Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes

Jon Kabat-Zinn is a scientist and meditation teacher. He is the creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, and is the author of several books on mindfulness, including Wherever You Go, There You Are.

A collection of quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is the founding director of the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.

Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes

‘‘Being a parent is one of greatest mindfulness practices of all.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into mindfulness.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Cultivate wisdom and equanimity – not passive resignation – in the face of the full catastrophe of the human condition.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Focusing on the breath does not mean you should think about your breathing!”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

‘‘If you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you’re not really understanding it.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Here is Eliot, again from “Burnt Norton”: Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time …”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat Zinn Quotes Mindfulness

‘‘Mindfulness involves living your life as if it really mattered.  And it does matter.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else — it’s about being where you are and knowing it.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment — non-judgmentally.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way – on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgement.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘My definition of healing is: coming to terms with things as they are.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘To drop into being means to recognize your interconnectedness with all life, and with being itself.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Until you stop breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘You can’t control the universe, so mindfulness involves learning to cultivate wisdom and equanimity.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat Zinn Quotes as Long as You Are Breathing

‘‘You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘‘Your very nature is being part of larger and larger spheres of wholeness.’’— Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is, and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.”

“Inner peace exists outside of time.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.”

“Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself.”

“discernment”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat Zinn Quotes on Mindfulness

“If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don’t really know where we are standing… We may only go in circles…”

“This means learning to work with the very stress and pain that are causing you to suffer.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”

“Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.”

“The main things are to commit to some simple behaviors—meditating, exercising, getting enough sleep—and to practice altruism.… And nurture your social connections.” If”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat Zinn Quotes Letting Go

“Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?”

“Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.”

“No matter what people are doing, they are much less happy when their minds are wandering than when their minds are focused,”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat Zinn How to Meditate

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity, which at the bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”

“Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.”

“At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient… only the universe rearranging itself.”

“If you stop trying to make yourself more than you are, out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier and easier to live with, too.”

“Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.”

“Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness.”

“In all the meditative traditions of the world, visualizations and imagery are used to invoke particular qualities of mind and heart.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.”

“Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Full Catastrophe Living Quotes

“One very important domain of our lives and experience that we tend to miss, ignore, abuse, or lose control of as a result of being in the automatic pilot mode is our own body.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

“from our point of view, as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“By repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath each time it wanders off, concentration builds and deepens, much as muscles develop by repetitively lifting weights.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Dr. Lown’s story graphically illustrates the enormous power that strongly held beliefs, which are in actuality just thoughts, can have on our health.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Quotes From Jon Kabat Zinn

“Anybody who is imitating somebody else, no matter who it us, is heading in the wrong direction. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“immersed in a seemingly never-ending stream of thoughts, coming willy-nilly one after another in rapid succession.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Because of this inner busyness, which is going on almost all the time, we are liable either to miss a lot of the texture of our life experience or to discount its value and meaning.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

“we all come into and go out of this world as passing gatherings of structured energy.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“We live immersed in a world of constant doing. Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing, or, put otherwise, with the world of being.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes Love

“Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

“It would not be hard to imagine that a happy hermit, living in isolation, might feel connected to everything in nature and all people on the planet and not be at all affected by a dearth of human neighbors.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation

“The present is the only time that we have to know anything. It is the only time we have to perceive, to learn, to act, to change, to heal, to love.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on as it is with how much room you are making for it to take place within the field of your awareness from one moment to the next.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“The present is the only time that we have to know anything.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Personal motivations to live are known to sometimes influence survival.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness