Buddhism and Recovery Practice Group
We explore how Buddhist meditation and teachings can support recovery and daily life. A facilitated, community based group rooted in shared practice.
Not a 12 step meeting, but open to people in all forms of recovery, or just looking for a more skillful relationship with craving, habit, and old patterns of mind.
Get in touch for Zoom info and to join the listAbout the group
We're a small, welcoming community exploring how Buddhist practice and recovery can support and deepen each other. Some of us come from 12 step backgrounds, others from Buddhist traditions, and some are simply curious about how the two might intersect.
The heart of the group is practice. We focus on establishing and sustaining a regular meditation practice, and on exploring how the teachings of the Buddha, especially around craving, clinging, and letting go, can help us live more skillfully in recovery and in everyday life. This isn't academic or theoretical. It's about how mindfulness and the dharma are actually practiced and lived, day to day.
Each session includes meditation, teaching or shared reading, and discussion grounded in direct experience.
How the group works
Each session begins with meditation, followed by a short reflection or teaching, and then opens into discussion and sharing.
The group is facilitated and practice led rather than peer led. Someone holds the container, sets the direction of study, and guides the meditation and discussion. That's John, whose background is below. This gives our time together a clear shape. The group is participatory, but it isn't unstructured.
We ask that shares come from your own direct experience, and that we listen without commenting on or responding to one another's shares. What's shared in the group stays in the group.
About John
John serves as practice leader, drawing on more than 30 years of practice in the Vipassana and Zen traditions, and on his own experience in recovery. He was encouraged to take on this role by his teacher, Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time and a pioneering voice in bringing Buddhist practice into recovery.
What we're currently exploring
We generally organize our sessions around a shared anchor text or a particular thread in the teachings, something we return to over a period of months so the group can go deeper together rather than covering new ground every week.
Areas of exploration have included Buddhism & the Twelve Steps by Kevin Griffin, the Eightfold Path, and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and breath awareness practice (anapanasati), drawing on Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg.
How we practice
Meditation isn't about stopping thoughts. It's about developing a different relationship to them, so that instead of being carried away automatically, we learn to recognize thinking as thinking. Over time that creates space, and in that space we have more freedom in how we respond.
Our approach draws from both the Vipassana and Zen traditions, and has two complementary movements. We begin by steadying attention on the breath, using it as a home base. As some steadiness develops, awareness naturally widens to include the body, sounds, feeling tone, and whatever thoughts or emotions arise, always with the breath nearby as an anchor.
When the mind wanders, and it will, we simply notice and return. That returning is the practice itself, not a failure of it.
New to meditation altogether? You don't need any experience to start. We'll help you get going.
When and where
We meet on Zoom, the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month, 7:00 to 8:15 PM ET.
There's no fee to join, though voluntary contributions are welcome to help cover small group expenses.
Is this group for me
You don't need prior meditation experience, and you don't need to identify with any particular recovery path, or with the word recovery at all. The only real requirement is a sincere willingness to practice, and an openness to what that practice might reveal about your own patterns.
Join
Reach out to get the Zoom link and be added to the group's email list for updates. Questions welcome too.