Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John is an award-winning author and editor of ten books, including Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction, and Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Emotional Trauma. This year their book I Am Still Your Negro: An Homage to James Baldwin was shortlisted for both the Dorothy Livesay and Gerald Lampert Awards. In the Fall of 2021 Afrikan Wisdom: New Voices Talk Black Liberation, Buddhism, and Beyond was published.

Vimalasara is an accredited Life Coach and Addictions Coach. They are also one of the founding facilitators of Dr Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry CI course. They are trained in both CI and Internal Family Systems IFS, and work as a Mindfulness Coach to help liberate people from the prison of their minds. They are ordained into the Triratna Community, and have been practising Buddhism for over 30 years.

Vimalasara has had over 300,000 hits on their TED X talk We are What We Think. They are an international public speaker in the field of Mindfulness for Addiction and Mindfulness for Trauma. They were a panelist on the Wisdom of Trauma Summit and are featured on Round Glass and Insight Timer as a public speaker and meditation teacher.

Vimalasara co-edited the award winning book Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha’s Teachings To Overcome Addiction. There are Eight Step Recovery meetings on several continents, and this free program has become part of many other recovery modalities. They are also the Co-Founder of the accredited program Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery MBAR, a cousin of Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention. There are MBAR facilitators in several countries.