Healing with the Work of Byron Katie

by Kris Bercov

If you look up the word “heal” in the dictionary, you will see that it means to “make whole.”  So if you want to heal, the question becomes how do you make yourself “whole?” Now this is the tricky part.   How do you make yourself what you already are?  Perhaps the real healing is to see that you are already as whole as you will ever be, no matter what your body is doing.

This doesn’t mean that you have to settle for disease.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel good and enjoy your life here.  But my sense is your body will be more inclined to heal if you can tap into your “inner health”….that part of you that knows you are okay no matter what your symptoms may be saying.

So the question then is:  How do you tap into that “inner health” that is already there waiting for you to discover it?  Well, in my experience, you have to find out how you are keeping yourself from it.  If it’s already there, then why aren’t you in touch with it?  Makes sense, right? This is where your mind comes in.  This is where you have to begin to listen to all the ways you “disturb” your own wholeness (ie the inherent peacefulness of your own Being)….and you will know your wholeness is being disturbed because you will feel stress.  It may be a physical tightness or tension or pain in your body.  It may be an emotion such as fear or anger or grief.  Feelings follow thoughts.  So if you are feeling “off” emotionally, then it’s time to sit down and ask yourself what you are thinking. 

Let's say you notice you are feeling unhappy.  If you look further, you may notice that you are having thoughts about hating your body for being sick.  Now I don’t know about your body, but I know for sure that mine doesn’t respond well to my blaming it for my feeling bad.

“But it is my body’s fault,” you might say.  Is it true, you can then ask yourself.  Is it really your body’s fault that it is ill?  If the answer is “yes,” then you can investigate further and notice how you react when you think that way. I notice when I blame my body, I feel worse.  It isn’t bad enough that I don’t feel well, but when I  judge my body on top of that, it makes for a really good depression.  And then I might find myself turning to things that aren’t good for my body (you know, all those addictive things people turn to) to distract me from those bad feelings. 

So the next question you might ask yourself is, what would be different if you weren’t blaming your body.  If you couldn’t think that blaming thought.  When I have done that, I often notice a feeling of compassion for what my body is experiencing.  It has even come to me to send some kind and loving thoughts its way…and  appreciation for all the ways it does work for me.

Now under which conditions do you think a body would be more likely to heal?  When it is loved and appreciated?  Or when you are blaming and criticizing it? The next thing you can do is take that thought “It’s my body’s fault that I am sick” and turn it into its opposite.  “It isn’t my body’s fault.”   Then you can begin to look for examples of how that belief is just as true, or more true, than the reverse.

In my case, I might say it isn’t my body’s fault because my body always does the best it can to maintain its well-being.  Another example would be that I couldn’t possibly figure out all the factors that have gone into creating my health problem. As I look for these examples, my tendency to blame my body lessens more and more as I mentally “get out of my body’s business.”  I actually see how all my efforts to try and figure out the causes of my health problems only contribute to my stress.

I am borrowing here from a process called The Work by a woman named Byron Katie.  Through her own suffering, she discovered that it is our thoughts that create the stress in our lives, no matter what our outer circumstances may be.  (See www.TheWork.com.)

The Work is one way to tap into your inner health by continuing to notice all the ways that you disturb your inner peace with your mind.  The more that you work with your thoughts in this way, the more that you see that it is actually your thinking that is “dis-eased”…and as you bring your thinking to wellness, your body usually responds in amazing ways.

So I encourage you to “give peace and wholeness a chance” by investigating the ways that you keep yourself from the wealth of wellness that is within you.

Kris Bercov is a licensed mental health counselor in Maitland, Florida.  She has been in practice for over twenty years and is a practitioner of The Work.  Visit her website www.pathtoinnerfreedom.com.