16 Facts About Joan Halifax

Joan Jiko Halifax was born on July 30,1942 and is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality.

Joan Halifax currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990.

Joan Halifax is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989.

Joan Halifax is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.

Joan Halifax was born in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1942.

Joan Halifax moved to New York City and began working with Alan Lomax, and by 1965 she was reading books on Buddhism and teaching herself how to meditate.

Joan Halifax worked at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University with Alan Lomax from 1964 to 1968.

Joan Halifax then went to Paris and worked at the Museum of Man in the Ethnographic Film Section.

Joan Halifax went to Mali, where she studied the indigenous Dogon tribe.

Joan Halifax entered a relatively short-lived marriage with Stanislav Grof in 1972.

In 1979, Joan Halifax founded the Ojai Foundation, an educational and interfaith center.

In 1990 Joan Halifax founded Upaya Zen Center located in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Joan Halifax considers our condition of interrelatedness and interdependence in the design choices she has made.

Joan Halifax has done extensive work with the dying over her career.

Joan Halifax holds them, listens to them, comforts them, calms them, and eases their suffering by any means possible.

Joan Halifax travels easily from church to synagogue, hospice to hospital, dispensing techniques and training born of Buddhist traditions and beliefs in a culturally and spiritually flexible manner.