Eight Step Recovery: Using the Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction

This new, expanded edition includes a Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a guide to running an Eight Step Recovery meeting, and how to teach a Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery (MBAR) programme, including teacher's notes and handouts.

"These teachings and the container of the MBAR program are offered as both a refuge and a practical curriculum for this hardest of all journeys back to the well-being that is our birthright as human beings. The basic message from the authors is that reclaiming your life and what is deepest and best in yourself is not only possible but actually workable if you are willing to engage in a certain kind of interior work on yourself, and to give yourself over to this intrinsically kind and trustworthy invitation to heal your own life and heart and relationships." - Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the Foreword

"This wonderful book shows how we are all addicted to aspects of life and can all benefit from training our minds and hearts to be free of the tyranny of compulsion. The Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery (MBAR) programme draws on a wide range of the Buddha's practical, yet deeply profound, teachings. Over the eight steps you are given a priceless gift - the possibility to gain mastery over your mind and heart and find freedom." - Vidyamala Burch (OBE), founder and co-director of Breathworks, author of Mindfulness for Health

"Through Buddhist teachings, personal experiences, and case examples, this book provides a wise illustration of the fundamental processes underlying a broad range of addictive behaviors. Mason-John and Groves offer here a practical and compassionate step-by-step guide to freedom from the deep trappings and suffering of addiction." - Sarah Bowen, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Washington, author of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for Addictive Behaviors

Author: Valerie Mason-John,Paramabandhu Groves
Publisher: Windhorse Publications (UK)
Published: 09/18/2018
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781911407126

About the Author
Dr Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara) is a playwright and the author of seven books, including Detox Your Heart (2005, Windhorse Publications), and her award winning novel Borrowed Body, republished as the Banana Kid. Her most recent publication, The Great Black North - Contemporary African Canadian poetry 2013, is the first national anthology to document the voices of African Canadian Poets. She has just completed her second novel, The War Done Done. She works as a consultant in Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice, Leadership and anti Bullying in both the domestic field of education, social services, youth, addiction and the police, as well as in the corporate world. She was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2005. She is currently based at the Vancouver Buddhist centre.

Dr Paramabandhu Groves is a consultant psychiatrist working in the National Health Service in the UK, and has specialized in the field of addiction for 20 years. He is the clinical director of Breathing Space, which is the health and well-being wing of the London Buddhist Centre, teaching mindfulness-based approaches to help with depression, addiction, and stress. He developed the Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention course for addiction, which has successfully run in both the UK and Canada. He is the author of Practical Buddhism: Mindfulness and Skillful Living in the Modern Era, and has published academic papers and contributed to several books in the field of addiction. He is ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order.