University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Full Catastrophe Living
Book

Full Catastrophe Living

Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Bantam Dell, 1990
First Edition: 1990
Buy book or audiobook

Read offline

Amazon Kindle

Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s perspective and straight-forward teachings on mindfulness are as important today as when he published the first edition of his book in 1990. The second edition was published in 2013 – thoroughly updated and revised. If you work under pressure, multitask, or feel overwhelmed and stressed, Kabat-Zinn can teach you how to slow down and use mindfulness to experience calmness and a sense of well-being. He offers tools for relaxing and interacting more authentically with others. This summary focuses on his teachings as they apply to easing work-related stress, but he offers many other applications of mindfulness. He goes into depth about reducing the difficulties of living with chronic pain and illness, as well as many different forms of stress. This revised and updated self-help classic offers a wealth of research-supported guidance you can implement immediately. getAbstract recommends this manual for its valuable, effective and doable quality-of-life methods and techniques.

Summary

“The Practice of Mindfulness: Paying Attention”

Mindfulness is “the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” To begin your mindfulness journey, try this three-minute meditation: Close your eyes, sit in a posture that embodies wakefulness and dignity, and become aware of your breathing. Let whatever random thoughts arise pass through your mind like clouds through the sky. Rest in your own awareness of the breath sensations and everything else. Don’t worry if you are uncomfortable. The point is to pay attention to your “actual experience, moment by moment.” The more you do this, the more comfortable and at home in your own skin you will become.

You can also experiment with cultivating mindfulness this way: take up one raisin. See if you can look at it, touch it, smell it, chew it and taste it as if it were the first time you ever encountered one. Take your time. Then try it with a second raisin. Consider all you observe. This “eating meditation” can help you literally and metaphorically become more awake in everything. As your intimacy with awareness develops, you’ll see how it can transform your relationship ...

About the Author

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is a founder of the mindfulness movement. Numerous hospitals throughout the world use his mindfulness-based stress reduction program (MBSR). He is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founder of MBSR and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Comment on this summary