MBSR/Full Catastrophe Living - My Understanding

[Mindfulness Newbie]

I am working at developing mindfulness with this book and the CDs designed to accompany it. However, I have found the first section sometimes a little confusing or vague. So, here is my summary of the theory which underpins developing mindfulness within the MBSR framework. Please feel free to critique!

1. The essence of mindfulness is knowing what we are doing as we are doing it

2. The idea of formal meditation practice is to create an island where we don't mentally try to DO things - we just pay attention to where we are at that time, thoughts and feelings which arise and bodily sensations. It is a non-doing

3. When we meditate we discover that, during the normal course of our lives, we are not mentally present with where we physically are and with what we are doing.

The mind is elsewhere, daydreaming, planning or whatever.

And we are not even aware that this is happening. Thus, we operate on AUTOPILOT a lot of the time, unless we interrupt it

4. Therefore, we miss lots of life's moments and also messages from our body

5. The best way to develop moment-to-moment awareness is by working on focusing on the breath moment-to-moment

6. Focusing on the breath like this - i.e. MINDFULNESS of the breath - brings calmness, allowing us to see thoughts and emotions more clearly, which gives us more options to respond, instead of reacting automatically all the time

7. If we don't check-in mentally from time to time, the mind's activity can carry us away from the present moments in our life, meaning that we end-up living a lot of our lives operating on the AUTOPILOT

8. We should aim to be present as much as possible during everyday tasks like cleaning, else we miss-out on our lives. So we can, and should try, to mentally BE (i.e. be present and aware) as we are physically doing activities

9. Thinking doesn't just occur on autopilot, however. We can be in DOING MODE (i.e. planning, analysing, etc) and STILL be present with it and aware that we are doing it

10. We are not always DOING/in DOING MODE when we are on autopilot, either - we may be daydreaming, fantasising, etc

I have done this to clarify in my own mind, and also to hopefully help others who're working with the book. Note that this is only a summary of the whys and wherefores - and not the HOW TO DO of mindfulness, because I think the book is clear on this, with summaries at the end of chapters.

[JonW]

Hi Newbie.
That sounds pretty much spot on to me. Many thanks.
Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it like this: "“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

[Mindfulness Newbie]

Hi Newbie.
That sounds pretty much spot on to me. Many thanks.
Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it like this: "“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Cheers, Jon.

One of the reasons I did not commit to Mindfulness fully in the past was because I didn't really understand the concepts, such as doing mode, autopilot and where they fit together with the operation of our minds.

[Mindfulness Newbie]

I have got to say, I am finding the revised version as baffling as the original. I hoped that Kabat-Zinn would have rewritten it extensively to make it more accessible. Not so.

It is a shame that he has not done this.

[piedwagtail91]

i had to read this and another book before going on a mindfulness teacher training course.
we had to do a write up.
part of my comment was that you could safely lose half of the book without losing anything important.
having recently had another go at reading it i still feel the same way.

there's a heck of alot of good stuff in it but you really need to look for it to find it.
it's not easy read by any means.

[Gareth]

Jon Kabat-Zinn is my hero, and I have so much to thank him for.

He can be a bit wordy sometimes and overelaborate the points though. I can see why some people don't get on with him.

[piedwagtail91]

he's the top bloke,we wouldn't have mindfulness without him, it's not that i dislike his book but you put it better than me when you say he can be a bit wordy!!
my mentor goes to a lot of his conferences when he comes over so my views on his book are always a good wind up

[Mindfulness Newbie]

Even simple points he dresses-up in over-elaborate language. If you are super-stressed, the book is going to be off-putting because you won't have the time or inclination to sit through and translate it.

I find the chapter on the problem of the 9 dots to be bizarre. Why not just say that, often, we focus too narrowly when looking to solve problems and demonstrate it with a simple anecdote?

[Gareth]

I would recommend trying a different book.

[Mindfulness Newbie]

I think I have grasped what the problem is, it's his definitions and uses of being and doing.

JKZ uses 'doing' to mean both mental and physical doing.

He uses 'be' and 'being' to mean both mentally and physically doing nothing apart from being aware, and also to mean just doing nothing mentally whilst being aware of what you are doing physically.

The dual-applications of these terms has confused me. I shall start the book again, with this in mind...