Hi there - no need to travel - you can join me online for 28 days of recovery coaching - January 2018

If you are in recovery - work in the field of recovery and want to know all about Mindfulness Approach to addiction come join me NOVEMBER 6TH - 8TH - Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery Course.

I will be in Manchester the UK - hope to see some of you.

For some of you it will be Xmas Eve - if you are feeling at risk join me 11am Pacific time, 2pm Eastern time and 7pm UK time - hope to see some of you Saturday December 24th - come and join me for my Xmas Eve pep talk - 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 7pm UK https://www.worldwideinsight.org/healing-video/"> click here

If you are free from Thursday 27th to Sunday 30th October - inspired to spend 3 days with me learning about addiction, craving and recovery. West London Buddhist Centre are offering bursaries for my Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery Course - - write to info@westlondonbuddhistcentre.com put MBAR bursary in subject. Hope to see some of you. Half price Bursaries - see page  About the course

Living in London?

Here is an opportunity to take part in an Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery Intensive course with me, while I am in England,

Friday October 28th to Sunday October 30th

Early Bird Price - 50 pounds discount of all listed prices on website.

MBAR Intensive

Great talk happening this Saturday June 25th  7pm UK time - by Kuya Minogue on the seven stages of hunger. I hope you will join us.

If you can’t make it - perhaps work with your stages of hunger on my July online course - Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery 

I hope some of you will join me this July. 70 pounds or a hundred dollars, and you will have access to more than four pre-recorded talks on Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery, and four interactive talks every Sunday in July. 4pm UK time, 9am Pacific time.

Understand why we relapse, get to know your early warning signs, understand thoughts, experience awareness,  become aware of feeling tone, recognize your triggers and much more.

It's a great course - lots of great stories and lots of great  tools - and if some of you ever thought you might like to deliver this course to groups, it's also a great foundation.

I hope some of you will join me.

Please join us for Healing and Insight on Saturday, May 14th at 11am PST, 2pm EST, and 7pm UK for Cynthia Kear as she speaks on Dogen's “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self" and the 4th Step. We look forward to seeing you there.

I hope some of you will join me in the Online Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery Course MBAR.  During the month of July I will be delivering a four week course, with interactive sessions weekly on how to work with our thoughts and  cultivate sobriety of mind. A mind free of the proliferation of thoughts. 

This Saturday April 2nd I will explore the second reminder - Impermanence and the inevitably of death. Together we will penetrate into the nature of this truth, to help us face our suffering, as stated in the first step of the 8 step model. Accepting that this human life will bring suffering. We are born and we will die. And in-between we must learn to face whatever arises with kindness. Death of this moment, this thought, this meal, this kiss, this life, is inevitable. Suffering and Joy is optional. Learn to live the joyous life, by penetrating the teachings that point to the truth. Healing and Insight 7pm UK Time 11am Pacific Time.

Don't miss Shakyakumara's presentation on Healing and Insight Saturday March 26th 6pm UK Time on "Using Mindfulness to Reduce Stress and Purify Purpose."

From age 15, Shakya was a "whizz-kid" - programming computers professionally while passing through school and university a year ahead of his age. He went on to land his dream job and then burnt out a year later, and was off work with "ME" for two and a half years.

In this talk Shakya will talk about his recovery process, the part that mindfulness played, the realisations that emerged, and the way his life has totally changed. He now devotes himself to teaching mindfulness in the workplace, in the hope of preventing burnout affecting others. As he often says, "I've been there, so you don't have to!"

He will draw out learnings from these experiences, also drawing on the Mindfulness and Buddhist traditions, so others can avoid burnout and find more enjoyable and satisfying ways to engage in life and work. Shakya would like your questions now, so please post them. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you Saturday.

From the “Illness of I” to the “Wellness of We” A Buddhist approach to recovery.
Dori LangevinThrough the lens of interconnectedness~interdependence~interbeing the addicted mind can open up and out of the narrow habituated cycle of wanting/getting/wanting ad nauseam and glimpse the deeper wholesome desires of simply being human. 
Saturday March 19th 6pm UK time 11am Pacific time 

What is this hunger I feel in the marrow of my bones?
What is this thirst I feel in the center of my heart?
The hunger for love.
The thirst for liberation. ~Anonymously left on the note board at IMS

Love or liberation may not be your answers, but what is your hunger really wanting? What is your thirst really wanting?

March 12th this Saturday 7pm UK time - Jon Kabat Zinn - a trained Dharma practitioner - who has mainstreamed mindfulness - said he brought mindfulness to the general public because he wanted to give his dharma friends a livelihood.

He will be talking about how to bring about well being on Healing and Insight this week. He will be taking questions, leading a meditation and a short talk.

Spiritual Death - Spiritual Rebirth - This Saturday March 5th 11am Pacific time on

Heaing and Insight

'When we accept Step One - 'This human life will bring suffering' we are receptive to the four reminders - Our Precious Birth, Death is inevitable - Actions have Consequences, and the ocean of karmic suffering. By reflecting on the reminders they can wake you out of the addictive hell realm, and bring about a gradual awakening through a Spiritual death and Spiritual rebirth. Join me this Saturday March 5th

Please join me this Saturday February 6th - 7pm UK time - 11am Pacific time  on World Wide Insight -   as I explore free ourselves from the prison of our minds. Healing and Insight 

Mary Stancavage a senior teacher from Refuge Recovery.  Part of  Noah Levines Lineage - Against the Stream. She will talk about  "An Undefended Heart: using Buddhist practices to stay present with our pain so we don't seek relief in addictive behaviors. When we crave things to be different and chase an illusory good time, we only compound our suffering. On  Healing and Insight 
this Saturday 30th. Please join us 7pm UK time 

Recovery 2.0 Free to sign up. Speakers include Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John, Noah Levine, Gabor Mate, and many others.

