Biography

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.".