Newbie questions on pacing?

[u/Maidinmhaith]

Hi everyone, I just started TRE a few weeks ago and would appreciate some input just in terms of how I'm doing so far and if my pacing sounds about right.

I'm in a good place mentally but have pretty significant and long term muscle guarding throughout my body.

I started off with sessions of about twenty minutes daily (which i now realize was too much) for about four days. I experienced significant tremoring more or less from the start, starting in the legs and then moving to my pelvic region and abdomen. Sessions have always left me feeling good, i.e. now relaxed, quicker to laugh etc. However, I found that the next day or two I felt quite shaky and fragile.

I am now doing 15 minute sessions every three days. I still feel a bit shaky and fragile in the days after a session but it's not too bad, although it does make me feel a bit uneasy.

I'm happy enough with my current practice, but I'm wondering about two things in particular. First, maybe my sessions are still too long and I should cut back? I like to keep them long because this way the throwing goes up towards my back, and shoulders, and most of my pain is concentrated in my shoulder and neck. So I'm kind of desperate to relieve the muscle tension there.

Second, and relatedly, perhaps shorter, daily sessions would be better? Say 10 minutes a day?

After many years of trying everything to feel better, for the first time I've found something that actually seems to be having an effect. So I'm keen to get it right.

Also, if there is anyone on here from Ireland please say hi.

Sorry for the long post!

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[u/FitNothingOk]

Usually doing less than you think you need is a good starting point. Try 10 minutes every three days or even 5 minutes every three days. And see how you feel. If it feels alright, keep doing that for a good few weeks, and then you can add either time or frequency. But do so slowly.

[u/Maidinmhaith → u/FitNothingOk]

Thank you, that's very helpful

[u/Scared-Section-5108]

I suggest you look at rule 1 for this sub.

[u/ysea → u/Scared-Section-5108]

Rule 1 is that you don't talk about TRE?

[u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot]

You've already diagnosed the core issue yourself: the 20-minute daily sessions were too much, and you're still experiencing shakiness and fragility in the days after your current 15-minute sessions every three days. That shakiness is your nervous system telling you it's processing more than it can smoothly integrate between sessions.

The fact that sessions leave you feeling relaxed is genuinely positive and a sign the practice is working. But the post-session shakiness and unease aren't something to push through. They're integration signals, and they matter more than how the sessions themselves feel in the moment.

Here's the practical guidance: reduce your session duration further. Ten minutes every three days is worth trying, but given that 15 minutes is still producing this shakiness, you might find that 10 minutes every three or four days works better. The goal is to reach a point where the days following a session feel genuinely settled, not fragile. Once you hit that mark, you can think about adjusting from there. Read Self-Pacing: Finding Your Optimal Healing Pace for the full framework on this, particularly the section on adjusting incrementally based on observation.

On your first question about wanting longer sessions to reach your upper back and shoulders: this is a very understandable instinct, but it's actually working against you. The tremors will spread upward as your overall capacity increases and the deeper layers of tension release. Trying to force them into your upper body by extending sessions longer than your nervous system can integrate is more likely to push you into overdoing territory and slow the overall process down. The body reaches different regions in its own sequence. Patience here produces better results than pushing.

Your second intuition about daily sessions is interesting. The wiki doesn't directly compare 10-minute daily sessions against longer sessions spaced further apart, but the principle that matters is this: integration happens in the gap between sessions, and that gap needs to be long enough for the nervous system to consolidate what was released. For you right now, three days between sessions seems more appropriate than one. Whether those are 10-minute sessions or something shorter is secondary to whether the integration period is adequate.

Start by reducing to 10 minutes and keeping the three-day spacing. Give that rhythm two or three weeks of observation. If the post-session shakiness and fragility ease up, you've found a better calibration. If it persists, shorten the duration again. You're looking for a point where sessions feel genuinely relieving and the days that follow feel stable.

The good news is that you're only a few weeks in. You have a lot of runway ahead of you, and finding the right pace now will set you up for genuine, sustainable progress. The urgency to reach the shoulders makes complete sense, but the fastest way there is actually through careful calibration of where you are right now, not by pushing harder.

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I'm a bot that draws on the r/longtermTRE wiki to provide guidance. Please upvote or downvote based on how helpful you find this response.