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A review by iggnaseous
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn
5.0
Can one ever finish a guidebook on meditative practice? The author, more coach and cheerleader than talking head, demands that you stop reading as often as possible in favor of practicing mindful meditation. And yet reading the book serves both as preparation and inspiration, encouraging the reader to persevere. A fundamental tension exists between learning about meditation and actually doing it. One needs some guidance to get started, but only just. It's possible to keep learning more and more about cultivating self-awareness without actually becoming more self aware. Therein lies the danger, and the promise, of Full Catastrophe Living.
The book contains delectable, digestible, and above all useful advice on the what, why, and how of mindfulness and meditative practice, all presented in Kabat-Zinn's signature melodious, baroque prose. Kabat-Zinn's main guidance is to sit, to put in time on the cushion (metaphorically and literally), not for any purpose but for its own sake. He takes great pains to emphasize the centrality of purposelessness of the practice while paradoxically praising it's ancillary benefits: increased health and wellness, reduced pain and anxiety, and an overall greater self-awareness and ability to focus on the moment. His evidence for these claims comes primarily from working with patients for decades, teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the stress reduction clinic in Massachusetts Medical Center.
Although Kabat-Zinn acknowledges the Buddhist roots of MBSR, he insists that anyone can benefit from the program without reference to religion. MBSR is neither a religion nor a philosophy according to Kabat-Zinn. It remains an open question to what extent it is possible to separate mindfulness from religion, despite the secular rhetoric. The category of mindful meditation has been deeply infused with religion. The thought forms and underlying worldview that gives rise to the insights of meditation may be unintentionally indoctrinating Kabat-Zinn's readers. Still, those with an allergy to religion need not worry: Kabat-Zinn avoids direct discussion of the religious underpinnings of the ideas he espouses.
Full Catastrophe Living presents an essentially hopeful message: you can, by cultivating nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness through the practice of mindful meditation, more fully embrace the life you’ve been given. I’ve become convinced that “making time for formal practice everyday is like feeding yourself”--it’s that important. While reading it, I tried to practice daily for 45 minutes, as Kabat-Zinn suggests, and found it enormously challenging. If you have any inkling that you might benefit from mindfulness meditation, try it for yourself: read the book, practice, and above get in touch with your own inner motivation to keep it up.
The book contains delectable, digestible, and above all useful advice on the what, why, and how of mindfulness and meditative practice, all presented in Kabat-Zinn's signature melodious, baroque prose. Kabat-Zinn's main guidance is to sit, to put in time on the cushion (metaphorically and literally), not for any purpose but for its own sake. He takes great pains to emphasize the centrality of purposelessness of the practice while paradoxically praising it's ancillary benefits: increased health and wellness, reduced pain and anxiety, and an overall greater self-awareness and ability to focus on the moment. His evidence for these claims comes primarily from working with patients for decades, teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the stress reduction clinic in Massachusetts Medical Center.
Although Kabat-Zinn acknowledges the Buddhist roots of MBSR, he insists that anyone can benefit from the program without reference to religion. MBSR is neither a religion nor a philosophy according to Kabat-Zinn. It remains an open question to what extent it is possible to separate mindfulness from religion, despite the secular rhetoric. The category of mindful meditation has been deeply infused with religion. The thought forms and underlying worldview that gives rise to the insights of meditation may be unintentionally indoctrinating Kabat-Zinn's readers. Still, those with an allergy to religion need not worry: Kabat-Zinn avoids direct discussion of the religious underpinnings of the ideas he espouses.
Full Catastrophe Living presents an essentially hopeful message: you can, by cultivating nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness through the practice of mindful meditation, more fully embrace the life you’ve been given. I’ve become convinced that “making time for formal practice everyday is like feeding yourself”--it’s that important. While reading it, I tried to practice daily for 45 minutes, as Kabat-Zinn suggests, and found it enormously challenging. If you have any inkling that you might benefit from mindfulness meditation, try it for yourself: read the book, practice, and above get in touch with your own inner motivation to keep it up.