About the School for The Work

This is the ultimate inner adventure. Unlike every other school on earth, this one isn't for learning—it's for unlearning. You'll spend nine days losing the fear-based stories you've innocently clung to all your life. They might be stories like "I'm not good enough" or "I need a partner" or "I'll never get over it" or "I have to be in control." Who would you be without those stressful stories?

Richard Lawrence Cohen has shared his School experience in "The School for The Work: An Account by Richard Lawrence Cohen." (PDF file format)

At the School you'll discover that your stories are everyone's, and everyone's stories are yours. You'll be welcomed into a diverse, supportive family where you can be completely yourself without fear of judgment, perhaps for the first time in your life. You'll facilitate your classmates' Work as they open up to themselves. And then you'll trade places, and they'll do the same for you.

The School for The Work begins on Friday at 6:30 p.m. (on-site registration is from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.). The School ends at noon on the last day.

This is an immersion experience—an immersion in freedom. Imagine a place where you can feel anything and say anything and know that it's all okay. Imagine that the person sitting next to you, whom you have never talked to before, asks you to facilitate her Work, and that fifteen minutes later you feel you can tell her anything.

The curriculum at the School is a living, evolving process, changing with the needs of the participants and on the basis of past students' experiences. The exercises and activities are designed to mirror the transformation Katie herself went through after she woke up to reality in 1986. You will work on issues such as gender, sex, fear, body image, addiction, money, and relationships of every kind.

Each day during the School you may find yourself feeling freer and happier than the day before. Old habits may fall away like outworn clothes. You may find yourself eager to get up in the morning so that you won't miss a moment of this unfolding adventure.

Many participants consider these nine days to be the most important days they have ever spent. Insights and realizations continue long after the School has ended, and for many people these insights are permanent. People report that they experience life in a profoundly different way, that for the first time they recognize that the universe is friendly, and that they feel a new commitment to doing The Work as a daily practice.

There is only one authorized School for The Work, and it is presented by Byron Katie through Byron Katie International.