Teaching WHEE can be a great benefit to the teacher, as well as to the student. I have used WHEE to clear countless old hurts, angers, fears, depression and other feelings and issues over the years. When I started out being a psychotherapist, I thought that one day I would be completely clear of psychological dross and at peace with myself... Having peeled many layers of the onion of life's stresses, I find that the onion seems to keep growing.

What I can definitely say, though, is that knowing I can use WHEE (and other de-stressing approaches such as meditation, relaxation, exercise, and the like), I am now far less often stressed about being stressed. I have the certainty, after many successful peelings my onion layers, that the tears and terrors will rapidly abate when I de-stress.

Even more, I often can approach my stresses with a curiosity to see what related hurts from the past may lie in the same file drawer with the current issues that are bothering me. Sometimes I even find myself eager to sit down and do the clearing. I now know that I will walk more lightly for having unburdened myself of old emotional garbage that I buried inside when I was younger and lacked the knowledge, wisdom and support to deal with those feelings.

Example: In working through my hurt and anger and grief over a broken love relationship, I discovered an inner file drawer that contained a messy old bag of pain from when my mother and father were not there for me in my early childhood.  My father was in another country during WWII and my mother was both emotionally a distant person and preoccupied with studies and needing to work to support us.

I thought I had cleared my feelings from these childhood experiences, through several decades of personal therapy. "Not so!" said Little Dan, my inner child. I allowed myself to As I cried and sobbed and raged over my hurts at age one and two and three, feeling there was no one in the world who wanted me. And there was an even deeper layer hidden at the back of that file drawer - an awareness from when I was still in my mother's womb that on some level she did not want me.

These sorts of 'clearings of the vessel through which healing flows' are essential for therapists/ healers - if they are to be sensitive and aware of clients' issues. Without such clearings, the unconscious mind can lead therapists to divert clients from opening up issues that would resonate with issues of hurt in the therapists' file drawers.

I am reminded of a quote from a book I am reviewing for the September issue of the International Journal of Healing and Caring:

Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?

Nouwen, H.J.M. The Wounded Healer. Garden City, NJ: Image Books, 1979, p. 72; in Taylor, Elizabeth Johnson. What Do I Say? Talking with Patients about Spirituality. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press 2007, p. 9.

WHEE enables therapists, as well as clients, to do these necessary clearings.

Blessings

Dan Benor