The Healing Effect of TRE on Your Relationships

Svava Brooks 10/30/174:32 AM

Did you know connecting with your body makes it easier to connect with other people? It’s true. Because of that, one of the side effects of TRE is the healing effect it has on your relationships.

I’m in Iceland this month, leading two groups of ten people through the TRE process for three weeks. Teaching TRE is one of my favorite things to do. I love the way it helps my students connect with the wisdom of the body.

When most people come to a TRE workshop for the first time, they tend to be a little nervous. I can relate. I felt the same way when I was introduced to TRE three years ago. Some come after watching a few videos and googling articles about TRE online. But most attend because they believe TRE will help them heal. And it will!

Being connected to the body is a new experience for child abuse survivors like us. We had to disconnect as children in order to survive our traumatic past. Since connecting is not a skill we were taught, we never knew we needed to reconnect as adults. This is one of the main reasons why our relationships tend to be a mess. If you’re not connected to your body, it’s impossible to connect with others in a meaningful way.

It’s important for all survivors to proceed slowly when they practice TRE. Baby steps are essential. It takes time to learn self-regulation when working with your body, which is another skill we were never taught as children.

We all know recovery from abuse is not a quick fix. TRE is no different. Yes, you’ll experience immediate relief during your first few TRE sessions. But deep healing from the chronic trauma of child abuse takes time. Be patient with yourself and your progress. Be consistent, stick with it, and healing will come.

If TRE sounds like a healing tool you’d like to experience, send me a message. I work with clients worldwide through private, online, TRE sessions. I’m always happy to answer your questions or schedule an online TRE session with you. Just ask!

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Leah HarrisMember

Woot! This is so awesome. Svava. I am currently getting certified as a TRE practitioner. Glad to meet another "shaker." :-)

10/31/174:21 AM

Kathy BrousMember

What is Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®) ?

Dr. Peter A. Levine discovered 35 years ago that wild animals recover from trauma by tremoring spasms of their body core and flailing of limbs, to complete the fight-flight they were in before they froze. Levine shows a National Geographic video of a polar bear chased by biologists (just to tag him), then shot with a tranquilizer dart. As the bear wakes from freeze, its body trembles intensely, its legs thrash, and it makes biting motions over its shoulder--replicating and completing all the fight-flight actions it was making during the chase. Finally it undergoes deep gasping; see minute 10-12 of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmJDkzDMllc This discharges tons of stress chemicals which otherwise get frozen in the body. [See Levine's book “Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body.” ]

Our human thinking brain usually refuses to do this trauma reset, aka "discharge." We're too fearful of the fierce shaking and the scary flood of our own natural aggression we might have to feel--without acting it out. Acting out is a no-no, of course, but we don't know how to feel strong emotions without acting out, so we don't want to feel.

That’s why humans have trauma and wild animals usually don’t: old fight-flight stress chemicals stay frozen in our bodies. Levine created “Somatic Experiencing” body work to let us experience the reset motions we need, especially decades after trauma. My attachment-base psychotherapist and I got a shock when I accessed this discharge shaking doing Levine’s CD exercises (the book I mentioned has an audio CD). My body went wild and released a ton of childhood trauma.

Later, Dr. David Berceli developed TRE® based on this tremoring, to help large groups of traumatized people in refugee camps, earthquakes, poverty, terrorism, war zones, any mass trauma. He discovered that the psoas muscle is key to body core tremoring.

TRE® is a set of seven purely muscular exercises which induce this same “polar bear” tremors on a bodily basis, by exhausting the leg and other muscles that normally inhibit the psoas from tremoring. And then, if we’ve got trauma (who doesn’t?), tremor it will.

Berceli describes the tremor reflex as a vital survival instinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0NooNBBro0

Levine’s friend trauma expert Robert Scaer MD on TRE®: https://livingubuntu.wordpress...-releasing-exercises.

On “how to” TRE® - see Matt Schwenteck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3x_ITdzKbI

Whenever I do these exercises, I feel fantastic. Matt says “only two kinds of mammals have forgotten how do to this life-saving tremoring: zoo animals and humans.” Haven’t we all felt we’re in a zoo at times in our traumatized society?

More here: http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/resources/tools/

10/30/1712:48 PM