A pain body is a concept developed by spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. It refers to an accumulation of emotional pain and negativity that has built up within a person as a result of unprocessed emotions, traumas, and painful memories from the past. The pain body can manifest as intense emotions, negative thoughts, and behavioral patterns. The pain body is an old emotional pain. Sometimes you also don't know where something comes from, so this is worth investigating.
According to Tolle, the pain body is activated when a person identifies with negative thoughts and emotions. This can happen when people get carried away by old wounds, worry about negative experiences, or see themselves as victims of their past. The pain body feeds on this negative energy and can make someone feel increasingly unhappy and stressed. Children often choose not to feel overwhelming emotions, but here, too, no one gets through their childhood without emotional pain. You have to fully face the emotions, because in pain there is growth. For a pain body, pain is pleasure. That's why you don't want to stop thinking. Every thought nourishes the pain body.
Releasing the pain body and reaching a state of awareness and acceptance is an important goal. Observing your thoughts and emotions without being fully immersed, and increasing your awareness, can help reduce and ultimately transform the pain body.
The idea of the pain body is intertwined with concepts from various spiritual traditions, such as Buddhist mindfulness and psychological approaches to healing trauma. It can serve as a useful concept for self-reflection and personal growth.
However, in war zones and societies that have been severely affected by war and conflict, there can be collective traumas and shared painful experiences. This can lead to collective pain bodies, wounds, and a shared emotional burden within the community. This collective pain and trauma can last for generations and affect the psychology and behavior of the people in that society.
While the concept of a collective pain body is not specifically applied by Tolle to entire societies or war zones, some people and groups can use similar ideas to describe the long-term psychological impact of wars and conflicts on communities.
Overall, it is important to understand that concepts such as the pain body and collective trauma are different approaches to describing how individuals and societies are affected by painful experiences. However, they have their roots in different disciplines and traditions. Personally, I think that there is still an enormous amount of profit to be made there, both collectively and on an individual level, where pain bodies are often also passed on from generation to generation.