Full Catastrophe Living-Paperback

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

Stress is everywhere around us, even worse, it gets inside us: sapping our energy, undermining our health, and making us more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and disease.

Now, based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this groundbreaking book shows you how to use natural, medically proven methods to soothe and heal your body, mind, and spirit. By using the practices described within, you can learn to manage chronic pain resulting from illness and/or stress-related disorders… discover the roles that anger and tension play in heart disease… reduce anxiety and feelings of panic… improve overall quality of life and relationships through mindfulness meditation and mindful yoga.

More timely than ever before, Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well, the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in today's world.

Dimensions: 9.04" x 6.58"
Details: Paperback, 496 pages
Author: Jon Kabat-Zinn

Testimonials

"Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, is perhaps the best-known proponent of using meditation to help patients deal with illness. (The somewhat confusing title is from a line in Zorba the Greek in which the title character refers to the ups and downs of family life as "the full catastrophe.") But this book is also a terrific introduction for anyone who has considered meditating but was afraid it would be too difficult or would include religious practices they found foreign. Kabat-Zinn focuses on "mindfulness," a concept that involves living in the moment, paying attention, and simply "being" rather than "doing." While you can practice anything "mindfully," from taking a walk to cleaning your house, Kabat-Zinn presents several meditation techniques that focus the attention most clearly, whether it's on a simple phrase, your breathing, or various parts of your body. The book goes into detail about how hospital patients have either improved their health or simply come to feel better despite their illness by using these techniques, but these meditations can help anyone deal with stress and gain a calmer outlook on life. "When we use the word healing to describe the experiences of people in the stress clinic, what we mean above all is that they are undergoing a profound transformation of view," Kabat-Zinn writes. "Out of this shift in perspective comes an ability to act with greater balance and inner security in the world.""

—Amazon.com

"Kabat-Zinn is founder and director of the stress reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and the "full catastrophe" of which he writes is the spectrum of stress in life. His program, in a word, is meditation, rescued from the mire of mysticism that made it trendy in the 1960s. The author focuses on the advantages of employing "practiced mindfulness" to control and calm our responses without blunting our feelings--and a more convincing introduction to the many modes and uses of meditation could hardly be imagined. In personable, enlightening prose, Kabat-Zinn first explains how to develop a meditation schedule, and in later chapters pragmatically applies his plan to the main sources of stress. An impressive middle section clearly marshals scientific and anecdotal evidence relating state of mind to state of health. And while emphasizing meditation's healing potential, Kabat-Zinn makes no sweeping claims, suggesting that the discipline serve not as means but end."

—Publishers Weekly

"A practical guide not only to mindfulness meditation and healing, but daily life."
—Joseph Goldstein, author of One Dharma

"Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn eloquently explains the power of paying attention and increasing awareness. I strongly recommend this book for everyone who wants to begin healing their life."
—Dean Ornish, M.D., author of Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for the Reversal of Heart Disease

"Happy 15th birthday to one of the great classics of mind/body medicine! More than any other, Full Catastrophe Living is the book that enabled Americans to discover the inner life. This book has brought peace of mind to hundreds and thousands of people and healed countless lives. This is your chance to let it heal yours."
—Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom

About Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dr. Kabat-Zinn's major research pursuits lie in the emerging field of mind / body medicine, with the focus on the clinical, social, and human performance effects of mindfulness meditation training in various populations.

These include people with chronic pain, stress related disorders, and / or a wide range of chronic diseases with a particular focus on breast cancer; multi-ethnic and multi-racial inner city communities experiencing high psychosocial stress due to poverty and associated social conditions; and inmates and corrections personnel in the prison system.

Other areas of research are directed at the effects of regulated attention on healing processes; stress in medical education; cost-effectiveness of mind / body interventions; stress related to work and organizational re-engineering; the tao of work; mindfulness in the physician-patient relationship; the development of psychological resilience to stress; mindfulness-based stress reduction curricula and their implementation in the primary and secondary education; achieving optimal performance in athletes through mindfulness meditation training.