“An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.”
—Byron Katie
What Is The Work of Byron Katie?
The Work of Byron Katie—also known as Inquiry Based Stress Reduction (IBSR)—is a way to identify and question thoughts that cause suffering, stress, reactivity and self-limitation. The resulting mental clarity makes it easier to address problems that once seemed insurmountable from a practical, positive and realistic new perspective.
Regular practice of The Work may result in improved communication, increased efficiency and a peaceful mindset that Katie calls “loving what is.” (Katie's source book for The Work, Loving What Is, may be ordered here.) For many, the effects are radical: relationships deepen, addictions fall away, stress-related health conditions improve, crises become opportunities, resentments and regrets lose their grip. Depression, fear and anxiety typically lessen and may even disappear.
Prior to questioning the mind, we humans tend towards what I call “conditional happiness.” We'll be okay, we think, in some nonexistent but fervently hoped-for future, when we get an appreciative boss, a bigger house or car, more money, better sex, physical health or beauty, a loving mother, compliant children, efficient employees, a different government or nicer weather. We try to bend the world to our will, to manipulate people and situations to satisfy our desires and our concepts of how we believe things ought to be. When we get what we think we want, we wonder why we still feel unfulfilled, unhealthy or afraid.
Astonishingly simple and accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, The Work is the result of one woman's experience of deep transformation. In 1986, Byron Katie—then a 43-year-old wife, mother and successful businesswoman from the California high desert who for many years suffered from rage, depression, obesity, paranoia and alcoholism— experienced the profound realization that without our knee-jerk reactions to stressful beliefs, we are left with the very thing we hoped to find through wish fulfillment or grasping tightly to what we were afraid to lose. Prior to the mythology we’ve attached to is the truth—reality, what is—which is joyful, peaceful and attainable when we stop fighting with it or trying to change it.
Katie also saw that giving people her answers was of little value. Instead she offers a practical, investigative process for finding your own answers.
While The Work is not therapy, it is therapeutic and increasingly incorporated by therapists and counselors. Called "a new royal road to the unconscious" by mental health specialists at the University of Washington, The Work/IBSR is offered at the "UDub" student health center. (Download the article by Hidalgo and Coumar.) The Work has been implemented successfully by practitioners in Mind-Body Medicine programs at Stanford Medical Center and Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in California to help patients deal with anxiety, depression, stress, infertility and chronic pain; and it has been used by Veteran's Administration therapists to help returning soldiers deal with PTSD. California Institute of Integral Studies, one of the country's leading institutions integrating modern psychology with Eastern spirituality, has offered The Work as part of its training for psychotherapists. Brain specialist Dr. Daniel Amen calls The Work "software" for optimal performance of the brain's "hardware."
Inquiry may also lead to self-awareness and insight that previously required years of meditation and intense spiritual practice. Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, has called The Work "a razor-sharp sword that cuts through the illusion and enables you to know for yourself the timeless essence of your being."
Transformational Inquiry requires nothing more than a pen and paper and an open mind. It points us towards “the peace which passeth understanding”—which is always available when we are willing to question what we believe.
—Carol L. Skolnick
The Work of Byron Katie™ :
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it's true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
Turn the thought around.
(Find three genuine examples of how the turnaround is as true or truer in your life.)
“As Carol facilitates, she asks simple questions that help you examine the thoughts that cause you stuckness or misery. What I love about it is that it's about truth and freedom, not forcing any kind of change. I'm able to receive life differently, with more acceptance and openness to what is given rather than judging my experience so much.” —Lor Larsen,
Santa Cruz, CA
Print out a Worksheet and begin to practice The Work.
The Work © Byron Katie International.
