conditions. Trauma-informed teaching shows up as pacing, as explicit consent for difficult material, and as a willingness to abandon the schedule when a practitioner needs that more than the next instruction. Engaged dharma is taken seriously here. Practice and ethical-political commitment get treated as a single fabric. Across the body of work, the consistent thread in Kazu Haga's teaching is the refusal to let practice become abstract. The instruction asks for direct contact with what's actually arising, and the framing supports practitioners in giving it that. Recurring questions in the teaching include how to keep practice honest across years, how to hold difficulty without bypassing it, and how the dharma actually shows up in ordinary life rather than only on the cushion.
Background
Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner in nonviolence and restorative justice with over 25 years of experience in social change work. He is a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network and founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective. Haga has authored Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. His work integrates spiritual practice, trauma healing, and nonviolent action. He is based at Canticle Farm community in Oakland, California, and is affiliated with Spirit Rock. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA, where he lives with his family. Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Kazu Haga through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses. Fierce vulnerability is one thread in the ancient lineage of nonviolence. The term emerged from years of conversation about “rebranding” nonviolence to counter the misunderstanding that it’s passive or weak, and to affirm it as a path of real depth, power, and courageous action. Kazu Haga's teaching is anchored at Spirit Rock. The teaching draws from the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield, with insight meditation (vipassana) as the working ground. Areas of particular focus include trauma, restorative justice. The voice in Kazu Haga's teaching is recognizably in the Insight Meditation lineage, warm without being soft, and willing to sit with the difficult places practice opens. Mindfulness, loving-kindness, and the gradual accumulation of insight are the working vocabulary. Practitioners drawn to Kazu Haga's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Kazu Haga's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Kazu Haga's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Kazu Haga's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way. Practitioners drawn to Kazu Haga's teaching tend to be people who've already noticed that practice is a long arc, not a quick fix, and who want a teacher who treats it that way.
Lineage
Kazu Haga teaches within the Insight Meditation lineage that grew from Burmese vipassana through teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield. Fierce vulnerability is one thread in the ancient lineage of nonviolence. Current affiliation runs through Spirit Rock. Kazu Haga teaches as a lay practitioner rather than from a monastic role. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing. The lineage shapes the form of the teaching, not just its content. Practitioners encountering it find a transmission line still actively developing.
What to expect
In Kazu Haga's online programs, expect guided sittings, structured teaching segments, and group discussion that takes the medium seriously rather than treating it as a fallback. Sittings are conventional, mindfulness of breath and body, with metta and inquiry into difficult mind-states woven through. There's space for questions, and the answers don't get rushed. Pacing is trauma-informed, which means slow when slow is needed and explicit invitations to titrate intensity rather than push through. The atmosphere is grounded rather than performative, and practitioners tend to leave with practical ground to keep working from on their own. The atmosphere is grounded rather than performative, and practitioners tend to leave with practical ground to keep working from on their own.
