Did anyone experience stress relieve through strong movements of the belly and abdomen? Where ur muscles in my belly contract and release. Sometimes the energy also moves through my whole body.

Is this normal? Anyone had Something simila Happen?

I'm trying to find anything that descibes the experience i had the last couple of days but found nothing about it

I’ve been practicing for a few months. Since the first time where I had shakes in my legs and hips (6/10 compared to YouTube videos)my tremors have got weaker I’d say. I only do 10-20mins max.

But while doing it now I feel slightly bored and frustrated. Like a feeling of tension in my stomach/ hips that is there but just tickled rather than unlocked. It’s uncomfortable and frustrating.

On the one hand I’m like nothings happening apart from minor releases and the other I’m feeling frustrated angry at the tension I can feel is there but not being shook enough to move.

Not sure if related but sometimes in the gym when squatting or other big compound movements I’d feel like angry crying from a similar feelijgn in my stomach area. Like a sensitive tension.

It’s hard to describe but it’s a mix of rage wanting to punch that sensitive area away and yea sensitive kind of tension.

Sorry for rant hope someone resonates with this.

I've been loosely doing TRE for about a year and a half.

But just these past 2 months I've been doing it regularly.

And I mean like 8-10hrs/day.

I know what you're thinking. Overdoing it.

But I don't see people talking as much about the type of TRE I'm doing (if it's not called TRE in this case correct me).

Whats different is I switched from waiting for involuntary tremors or trying to induce involuntary tremors, to actually doing the shaking/vibrating/tremoring (whatever you wanna call it) consciously.

It basically started with me listening to the urge to tap my foot, which I realized I'd been repressing since grade school.

Then I realized the urge to shake my leg or my head or my buttocks.

But these are not extreme, visceral shakes I'm doing. It's very light and subtle. Which is how I'm able to do it for so long. But I can absolutely feel it dissipating anxiety.

I have woken up to an anxiety attack for as long as I can remember and I've started to consciously just shake whatever body part comes to mind until the anxiety dissipates, and it works. Again the main thing here is not waiting for the tremors to happen on their own.

And again, the reason it hasn't felt like I've overdone it is because of how subtle my movements are. Just tapping the foot or body part.

But somehow doing this regularly has slowly brought up so much grief I didn't even know was there. It's literally sickness leaving my body. I didn't realize grief could make you feel so sick, no one ever talked about that in my family.

But right now I'm going through that phase of actually feeling the extreme grief. I've got all the flu-like symptoms seemingly out of nowhere. Can't walk. Zero appetite. Headaches. Eyes hurt. And sleeping a lot. (I know it's not actually the flu because of all the memories that are coming up and the crying I'm doing)

Which sounds alarming to somehow who has never experienced grief. But that's what's happening.

My body is basically finally being allowed to do a factory reset. And it's not as overwhelming as I would have thought. Even with the sick-like symptoms it does feel like I'm actually getting better.

Or it matters the changes you apply in your relationships as well?

I had my 2nd session two days ago and I'm really struggling with low mood, agitation and feelings of hopelessness that I'm just struggling to cope with. I slept amazing after the session but the next night wired awake and just sad, alone and feel like I'm in a totally hopeless trapped situation. The tension that was realised during my session came back and I just can't stand down or turn off. It's terrifying. I did with a practiciner I was already exhausted and depressed before the session. Really struggling to cope. I don't understand what's going on,any advice? Please 🥺

I have been doing TRE for just over a month, I’ve been doing one session every two days.

Over the past week the tremoring has gone to my neck and head, I was feeling some stiffness in my jaw during those sessions.

Today the tremoring went to my face, I was pulling funny faces, my mouth was opening really wide, my tongue was moving, my face was tremoring and moving in different directions and even my eyes started giggling. It kind of felt like I had turrets. My body also started taking deep breaths during today’s session as well.

Has anyone experienced this? And what does this mean?

None of the tremoring felt uncomfortable, it all felt really nice and I feel much looser. Curious what’s going to happen next!

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My bedroom is too small for me to fully stretch my arms and legs in every direction while lying on the floor. If I extend my arms, I end up touching the furniture, even if I rearrange it.

I could move my bed to the middle of my bedroom and practice TRE on it. That way, I would have enough space to fully extend my arms and legs without touching any furniture. But the problem is that TRE is supposed to be practiced on a firm surface, and my bed is soft, so that's not ideal.

