FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: How to Use the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness

An unusual--and unusually profound--self-help manual that teaches the application of ancient meditative techniques to modern living. Kabat-Zinn is founder of the Stress Reduction Program at the Univ. of Mass. Medical Center, which offers an eight-week course grounded in the Buddhist practice of ""mindfulness"" to patients afflicted with extreme stress. In clear and persuasive language, Kabat-Zinn here details the lessons of the course--from how to undertake a breathing, attentive ""sitting"" meditation to how to apply insights gained to the obvious stresses of physical and emotional pain, as well as the more subtle stresses of work, other people, time pressure, etc.--the ""poignant enormity of our life experience."" The key to the therapy is ""the regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete 'owning' of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly."" Kabat-Zinn buttresses his practical advice with much discussion of clinical findings and theories about the relationship between stress and disease, and with a flush of sunny examples from his casebook of patients--a man with AIDS, a migraine sufferer, a cancer victim--who have employed mindfulness to positive effect. Challenging and compelling study for followers of Bernie S. Siegel and Harold S. Kushner.