Calendar
EcoDharma Exploration: Fierce Vulnerability with Kazu Haga
EcoDharma Exploration Series:
Fierce Vulnerability with Kazu Haga
Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse
The world is in a state of panic and injustice is escalating. We need actions to alleviate suffering. Yet if we respond from a place of urgency, we are only adding more panic to the world.
How do we move in ways that honor that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast?” As we face the poly-crisis, how do we escalate our actions without escalating a worldview that keeps us from interdependence? How can we view injustice less as a political issue and more as a manifestation of collective trauma? And how can Buddhist teachings and practices support us in responding skillfully to these times?
Fierce Vulnerability invites us into building a movement with the power to stop injustice while cultivating the love necessary to heal it. One that has the vulnerability to accept the depth of the crises we are in and the fierceness to not get frozen by it.
Kazu’s latest book, Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse, is available for purchase through Parallax Press or your local bookseller now.
This EcoDharma Exploration session is part of a short series in collaboration with One Earth Sangha, Spirit Rock’s ecoDharma & Transformational Culture Program, and Braided Wisdom. We’re honored and excited to work with our new partners.
ABout THE Speaker
Kazu Haga
Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of the Fierce Vulnerability Network, a founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective, a Jam facilitator and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm and Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country and has over 25 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA, where he lives with his family. You can find out more about his work at his website.
Let’s Practice Together with Margarita Loinaz
Let’s Practice Together with Margarita Loinaz
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Margarita Loinaz
Guest Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
Let’s Practice Together with Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Dr. Renda Dionne Madrigal
Guest Teacher
Let’s Practice Together with Amana Brembry Johnson
Let’s Practice Together with Amana Brembry Johnson
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Amana Brembry Johnson
Guest Teacher
Amana Brembry Johnson, Residential Dharma Teacher and Community Leader, is a Core Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC), located in Oakland, CA and co-Guiding Teacher of EBMC’s Spiritual Teacher and Leadership Training. Amana mentors local and international groups of emerging Mindfulness teachers through the Mindfulness Meditation Training Certification Program (MMTCP) designed and developed by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Her life’s work emerges from the intersections of spirituality, social justice, somatic practices, and intuitive creativity. An accomplished visual artist, Amana creates imagery that exposes emotional and spiritual barriers of the heart as portals into kindness, compassion, self-love, and fierce action.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Program Overview
These times call for us to expand our individual and collective capacity to navigate uncertainty, instability, and complexity. By practicing deeply together, we strengthen our ability to meet these challenges with resilience and presence.
Throughout 2025, we will gather one Sunday a month online as a community of curious practitioners to explore the timeless wisdom of the Buddhadharma and mindfulness/Insight meditation. In each session, we will cultivate presence, deepen our meditation practice, and engage in shared reflections and inquiry. Together, we cultivate a collective heart-mind-body—a living, interconnected field—spacious enough to hold and transform whatever life brings our way.
Let's Practice Together offers a space for meaningful dialogue—an opportunity to ask questions, explore personal and collective experiences, and learn from one another. We welcome sincere and committed practitioners of all levels and backgrounds to join us on this collective path of discovery and connection.
We gratefully welcome donations of any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support is appreciated, and everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to contribute.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Introduction to Cross-Cultural Mindfulness - October 2024
Introduction to Cross-Cultural Mindfulness
We are facing a time in humanity of great division and despair as we witness the unfolding of a dying ecosystem. We are experiencing the challenges of a world in crisis, pandemic, war, racial inequality, economic disparity, displacement, and climate devastation. We need a framework for building up ourselves and each other - together.
Cross-Cultural Mindfulness is a framework that brings together universal principles common across many cultures to help us integrate with our most primordial selves.
"Primordial comes from the Latin words primus, meaning 'first' and ordiri, 'to begin.' So it is easy to see that this adjective means 'first of all, original.' When something is primordial, it has existed since the earliest time, like the primordial mud some scientists believe was the source of all life on Earth."
This framework centers on the foundations of mindfulness that are grounded on the breath, body, heart, and mind. Cultures from all four corners of the world understand this framework to be fundamentally necessary to connect with our direct experience of the ever changing flow of life itself, which is essential to how we hold ourselves and each other in this very difficult time for humanity. In this course, participants will:
Cultivate stillness, deep listening, and the ability to pay attention to present moment experience with a quality of mind that is alert, open, aware, and fully alive.
Explore Earth-Based Practices to experience the truth that can be revealed through being in direct relationship with Nature.
Practice ways of tracking what is present for us, the visible and invisible.
Learn how to witness the mirroring of our internal and external realities through a self-assessment tool that explores how we are surviving and thriving.
Learn the distinction between Cross-Cultural Mindfulness and secular mindfulness.
Every time we practice mindfulness meditation, we are actively engaging with life itself internally and externally. Our internal landscape is a full living ecosystem no different from our beloved Earth, deeply connected to one another with no separation of other living beings, seen and unseen. Hence, this is why we honor the form and the formless as we acknowledge those who have come before us and after us. Our ancestors are living through us and the acknowledgement of our cultural roots is vital for a deeper understanding of our freedom beyond this body, this culture, this identity and this world. We open ourselves to this precious life shared with so many and embody the knowing that we are not separate from any of it. This practice is a vital antidote to the divisive patterns being amplified in our declining ecosystem worldwide.
