COURSE

Break The Vicious Cycle Of Addiction

Addiction is the behaviour of habitually turning away from direct experience happening in the moment, despite the fact that it will have negative consequences. The more we turn away from what is going on in the body, the more we will be trapped on the vicious cycle of addiction. Mindfulness teaches us to become aware of the body, feeling tone in the body, the breath, and be with our direct experience. When we learn to come home to the body, to be with mental pain and anguish, we begin to free ourselves from the vicious cycle of addiction. During our 10 sessions, I will share some of the mindfulness teachings that gave me freedom and liberation from the hell realm of addiction and compulsive behaviours.

Addiction Recovery & Healing Mindfulness Secular Mindfulness Meditation Secular Mindfulness

Meet your Teacher

Valerie (vimalasara) Mason-John

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dr Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John (Hon.doc) M.A is one of the leading African descent voices in the field of Mindfulness for Addiction. She is the award winning author of Eight Step Recovery, Using The Buddha’s Teaching to Overcome Addiction, Detox Your Heart - Meditations for Emotional Trauma, and the co-founder of Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery MBAR. She is also a consultant for Hip Sobriety a groundbreaking online program for women struggling with Alcohol. And is president of the Buddhist Recovery Network. She is exploring the interface of the Buddhist teachings, and Compassionate Inquiry as taught by Dr Gabor Mate, in addressing the issues of addiction and emotional trauma. Valerie draws from her personal experience of recovering from addictions and emotional trauma through the mindfulness teachings, 25 years experience of mindfulness and Buddhist training, her work as a master trainer in conflict resolution, and anger management. This course was specifically designed for Insight Timer, while referring to some of the teachings in MBAR, and writing in Eight Step Recovery Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction. This is a secular mindfulness course, exploring a contemporary relapse model, which Valerie first came across while working for LEAP Confronting Conflict, and adapted it as a relapse model for addiction. Mindfulness and Loving Kindness saved Valerie’s life, and she has committed the rest of her life to be of service to people struggling with addictive and compulsive behaviours. She works as keynote speaker, and trainer, on the theme of addiction, and you can also listen to her successful TEDx talk We are What we think.

10 Days

16.5k students

4.7 stars

14 min / day

Addiction

English

Lesson 1

The Vicious Cycle

In this opening session we slow down the process of what is happening before we pick up our choice of addiction or engage in our choice of compulsive behaviours. When we become aware of what is happening in the body, with our feelings, thoughts and emotions, it may help to interrupt our addictive and compulsive behaviours and or relapse. Each session we begin with a breathing space, to help begin to train the mind to come back to what is happening in the body.

Lesson 2

Becoming Aware Of Our Triggers

We can not avoid our triggers. Yes, it is good to become aware of our triggers, because it can help us to be vigilant if we know we are going to be in an environment where these triggers may be present. Today we will take a look at our triggers, and how we can work with them.

Lesson 3

Coming Home To The Body

Mindfulness teaches us to come back to the body. The journey of recovery is learning to find our way back to the body. But some of us have lost our way home, because our bodies were violated in childhood. We have to relearn that our body can be one of the safest place we could ever inhabit. The breath is the guide back into the body. In today’s guided meditation we come home to the body by practising mindful breathing in the body.

Lesson 4

Understanding Our Feelings

Mindfulness teaches us, that the body will produce feeling, and that feeling tone in the body is unavoidable. We can not escape feeling. But what we can do, is begin to notice that feeling tone, is sensation in the body, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And if given space will change and even dissipate. In today’s guided meditation I will take you through a body scan. A journey of exploring feeling tone in the body.

Lesson 5

Thoughts Are Not Facts

When we are controlled by our thoughts, we make interpretations, believing our thoughts to be true. Based on those interpretations, we make decisions, which can have detrimental outcomes for our recovery. In this session we will begin to see that our thoughts are not facts, they are just mental events arising and passing, like all other events in our live.

Lesson 6

Exploring Our Emotions

Our thoughts and emotions can be so fleeting and subtle that we might believe they don’t matter. However, they shape our speech and bodily actions. In this session I am inviting you to be with your emotions like anger, while breathing into the body, and allowing your emotions to arise and cease, like the waves in an ocean.

