About
Matthew Hahn began practicing in 2005 while incarcerated at Folsom State Prison. He has practiced principally in the Insight and Theravada traditions since his release in 2012. He was mentored by Matthew Brensilver and received lay ordination from Venerable Pannavati and Ashin U Pannadipa. Hahn is a program facilitator for the Mindful Prisons Program and co-founder of Recovery Dharma. He is based at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. He also works as a union electrician and photographer.
Teaching focus
His teaching combines classical Insight practice with substantial work on prison dharma and recovery dharma. Recovery Dharma, which he co-founded, is a Buddhist-based recovery program serving people with addiction histories. The work draws on the Insight Meditation lay-teacher lineage as the foundational framework, taught with care for the textures of present experience rather than as abstract doctrine. The four foundations of mindfulness, breath, body, feeling tone, and mental states, organize the formal practice, with lovingkindness woven through as supporting work. Sitting and walking are the standard formal forms, paired with daily-life mindfulness as the integration practice. Lovingkindness gets serious time on retreat, treated as central practice rather than supplemental, and the broader brahmavihara framework offers additional ground for the slower work of equanimity and forgiveness. Daily-life integration runs through the recorded teaching as a steady concern. The same awareness that opens during a sit is the awareness that meets traffic, family, and work, and the teaching keeps coming back to that continuity rather than treating retreat as a separate world. Across the recorded teaching runs a steady commitment to the actual work of practice, the slow unfolding that doesn't always make for inspirational soundbites but that carries the path forward across years of sitting. There's also careful work with the harder stretches of practice, the dry months, the periods when nothing seems to be moving, the recurring difficulties that don't resolve quickly. The teaching treats those stretches as honest dharma material rather than as obstacles to be pushed past.
Background
Matthew Hahn is a teacher whose work is part of the wider Insight Meditation tradition descended from the Burmese and Thai vipassana lineages as carried into the West. Matthew Hahn started practicing the Dhamma in 2005, attending his first sangha as a prisoner in Folsom State Prison. Since coming home in 2012 he's practiced principally in Insight and Theravada traditions. He's a program facilitator for the Mindful Prisons Program and co-founder of Recovery Dharma. He has been mentored for many years by Matthew Brensilver and was empowered with lay ordination by Venerable Pannavati and the late Ashin U Pannadipa. He's a husband, photographer, and union electrician. The teacher's recorded material is mostly hosted through affiliated centers and personal platforms rather than through Dharma Seed. Emerging teachers offer something different from senior figures: the texture of a teaching voice still finding its specific shape, which can be useful for students who want to follow a teacher's development rather than encounter an already-canonized body of work. The teaching voice is plainly framed and unceremonial, in keeping with the broader Western lay-teacher insight tradition. Like many teachers in the wider Insight community, this teacher's path includes time on long silent retreat, ongoing study with senior teachers, and gradual integration of teaching responsibility through co-teaching and small local programs before stepping into broader retreat work. That apprenticeship model shapes the careful pacing of the teaching.
Lineage
Hahn was empowered with lay ordination by Venerable Pannavati and Ashin U Pannadipa. He's been mentored by Matthew Brensilver. He's a co-founder of Recovery Dharma and a facilitator for the Mindful Prisons Program. The teacher works as a layperson, in keeping with the broader Western lay-teacher form of the tradition. He co-founded Recovery Dharma and facilitates the Mindful Prisons Program. He's affiliated with Insight Meditation Center.
What to expect
Programs through Recovery Dharma, Mindful Prisons Program, and IMC-affiliated networks. The teaching specifically reaches populations not traditionally served by retreat-center dharma. Retreats follow standard Insight format: sittings, walking, dharma talks, and meetings with the teachers, with lovingkindness practice woven through and daily-life integration treated as serious work rather than an afterthought. The pacing is careful and the teaching is specific, suiting practitioners who want concrete instruction over inspirational framing. Students new to the teacher's work often find it useful to start with a shorter program or a recorded talk before committing to a longer residential retreat, both to get a feel for the teaching voice and to clarify whether the format suits their practice at this stage.
