Tai Hazard

"There's a kind of energy that draws you out and pulls you into life, and I've always liked that total immersion in life. You don't sit back in a corner; you leap into it completely." Tai says her studies in Zen and her studies in shamanism with a Sammi teacher from Lapland have led her into this full-immersion life. And so now, at the age of seventy-seven, she's studying Aikido sword work.

Tai ordained as a Buddhist priest in the Rinzai tradition with Zen Master Maurine Stuart in 1989. At that time Tai lived in western Massachusetts, not far from Smith College, where I taught, and a mutual friend introduced us. She and her partner of what is now thirty years became my good friends before I left for Africa in 1992, and we have stayed in touch over the years as we've all developed in surprising ways. Tai teaches Kyudo (zen archery), and now she and her partner live in Vermont, but Tai comes out to the west coast each winter, where she is a visiting teacher at Stone Creek Zen Center.

This is Tai's third visit to Portland, and she'll be here all this week.

Tai Ingrid Hazard is an artist, Rinzai Zen priest, and cabinet maker with interests in Japanese martial arts and shamanism. She was certified by Stan Grof as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator in 1992. --from her book, A Shaman's Journey, 2009.

More information about her book is here.