Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community and is based at the East Bay Meditation Center. They have written or co-authored eleven books, including Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Emotional Trauma and the co-authored Eight Step Recovery: Using the Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction. Mason-John is a founding facilitator of Gabor Maté's Compassionate Inquiry and co-founded Freedom Together, a mindfulness course designed for and by the Global Majority. They have given a TEDx talk and curated an online retreat for Tricycle Magazine.
Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John's teaching focus, drawn from the source profile, sits in the Insight and Mahayana traditions. Several threads come up: compassion training that doesn't collapse into pity or burnout; trauma-aware mindfulness that pays attention to the nervous system as part of the practice; and direct inquiry into how clinging and aversion arise. On talks, the style is closer to thinking-along than presenting. Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John 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, addiction, LGBTQ+. The bigger move Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John 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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John teaches in the Insight and Mahayana traditions. The teaching home is East Bay Meditation Center. From the teacher's own profile: Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John is the author of the new revised edition of Detox Your Heart - Meditations For Emotional Trauma published by Wisdom Books in 2017. They are co/author of the award-winning book Eight Step Recovery - Using The Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction. They are also a TEDx speaker and are the author and editor of 11 books including their award-winning novel Borrowed Body. They are the curator of Teachings in Uncertain Times, an online retreat by Teachers of Color for Tricycle Magazine February 2017. A founding facilitator of Dr Gabor Mate's Compassionate Inquiry, they are a leading African Canadian voice in the field of Mindfulness for Emotional Trauma and Addiction. Vimalasara is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community. And one of the founders of Freedom Together, a mindfulness accredited course by the Global Majority for the Global Majority. In the Insight stream Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John 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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John'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 (Valerie) Mason-John teaches as a lay teacher in the Insight and Mahayana traditions. The institutional home, per the source listing, is East Bay Meditation Center, 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.
On a class or retreat with Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John, the basic shape is short instruction, longer sittings, and some Q&A. Online sittings and talks, mostly in real time with optional recordings, are part of the offering. The container is shaped by East Bay Meditation Center, 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.