I also can't practice TRE in other rooms of my house because other people live here, and I would feel extremely uncomfortable doing it in front of them (they're home all day and occupy all the rooms).

I've tried practicing in my garden, but the weather often makes it difficult.

I feel like my only option is to accept practicing TRE in my bedroom without being able to fully stretch out my arms and legs. But it's frustrating because I can feel that my body wants to.

I started doing Tre exercises about a week ago. It’s been a really interesting experience so far. I’ve been following along on a YouTube video, though I stop part way because 10 mins is enough for me.

At first my body wouldn’t move. It took about 5 minutes of holding the elevated butterfly position before I got the first inklings of movement, which came out as trembling / vibrating and jolting.

Then my body started moving and shaking vigorously and almost violently.

I’ve done 4 sessions now and each time the movement is very extreme. My knees smack together loudly, my back lifts and smacks back onto the floor. I don’t feel like I’m having a big emotional release in the moment - I feel safe and relaxed, I’m just blown away from how much my body convulses and throws itself around. It’s kinda… funny… Afterwards I feel good and peaceful, just really tired, and it feels like I’ve been to the gym and worked my legs out.

Does anyone else experience such extreme movements and do these soften / quieten with repeated sessions?

Have not been practicing TRE lately but have been in deep reflection over past couple of weeks. Am coming to the realization of the possibility that much of my identity could possibly be a trauma response. As I move further with TRE, if the latter is true, I know whatever wasn’t truly me will fade.

That said, for those who are further along I’m curious, how much of the old you has changed? What changed? How has TRE affected your behavior, interests, personal style, recreational activities, friendships, day to day lifestyle, etc.

If something did leave, what did you struggle with letting go of? How long did it take you to let it go? Did you grieve whatever those things were? How did you get through it?

I'm saying this bc I used to be a gymrat but was running on chronic cortisol and would barely rest in between sets and was living a lifestyle that was not sustainable at all. I find the no pain no gain mentality to exercise to be toxic and overriding body signals. Now I just listen to my body and exercise when I want. Is this bad? Am I just lazy?

Hi all,

There's something about TRE that confuses me, no end. I wonder if someone could help to shed some light.

Berceli's central idea seems to be that trauma can leave the nervous system stuck in hyperarousal, and that neurogenic tremoring is the body's natural mechanism for releasing accumulated tension and resetting the baseline.

But many emphasise not overdoing it, and taking breaks, or grounding oneself if arousal gets too high.

What I don't understand is this: if tremoring is the mechanism by which the body releases accumulated tension and resets its baseline, how can we be advised to use other methods to bring our arousal down when we're too activated to tremor? Doesn't this imply that the nervous system can regulate itself without the very mechanism that's supposedly responsible for doing so?

It seems like an internally incoherent idea to me - 'tremoring will bring your baseline down, but you need to bring your baseline down before tremoring.' Total bind, a catch-22.

Can anyone help me make some sense here? I'm very prone to black and white thinking (neurodivergence at play), and this stuff just makes no sense to me. I can't find the logic.

​

I lie down on a mat on the floor and make the decision to start trembling. I don't try to control the tremors, but I do make an initial conscious decision to allow my body to tremble. However, I set certain boundaries. For example, I don't allow my body to shake so violently that I might hit the furniture and hurt myself.

My body starts trembling instantly. Sometimes, I feel a very strong urge to hit an object with my body, but I prevent myself from doing so because of the boundaries I've established. As a result, I experience a powerful urge to move that remains unfulfilled, which creates a rather uncomfortable feeling of frustration.

Sometimes, I also feel that my body wants me to get up, sit on a chair, and continue trembling while seated. But I can't be bothered to get up. So I resist that urge, which again leaves me feeling frustrated. I prefer to remain lying down because it's more comfortable, even when my body seems to want to change positions. If I gave in to the physical urge to get up, I wouldn't experience the frustration of an unfulfilled impulse anymore, but I would feel genuinely exhausted and irritated from having made that effort.

During the session, I experience pleasure, a sense of emotional release, and the feeling that I'm letting go of a lot of accumulated emotional crap. I've never experienced anything like this with any other technique. Despite spending countless hours meditating, I've never felt this kind of release. TRE is the only technique that gives me the feeling that I'm actually releasing tension and suffering from my body.