Finally, as most know, the timeless practice of mindfulness was historically taught by the Buddha. The teachings of the Buddha belong to all living beings. At the same time, Asian descendants whose cultural and ancestral lineages have preserved Buddhism throughout history, have a particular birthright to Buddhism. Known as Heritage Buddhists, these Asian diaspora communities must navigate the complexities and intersectionalities of modern day Buddhism. Many must practice holding the tension of oppressive aspects of patriarchy and traditionalism in Buddhism while also the harms of racism, invisibility, erasure, and cultural appropriation perpetuated by white colonization. Cross-Cultural Mindfulness honors the contributions of Heritage Buddhists to the ongoing preservation and expansion of mindfulness and contemplative practices worldwide while making space for the evolving complexities and unfolding needs facing these specific practitioners.
ABout THE teachers
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.
Imee Contreras
Co-Teacher
Imee Contreras, CMT-P, is the founder of Mindfulness Asia. She is co-founder of the Philippine Insight Meditation Community and Nibbāna Forest Refuge. She is a mentor for Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach's Mindfulness Teacher Training Certification Program, where she co-facilitates the Third Space in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, and Accessibility Program. She is the Mindfulness Teacher of Braided Wisdom's Leadership Training Program and a Co-Teacher for the Original Medicine Yearlong Program.
She develops and facilitates innovative mindfulness programs for international companies, schools, and events. She volunteers to teach incarcerated women serving life imprisonment and supports sexually abused women and children.
She spent a large part of her younger years growing up in the United States and is now based in her motherland, the Philippines. She is mixed-race, adopted, and raised by hard-working, lower-middle-class, immigrant Filipinos. She is a mother, an organic gardener, a health and wellness advocate, and a yoga therapist.
Dr. Pawan Bareja
Guest Teacher
Pawan Bareja, PhD has practiced Vipassana meditation since 2001. She is a graduate of the Spirit Rock Teacher Training, a Buddhist Ritual Minister and a Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock. She has taught classes and daylongs on healing trauma using mindfulness at Spirit Rock, San Francisco Insight, EBMC, and Esalen. In her private practice as Trauma Resolution Practitioner, Pawan works with a diverse population of clients and teaches mindfulness meditation. For the past 18 years, Pawan has been a senior assistant at Somatic Experiencing trauma healing trainings and has traveled to India to teach this work to professional care providers.
Carmen Alvarez
Teacher’s Assistant
Carmen is from the Purepecha lands in Michoacan Mexico. Carmen has a master’s degree in Leadership which she has braided beautifully with her Toltec, Purepecha, and her Mindfulness Training Practices providing holistic approaches to healing and personal development. She received her Certification as a Mindfulness Teacher from the Braided Wisdom Leadership Training Program in 2022. She also has completed two Indigenous Master programs, Nahualismo and Curanderismo. Carmen is a practitioner of Mexica indigenous practices and she is also part of a Lakota centered community.
Coaching and training are her passion as she thrives when working with others. Her belief is that we must heal ourselves and by doing so we heal our family, our ancestors, and our communities. Carmen practices and guides mindfulness meditations, leadership coaching, ancestral healing, trauma-based healing, limpias, manifestations, planting dreams, among many other healing techniques. Her intention is for everyone to find their passion and live their best life.
R. Consuelo Inez
Teacher’s Assistant
Inez is an indigenous energy medicine-woman, certified in international mindfulness meditation, sound healing, acupressure, ayurvedic and healing touch therapies. She is a trained herbal medicine practitioner, and hypnotherapy guide. Aware of her intuitive abilities at a very young age her life purpose was revealed to her through elements of nature and the spirit of dreams. She unites traditional indigenous philosophies, evoking ancient shamanic sounds of the ancestors through Native American drumming, Tibetan bowls, and voice while integrating the science of music therapy.
Inez has a private practice in Northern California offering energy medicine to clients opening pathways for spiritual awakening to help alleviate and release emotional trauma, spiritual, and physical burdens, while restoring soul integrity.
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
Let’s Practice Together with Carol Cano
This offering calls in curious practitioners desiring a deeper understanding of their meditation practice in community. It's an opportunity to be in inquiry and to ask a seasoned teacher questions about one's practice that everyone can learn from. Each session will include collective meditation practice and time for Q&R (question and reflection). Please join us if you're interested in deepening your practice while cultivating connection with a sangha.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with all registrants. During the session, practitioners who don't wish to be recorded may offer their questions in the chat.
Sincere and dedicated practitioners of all levels are welcome.
We welcome a donation of $10 however will not turn anyone away due to lack of funds.
Remaining Dates:
November 16
Setting the Container:
We request participants attend the whole program to respect the container of the class and Carol.
At Braided Wisdom we strive to build an online environment that creates a safer container for all. Part of creating a safer environment is asking for participants to have their cameras on during class time. If you have an access need around this request, please reach out to info@braidedwisdom.org so we can discuss how best to support you.
ABout THE teacher
Carol Cano, M.A.
Lead Teacher
Carol Cano, M.A., began her practice over 35 years ago at Wat Kow Tahm in Thailand and has actively engaged in building communities and teaching Dharma internationally. She is a teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a core teacher and a former board member of East Bay Meditation Center. Carol co-founded Philippine Insight Meditation Community in the Philippines.
Her unique teachings are deeply grounded in Basque, Native American and Buddhist influences that braid the Dharma along with Indigenous wisdom and earth-based practices. Her psychology background gives her a unique view into the human condition, which helps her hold community in a compassionate and confident manner. Carol reminds us to keep grounded in our hearts as we uphold spiritual ideals and encourages us to remain balanced within the demands of modern life. To find out more about Carol, please visit www.carolcano.com.