Full Catastrophe Living
Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
By Jon Kabat-Zinn
Category: Health & Nutrition | Reading Duration: 25 min | Rating: 4.6/5 (249 ratings)
About the Book
Full Catastrophe Living (1990) doesn’t sugar-coat it: this is a book that acknowledges life can sometimes feel like one catastrophe after another. But while we might not be able to prevent life’s catastrophes, the way we respond to them is entirely within our control. An acknowledged classic in the mindful living genre, Full Catastrophe Living explains how life’s storms can be weathered through mindfulness.
Who Should Read This?
- Those struggling to cope with physical or emotional pain
- People who struggle to deal with stress
- Anyone who just can’t seem to turn their mind off
What’s in it for me? Learn to live life to the fullest.
There’s a line in the movie Zorba the Greek where Zorba, the irrepressibly happy protagonist, describes his life as “the full catastrophe! ” Zorba isn’t being negative – far from it. He’s alluding to the fact that a rich life is woven from great happiness and great disasters, as well as small pleasures and minor irritations. And you can't close yourself off to life's irritations and disasters without also closing yourself off to its joys.
Confront life’s catastrophes head-on and your life’s joys will also be intensified. Sounds straightforward, right? But, as you may know from bitter experience, facing up to sorrows, stresses, regrets, and misfortunes is far from easy. Luckily, there’s a way to cultivate a clear-headed, calm acceptance of stress, sadness, and pain. It’s through mindfulness, a meditation technique that connects mind and body, intensifies pleasures, and offers helpful coping strategies for pain.
In this summary, you’ll learn - how your breathing can unlock your mindfulness practice;
- why stress is a vicious cycle and how you can break it; and
- all the tools you need to live in the now.
Chapter 1: Mindfulness guides you to experiencing the present moment.
Imagine only having moments to live. How do you spend this precious time? Perhaps you stop to feel the breeze on your face for the last time, or savor every bite of food you’re eating, or appreciate the melody of sounds coming through your window. When you think about it, you really do only have moments to live.
Because that’s all life is: one moment after another and another and another. To make the most of life, make the most of each moment. Mindfulness can show you how. The key message is: Mindfulness guides you to experiencing the present moment. You might ask: Is experiencing the present moment something I need to learn? Don’t I already experience it simply by existing in it?
Well, try it now. Try to focus solely on this moment. How long does it take before a thought snatches you out of the present? If you’re like most people, it doesn’t take long at all. Even though our bodies are in the present, our minds habitually wander into the future or the past. And that’s not a good thing.
In fact, a 2012 Harvard study found that we feel calmer, more stable, and happier when our minds are focused on the present instead of the future or the past. That’s where mindfulness comes in. It’s a meditation technique focused on anchoring mental attention and physical sensation in the present moment. Practicing mindfulness allows us to still our wandering thoughts and to experience the full texture of the present. What’s more, it brings us into deeper communication with our bodies, teaching us to recognize and deal with early warning signs of depression, stress, and anger. Here’s a simple mindfulness exercise to try out.
Take three raisins. Observe the first raisin closely. What does it look like? How does it smell? How does it feel between your fingers? Then put the raisin in your mouth and begin to chew: How does it taste?
How does it feel on your tongue and in your teeth? Repeat the process with the next two raisins. Each time, try to deepen your focus on the process of eating the raisin. And with that deeper focus, you might find that the sensory experience of eating the raisin intensifies each time. Slowing down to fully attend to even the most seemingly mundane experiences – like eating a raisin – is the first step on a path to a mindful life.
Chapter 2: Meditation quiets the mind and allows for mindful moments.
Does this sound familiar? Your days are busy with “doing”: work, errands, obligations, commitments. But at the end of the day, when your body stops doing, your mind doesn’t get the memo. It churns over events of the day, makes plans for the future, dredges up anxieties, and more.
Mindfulness makes space for “being” in lives filled with “doing. ” But you can’t simply “be” with a “doing” mind. So, how do you quiet a busy mind? The key message here is: Meditation quiets the mind and allows for mindful moments. So, how do you meditate? In a nutshell, you try to “be” rather than “do.
” That’s easier said than done, so let’s break it down and start our first exercise. Start by finding physical stillness. A seated position is ideal, especially when you’re just starting out. Straighten your back and make sure it’s aligned with your neck and head. Relax your shoulders and place your hands somewhere comfortable, like resting in your lap or on your knees. Next, gently bring your focus to your breathing.
