In hard times, one thing that sustains me is meaningful conversation. With so much pain and upheaval in the world, I turned to my friend and colleague Kazu Haga to talk about his new book, Fierce Vulnerability: Healing From Trauma, Emerging Through Collapse, which offers clarity, courage, and inspiration for this moment.
Kazu and I met through our shared roots in Buddhist meditation and nonviolence. A longtime practitioner and trainer in nonviolence and restorative justice, he studied with Civil Rights leaders like Rev. James Lawson and Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr. An edited version of our conversation follows.
What is Fierce Vulnerability?
Kazu Haga: 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.
It’s about applying the lessons of trauma healing and neuroscience to a larger scale, recognizing that violence and injustice aren’t merely political problems, but are manifestations of unprocessed collective trauma. These insights open up new pathways for movements rooted in healing, courage, and connection.
How does that shift the way we organize or work for social change?
Real transformation requires movements that know how to metabolize trauma. If injustice is a form of trauma, then we can’t just shut it down—any more than we can shut down trauma itself.
While it’s sometimes necessary to put our bodies on the line to interrupt harm, fierce vulnerability invites us to shift from a mindset of “shutting things down” to a spirit of opening things up: to slow down, create enough safety for stories to be told, conversations to unfold, and real connection that allows healing to emerge.
The world is in a state of panic. It’s easy to become dysregulated or have our traumas activated. When that happens, the part of our brain capable of nuance, empathy, and interdependence goes offline.
Grounding practices can reconnect us with our higher selves. One way to break the trance of panic is to sparks introspection or curiosity—because curiosity reawakens our capacity to connect.
So how can we organize in ways that invite curiosity? When we repeat the same protest forms with slogans and signs, people go on autopilot. But what if we led a grief ritual, read poetry, or shared our vulnerability in the middle of a demonstration? Fierce Vulnerability invites us to organize in ways that embody nonseparation—touching something real, inviting people to ask questions, and helping us all wake up from panic and disconnection.
What’s the “fractal nature of healing”?
I believe that trauma, its impact, and healing all happen in fractals—because we live in a fractal universe. It’s a law, like gravity—an unwavering truth about the universe’s structure.
I experienced a lot of trauma and violence in early childhood. Even though I told myself I’d healed, the trauma lingered in my body and affected my relationships, because I’d never really processed it.
The United States also carries core traumas—enslavement, genocide, indentured servitude. We like to think, “That happened long ago; we’re past it.” But because we never integrated these wounds, conversations about racial healing often trigger panic or shutting down.
In the same way I had to learn to embody frozen emotions from early childhood, how can our communities—across race, gender, nationality—begin to feel and release the frozen emotions from centuries of unprocessed trauma?
You don’t have to experience violence directly to be impacted by it. The same goes for healing. Just witnessing a genuine act of healing can be deeply transformative. I remember at Standing Rock, a group of US Veterans kneeled before Indigenous leaders to apologize for centuries of military violence. Witnessing that kind of healing touches something profound in our collective nervous system.
Can you say more about the relationship between personal and collective healing in the context of social change?
To me, healing is everything—it’s our North Star. But we don’t have time to only focus on personal healing. We can’t ignore the urgency of this moment. Even if we work through our trauma and support others with theirs, that won’t turn this ship around.
I think the idea of individual liberation is a delusion. There’s no such thing as personal healing in an interdependent world. What we often call “personal healing”—spirituality, healthy living, trauma work—must be connected to systemic change. We need to embody the changes we want to see in the world.
We need to take care of ourselves. But the intention of individual healing is to recollect our interdependence. If my hand is hurting, then my body isn’t well. And if I heal my hand but ignore that my nose is bleeding, I’m living in a delusion if I think I’m well just because one part of my body is better. So let’s care for ourselves in all the ways we need—without losing sight of the fact that individual and collective liberation are inseparable.
I know people who feel too overwhelmed to face what’s happening—or who simply don’t want to know. How do we help move people from complacency or denial into engagement?
Part of our work is to keep building relationships and embody the potential of Fierce Vulnerability. With enough trust, we can invite people into hard conversations and support them in stepping outside their comfort zones. It’s easy to put Dr. King on a pedestal now, but he was deeply unpopular in his time—because he called people to take uncomfortable, radical action.
We can stay grounded in practices that reconnect us to our center, and organize in ways that create safety and belonging. If we embody Fierce Vulnerability, people will feel something shift inside. If we create spaces of belonging, people will transform. That’s what opens the door to real engagement.
We can’t force people to change—but the earth can. The earth is our ally, and it’s already pushing more people to mobilize. We’re living through a polycrisis, and things will likely get harder before they get easier. Fewer and fewer people will have the privilege not to engage.
Part of our role is to prepare the ground—to support people when they’re ready to shift, and to welcome them when they arrive.
What about those of us who care deeply but don’t feel called to protest or put our bodies on the line right now (like myself, as a parent of young children)?
That really does change things, doesn't it! You don’t have to be on the front lines to be part of the movement. Everyone has a role, and there’s a creative process to discovering what that is for each of us.
Two of my favorite movement experiences were at Standing Rock and in the early days of Occupy Wall Street in Downtown Oakland. There were medical clinics, healers, and childcare providers. There was a free school and library, people leading ceremonies and teaching songs. There was even a barbershop set up in the middle of the encampment.
So, what’s your calling? Is it cooking? Making art? Song? Poetry? Offering a space for people to meet and organize?
We need to shift from asking if we will participate to how we will participate. That’s a more fruitful place to begin.
What does effective activism look like to you today, and what’s the role of not knowing?
Pragmatically, some things need to be stopped. For example, we need strategies to resist authoritarianism. As an activist, I was trained to have a clear strategy with contingencies. And yet, that worldview—that if we just think hard enough, we can figure it all out—feels like part of how we’ve gotten into this mess.
I’m deeply inspired by Taoism, which emphasizes not knowing. As big as the threat of authoritarianism is, there are larger, unknowable changes happening on the planet that are beyond our control.
The practice isn’t trying to steer those changes in the direction that we want, but learning to be in right relationship with forces outside of our control. Accepting that we can’t know every step toward liberation allows us to have beginner’s mind and stay curious.
I think one of the most important things we can do right now is slow down, ask what our heart’s truest calling is, and listen—to the wind and the birds, the moon and the stars—for guidance from beyond our intellect.
So much wisdom is being offered. But when we think we’ve figured it out, we stop listening. That’s the danger: losing curiosity and our ability to truly hear what the universe is saying.
How are you holding the helplessness, despair, or hopelessness so many are feeling?
First, I think we need to rely on spiritual practice—and I mean that in the broadest sense. I consider Neil deGrasse Tyson one of my spiritual teachers, because when I hear him talk about the cosmos, it fills me with the same awe and wonder I feel in ceremony or on retreat.
We need practices that connect us with something larger than ourselves and widen our sense of time. A lot of hopelessness comes from the sense that we won’t reach Beloved Community—that the transformation we long for won’t happen in our lifetime. And that might be true.
But we can expand our view beyond our lifetime. Recently, I was at a gathering on Bowen Island, off the coast of Vancouver, and each morning I’d visit a thousand-year-old tree named Opa. I’d just sit there, contemplating what it means to witness a thousand years. In another ancient forest, one tree is over 4,800 years old. It was already two thousand years old when the Buddha walked the Earth!
There’s something about our individualistic, human-centered view that fuels urgency and anxiety. But when we remember we’re part of something much greater—not just as individuals, but even as a species—it becomes a little easier to be with this moment as it is. And that can nourish and sustain us for the road ahead.
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