Meeting Challenges with Backbone and Heart | Roshi Joan Halifax and Rhonda Magee

This is the finale in our 4-part series on the power of compassion, which has featured leading researchers and practitioners in illuminating conversations about how to live with a more kind, and open hearted stance toward the world. 

Today's conversation could not be a more fitting end as Roshi Joan Halifax and Rhonda V. Magee, two extraordinary pioneers working at the intersection of mindfulness, social change, law, and end-of-life care will engage in a deep and inspiring discussion about accessing compassion in the face of our most pressing challenges.

Some of the topics they'll explore include:

• How we might engage with ourselves, our communities, our perceived adversaries, and the broader world with an open heart.
• Training qualities of compassion, kindness, and love when fighting for causes one cares about
• Their experiences, including challenges they've faced, in cultivating compassion 
• The GRACE model for training compassion
• Overcoming fear
• Practices for responding (vs. reacting) in the heat of the moment or when one is triggered
• Working more effectively with failure and disappointment

As you'll hear this conversation will infuse the metaphor of an open hearted warrior as Joan and Rhonda discuss the possibility of meeting life's challenges with a blend of both backbone and heart.

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More Power of Compassion Series episodes:

#3: The Future of Work - Love, Safety, and Belonging | Leah Weiss & Jerry Colonna

#2: Moving From Fear to Love | James Doty & Jacinta Jiménez

#1: The Key to Resilience, Growth, and Possibility | Barbara Fredrickson & Sharon Salzberg

About Rhonda Magee:

Rhonda V. Magee is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and a leading mindfulness teacher with a focus on applying mindfulness to the hardest challenges of our times. She is an internationally-recognized teacher, guide and mentor, focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law and social change work. For more than 20+ years, Professor Magee has studied mindfulness, its underlying origins in Buddhism, and its potential benefits and applications in the world. A prolific author, she draws on law and legal history to weave storytelling, poetry, analysis and practices into inspiration for changing how we think, act and live better together in the face of the multiple interlocking challenges of our times. For more please visit rhondavmagee.com

About Roshi Joan Halifax

Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a social activist, author, and in her early years was an anthropologist at Columbia University and University of Miami School of Medicine . She is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care and has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions and medical centers around the world. She has also received numerous awards and honors from institutions for her work as a social and environmental activist and in the end-of-life care field. She has served as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress where she developed a heuristic map of compassion and created  the GRACE model for training compassion. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying, and Founder of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For more please visit:

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