About
Vimalasara Mason-John is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Order with 27 years of practice. She is chair of the Vancouver Buddhist Centre and based in Canada. Mason-John has authored eight books, including Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction and Detox Your Heart. She co-founded Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery (MBAR) and is president of the Buddhist Recovery Network. Her work focuses on addiction recovery, emotional trauma, and mindfulness approaches. She is a TEDx speaker and public speaker who tours internationally.
Teaching focus
Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's teaching focus, drawn from the source profile, sits in the Insight and Theravada traditions. Several threads come up: trauma-aware mindfulness that pays attention to the nervous system as part of the practice; recovery and addiction-aware mindfulness;. On talks, the style is closer to thinking-along than presenting. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA works with whatever shows up in the room rather than reading from notes, which is part of why these talks land as conversational instead of scripted. Short pauses, longer sits, and questions that come back to direct experience are usual. Listed specialties on the source profile include trauma, LGBTQ+. The bigger move Vimalasara Mason-John, MA keeps making is back toward attention itself: what's happening, how it's being held, and what gets in the way. That keeps the teaching close to practice rather than drifting into commentary about practice. For talks, schedules, and longer essays, the affiliated organization's page is where the live material lives. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on.
Background
Vimalasara Mason-John, MA teaches in the Insight and Theravada traditions. The teaching home is InsightLA. From the teacher's own profile: Dr. Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John MA is a TEDx speaker, author of 8 books including Detox Your Heart, Meditations for Emotional Trauma, and her award-winning books Eight Step Recovery - Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction and her novel Borrowed Body. She is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Order, practicing for 27 years, chair of Vancouver Buddhist Centre, President of the Buddhist Recovery Network and one of the organizers of the GENX Buddhist Teacher’s gathering in 2019. She curated the Tricycle series Teachings for Uncertain Times 2018, and was the recipient of a European Diversity Awards 2018, for her past work in the LGBTQ communities in the UK. She is a co-founder of Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery MBAR and trained as a telephone counselor for Night Line UK. She lives in Canada and tours internationally as a public speaker and is one of the new leading African Descent voices in the field of Mindfulness Approaches for Addictive Behaviors. In the Insight stream Vimalasara Mason-John, MA works inside, the emphasis is on direct attention to body, feeling tone, and mind, alongside the brahmaviharas and an ongoing investigation of how clinging and aversion arise. Talks tend to be conversational rather than scripted, and there's room for sila and ethics to be talked about as part of practice rather than as a separate topic. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Vimalasara Mason-John, MA's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography.
Lineage
Vimalasara Mason-John, MA teaches as a lay teacher in the Insight and Theravada traditions. The institutional home, per the source listing, is InsightLA, and that's where most of the public teaching schedule and any retreat offerings will be posted. The Insight lineage in the West runs through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw, U Ba Khin, Anagarika Munindra, and Dipa Ma into the founders of IMS, Spirit Rock, and the regional centers, and most contemporary Insight teachers position themselves somewhere in that broad family.
What to expect
On a class or retreat with Vimalasara Mason-John, MA, the basic shape is short instruction, longer sittings, and some Q&A. Retreats are part of the offering, usually a few days to a week, mostly silent. The container is shaped by InsightLA, so format details, fees, and access policies follow that organization's norms. Expect plenty of silence, less talking-at-you than you might think, and an emphasis on letting the practice do its work rather than chasing experiences. For exact dates, registration, and any sliding-scale or scholarship information, There's usually a short Q&A window and, on retreats, optional teacher interviews where students can bring specific questions about their practice.