And if you are wanting to take your recovery one step further - 8 Step recovery meetings are beginning to set up in the UK. If you live in Brighton and want to attend a meeting please let me know. If you live in Bristol and are interested please let me know too.

Also we have some great Triratna OMs teaching on Healing and Insight  Every Saturday 7pm UK time.

May you all be well. 

www.WorldwideInsight.org is pleased to announce the launch of its online channel, Healing & Insight: Buddhist Health and Wellness dharma teachings. Every Saturday beginning January 2nd, 11am Pacific time, 7pm Greenwich Mean time. 

Free sign up and more information:

Worldwide Insight has offered an interactive live weekly Sunday dharma session, taught by renowned meditation teachers over the internet, for nearly a year now with great success. With nearly 5,000 people signed up from 70 countries and a growing weekly sangha it became apparent that there was a need for another channel focussing specifically on some of the harsh realities of life; Healing & Insight was created as a response.

https://youtu.be/hdVd7T6lRTY">Introductory video:

This new live online channel will explore the sharp end of suffering - including addiction in its broadest sense, depression, physical and mental pain, and stress - through the lens of the Buddhist teachings.

Healing & Insight will start Saturday January 2nd at 11am Pacific US Time, 2pm Eastern US time, 7pm UK time, 8pm European time. It will follow the same 90 minute format as the live Sunday sessions, consisting of 30 minutes guided meditation, 30 minutes dharma talk and 30 minutes' opportunity to ask questions directly to the teacher, either via webcam or through the chat box.

We have over 40 teachers signed up all with very different backgrounds but united through their contact with Buddhism and the practice of presence, investigation and care when looking at and dealing with life’s difficulties. Each session is entirely based on dana (donation) whereby participants will have the opportunity to express their gratitude for what is given through generosity and appreciation.

All sessions will be recorded and made available on our website during the week following the live session.

Join us for our first session on the 2nd January with co-founder and guiding teacher of Healing & Insight, Vimalasara Mason-John. 

At the heart of Buddhist Recovery is ethics, placing positive values at the centre of our lives, awareness and kindness.
Launching Saturday January 2nd
Buddhist Health and Wellness  - Healing and Insight.

Sign up and hear some of your favourite teachers talk about Recovery in it's broadest sense.

11am Pacific Time

7pm Greenwich mean time
 

 I was asked to talk about weight loss - and I balked at the idea - and then I thought let me add to this dialogue - because as far as i am concerned  The weight we need to lose is of our minds, we carry so much crap around in our thoughts, that they weigh us down and trigger us to eat. And how sugar can really affect our moods.If we lose weight of our minds, our bodies will take care of ourselves. So I hope to add to this lively debate. 

 I decided it was about time I make some more effort at walking my talk. So what better opportunity do I have but to work through the 8 steps that I co-founded to take me out of my misery? Although many of the teachings I speak about in the book, were inspirations for me to change my life. I’ve not surrendered to a mentor/sponsor to take me systematically through the set of 8 steps. 

While writing the notes on 8 step meetings, which I should say I attended daily while working in India for the month of January, and also writing on how to mentor someone in the program, I thought wouldn’t it be great for somebody to mentor me. So I wrote to my sponsor a long time 12 stepper in several programs and asked: ‘Will you sponsor me?’ 

He emailed me back: ‘Hahaha, interesting, you know. The idea of taking the woman who wrote the book through them is just kind of topsy-turvy. Anyway, sure I’d be glad to do that. It would be good for me too. I’ve been looking forward to an opportunity to do something like this with someone, to explore the steps myself with someone,  and you’re the first person to turn up. And naturally I’m confident that you won’t give up or do it on a shallow level.’

Well it’s kinda topsy turvy for me too. Surrendering to my own work. But I realize more and more as I mentor people through this program, and read the emails sent to me, that I need to keep on walking my talk. Those of you who are familiar with food addiction will know, that it is non stop work, and if we are not mindful grey areas do arise.

So I thought I would work on my relationship to cashew nuts, You may laugh, everybody else does, or they tell me: ‘It’s healthy, you’re a vegan—eat away’. But I can’t kid myself, I know that I have a neurotic relationship with them. I know that, because if you told me today I could never eat cashews again, I would cry (metaphorically), and find it incredibly challenging. It’s not so much the behaviour it is the volition behind the behaviour. Still holding to a past that can drive a behaviour. 

My trip to India put me in my uncomfortable zone, I was powerless over the foods I could eat. I had no choice but forced into renunciation of my green smoothies, my marmite and tahini, my rice cakes, for a diet of rice and oily vegetable curries three times a day. While I loved the food, I knew I could not keep such a diet. I was shocked to realize that I had a huge fear of becoming bigger. This fear was behind my neurotic eating of cashews, the only food I could cling onto, while away from my familiar environment.

While working with people who are struggling in their addictions, I often say: ‘You have to be abstinent’. I’ve forgotten how painful it is to let go and be abstinent, as there are so many things I have chosen to live without in my life. And I also remember that harm reduction can be a way to go, if abstinence is the place we truly want to land upon, and even that at times may not be perfect.

Vimalasara speaking about eight steps

So I wanted to investigate, why is it so hard to let go of a habit, a behaviour that causes us stress, unsatisfactoriness and can never be permanent in our lives?

So I’m in the hot house. Join me in doing one meditation a day from the 21 meditations for recovery. Check in daily. Email for a copy of the 8 step book study, mentoring and meetings.

For a free sample of the book study and 21 meditations of Eight Step Recovery – Using The Buddha’s Teachings To Overcome Addiction please email: