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

The landmark work on how to connect your mind and body to reduce stress and lead a more fulfilling, healthy, and complete life—now revised and updated

Featuring a preface from Thich Nhat Hanh

“This wise, deep book is essential, unique, and, above all, fundamentally healing.”—Donald M. Berwick, M.D., president emeritus and senior fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these mindfulness practices and integrating them into your life from moment to moment and from day to day, you can learn to manage chronic pain, promote optimal healing, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of your life, relationships, and social networks.

This revised edition features results from recent studies on the science of mindfulness, a new Introduction, up-to-date statistics, and an extensive updated reading list. Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well and the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in our fast-paced world.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society. He is professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, as well as founder and former director of its world-renowned Stress Reduction Clinic. He is the author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness; Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life; Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness; and co-author, with his wife, Myla, of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. He lectures and leads retreats on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for health professionals worldwide. He received a Pioneer in Integrative Medicine award from the Bravewell Collaborative in 2007 and the 2008 Mind & Brain Prize from the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Turin, Italy. His books are in print in more than thirty languages.