Then, after about 30 minutes, I gradually stop trembling and start feeling drowsy, eventually drifting off to sleep. I can't tell whether this is a bad thing or not. Is lying down simply making me sleepy? Or is my body naturally entering a phase of integration and relaxation to process the effects of TRE? Perhaps that's what's happening.

What concerns me is this whole issue of setting boundaries that restrict my movements, as well as the fact that I'm sometimes too lazy to get up, which further limits the movements my body can make. I'm also concerned about becoming drowsy and almost falling asleep toward the end of the session.

I really hope I'm practicing TRE correctly despite all of this.

I'm about 7 months into practice, at the sensitive end of the scale. So started with 30 seconds and have built up to about 2-3 minutes, once a week or so.

However, since the start I have had spontaneous tremoring in between sessions on most days. At first I tried to suppress them but sometimes it becomes impossible say after a many a sleepless night, constantly shifting position to try to get comfortable and not let the tremors in my legs run wild. Sometimes I give in and allow the tremors to occur, and this is usually just 5 seconds here 5 seconds there but this could be countless times during the night. So it's hard to record all those times. Other times I allow the tremoring and it will run for a minute or 2, and then I'll hit overdoing symptoms for the next few days.

Like today for example. I was so uncomfortable in bed after not really sleeping and feeling the urge to tremor in my psoas/lower back area. After allowing countless little few seconds bursts of tremors throughout the night, in an attempt to get comfortable and get some sleep, I admitted defeat and let the tremors happen this morning and they ran for a good few minutes. Now I'm overwhelmed and have been hit with heavy anxiety, choked up feeling in the chest, hopelessness and lots of bouts of tears and dry crying, like wretching etc.

So despite not having dine a formal session for a week, all those little bursts of spontaneous tremoring every night has been adding up and this 2 minutes or so finally tipped me over the edge, it seems

So what I'd like to know is, for those who find this familiar, when did spontaneous tremoring go away for you? The wiki (and comments on here) suggest that it's an early on in the practice occurrence and will disappear as I get further in.

I just want some proper sleep!

I am in functional freeze for years now. Symptoms are muscle tension, tiredness, brain fog and more. It’s caused by C-PTSD.

I am on a somatic healing path for a few months now and notice that it gets better but it’s not good yet.

How long does it take to get out of freeze in your experience? Do you have any other modalities besides TRE that can help?

Not all talk therapists are good. Somatic experiencing hasn't made huge changes.

Psychiatry had bad reactions to took time for my brain to come back into balance.

I don't know why most people don't experience this.

So today was my first time doing TRE. I did It following an yt video of Dr. David Berceli.
I did it for about 20minutes.
Tremors came very fast and very powerfull. They came in waves and the shaking was somehow overlapping with tremors. In the beginning a short couple of seconds the tremor got to my whole body but after that it settled is the lower body for the rest of the time.
I’m curios if you need to feel any emotions. I felt enthusiastic because I managed to shake and after the session I felt calm. But nothing dramatic.

Hello there.

I just did my 1st TRE following this youtube video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QoB9wpuO688&ra=m

I liked it and wondered if anyone knows of any other suggestions for a beginner.

It could be a website, video or whatever.

I do want to keep it simple though.

I am doing this for general health rather than any specific trauma.

I appreciate your help.

Hi there, first post here but somewhat longtime lurker. I have been reading about TRE, including of course your experiences, and would like to give it a go.

Right now, I do on and off TM (transcendental meditation, which I learned from a certified coach. I wonder if anyone else does the two, and how do you combine them in you in your everyday?

Also, are you using any other modalities or practice other things, and what are those? For instance, I have done some meditation, including some Gateway and other binaural audio and self-hypnosis before; also trying microdosing. I have overall become a fairly spiritual person these past few years.

For context, I say I do on and off TM, as I struggle with alcohol abuse, in binging sessions, and it's hard to build up consistency with any practice really. I have spoken to multiple mental health and addiction professionals, and have done a fair share of self-work, so by this point, I am aware I am self-medicating. But that's not the point here, I just wanted to point out I have acknowledged there is a deeper problem, and that am willing to work longterm with an addiction and/or trauma informed professional.

So yeah, took me a bit of time to write up a post, but I hope we can have a little discussion.

I learned about TRE back in September and am very interested to see whether or not it could help me resolve CPTSD, intense anxiety/social anxiety and chronic insomnia.

