Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Customer Reviews

This one is more wordy, a description of what goes on at the Massachusetts General Hospital Pain Reduction Clinic, where Kabat-Zinn uses a combination of (physical) yoga, mindfulness meditation, and something called the "full body scan" (lying down and concentrating on different parts of the body at a time) to help people with serious, stress-related illnesses such as heart disease, back pain, migraines and cancer.

There are instructions on how to do the above; statistical information on how well this program works; descriptions of the types of illnesses they deal with; lots of case studies of typical patients; and some general conclusions that the very insightful Kabat-Zinn has drawn from his work. I hate pop psychology but that's not what's delivered here - these are very real insights, not facile at all, on the damaging stresses of modern life and concrete advice on how to cope with them in such a way as to not get sick.

He says, for instance, that "your pain is not you" - that you can and should separate yourself from the pain, and from the negative feedback voice ("I'm never going to get better," for example) that makes things worse.

They do recommend (as I do, and as I see another reviewer does) that you buy the tapes listed in the back of the book to help you with your program. But you can use the book without them: it just takes more willpower and concentration.

As far as personal testimony is concerned, I haven't had to use this program to help me cope with any serious illnesses, thank goodness. But (like most women in their post-childbearing years) I do have a lot of miscellaneous aches and pains which I do deal with much better using the techniques in this book. I have not yet had time to make the recommended commitment for optimal results (45 minutes per day, 6 days a week) - I just use the techniques (which include, for instance, imagining that you are breathing in and out of the painful part of your body - it's hard to describe, but it works!) when I feel headachy or in pain, and medicine either doesn't help or isn't possible to take because of stomach upset.

What I'm saying is, this book is valuable even if you don't have a serious, chronic illness.

Besides, it really is preferable to use these techniques BEFORE you get sick, rather than after.

And they do give the advantages of regular meditation, too: a sense of deeper understanding of yourself, a sense of wonder, etc. (so hard to describe without sounding silly).

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