One of the elements Tolle discusses in this outstanding book is the pain body. This is an energetic, unhappy sub-part of ourselves that seeks to express pain and may even generate pain in our inner self and in our relationships. The pain body has a life of its own and often is not under our control. It frequently leads to serious conflicts between people who are in long-term relationships.

The pain body is formed early in our life from threatening, frightening, stressful and painful experiences. As children, we typically deal with these by running away from our awareness of our distress, burying the negative experiences in the caves of our unconscious mind.

The pain body persists because we live largely in the past and in our mental constructs of the future rather than in the Now. We are trapped in our thinking mode of relating to our inner and outer worlds, constantly chattering aimlessly in our minds, essentially not having our hands on the steering wheel of the mental vehicle in which we travel through life.

Tolle's recommendation for dealing with the pain body is that we practice holding our awareness in the Now. When we stop giving the energies of our attention to our pain body - with its associated traumatic memories from the past and fears of repeated, similar pains in the future - then we starve the pain body of its sustenance of recreated suffering in the present. The pain body will gradually atrophy and wither through our not feeing it with our energies.

This is an excellent recommendation. Not only does it help us deal with the pain body, it actually converts the experience of pain into a motivating factor for reconnecting with our spirituality - by being in the Now.

The difficulty with this approach is that it is slow and often leaves us suffering for long periods of time as we struggle to gain control over our constantly chattering mind. It may also be impossible for people who are seriously stressed to manage to quiet their minds and not to get triggered by their own pain body or that of someone around them.

WHEE offers many ways to deal with the pain body. This is a method of self-healing that allows us to release pains and distress from psychological and physical causes. By holding our pains in our conscious mind, while stimulating the right and left sides of our body, it is possible to decrease the intensity of these pains.

This is not to say that Tolle's methods are not helpful. Tolle brilliantly details how we get lost in our pain processes and ways that we can deal with these.

WHEE works deeply and more rapidly. It is derived from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which has been proven in extensive research to relieve the symptoms of severe stress. Even people with serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have improved with EMDR and WHEE. Many of these people with PTSD have had flashbacks, panic attacks, temper outbursts and nightmares, making it impossible for them to lead normal lives, or even to sleep through the night over many years. WHEE (unlike EMDR) is safe for use as self-healing at home because it is gentle, yet thorough, in its release of the buried hurts that plague us through the pain body.

The pain body is actually a residue of PTSD experiences. It can be deactivated much more rapidly with WHEE than with the sorts of meditation Tolle recommends. WHEE also promotes personal spiritual awareness through spiritual affirmations and through the immediate, personal feedback we get from the power of the spiritual that we bring into the WHEE process.

WHEE can also contribute to the decrease of the collective pain body in families, communities, nations and our global community. Using WHEE, we can release hurts and angers experienced by the ethnic and national groups with whom we identify and through which we may have suffered great pains over many generations. Each of us is a pixel on the screen of broader reality. If we each work hard to be the best and clearest and brightest pixel we can be, and encourage others around us to do the same, then soon the entire screen will be brighter and clearer.