| Byron Kathleen Mitchell | |
| Birth Name: | Byron Kathleen Reid |
| Birth Date: | 6 December 1942 |
| Birth Place: | Breckenridge, Texas |
| Other Names: | Byron Katie |
| Known For: | "The Work (of Byron Katie)" |
| Occupation: | Author, speaker |
| Nationality: | American |
| Spouse: | Stephen Mitchell |
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 the founder of Byron Katie International, an organization that includes the School for the Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California. Time magazine describes her as "a spiritual innovator for the 21st century."[1]
Katie was born in Breckenridge, Texas, in 1942, and grew up in Barstow, California.[2] Her father was a train engineer and her mother was a housewife.[2] She was married at age 19, had three children and started a career in real estate.[3] [4]
In 1986, when she was forty-three with three children and unhappily married to her second husband, she reportedly suffered from depression, agoraphobia, overeating and self-medicating with codeine and alcohol.[2] She called her insurance company for help, and was referred to Hope House in Los Angeles, a women's counseling center that has since closed. After two weeks of self-reflection in her home, 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.[2] She credited the epiphany, which became known as "The Work", for a subsequent weight loss and other reductions in bad habits.[2]
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.[2]
She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell. Katie is the mother of record producer Ross Robinson.[5]
She describes her 1986 epiphany as follows: Katie calls her process of self-inquiry "The Work".[6]
Katie's experience, as described in her book Loving What Is, is that all suffering is caused by believing our stressful thoughts. This, she says, puts people into painful positions that lead to suffering, as she recognized to be the case with herself. Through self-inquiry, she describes how a different, less-known capacity of the mind can end this suffering.[7]
The purpose of self-inquiry in Byron Katie's method is to free individuals from the suffering caused by their own thoughts and beliefs. It encourages a profound level of self-awareness and liberation from patterns of thinking that contribute to one's own suffering and unhappiness.
Her books provide a comprehensive introduction to her method, including detailed discussions of how each step is conducted and examples from real-life sessions. The self-inquiry Work method can also be applied to issues of love and relationships.
Specifically, The Work is a way of identifying and questioning any stressful thought. It consists of four questions and what is referred to as the "turnarounds".
The four questions are:[8]
The next step of The Work, the turnarounds, are a way of experiencing the opposite of the thought that one is believing. For example, the thought "My husband should listen to me", can be turned around to "I should listen to my husband", "I should listen to myself", and "My husband shouldn't listen to me".[8]
Then one finds specific examples of how each turnaround might be "just as true" as the original stress-producing thought.