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Joan is a writer and lifelong explorer of what is. Her background includes Buddhism, Advaita, nontraditional meditative inquiry, radical nonduality, martial arts, somatic work, addiction recovery, political activism, visual arts, and a devotion to both boundless presence and the beauty of the ordinary. Joan has held public and private meetings as well as occasional retreats since 1996. She encourages people to question the stories, beliefs and misunderstandings that create so much of our human suffering, especially our tendency to mistake conceptual maps for the living actuality. Joan openly shares her own experiences with addiction, depression, cancer, aging, disability, and other life adventures. Her books typically include a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. To Joan, spirituality sees all of life as sacred. It is about direct experience, here and now, not dogma, belief, or future attainments. Joan's main teacher was Toni Packer, a former Zen teacher who left that tradition behind to work in a simpler and more open way. Joan spent time with many other teachers as well. Joan has a BA in English from Bard College and an MA in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, and she was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Joan is the author of Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life (1996), Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is (2003), Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogs about Nonduality (2010), Nothing to Grasp (2012), and Death: The End of Self-Improvement (2019). Joan has lived in northern California, rural New York state, and Chicago, and currently resides in southern Oregon.
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