We all have different pasts and experiences.
If your background involves emotional or physical abuse, adverse childhood experiences, significant prolonged stress or trauma and you have not yet worked through these, then TRE® is the package you would need to do as this helps release trauma from the body, helping the brain to process your past, creating new neural pathways which can get rid of nightmares, flashbacks, sciatica, hypervigilance and all the typical symptoms associated with PTSD.
HTR is a different medical system to TRE. and is for women who are struggling with hormonal symptoms during perimenopause and menopause and other times of their life, who are not suffering from active PTSD symptoms.
Neurogenic Yin® is perfect for anyone suffering from autoimmune disorders, fatigue, burnout, fibromyalgia, or psychogenic pain – it’s highly restorative and less physically demanding in comparison to TRE, and includes the neurogenic tremoring which is involved in TRE.
The concept of trauma being held in the body is a central tenet of somatic psychology.
Here are some ways in which trauma is thought to be held in the body:
The James-Lange theory of emotions states that emotion is the result of bodily processes, meaning bodily reactions elicit emotions and this can be demonstrated by the fact that benzodiazepines, which were initially developed as muscle relaxant medication have anti-anxiety qualities. Essentially the muscles relax, which means the brain no longer receives the signals telling it the muscles are tense, and as a result, the anxiety goes away. Benzodiazepines have subsequently been reclassified as anti-anxiety medication for that very reason – but long-term use of them comes with many adverse effects including addiction, overdose, mind disorders and much more.
Trauma leaves footprints in the subconscious part of your brain and body – the autonomic nervous system (responsible for unconscious action, hormone & immune regulation etc.), altering brain function and neural pathways, increasing the sensitivity of the amygdala and shrinking the hippocampus – both of which are located in the subconscious limbic system part of the brain.
The amygdala controls the fight or flight stress response. Chronic stress, adverse childhood experiences, and trauma have the power to alter the function of the amygdala and the hippocampus (which processes new memories). The amygdala becomes overactive/overreactive and essentially stuck, sending signals to the rest of your body and nervous system telling them that there’s a real life tiger in the room that it needs to protect you from, activating the nervous system and body into action, when there is no tiger in the room. Changing the body at a physiological level, producing higher than healthy levels of the hormones Cortisol and Adrenalin in preparation to either run away from the tiger or fight the tiger, affecting our fascia (connective tissues), and muscles, which in turn affects our emotions, making you hypervigilant, anxious, angry, depressed etc.
The peripheral nervous system in your body is part of your subconscious brain The neurogenic tremors activate the brain stem, sending a gentle electric charge around the nervous system essentially unblocking any energetic blockages, rebooting it and regulating the processes in the autonomic nervous system. The fascia (connective tissue – a sensory organ) in the body, then feeds information to the brain, telling the brain that you are safe, calming the brain into releasing the overprotective outputs in the amygdala, calming it, creating neuroplasticity (new positive neural pathways) as well as increasing the size of the hippocampus – meaning your short term memory is improved.
So by using a body-up approach in the first instance, rather than a top-down (talk therapy) approach, we are calming the brain, creating new neural pathways. The practices I teach help to bring you back into balance, calming the amygdala’s sensitivity meaning you are less likely to react and be triggered by difficult conversations and the hippocampus is more able to process new memories, which makes talk therapy more effective when you are eventually ready for it.
We all have different pasts, and experiences. When we experience, adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress, emotional abuse or trauma, the internal threat detection system in our brain can become stuck in a defence physiology, making us overreactive, altering brain function and neural pathways, affecting our mental and physical health.
TRE helps the brain to process challenging past events – even ones that may have happened when you were in the womb or during birth, helping it to let go of these old events, which can be healed & transformed.
TRE® stands for Tension, Stress & Trauma Releasing Exercises designed by David Berceli. These are 7 exercises which stretch and tire out the muscles, activating a natural therapeutic tremor reflex in the body.
