About
Ro Grace is a Black trans yoga educator and artist based in Brooklyn, NY, with over 12 years of experience in group facilitation. They hold E-RYT 500 certification and lead 200 and 300 hour teacher trainings at Folk in San Francisco. Grace developed the Intersectional Yoga Teaching Module within that organization's Trauma Informed Training program. They work as a consultant and facilitator with organizations, and practice disability justice as an audio describer for blind and visually impaired audiences at live performances.
Teaching focus
Grace 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. Grace'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 Grace, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Grace'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, Grace's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Ro Grace 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 Grace has chosen to share there. Ro Grace (they/them) is a Black Trans Yoga educator and artist with over 12 years of experience facilitating emergent, liberatory spaces. An E-RYT 500 certified Yoga Teacher based in Brooklyn, NY, they lead 200 & 300 hour teacher trainings at Folk in San Francisco, where they developed the Intersectional Yoga Teaching Module within the Trauma Informed Training program. Ro supports organizations to become sites of refuge for those most impacted by systemic exile, violence and injustice through consulting and facilitation. In an ongoing practice and commitment to disability justice, Ro is an audio describer, verbally illustrating visual elements of live performance and dance for blind and visually impaired communities. That body of work places Grace 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. Grace'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. Grace contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Grace'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
Grace'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. Grace 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 Grace's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Grace at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Grace's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Grace is teaching.
