- At age four a serious virus caused her to go legally blind, from which she recovered two years later.
- In March 2011, she was appointed a distinguished visiting scholar at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress.
- She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989.
- As director of the Project on Being With Dying, Halifax has helped caregivers cope with death and dying for more than three decades.
- Joan Halifax has done extensive work with the dying over her career. Professor Christopher S. Queen writes-in the book Westward Dharma (edited by Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann), "She teaches the techniques of 'being with death and dying' to a class of terminally ill patients, doctors, nurses, lovers, family, and friends. She speaks calmly, with authority. In a culture where death is an enemy to be ignored, denied, and hidden away, Joan physically touches the dying. She holds them, listens to them, comforts them, calms them, and eases their suffering by any means possible. She shares their thoughts and fears; she feels their last shuddering breaths, holding them in her arms. She 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.".
- In 1979, Halifax founded the Ojai Foundation, an educational and interfaith center.
- In 1990 Halifax founded Upaya Zen Center located in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax.
- She is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality.
- Halifax-roshi has received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied with the Korean master Seung Sahn.
- In 1964 she graduated from Harriet Sophie Newcomb College at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she had become drawn into the American civil rights movement and participated in anti-war protests.
- She 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.
- As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded).
- Halifax entered a relatively short-lived marriage with Stanislav Grof in 1972. While together the two examined the use of LSD as a support mechanism for those dying, jointly publishing the book The Human Encounter With Death in 1977. The book discusses several "rebirth" incidents which are rather similar to regular reports of near death experiences.
- She 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.
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