They brought the Iraq war back home to Rye, along with a lot of ghosts of horrors past that they were looking to exorcise.

They had killed or worried about being killed, after seeing friends become fallen soldiers. When they survived, they had survivor's guilt because they made it and some of their best friends hadn't.

If they served their tour of duty and were very lucky, they could make it back home in one piece, more or less, only they would really never be the same, because post traumatic stress usually came home with them—and nobody except for maybe a few people back home really seemed to understand what they had been through.

For many veterans of the Iraq war, this is a familiar scenario. Many of them have been hospitalized after suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, a disease that for some has become part of their daily existence. Some Iraq veterans— from an undisclosed New York Veterans Administration Hospital—came to Rye's Wainwright House, a non-profit organization and holistic healing center, for therapy on a recent weekend in April, according to Diane Negvesky, Wainwright's program director.

Wainwright House is known for its wide-ranging alternative healing programs as well as its yoga and Pilates classes, and was looking for a way to expand its program base in new directions, Negvesky said, including reaching out to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who could benefit from therapeutic healing classes in a peaceful suburban environment like Rye.

The veterans' time in Rye was paid for by some very special Rye people –Lee and Bob Woodruff – who live not far from Wainwright House and started a charitable foundation because they knew what it was like to have their lives blown apart by an IED.

Mr. Woodruff, then co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight, nearly died in 2006. Mr. Woodruff, a father of four, was embedded with the military in Iraq when an IED went off near the tank he was riding in near Taji. Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.

He and his wife, Lee, a former public relations executive and freelance writer, have since dedicated themselves to helping others who have experienced traumatic brain injury. They've written books, including "In an Instant," and "Perfectly Imperfect, A Life in Progress," both of which they co-authored together about healing and overcoming Mr. Woodruff's injury.

The Woodruff's work extended to the Wainwright House, after the organization approached them about bringing a group of veterans to Rye for therapeutic healing. The Woodruffs sponsored the project and paid for the veterans to experience a weekend at Wainwright, Negvesky said, a place founded by Lt. Col. J. Mayhew Wainwright, who may have had an understanding of what these veterans experienced because he had been there, under enemy fire during World War I in France.

During their stay, the veterans learned "Meridian Tapping for Healing and Peace" from Melinda Martin, who taught them dynamic ways to release the blocked energy that causes negative thinking, fear, anger, sadness and shame. They learned "life changing" ways to release fears, phobias, insomnia, weight imbalances, and physical pain.

They also watched DVDs, including a Robin Williams documentary about his recovery from, among other things, drug abuse. They roamed the grounds and explored the facilities that include three buildings, meeting rooms, dining rooms, a meditation room, a library with a piano and solarium. They also took basic mat yoga classes and restorative yoga at the Carriage House Yoga Center. And they dined on meals catered by the nearby Corner Stone Caterers, according to Ms. Negvesky, who helped plan the program and taught the veterans the basics of yoga along with Carole Stefanelli, one of her fellow yoga instructors.

The Wainwright House insisted on confidentiality and therapists wouldn't allow Rye Patch to talk to any of the veterans, but they did share written comments from those veterans.

One veteran, for example, wrote how before that weekend, he had been a "ball of fear" suffering from major trauma that had left him "selfish and self-destructive," but the Wainwright House time had given him "ways to defuse my anger" and "bond with fellow sufferers who became almost like brothers."

Another wrote that the Wainwright House experience had given him "positive and useful tools to utilize" in coping with his suffering so that he was "no longer afraid." And yet another wrote "when I came here I was a mess, I didn't want to speak to anyone…but now I have a new source of life" and "my feeling of loss has been replaced with a new joy for living that I hope to take away with me."

And all of these life-altering experiences were going on at Wainwright House, where the war from Iraq came to Rye in ways virtually unknown to the community-at-large. Wainwright is looking to stage similar programs for more vets and their significant others in the near future.

Further program information: 914-967-6080; www.wainwright.org.