BY: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
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4 Thoughts
1. What is Full Catastrophe Living?
“Yet ever since I first heard it, I have felt that the phrase “the full catastrophe” captures something positive about the human spirit’s ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom. For me, facing the full catastrophe means finding and coming to terms with what is deepest and best and ultimately, what is most human within ourselves.”
I have avoided reading this book for a long time simply because of the title. But that passage on “the full catastrophe” is truly inspiring, and now I love the phrase : )
And really, the book is about using mindfulness to build our inner resources so we can accept this “full catastrophe” of living and still thrive. As Kabat-Zinn goes on to say:
“In this book, we will be learning and practicing the art of embracing the full catastrophe. We will be doing this so that rather than destroying us or robbing us of our power and our hope, the storms of life will strengthen us as they teach us about living, growing, and healing in a world of flux, change, and sometimes great pain.”
That is inspiring and beautiful. So how do we embrace the full catastrophe? No surprise here: It all starts with the breath.
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P.S. The philosophy and practices described in the book are the foundation of Kabat-Zinn’s famous Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. I’m focusing on breathing here, but the book/program includes other practices, such as yoga and body scans.
2. Why Breathing is the Fundamental Anchor for Mindfulness
“Probably the best place to start is with your breathing. If you can manage to bring your attention to your breathing for even the briefest of moments, it will set the stage for facing that moment and the next one with greater clarity. As we have seen, the breath itself is calming…it anchors us, gives us stability, like the bridge piling anchored in bedrock as the river flows around it. … What is more, we carry it everywhere, so it is always here, no matter what the circumstances, and thus exquisitely convenient for us to call upon—a true ally in the cultivation of emotional balance.”
I’m obviously biased 😊, but a lot of the book is about the breath. Kabat-Zinn does an incredible job articulating why our breath is so powerful for cultivating mindfulness, balancing our emotions, and embracing the full catastrophe of life.
As he points out, breathing brings us into the present, allowing us to face our next moment with more clarity. Moreover, it’s always there, so we can use it anytime, anywhere—“a true ally in the cultivation of emotional balance.”
But ultimately, the breath brings us back to life. Because it is life. As he says, the breath “immediately anchors our awareness in the body, in a fundamental, rhythmic, flowing life process.”
So how do we do it? He suggests you pay attention to the sensations of your belly rising and falling with each breath (we’ll see why in the next thought). When your mind wanders, you bring it back to these breath sensations. This can be done sitting or lying down. Start with three minutes, with the goal of reaching fifteen minutes daily.
3. The Metaphorical Benefits of Belly Breathing for Stability
“Focusing on the breath at your belly can be calming. … when we focus on our breathing down in the belly, we are tuning in to a region of the body that is far from the head and thus far below the agitations of our thinking mind. It is intrinsically calmer. So tuning in to the breath at the belly is a valuable way of reestablishing inner calmness and balance in the face of emotional upset or when you have a lot on your mind.”
Although this analogy isn’t valid for everyone, I think it’s a neat way of framing the psychological benefits of belly breathing. We focus on the abdomen area because it’s “far from the head and thus far below the agitations of our thinking mind.”
It’s also helpful because it’s centering, both literally and figuratively:
“Your belly is literally the center of gravity of your body, far below the head and the turmoil of your thinking mind. For this reason we “befriend” the belly right from the beginning as an ally in establishing calmness and awareness.”
As an aside, tons of research shows that “belly breathing” is calming for most people. In the breathing community, however, there is a stigma about “belly breathing” because we really want diaphragmatic breathing, which doesn’t necessarily occur with belly breathing.
But perhaps this is why it works, even if technically incorrect… Maybe it’s so relaxing and beneficial for so many people, not just for physiological reasons, but because it gets them away from the agitations of their thinking mind…just a thought…
Either way, consider using the abdomen as your anchor for breath awareness to bring you back to the present and away from the turmoil of your thinking mind anytime, anyplace.
4. Why It Works: Breathing is No Longer Just Breathing
“When we surveyed several hundred patients who had been out of the stress reduction program for a number of years and asked them what the single most important thing they got out of the program was, the majority said, “The breathing.” … Why would breathing, which they were doing before anyway, be so important and so valuable all of a sudden?
The answer is that once you start meditating, breathing is no longer just breathing. When we start paying attention to our breathing on a regular basis, our relationship to it changes dramatically. As we have already seen, tuning in to it helps us to gather our often unfocused energies and center ourselves. The breath reminds us to tune in to our body and to encounter the rest of our experience with mindfulness, in this very moment.
When we are mindful of our breathing, it automatically helps us to establish greater calmness in both the body and the mind. Then we are better able to be aware of our thoughts and feelings…And with this awareness comes a feeling of having more room to move, of having more options, of being free to choose effective and appropriate responses in stressful situations rather than losing our equilibrium and sense of self as a result of feeling overwhelmed, thrown off balance by our own knee-jerk reactions.”
Beautifully said. I have nothing to add, except a few of these 👏👏👏
1 Life-Changing Idea
Remembered Wholeness
“Perhaps more than anything else, the work of MBSR involves helping people to see and feel and believe in their wholeness, helping them to tend, befriend, and mend the wounds of disconnectedness and the pain of feeling isolated, fragmented, and separate, and helping them to discover an underlying fabric of wholeness and connectedness within themselves.”
Here is the overarching benefit of the practice: remembered wholeness. When we take time to sit or lie in stillness and breathe consciously, we reconnect with our true selves. We remember that we’re already whole. It happens naturally.
As Kabat-Zinn also says, “We remember wholeness so readily because we don’t have far to look for it. It is always within us.”
Explaining why this is life-changing is difficult. It’s more of a feeling than anything that can be described in words. But to link it back to embracing the “full catastrophe” of living, here’s the power of remembered wholeness: “You feel like you are at home no matter where you are and what problems you face.”
Putting it all together: We practice mindfulness—through breath awareness—so we can access the present moment and feel whole & at home wherever we are. Sounds worth it to me 🙏
1 Stack of Memorable Quotes
“There is not one person on the planet who does not have his or her own version of the full catastrophe.”
“One way to think of this process of transformation is to think of mindfulness as a lens, taking the scattered and reactive energies of your mind and focusing them into a coherent source of energy for living, for problem solving, and for healing.
“The breath plays an extremely important role in meditation and in healing. Breathing is an incredibly powerful ally and teacher in the work of meditation, although people who have no training in meditation think nothing of it and find it uninteresting.”
“Our breathing has the added virtue of being a very convenient process to support ongoing awareness in our daily lives. As long as we are alive, it is always with us. We can’t leave home without it.”
“Right in the simple old breath (I won’t say “right beneath our noses”) lies a completely overlooked source of power to transform our lives. All we need to do to make use of it is to deepen our attentional skills and our patience.”
“After all, the breath sensations are themselves an intimate part of the sensory field of the body and can put you back in touch with the whole of it.”
“While it may not be possible for us to cure ourselves or to find someone who can, it is possible for us to heal ourselves—to learn to live with and work with the conditions that present themselves in the present moment.”
“Healing implies the possibility that we can relate differently to illness, disability, even death, as we learn to see with eyes of wholeness.”
“[A]s long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.”
“It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself. That is the reason for practicing meditation in the first place.”
“As it turns out, we don’t have to look very far to reconnect with our deepest selves on this quest. At any moment, we are very close to home, much closer than we think. If we can simply realize the fullness of this moment, of this breath, we can find stillness and peace right here.”