TRE® (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises)


The focus of TRE is on activating tremoring throughout your body to free up the body’s holding patterns associated with your experience of stress and tension, whether it be from your everyday activities or from your experiences of major trauma, or even micro-trauma.

Tremoring is found throughout nature…

  • the ground beneath our feet shakes, most notably during earthquakes, and their aftershocks, but even before this movement reaches the ground, seismologists can measure trembling coming from deeper in the earth’s core.

  • atomic and subatomic particles vibrate

  • animals shake, e.g. after a fight in the wild or other major stressor, the survivors can often be observed standing there and shaking throughout their whole body

  • children readily shake when they are frightened

  • we all tremor when we are cold, but as we grow older, we often learn to suppress the shaking associated with fear, not wanting others to see our fear

This innate tremoring mechanism is part of your body’s natural way of recovering from stress and trauma. It comes from the brainstem, or the primitive area of the brain, where our survival responses originate, including breathing.

Tremoring is your body’s way of restoring itself to a more calm and relaxed state from a state of acute intense hyper-excitability or from chronic tension.

David Berceli developed this approach coming from his own experience and observations during over two decades living and working in nine different war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa, and from his own experiences and challenges recovering from PTSD.

While it was developed as an approach to trauma recovery, it has been found to be helpful for the whole range of stress-related problems, even those developing simply from the typical stresses of daily life.

Consider for a moment -- What happens in your body when you are under stress?

  • You unconsciously tighten your muscles – the greater the stress, the more intense and widespread is the muscle tightness throughout the body.

  • And not just your skeletal muscles, but also the smooth muscles of your internal organs and the cardiac muscles of your heart. That’s how your digestive system and all other systems of your body can be affected by stress, even gravely affected.

  • This tension cuts off the normal pulsations that need to occur for healthy and vibrant functioning. These pulsations are integral to our life force and feelings of vitality.

So, the key question is -- How can you free yourself from what may have become a chronic state of tension? How can you release these largely unconscious tension patterns? We are only conscious of the surface layer, which is only the tip of the iceberg.

Since the contractions are largely unconscious, perhaps the healing is best done unconsciously.

With TRE we trigger the innate tremoring mechanism through a series of exercises that we do consciously, but then as the tremoring takes over, all we have to do is lay there and let the unconscious part of the brain do its thing. It knows where to find these tension patterns and how to release them.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that it is something magical that results in an overnight recovery from contracted patterns that have been years in the making, but it is something remarkable and a wonder to behold to experience how over time you can experience profound changes in your whole way of being in your body, and in your way of being with other people. When you inhabit your body in its relaxed pulsating state, you will be more vibrant, energized and loving toward others.

I work with people individually, as couples, or in groups to provide instruction for TRE. I find that teaching TRE in a small group formed by an individual who develops an interest in TRE is not only more affordable for all involved, but it is uniquely effective. As many as four can fit into my teaching space, or I’m available to travel to teach in your space if that would be more conducive to gathering the group together. In circumstances where a Certified TRE Provider is not available locally, I would also consider working remotely through an online platform like Skype or Zoom that allows for visual along with audio interaction.

For further information, see TRE® Resources and TRE® Video Links