About 18 months ago I interviewed Dr. Melanie Salmon, a doctor, gestalt psychotherapist and TRE provider in South African, about the results of her bringing TRE: Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises, to a children's village in Cape Town. After working with the caregivers for several weeks, they reported far less stress, better sleep, and better behavior from the children in their care.

She then started offering TRE to the children themselves, and all bedwetting stopped, school behavior problems decreased, and schoolwork increased, among other beneficial outcomes.

Dr. Salmon had been living in England, seeing patients, and becoming enormously frustrated at the trauma her patients were experiencing, and her lack of training and tools to help them resolve it. 

Undeterred, she trained in Gestalt Psychotherapy, but still found she needed something else to address where the trauma was being stored - in the body. After doing some online research, she discovered the work of Dr. David Berceli, who developed TRE after years working with refugees and survivors of wars in the Middle East.

TRE allows one to activate one of the body's innate healing mechanisms - shaking (neurogenic tremors) - something shared by all mammals but often repressed by humans, both because we associate trembling with being scared and weak and vulnerable, and because it has become pathologized (shaking is listed as a symptom of many psychiatric disorders in the DSM). 

But the natural tremor instinct allows the body to come back from a freeze state and discharge the still-present fight or flight energy that has been stored deep in the muscles and fascia. And, because the tremoring originates from the brain stem, it does all this without any need for talking, and for almost everyone, no recollection of memories or any emotional response at all. 

That was it for me - an effective modality that releases tension and trauma from the body and without the need to become retraumatized or talk endlessly about what happened or how one feels? I decided to become certified in TRE myself and completed my training earlier this year.

Although still not widely known in the United States (and especially in the center of the country), TRE is now used worldwide with refugees, first responders, caregivers, school children, veterans, and anyone who has experienced any kind of adverse experiences and hasn't had the opportunity to heal.

I am excited to now be able to offer TRE training in the St. Louis metro area, as I believe it could be enormously helpful to so many populations, whether stressed social workers with huge caseloads, first responders whose nervous systems have taken a beating for years, caregivers at residential treatment centers (and the children living in them), veterans who may or may not have been diagnosed with PTSD and so many others who simply have been carrying around tension for years. 

If you'd like to learn more about how TRE was developed, how it works to calm and regulate the nervous system, and experience it for yourself, I'm hosting a 2-hour introductory workshop on TRE at the St. Louis Wellness Center in Webster Groves on Saturday, July 13 from 1-3 pm. Learn more and register at https://www.facebook.com/events/430917147748224/

If you can't make that date/time but would like to learn how TRE might be useful for the communities you serve or organizations in which you work, please reach out - I'd love to schedule an intro workshop. Email me at STLStressRelease@gmail.com.