Shake It Off and Get Trauma, Stress, and Pain Out of Your Body… Instantly

I've had chronic muscle pain for two years. On my way to recovery, I started doing TRE exercises, which use the body's natural shaking mechanism to shake tension out of the body.

Three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, I took part in an intensive dance programme. Being able to move my body with other bodies was a luxury at that time. But here's the but: although I was constantly working with my body, I wasn't really in touch with it. After almost ten months of up to 20 hours of dance training a week, my 40-year-old body was screaming at me. My back hurt, my hip muscles ached, everything felt hard and tight.

Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash

Since then I've had constant pain on the right side of my body. Hip, back, leg, you name it. School medicine (as we call it here in Germany) hasn't really helped, so I'm on my own quest to find out what will. One thing I discovered years ago, that has recently found its way back into my life, is Dr David Berceli's TRE.

Stress, trauma, tension – our bodies store everything

TRE stands for Trauma Release Exercises. The idea behind the concept is that stress, tension and trauma manifest in your body, your muscles, your tissues.

With the TRE exercises you simply shake off everything that is stored in your body. Have you ever seen a gazelle escape from a lion? They shake it off too. All mammals actually do it, only the "smartest" ones have somehow forgotten how to do it.

I mean, our body does it automatically when our life is at stake. But in today's life, I think we have just got used to the amount of stress. And we store it and store it and store it. And when we feel stressed, we think we just need to go for a run to calm down. Or dance, as in my case. And sometimes it works, but in my case it didn't. So, looking back, I think it's a pretty simple calculation:

(pandemic stress + compensation with extreme sports) × "almost a year"
= CHRONIC PAIN & BODY IN AGONY

*never forget the brackets ;)

I'm not saying this is the only cause of my problem (because my body is over 40), but it's definitely one. So I'm glad I started doing the TRE exercises.

When I shake it off, it looks like I've been possessed by a demon

You'll find all the exercises in the video below. But to give you an idea of how I make my body shake, here is a brief description: I lie on the floor with my legs in the butterfly position, and just by adjusting the height of the "butterfly wings" my legs automatically start to shake. And then I let the shaking, the trembling, go through my whole body.

I have been doing the TRE exercises every day for the last week. And each time it was a little different. Sometimes I shook like I was shivering, sometimes I rocked my pelvis back and forth like I was the star of an adult film, and very often I just looked like I was possessed by a demon. Like her. Hello Exorcist!

It's strange what my body does all by itself. I don't force it, I don't control it, it just moves, shakes, trembles… and sometimes it really scares me. When that happens, I stop immediately. I don't want to bring up traumas that I can't handle on my own, or irritate my nervous system. Fortunately, it's very easy to stop shaking. All you have to do is straighten your leg and the shaking stops. Fascinating.

After each session I feel really relaxed. I've also noticed that my muscle and back pain has got a bit better. But hey, it's just one week of practice, let's see where these exercises take me. I'll let you know.

Anyway, that's enough from me - for those of you looking to shake off some stress or tension, here's the video to get you started.

For those of you who wants to see first how weird it can look like, check out this video. It’s just 12 minutes, but gives you a good idea of a live session.

And for you, my fellow researchers, I recommend that you watch Mike Maher's interview with Dr David Berceli. I have already written about The Breath Cast, and although this topic is not specifically about breath work, Mike himself has been very involved with TRE lately. It's a long interview, over an hour, but at the end you get to see a bit of a live session. And boy, Mike looks as crazy as me when I'm doing TRE in my living room.

So, shake it off… literally.

Cheers,
Katie