About
Mary Taylor began studying yoga in 1971 while pursuing a degree in psychology. In the early 1980s, she moved to Boulder and studied with Richard Freeman at Yoga Workshop, where yoga became central to her practice. In 1988, she traveled to India to study with K. Pattabhi Jois. Taylor has authored three cookbooks and co-authored What Are You Hungry For?: Women, Food and Spirituality, which explores yoga, meditation, and dharma. She serves as director of Yoga Workshop and has attended Freeman's teacher trainings. Her teaching emphasizes breath, steady movement, and the integration of yoga with food, cooking, anatomy, and art.
Teaching focus
Taylor appears at Upaya as part of the wider faculty Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered to teach alongside the Soto Zen core. Upaya's programs regularly bring in scholars, clinicians, scientists, poets, and knowledge holders from beyond the Zen sangha to teach in dialogue with the practice. Taylor's sessions live inside that container. The work tends to ask how a particular field of expertise meets contemplative practice and what each can learn from the other. Sessions are usually held alongside zazen and the Soto Zen forms that structure the days at Upaya, so students can expect a rhythm of formal sittings, talks or seminars from Taylor, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Taylor's own field rather than from technical Zen instruction. For students with a steady practice, the value is in seeing how practice meets a specific discipline, and how that discipline reads when held inside the container Upaya provides. For people newer to Zen, Taylor's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Mary Taylor appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Taylor has chosen to share there. Mary Taylor began studying yoga in 1971 while earning a degree in psychology. It was not until the early 80’s, when she moved to Boulder and started studying yoga with Richard Freeman, Founder of Yoga Workshop in Boulder, that yoga became a central thread in her life. Before that, yoga had provided a means of relieving stress, and honing a sense of focus and well being. In 1988, Mary traveled to India to study with K. Pattabhi Jois, and began to see the overlay of yoga with her interests in food, cooking, movement, anatomy and art. Mary has authored three cookbooks and co-authored a book which explores yoga, meditation and finding one’s personal dharma as a means of bringing lasting meaning and happiness. (" What Are You Hungry For? Women, Food and Spirituality.") As the Yoga Workshop’s director, Mary has attended all of Richard’s teacher trainings, and feels she’s just beginning to understand the subject at hand. She brings to her teaching a deep respect for the healing and calming effects of yoga. Her classes are engaging and fun, focusing on the flow of breath, steady movement and the feeling of completeness that can be cultivated through a lasting practice. That body of work places Taylor inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Taylor's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Taylor contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Taylor's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Taylor's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Taylor contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Taylor's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Taylor at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms held alongside teaching focused on contemplative care for the dying, grief, and serious illness. Many of these programs draw on Upaya's Being with Dying curriculum and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians. There's room for personal experience and difficult emotion, held inside the container of practice rather than processed away. The schedule is recognizable as Zen: sittings, walking, meals, talks, and time for questions. Quiet is taken seriously. Most participants leave with both a steadier practice and a more honest relationship with mortality.
