Halifax entered a relatively short-lived marriage with Stanislav Grof in 1972. During the 1970s, Halifax went to Mexico to study the Huichols. She also went to Mali, where she studied the indigenous Dogon tribe. in medical anthropology and psychology and worked at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She then went to Paris and worked at the Museum of Man in the Ethnographic Film Section. She worked at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University with Alan Lomax from 1964-1968. Halifax moved to New York and began working with Alan Lomax, and by 1965 she was reading books on Buddhism and teaching herself how to meditate. In 1964 she graduated from Harriet Sophie Newcomb College at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she had become drawn in to the American civil rights movement and participated in anti-war protests. At age four a serious virus caused her to go legally blind, from which she recovered two years later. Joan Halifax was born in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1942. Joan with Seung Sahn Soen Sa Nim at the Ojai Foundation in 1979.

She is in the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. 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. Halifax-roshi has received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied under the Korean master Seung Sahn.

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. Joan Jiko Halifax (born 1942) is a Zen Buddhist roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality. Joan Halifax with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Shamanic Voices by Joan Halifax