Biography Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
Byron Kathleen Mitchell (née Reid), 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". (Her method is distinct from "The Work" of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.)
Biography
Byron Kathleen Reid lived in a halfway house for women with eating disorders in February 1986 and while living there claims to have experienced a life-changing realization. She claims that people started seeking her out and asking for advice. She is married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell. Katie calls her method of self-inquiry "The Work". She describes it as an embodiment of wordless questioning and has taught her method to people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, shelters for survivors of domestic violence, universities and schools, at weekend intensives, and at her nine-day "School for The Work".
Method
Katie's method asks four questions intended to lead people toward finding their own truth and full acceptance of their own situation. The questions asked of an issue are: 1) Is it true?, 2) Can you absolutely know that it's true?, 3) How do you react when you believe that thought?, and 4) Who would you be without the thought? The follow-up step to these four questions is to "turn it around" and examine the opposite thought for underlying truth that has manifested as denial of the original thought. The method has been described as "the ultimate inner adventure" that leads to "self-induced epiphanies" where a person attains a realization that the fundamental problem in any stressful situation in life is the person's own attitudes, judgements and expectations.