Books · MBSR
Full Catastrophe Living
Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness — Jon Kabat-Zinn's foundational book, and the text behind the MBSR curriculum.
What the book is
Full Catastrophe Living is Jon Kabat-Zinn's book-length account of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the program he founded in 1979. According to its official page on jonkabat-zinn.com, it lays out the foundation of the MBSR curriculum — now taught in hospitals and clinics around the world — and addresses cultivating mindfulness to work with stress, pain, and illness. This Second Edition, Revised and Updated, adds more recent research on how mindfulness relates to the brain, gene expression, cellular aging, immune function, and symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Who it's for
It's written for anyone living with stress, chronic pain, or illness who wants to understand the reasoning behind mindfulness practice in depth — not just a set of instructions, but the "why" behind them, drawn from Jon Kabat-Zinn's clinical background. It also serves as a longer-form companion to the eight-week MBSR course itself, for people who want to read the material a teacher would draw on.
How it relates to the app and practice
The JKZ Meditations app doesn't include the text of this book — it offers its own guided audio and video recordings, including the Coping with Stress series that mirrors the core MBSR practices (Body Scan, sitting meditation, and mindful yoga) described in the book. See the MBSR guide for how those practices are organized in the app, and the Body Scan Meditation guide for the specific practice that opens the course.
Sources and further reading
- Full Catastrophe Living — official book page
- Jon Kabat-Zinn — official books page
- UMass Chan Center for Mindfulness — the academic home of MBSR