Arawana Hayashi is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, with roots in Asian and Western arts. She began her dance training in classical ballet, culminating in studies with Nina Fonaroff in New York, and later trained in modern dance at the Merce Cunningham Studio. Throughout her career she has been involved in interdisciplinary, ensemble improvisation. Arawana was on the faculty of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School and the Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado.

She has created outdoor community performances in both inner-city and rural environments. Her workshop in creative process, The Art of Making a True Move, has been presented in educational institutions, meditation centers, and organizational settings in the U.S. and Canada. In this and other workshops, Arawana invites non-dancers to discover their natural creativity as she guides them through a gentle, non-judgmental process of paying attention to their own physicality and to their environment.

She is a master meditation teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition and recently completed a three-year term as teacher-in-residence at Karmê Chöling in Northeast Vermont.