Jon Kabat-Zinn 2001 Full Catastrophe Living. New York: Dell Publishing.
This is a large book, 472 pages and for that reason may be off putting to those who approach it with anxiety or a limited schedule. None the less, almost as soon as you start, the acknowledgments, preface (by Thich Nhat Hanh) and introduction orient you well to the material to follow. There is a good outline of the chapters and a comprehensive index at the back of the book allowing easy navigation throughout its many sections.
The author tells us that you will be able to "..develop your own stress management program.." and "discover how mindfulness will help you cope with a wide range of problems". All true.
The book is based on a successful stress management centre in the United States and brings together the testimonies and experiences of the staff and clients who have attended there over a period of many years. As a practicing therapist, I found this comforting and useful in that it was set in the `real world'.
The book is split into five main sections:
1. The Practice of Mindfulness: Paying attention
Within this section, the author covers the basic practice of mindfulness and introduces the power of the breath, sitting meditation, walking meditation, a useful `body scan' technique and yoga. It then helps the reader start a formal practice of their own. A useful comment about this section is that it is quite balanced and acknowledges the role of the body, introducing Yoga and body scanning as practices to help with grounding and connecting/feeling.
2. The Paradigm: A new way of thinking about health and illness
This section offers us a series of examples where our mood, outlook, personality type and sphere of relationships are explored in the context of developing diseases such as cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure etc. The core message appears to be that the more positive your outlook, the greater our sense of coherence, belief that life can be manageable, meaningful and full of valued relationships the better. Mindfulness of our reactivity, mental states, beliefs etc help enormously as does the practice of meditation.
3. Stress
Chapters 17, 18 and 19 offer a nice introduction to stress and its manifestations both physically and psychologically. The use of intoxicants and other avoidant strategies is discussed and this parallels the teaching about different levels of sensory escape taught within the four noble truths. Chapter 20 offers us a way of `responding' rather than `reacting' to stress and the key focus is on bringing mindfulness to our experience, focussing on the breath as taught in previous chapters. If done well, one is "â¦maintaining your own balance of mind and of body, what is sometimes called maintaining your `centre'." p268
4. The applications: Taking on the full catastrophe
Chapters 21 â 23 focus on pain, initially physical pain, acute and chronic and the author shares clinical material from the stress clinic giving encouraging examples of people having successfully applied mindfulness to their experience of pain. The focus here is on the `body scan' technique introduced earlier and a memorable quote from this section is to be found on p298, "If you are not your body, then you cannot possibly be your body's pain".
Chapter 24 looks at emotional pain â as a messenger that things aren't right and a reminder that life is dukkha, unsatisfactory. The author shares personal experiences of fear and discusses emotion-focussed perspective taking (thoughts and feelings) and problem-focussed perspective taking (the situation etc..).
The remaining chapters in this section, 25 through to 32 focus in turn on time, sleep, people (relationships), role, work, food and world stresses. For each, mindfulness, awareness and wise seeing are emphasised throughout along with many useful explanations and examples.
5. The way of awareness
This final section comprises of chapters 33 to 36 and summarises
some of the core themes in the book and after stressing and reminding
us of the need for continued practice introduces us to the Taoist
`way', emphasising the difference between `being' and `doing', living
with the way things are and perhaps lamenting
that our western world isn't like this, but could beâ¦
The book ends with several useful appendices containing charts, a reference list and a good index. I feel the book certainly achieves what it sets out to do and offers the reader a practical way of coping with stress and anxiety whilst offering a glimpse at a different way of being and introducing many Buddhist concepts along the way.
The book was enjoyable and I would certainly recommend it to other therapists and clients and ask them
to keep an open mind whilst reading. There may be a tendency for some
to `already know' what is in the book yet on careful reading, this is
not just another `anxiety management' guide or package, it really does
offer a different way of conceptualising and approaching anxiety and
stress whilst walking the middle path between
western empiricism and eastern spirituality.
Mark Walker