Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

Chronic anxiety can also fuel severe patterns of what is called experiential avoidance, in which people attempt to avoid at all cost any thoughts, feelings, memories, or physical sensations that might cause distress. This is tantamount to holding themselves back from life itself, out of fear of their own inner experience. Chronic anxiety can also t

You can even bring this orientation to your electronic communications, whether it is texting, email, spending time on Facebook or Twitter, or sharing photos and videos—whatever your preferences. How? First by being in your body as you use your devices, and thus being in the present moment. Second, you can construct texts mindfully, with full awaren

Such findings underscore the well-known fact that there are different dimensions to the experience of pain: the sensory, the emotional, and the cognitive, all of which contribute to the overall sense of suffering that accompanies physical discomfort.

of the body scan and giving yourself over to doing what it says to do—again, for at least forty-five minutes a day, six days a week.

Tony Schwartz, author and longtime student of performance and excellence in business, writes in the New York Times that studies show that “paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less…. strategic renewal— including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office, and lo

willingness to be kind and gentle with yourself.

It means working at your limits, but gently, not trying too hard, not exhausting yourself, not pushing too hard to break through. The breakthroughs will come by themselves in their own good time if you put in the energy in the spirit of self-discovery. Mindfulness does not bulldoze through resistance. You have to work gently around the edges, a lit

by practicing the meditation and the yoga, you can transform a bad or isolating or fear-inducing situation into a creative one.

Alternatively, you might ask yourself, “Is everything already basically okay right now?” “Am I just not noticing the ways in which things are good because my mind keeps coming up with ideas for what it has to have or has to get rid of before I can be happy, just like a child?” Or, if that is not the case, you might go on to ask, “Are