Full Catastrophe Living

Book Being Reviewed:

Zinn, John-Kabot. (1990). Full catastrophe living: using the wisdom of your mind and body to face stress, pain and illness. New York, NY: Delta Publishing.

Reviewer:

Danielle Richards

Genre:

Non-Fiction—Adult

Subject Headings:

Anxiety disorders,Depression,Spiritual practice

Review:

Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, has written Full Catastrophe Living as an overview of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program. M.B.S.R. has been noted as a useful therapeutic technique for a number of medical and psychological conditions including depression and substance abuse but most specifically has been associated with chronic pain. The book provides the reader with an integrated approach to working with physical, emotional and psychological stress and offers coping tools for handling everyday life and debilitating illness. Zinn outlines how mindfulness meditation can be used as the basis for an effective behavioral program in self-regulation for chronic pain.

The Center for Mindfulness has been doing research on M.B.S.R. for twenty-eight years and has had some major research findings. M.B.S.R. is currently being used in about 250+ universities and hospitals worldwide and is the focus of a number of research studies. Thus, this book is quite relevant to practitioners interested in the utilization of mindfulness based intervention strategies. For those interested in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy this book is good starting point because M.B.C.T. was developed as an outgrowth of M.B.S.R.

Originally posted on 5/01/2009 at csi-net.org