Byron Kathleen Mitchell, better known as Byron Katie, is an American speaker and writer who teaches a method of self-inquiry called “The Work of Byron Katie” or simply “The Work.”Katie became severely depressed in her early thirties. She was a businesswoman and mother who lived in Barstow, a small town in the high desert of southern California. For nearly a decade she spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom. Then, one morning in February 1986, while in a halfway house for women with eating disorders, she experienced a life-changing realization. She called it “waking up to reality.” In that moment, she says,“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.”Soon afterward people started seeking her out and asking how they could find the freedom that they saw in her. As reports spread about the transformations they felt they were experiencing through The Work, she was invited to present it publicly elsewhere in California, then throughout the United States, and eventually in Europe and across the world.The Work has been compared to the Socratic method and to Zen meditation, but Katie is not aligned with any religion or tradition. She describes self-inquiry as an embodiment, in words, of the wordless questioning that had woken up in her on that February morning. She has taught it to millions of people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, V. A. treatment centers, corporations, universities, and schools. Participants at her weekend workshops, the nine-day School for The Work, and the twenty-eight-day residential Turnaround House report profound experiences and lasting transformations. “Katie’s events are riveting to watch,” the Times of London reported. Eckhart Tolle calls The Work “a great blessing for our planet.” And Time magazine named Katie a “spiritual innovator for the new millennium.”Katie is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell, who cowrote her first book, Loving What Is and her third, A Thousand Names for Joy, both of them bestsellers. I Need Your Love—Is That True?, written with her literary agent, Michael Katz, was also a bestseller. Her other books are Question Your Thinking, Change The World; Who Would You Be Without Your Story?; and, for children, Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? On her website, www.thework.com, you will find basic information about Katie and The Work, her blog, free materials to download, audio and video clips, a schedule of events, a free helpline, and a network of certified facilitators.