Lesson 7

Stinking Thinking

Stinking thinking, make up the stories we tell ourselves. They are the superego disguised in the voice of a negative parent or adult, who told us unkind things in childhood. In this session we see how we create the extra dramas in our lives, that can keep us stuck on the vicious cycle of addiction.

Lesson 8

Actions Have Consequences

Actions have consequences. Every time we relapse we are at risk of going around and around the vicious cycle of addiction. In this session explore how actions like blame, self pity and distraction can sabotage our abstinence and sobriety of mind.

Lesson 9

What We Can Learn From Our Addictive Behaviours

Understanding what we gain can help us cultivate, self compassion towards ourselves, because it can be so easy to beat ourselves up in the aftermath of a binge, or a slip, or relapse. The fact is that our addictions and compulsive behaviours are what Dr Gabor Mate’ calls adaptations to trauma in our childhood. We hold on to our addictive and compulsive behaviours for a reason.

Lesson 10

The Cost Of Our Addictive Behaviours

Watch your thoughts, they become stories; Watch your stories, they become excuses; Watch your excuses, they become relapses; Watch your relapses, they become dis-eases; Watch your dis-eases, they become vicious cycles; Watch your vicious cycles, they become your wheel of life.

Ask your teacher

This course includes 166 community questions and 40 audio replies from Valerie (vimalasara) Mason-John. The community classroom and teacher audio replies are only available via the app.

166

4.7 (1148)

Recent Reviews

Kirsten

December 2, 2025

Thoughtful and clear delivery. Meaningful metaphors and examples spoken from real lived experience. Helpful reflections. Will take course again .

Kathleen

October 2, 2025

Thank you.

Judy

September 30, 2025

Excellent. Thank you!

Gary

July 24, 2025

Great listen!

Caylen

March 31, 2025

Thank you Valerie 🙏🏻

Karim

January 18, 2025

Amazing 👏

tracy

January 6, 2025

Soothing and informative. Thank you for sharing so much of your journey and teaching others how to heal. Namaste

Kim

January 6, 2025

Excellent practical theory to put into action with ones own personal addiction!

Kim

January 1, 2025

Excellent course! I was expecting a few mantras or discussions about addiction. This was not that. It was better! I feel for the first time in my life that I understand what my addiction truly is about and how to address the feelings when they arise. Thank you!

Leslie

November 1, 2024

Great insights, examples and guidance. I could really relate and was able to reframe some things for myself throughout the course. Thank you!

Sue

October 15, 2024

I learned so much about feelings and alcohol. Thank you for this course. ☮️

Jim

October 9, 2024

First course on Insight Timer that I listened straight through with no interruptions. Powerful examples and an even more powerful dialogue regarding addiction and its hold on our lives. Straight forward, clear, and attainable. Will return to this course many times until I am free of the Vicious Cycle. Thank you for this course.

Paulo

September 21, 2024

It was a very practical, affirming, and reality-check based course. Valerie is so calm and lovingly firm. She helps reorient me to my relationship with myself and working through addiction with compassion.

Sarah

September 18, 2024

As someone who is facing many addictions this 10 day course has given me a lot of self compassion, understanding, and tools to continue overcoming addictive behavior and support others as well. Her words are wise and vulnerable, her voice is soothing and she makes you feel like she is speaking directly to you. I am going to restart the course and keep it on my daily meditations for some time. Thank you kindly for sharing your gift of meditations. You are a lotus flower! After all you’ve been through you bloom and radiate strength as a compassionate leader. 🪷

Sapphire

September 2, 2024

Wow. This course was so eye and mind and heart opening! I’m going to go through it again from Day 1! Thank you for sharing this with us

Cecile

May 27, 2024

Great course, lots of useful information. I ll go back to it when needed. Many thanks 🙏

Helen

April 19, 2024

This course was so helpful on my journey to recovery. I would Definitely recommend to anyone struggling with addictions of all kinds. Thank you!

Amy

April 2, 2024

I appreciate that any addictive behavior can be addressed and examined through this course. The soothing voice left me feeling reflective and at peace throughout the course. Highly recommend.

Dee

February 22, 2024

A truly inspiring and informative course. Much thanks and gratitude. Namaste 🙏

CAROLINE

February 13, 2024

Lovely teaching and teacher!

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