Nationality American Role Author Other names Byron Katie | Occupation Author, speaker Children Ross Robinson Name Byron Katie | |
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Full Name Byron Kathleen Reid Known for "The Work (of Byron Katie)"A method for self-inquiry Books Loving what is, A Thousand Names fo, I Need Your Love ‑ Is That Tr, Who would you be without y, Question Your Thinking Similar People Profiles | ||
Free Your Self From Pain | Russell Brand & Byron Katie
Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie (born December 6, 1942) is an American speaker and author who teaches a method of self-inquiry known as "The Work of Byron Katie" or simply as "The Work". She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell. She is the founder of Byron Katie International (BKI), an organization that includes The School for the Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California. TIME Magazine called her "a spiritual innovator for the 21st century."
Contents
- Free Your Self From Pain Russell Brand Byron Katie
- Byron katie author and teacher of the work in 2008 video interview
- Biography
- Philosophy
- References
Byron katie author and teacher of the work in 2008 video interview
Biography
Katie was born in Breckenridge, Texas in 1942, and grew up in Barstow, California. Her father was a train engineer and her mother was a housewife. She was married at age 19, eventually had three children and started a career in real estate.
In 1986, when she was 43 with three children and unhappily married to her second husband, she reportedly suffered from depression, agoraphobia, overeating and addiction to codeine and alcohol. She called her insurance company for help, and was referred to Hope House in Los Angeles, a woman's counseling center that has since closed. After two weeks at the house, she reportedly experienced an epiphany in her thinking which created a way for her to challenge and lessen the harmful effects of long-held beliefs. She credited the epiphany, which became known as "The Work", for a subsequent weight loss and other reductions in bad habits.
She began holding informal meetings to discuss her philosophy, and in the early 1990s, began having more formal workshops. The workshops eventually led to the formation of Byron Katie International.
In 1999, the California Board of Psychology questioned if she was engaging in psychotherapy, after Katie had counseled an incest survivor. The Board found she was not practicing psychotherapy, and dropped the investigation.
Philosophy
She describes her 1986 epiphany as follows: "I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment." Byron Katie calls her process of self-examination "The Work."
Katie's philosophy, as described in her book Loving What Is, is that often when people think they are being rational, their own thinking is often interfering. This, she says, puts people into painful positions that lead to suffering, as she recognized to be the case with herself. Through self-questioning, she describes how a different, less-known capacity of the mind can reduce this suffering.
Specifically. The Work is a way of identifying and questioning any stressful thought. It consists of four questions and a turnaround.
The four questions are:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it's true?
- How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? and
- Who would you be without the thought?
The turnaround involves considering the thought in a reversed form - changing subject and object, changing yes and no, or changing it to be self-referential. For example, for the thought "My husband should treat me better," turns around to "I should treat my husband better," "I should treat myself better," or "My husband shouldn't treat me better."