Simply register the sensations of your breath. Feel the tickle of air at your nostrils as you inhale. Notice how your lungs expand. Observe the feeling of refreshment and replenishment that courses through your body after every breath. Lastly, turn to your thoughts. Your objective is to still your busy mind.
But that doesn’t mean you need to empty your mind completely. Instead, allow your thoughts to pass through your mind. Acknowledge each thought and then release it. As an observer, try to give equal weight to each thought, whether it’s a thought about death or a thought about buying cat food. The longer you sit with your thoughts, the more you’ll see that they’re just that: thoughts. They don’t define you.
They don’t shape your reality. They are simply passing thoughts. At first, you’ll probably find it hard to meditate for long stretches. Your busy mind may take over or your body may grow restless.
Try not to give up if this happens. Instead, note what has drawn your attention away, then return your mind to stillness. This could happen a hundred times in the space of minutes, which is fine. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with sitting, breathing, and allowing your thoughts to simply pass through the mind, you’ve nailed the basics of meditation!
Chapter 3: Deepen your meditation practice to access mindfulness, naturally.
When was the last time you truly noticed the steamy warmth of a morning shower, the unexpected beauty in an arrangement of pens, or the suggestive outline of shadows on a sunny sidewalk? Once you’ve entered into a completely mindful life, you’ll find that you create spontaneous mindful moments like these throughout your day. You’ll naturally slow down, pay attention, and exist fully in the present. But it takes work to reach this point.
Think of mindfulness as a muscle, and meditation as your training. The more you practice meditation, the more you’ll experience spontaneous moments of mindfulness. The key message is: Deepen your meditation practice to access mindfulness, naturally. Mindfulness is all about cultivating a strong mind-body connection. That’s why a foundational meditation technique is the body-scan meditation. Here’s how to do it.
Start by lying on your back. Just as you would in a sitting meditation, begin by focusing on the breath. Allow thoughts to pass through your mind without dwelling on them. When you’re ready to begin the body-scan, direct all your focus to the toes on your left foot. This is done in the same way that you’ve learned to focus on your breathing. Bring your focus to your left toes and allow your thoughts to pass through you.
Really notice the sensations that you’re experiencing in each toe – even if those sensations are numbness or discomfort. Study these sensations with non-judgmental awareness: understand that they are neither good nor bad. They just are. Finally, see if you can direct your breathing into your left toes. Now that you’ve paused at your left toes for a few breaths, slowly draw your focus up your leg. Continue to repeat this process, slowly and deliberately, for every region of your body.
Once you’re practiced at the body-scan technique, it’s time to turn your awareness to the different emotions throughout your body. For example, you may feel anger in the pit of your stomach, dread in your fingertips, or calm across your shoulders. In the same way you directed your breath to your left toes, experiment with directing different energies, like kindness, healing, or strength, to the regions that need them. Regularly practicing the body-scan meditation conditions you to “be” – to be in your body and to be present. By taking this time to be, instead of to “do,” you’ll cultivate stillness, calmness, and mental stability.
Chapter 4: We can’t control stressors, but we can control our response to them.
Stress can be like the weather, can’t it? It’s something we can’t predict or control. And when it pours down on us, like a sudden rainstorm, there’s no escaping or stopping it. Stress, like weather, may feel like an uncontrollable force that shapes our lives.
Unlike the weather though, we have more control over it than we realize. In fact, it’s helpful to think of stress as having two factors: a stressor and a response. Stressors are the situations or things that cause stress, and responses are the feelings and behaviors that stressors cause in us. Stress happens to us. But we produce our own stress responses. The key message in this blink is: We can’t control stressors, but we can control our response to them.
Stressors and changes are outside our control. Stress responses are within our control. But all too often, we act like they aren’t. When we’re confronted with acute short-term stressors – a missed bus, for example – we tend to respond with adrenaline. We feel frustration, or even rage. When we’re confronted with chronic long-term stressors – like ongoing financial problems – we sink into feeling overwhelmed and depressed.
Neither of those reactions are great. But it gets worse. Rather than facing up to the stressors that cause these responses, our bodies and minds create ways to cope with the negative feelings. We put these deeply ingrained coping strategies on autopilot so we never have to deal with the ultimate source of our stress. A lot of the time these coping strategies are far more harmful than the stressors they’re intended to alleviate. These negative coping strategies are known as maladaptive coping strategies.
