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

People are accustomed to taking medicines to relieve uncomfortable symptoms, which Kabat-Zinn believes can prevent people from resolving the root issue of their health problems. Moreover, by dulling pain people become less in tune with their bodies and do not develop the practice of listening to it. Participants in Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR program experience, on average, a 36% decrease in symptoms after their eight-week program. He considers this a triumph of both meditation and the active approach of participatory medicine.

The author reflects on the differences between mainstream medicine and the MBSR program; in meditation practitioners “tune in to the actual experience of the symptoms” rather than trying to make them go away (356). He calls this “wise attention,” which helps people resist thought patterns that are based on fear and judgment (357). By feeling their physical symptoms people can reflect on their emotional reactions to those sensations, and observe and accept them with neutrality, rather than forming an attachment to them or a story out of them. He concludes his chapter by relaying the story of a priest who ignored his headaches until they worsened, ignored his ulcers, and finally, changed his lifestyle when he had a mild heart attack, realizing that he needed to “listen” to his body’s messages.