What is The Work?
The Work of Byron Katie is a tool for cultivating inner healing, peace, empowerment, and compassionate relationships.
​
Also known as 'Inquiry', The Work invites us to identify, question, and transform our most deeply ingrained beliefs into a source of radical change and growth. ​
​
Doing The Work provides an in-depth, transformative experience in which you will acquire a lifelong tool for healing the past, re-aligning with the present, and empowering yourself for facing current and future challenges.
​
Tell me more about Byron Katie
Byron Katie was an ordinary American woman who is now known as one of the great spritual teachers of our time. The Work was born out of her spontaneous discovery in 1986 that her mental conflict with reality was the source of all her suffering. The questions of Inquiry developed intuitively from this newfound awareness. She is seventy-seven years strong, teaching The Work to millions of people in workshops around the world devoting herself to helping others end their suffering.
​
“A spiritual innovator for the new millennium.”
​
TIME MAGAZINE
​
​
Does The Work uh...Work?
That would be a Yes.
​
The Work is a synthesis of established methods of psychotherapy, including Mindfulness-Based, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). It both complements these respective styles and provides significant improvements to where each of these modalities can fall short.
​
In addition to more than thousands of testimonials from around the world, The Work has been empirically shown to have the capacity for immediate and life-changing impact. Also known in psychology research as IBSR (Inquiry Based Stress Reduction), literature on The Work validates the overall improvement in quality of life expressed by so many who experience and practice this technique.
​
​
Who can benefit from The Work?
According to Byron Katie, “Anyone with an open mind can do this Work.”
​
The Work is remarkably beneficial in addressing a wide range of mental health, emotional, existential, and life-cycle issues including:
​
-
Aging Parents
-
Anger
-
Anxiety
-
Body Image
-
Dating / Relationships / Marriage
-
Depression
-
Divorce
-
Emerging Independence​
-
Financial Stress & Career Satisfaction
-
Fulfilling Potential
-
Grief / Death & Loss
-
Health & Illness
-
Immigration / Aliyah
-
Life Path / Choices
-
Parent & Sibling Relationships (Family of Origin)
-
Parenting
-
Pregnancy & Birth
-
Retirement
-
School Stress
-
Social Anxiety
-
Work-Life Balance
​
“The more honest your inquiry, the freer you become.”
BYRON KATIE
​
How do you do The Work?
The Work involves identifying a stressful thought and asking four questions about it:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?
These four simple questions unlock the chains of our entrenched thinking patterns, opening the way for Clear Thinking, Self-Validation, Compassion, and Effective Action.
​
These four questions, also known as Inquiry, are then completed with the 'Turnarounds', a playful and profound process in which the original thought gets flipped on its head. Reality is met with greater understanding as we discover truths previously concealed behind our stressful thoughts.
​
The Work can be done alone with pen and paper. A friend or stranger may simply ask you the questions (as Byron Katie was wont to request when she first developed this technique). Trained facilitators can guide you through a tremendous healing journey with this process.
​
About Me
I first discovered and swiftly became passionate about The Work in 2013 when
the byline of an unassuming book on my mother-in-law's coffee table professing
"the revolutionary process called The Work" caught my eye.
This was Loving What Is, the first of Byron Katie's nine publications to date. It offered up exactly what it promised: a revolution in my personal life, as well as the course of my career as a psychotherapist.
​
I now practice and teach The Work to individuals and groups in Jerusalem, its surrounding area, and online.