Maladaptive coping strategies can include denial, workaholism, alcohol or drug dependency, eating disorders, or shopping addiction. When we habitually rely on unhealthy coping strategies, we create a vicious cycle in which our responses become stressors themselves. Thankfully, it is possible to break this vicious cycle, as the next blink explains.
Chapter 5: You can train yourself to respond to stress instead of reacting to it.
Remember those old Choose Your Own Adventure books? Whenever the narrative reached a turning point, you were prompted to choose what happened next. To take a shortcut through the dragon’s lair, turn to page three. To go the long way through the forest, turn to page seven.
The way we respond to stress can feel instinctive, but there’s actually a “choose your own adventure” element to it: we always have a choice. Having a fight with your partner? You could storm out. Throw a plate against the wall. Talk it out. Turn cold and silent.
Or try to see things from their perspective. Practicing mindfulness allows you the time and space to consider all potential responses to a stressor. With this clarity, you can choose how to react wisely. The key message is: You can train yourself to respond to stress instead of reacting to it. Let’s say you make a mistake at work. What’s your automatic reaction?
Do you lash out at your boss for pointing it out? Berate yourself internally? Put in workaholic hours for the rest of the week? None of those reactions are good – autopilot reactions to stress rarely are. Mindfulness helps you turn off the autopilot switch and move from mindless reaction to mindful recognition. Next time you make a mistake, intentionally bring your awareness to what’s happening in that situation.
Be present in the moment and register your physical reactions. Are your palms sweating? Is your heart racing? Acknowledge these reactions without judgment. They’re not good or bad. They’re just the sensations you’re experiencing in the moment.
Do the same for your emotional reactions. Feel your emotions without amplifying them. Next, without inhibiting or deflecting your reaction to it, turn towards the stressor, and place it in context. Why did you make the mistake? What will its consequences be? How can you learn from it?
How could you best respond to it? You’re breaking your stress response cycle simply by sitting in the moment. You’re creating a pause that allows you to consider your response. Has your mindful response changed the fact that you made a mistake?
No. Has it reduced the stress you experienced? Maybe not. But it has stopped your reaction to your stressor from compounding your stress.
Chapter 6: Mindfulness helps us live with, and even grow from, pain.
Imagine you couldn’t feel any physical pain. Life would be better in every way. Right? Maybe not.
Ever heard of congenital analgesia? People born with this condition simply do not experience physical pain. As a result, they often injure themselves unknowingly. Without pain to warn them of danger, they have great difficulty moving safely through the world. Pain is a teacher. It teaches us where our limits lie and how to protect ourselves.
We can learn a lot from pain, though it’s hard to discern the lesson when overwhelmed by chronic pain. The key message is: Mindfulness helps us live with, and even grow from, pain. Let’s be clear: there’s nothing positive about being in pain. Pain, and especially chronic pain, can be debilitating, costly, and psychologically damaging. But if you can’t change the fact that you’re in pain, you can at least manage it through mindfulness. Note the term “manage.
” The goal of mindfulness isn’t to eradicate pain. It’s not something that can be turned off with the flip of a switch. Instead, it’s something that can be moderated. We tend to understand pain as a purely physical experience. In fact, pain exists across three dimensions. The sensory dimension – the physical sensation of pain.
The emotional dimension – the way we feel about pain. The cognitive dimension – the thoughts we have about pain. We can use mindfulness to modulate pain across all three dimensions. Here’s how. Perform a body-scan meditation to access the pain. Put out a welcome mat.
Invite the pain to stay once you locate it. Register each sensation – whether a sharp throb or a dull ache. Focus on the present moment. How bad is your pain? Is it unbearable? Or are you anticipating it to become unbearable?
The reality is that the pain is most likely bearable in the moment and will continue to be from moment to moment. Accept your pain without anticipating it and notice how much easier it is to manage. With your focus still on your body’s problem region, address the emotional and cognitive dimensions of your pain. Identify any thoughts and feelings you have about it.
Acknowledge them and let them pass. Your thoughts about your pain are not the pain. Your feelings about your pain are not the pain.
Chapter 7: Mindfulness can unlock happiness by easing emotional suffering.
Are you a truly happy person? No judgment if you answered “no. ” It’s hard to feel truly happy. We all carry around grief and trauma.
We’ve all been hurt. But try this: focus on the here and now. Still your thoughts. Be inside your body and mind. Are you happy in this moment? You might find that you actually are.
The key message is: Mindfulness can unlock happiness by easing emotional suffering. Let’s say you’re not feeling happy. What’s holding you back from that happiness? The culprit is probably thought patterns stemming from past emotional pain. For example, you may believe you don’t deserve to be loved because of an old nasty break-up. Those insidious thought patterns might exist in response to your pain, but they also prevent you from dealing with it.
They’re geared toward avoiding, denying, or deflecting your pain. Ultimately, they only exacerbate it. Next time you’re experiencing emotional pain, examine it with compassionate mindfulness. First, bring your focus to the emotional experience. Do you feel rage? Sorrow?
Dull pain? Notice how these emotions ebb and flow. Your emotional pain isn’t permanent. It’s ever-changing. If you sit with these emotions long enough, you’ll see that they have a beginning and an end. Emotional pain isn’t ongoing.
It’s finite. Do the same for the thoughts and images arising from your emotions. Observe each thought without judging or attaching meaning to it. Don’t speculate about the future or fixate on the past. Notice how these thoughts and images change. Notice they have a beginning and an end.
These thoughts too, are not permanent. Finally, interrogate your thoughts and feelings. Bring your attention back to the moment. Ask yourself, “Am I happy in this moment and not allowing myself to see it? ” If the answer is “no,” ask yourself, “Are there steps I could take to address this unhappiness? ” Mindfully sitting with painful emotions and thoughts will teach you they are just that: feelings and thoughts.
They don’t own you. And that’s the first step to letting them go. Of course, not everything should be let go, but rather changed if possible. The next blink will show how to use mindfulness to understand which option to go with.
Chapter 8: Use mindfulness to accept your emotions and address your problems.
Have you ever heard the serenity prayer? It begins with, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can. ” But how are we supposed to know which is which? Pushing to change things that can’t be changed is both draining and futile.
Passively accepting things that could be changed is just as bad. There’s an art to understanding what can be changed and what needs to be let go. Mindfulness can help you discern the difference. The key message is: Use mindfulness to accept your emotions and address your problems. Your emotional pain has two distinct facets – your feelings and problems. Imagine you’ve gone hiking.
The weather’s turned and you find yourself stuck on a steep slope. The path has become slippery with rain. It’s scary. You’re facing both a feeling – fear, and a problem – how to continue your hike. When you’re confronted with emotional pain, use mindfulness to break it down into a feeling and a problem. Sit first with the feeling.
Let it pass over you like a crashing wave. Don’t attach judgment to these feelings. Examine them with self-compassion. Then, ask what this feeling can teach you. Is the source of your suffering fear? Perhaps it’s teaching you to be careful.
Is it guilt? Perhaps it’s nudging you to make amends for something. Next, sit with your problem, distinct from your feelings. Ask yourself: What can I do to alleviate this problem? Does a solution present itself? Great!
Does the problem seem too overwhelming for a single solution? Try to break it down into smaller problems. Maybe there’s no apparent solution? Then do nothing. But do it intentionally. Choose to let this problem go unaddressed because that choice is the most productive path.
Let’s go back to that slippery hiking path. The trick is to not let your feelings prevent you from addressing your problems. Don’t let fear send you scrambling back down the slope before you notice a safer route. Don’t let it push you forward, risking injury, either. Respect your feelings, then address your problems. Bring mindfulness to bear on the moment, and you’ll soon find yourself on firmer footing.
Final summary
The key message in this summary: It’s impossible to live a life free from pain, sadness, and misfortune. Paradoxically, trying to avoid life’s pitfalls can also close you off from its pleasures. While catastrophes are outside of your control, you can control how you respond to them. Use mindful meditation to embrace the pleasures of the present, and to ride out its challenges.
Actionable advice: Master the loving-kindness meditation. Are you hanging onto an old hurt? You might need a dose of healing. Begin a seated meditation. Then direct loving kindness inwards towards yourself. Next, direct loving kindness outwards, first to someone you love, then to someone you feel neutral towards.
Finally, if you feel able, direct that same energy to the person who hurt you.
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About the Author
Jon Kabat-Zinn has been described as a master of mindfulness. Kabat-Zinn has achieved international renown as a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher. He’s also the pioneer behind MBSR, the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction technique, which has helped thousands.