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 describes her as "a spiritual innovator for the 21st century." In 1986, when she was 43 with three children and unhappily married to her second husband, she reportedly suffered from depression, agoraphobia, overeating and addiction to codeine and alcohol. 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 at the house, 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. She credited the epiphany, which became known as "The Work", for a subsequent weight loss and other reductions in bad habits. 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. 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 shared The Work with millions of people at 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 co-wrote Loving What Is, A Thousand Names for Joy, and A Mind at Home with Itself. I Need Your Love—Is That True? was written with Michael Katz, her literary agent at the time. Her other books are Question Your Thinking, Change The World; Who Would You Be Without Your Story?; Peace in the Present Moment, with Eckhart Tolle, A Friendly Universe, and, for children, Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? and The Four Questions. Less