The neurogenic tremors help reset the reflexes and habits in the brain that are stuck in a protective mode, creating neuroplasticity – new positive neural pathways. They send a healing electric charge around the nervous system, acting as a system reboot – regulating the body, regulating the go-quick hormones Cortisol & Adrenalin which can cause a multitude of symptoms including: anger, anxiety, sadness & panic attacks, back ache, sciatica, infertility, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), inflammation, insomnia, high blood pressure, heart disease etc.
TRE is a safe and easy way of releasing long-held tension patterns and waking up the body, taking the body from contraction to expansion
Over time people report feeling more alive, joyful, confident, safe and connected to their body through the simple process of shaking
Essentially, we are reconnecting you to your body through tremoring
What’s great about it is, that it’s not talk therapy – I’m a big fan of psychotherapy which can be really useful at the right time, but studies and science now knows that working with the body, to regulate it should be the first step when healing trauma, followed then by psychotherapy.
Our experience in the TRE community is that TRE is an effective anti-stress tool and many people report benefits of improved sleep. We have also seen that tremoring improves other symptoms:
Initially though, I will guide and support you to make sense of things that can arise during the transformational process. I will teach you:
The trauma recovery package is a set of 6 1-hour TRE sessions where you will learn the art of sentience, and self regulation. You will learn how to develop the tremors in your body to the different parts.
Happy shaking!
Neurogenic Yin is an incredibly peaceful restorative practice that I offer clients suffering from burnout, fibromyalgia, complex pain and autoimmune disorders, helping to calm their symptoms.
Neurogenic Yin stimulates the meridians and pranic energy channels, reboots and reintegrates the nervous system, and recalibrates the brain’s limbic system, calming the brain’s over protective outputs, the pain response, inflammation etc.
Reframing our perception of our body and how we talk to it can be very powerful, it’s the reason Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is offered on the NHS, however, I had CBT far too early in my treatment, by a therapist who was clearly not trauma-informed and to be quite frank in my opinion, should not be allowed to teach it. She was out of her depth, which re-traumatised me, putting me in danger.
Other studies have noted that it’s very difficult to see if CBT is an effective treatment for PTSD – one study, in particular, involving 255 female veterans given CBT, saw no change in their depression after the treatment[i].
With regards to TRE, the only questions I’m going to ask you are questions about your body and symptoms for example:
You don’t need to tell me about your past, which could be retraumatising.
The neurogenic tremors enable the body to process your past intuitively.
[i] Shedler J. Psychology Today. 2017.
People who are trauma-informed are qualified professionals who are able to help people recover from trauma.
People who are trauma-aware are not able to help people recover from trauma.
Always ask your therapist whether they are trauma-informed and ask to see their qualifications. I regularly treat clients who have sadly come to me having previously paid for expensive therapies from people who are not trauma-informed. Save your money and time by vetting your service provider in the first instance.
Always check whether your therapist has the correct qualifications. It’s important for your safety and health.
You have to take accountability and set aside time in your day to shake. You will probably notice some positive differences in the first 2 weeks of practicing it, however, the major changes tend to take place between weeks 6 and week 12. It’s a process – but if you don’t do the work, you won’t experience the transformation.
When you’re first starting out, I recommend having 2 sessions per week.
In my experience, if we work more intensely at the beginning, you’ll need to work much less in the long term.
For the best results, the first 3 classes of the trauma recovery package should be no more than 1 week apart, because like therapy, you tend to lose the cumulative effect if we have long pauses in-between
Absolutely – you can stop the tremoring whenever you want to, and I will teach you how to do this.
Whilst the programs I offer are simple and powerful for 99% of the people I treat, there is no guarantee that they will work for everyone.
For the best results:
There are contraindications, which are listed against each programme – if you suffer from any of these, then I am afraid you wouldn’t be able to take part in them.
My programs and classes are not for everyone
Whilst they help most people, I advise anyone who has serious body/mind issues to first seek medical help (doctors or psychiatrist).
If you have a chronic ache, I advise you to get it investigated to make sure there’s nothing physiologically wrong with you, before you embark on any of the programmes that I offer.
I would specifically hold off from doing TRE and neurogenic exercise if you have any of the below conditions which are contraindications.
Physical limitations
Psychiatric conditions (with medication)
The Graduate classes are for people who are experienced shakers, who understand grounding and how to self regulate
