Transformational Work with Byron Katie and Anat Baniel
Practitioner Robin Winn Shares Her Experience and a Special Invitation
Loving What Is—the Byron Katie Joint Benefit event with ABM—is sure to be an amazing and transformational one. We need your help in putting the word out, and ask you to encourage your clients, friends, family, and professional colleagues to sign up. And we would love to have you join, too!
The purpose of this benefit is to help parents, caregivers, and professionals reduce suffering and fear in association with the great challenges they and their children face. Help us help the parents!
Our graduate, Robin Winn, has worked with and for Byron Katie for many years and asked me to share her letter. Below is Robin’s message.
This is my personal invitation for you to come to the Byron Katie event focused on parents, family, and providers of special needs children. If you haven’t yet signed up, register now! If you know or work with parents of a special child, do encourage them to attend. The event takes place August 29th from 1-3 pm at the ABM Center.
It has been 7 years since my first ABM [NeuroMovement] workshop where I witnessed Anat Baniel work on Devorah and saw firsthand the miracle of Devora moving her tiny fingers in a prior inert hand. (Devorah had a brachial plexus injury at birth. See the Anat Baniel Method NeuroMovement video here.)
I remember the hush in the room…the deep awareness in all of us that this child’s life had just made a miraculous turn.
I remember the awe and the spontaneous recognition that arose within me—the realization that what Anat Baniel had just done through touch and movement, I had witnessed, and experienced Byron Katie do, and teach others to do, through words and inquiry.
The capacity to take what appears as fixed and immovable suffering and shift it in a moment—to change the trajectory of a life—is a gift worth cultivating.
In the late 90’s, I had the great fortune of meeting Byron Katie and learning her simple inquiry The Work. Like Devorah, my life changed directions on a dime. The emotional suffering I had battled with since I was a young child evaporated.
As I watched Anat work, it was like watching Byron, and I knew I would be studying with Anat to learn how she brought about these miraculous results.
One of the greatest and unexpected privileges I felt during the ABM training was being in the presence my fellow students who had children with special needs. Continuously, you touched my heart. The courage, the strength, the commitment, the love I felt from you, in you was truly inspirational. And I saw the suffering you endured.
So many times I wished Byron Katie could come and be in the room. I had watched her at one point work with a couple who were living in rage that their child became autistic after receiving vaccines. Watching Katie work with this couple shifted their, and my own, internal war/outrage. It became clear that the war was taking them away from the present moment with their child, and that without the war there was the possibility of clear action.
I have a deep desire for parents, families, and practitioners of special needs kids to have what feels to me like the other wing to ABM.
Recently my friend, Carole Keefe, who is working extensively as an ABM [NeuroMovement] practitioner with special needs children in Austin, TX, at the ABM Center, and around the world, sent me an email:
I have been thinking about how to support the parents in their healing from [their child’s] birth trauma and the loss of a dream or [their] disappointment of having a child with special needs, or [having] feelings of being robbed/cheated…. Do you have any thoughts? I keep encountering parents who just want their child fixed and I know they (the parents) need help, too, to see the blessing.
This event with Byron Katie IS an answer to Carole’s wish for the parents.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Warmly,
Robin Winn, ABM [NeuroMovement] Practitioner
Thank you, Robin, for taking the time to write this special invitation. I extend this invitation to anyone who is interested: I hope you can join us for an extraordinary event with Byron Katie! Please share this blog post with others.
Anat Baniel
UPDATE
We recorded this event, and you can now view it online for $4.99: Byron Katie & Anat Baniel: The Special Needs Child (Streaming Video).
Note: All proceeds go to the Anat Baniel Method Foundation and The Work Foundation, Inc.