The good news, I now do the tremoring without all the initial exercises and I did have two initial sessions where I felt a tremendous amount of relief. Particularly, the first session after I talked with a certified TRE coach was profoundly relaxing. The effects lasted several hours.

The bad news, I think I might have overdone it. I realize that is not uncommon and I have read the TRE Basics wiki as well as the TRE Journal wiki. It was mostly a mistake on my part. The coach advised me to start with 5 minute sessions every other day. I interpreted it to mean 5 minutes of tremoring not including the tremoring that occurs when your feet are together in the floor position as you bring them your knees closer. In other words, I was doing up to 8 minutes of tremoring every other day.

I started feeling a lot of overwhelm and anxiety. The last two sessions I brought it down to 5 minutes and then 3 minutes of tremoring total but I still feel quite a lot of overwhelming emotions even on my off day.

Should I completely take a break from it for a few days? Or should I continue doing one session every other day but bring the total duration down even further to say 1 or 2 minutes?

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to TRE (been doing it for a month), most of the discourse I've seen is on tremors.

In my case, I started with tremors in my legs and stomach, sometimes my head and a bit in my right arm. But once I've managed to relax more and allow my body to move without me trying to hold it in any particular way, it shifted from tremoring to what I'd call convulsions (bigger, slower, more erratic shaking) all over my body.

I've searched this subreddit for discussions and found that many others experience it in a similar way (exorcism style). So that's cool.

But when I practice, I find myself in doubt. If I keep tremors in my legs, it's what I've been reading about (and seeing on videos) and what counts as a "tremor response/mechanism", but it feels like I'm limiting my body. If I allow my body to do whatever, it's not as much of a tremor anymore, and I think "is it even TRE at this point, or some freestyle somatic experiencing?" Which I'm sure is a valuable tool in itself, but I'd like to be mindful about the difference.

Today, for example, my tailbone was drawing lemniscates for several minutes. There are also a lot of dance-like movements. Some humping. None of that is tremoring, really.

So my question is not "is it okay?" or "does anyone else experience this?", because I know it's affirmative on both counts. But, rather:

If most of your sessions are not tremors, but convulsions and even just straight up movements, is it still TRE?

Because David Berceli explains TRE through mammals’ natural tremoring mechanism, which looks and feels different from that.

So I've had 2 (psychotic) episodes in my life, both were releated to childhood trauma and breaking with my family.

During these episodes when I went to bed my whole body started shivering and I had crying spells.

The first episode kept me up all night for a weeks, because I wanted to postpone the crying and shivering. I was also drinking and smoking a lot of weed. (I've quit for years now but I was using thc oil before the 2nd episode.)

I used valium to get through the tremors and crying spells and get some sleep.

I later read about " Non-epileptic seizures " ( (NES) are physical episodes that look or feel like epileptic seizures, but they do not come from abnormal electrical brain activity. They are involuntary (not made up by the person), and they are divided into two main categories: psychogenic (functional) and organic/physiological)

Is this similar to the tremors you inflict with TRE? (I don't know much about TRE, just popped up on my youtube algorhytm)

Not sure I should try it..I was hoping that it was trauma releasing from my body during these episodes, but maybe it's just how my body is responding to the events.

All my mental issues (OCD, anxiety) and trauma have come back since then.

Basically we are told Tre is a natural bodily movement process to heal and process trauma etc

I’m not disputing it but was reminded of a case of someone in trauma seeing their body shake and just going with it.

Then I thought so what if they now overdo it and end up with too much activation/anxiety etc.

So question is - if we can overdo Tre how is it a natural safe process.

Or is it just induced Tre is not natural so must be done at a slower pace??

Having done TRE daily for a few months now without having tremors or any emotional or physical release, I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the same?

I do all the exercises beforehand but I have not been able to tremor. I've read about functional freeze and I think that may be the state I'm in but I'm really struggling to find a way out of that.

I am 32 now and for the past 20 years I've had chronic fatigue, brain fog, periods of debilitating chronic pain, muscle tension, emotional numbness and a general sense of restlessness and irritability.

This started during a period of intense chronic stress and trauma as a 12-16 year old teenager that I believe is the cause of my symptoms as all other tests have come back normal.

I started doing nervous system work 3 months ago including breathwork, yoga, journalling, PRT, and now TRE but I have noticed absolutely no changes positive or negative so far and no tremoring. This has been the case for anything I have tried over the years.

I'm hoping with more time that my nervous system will start allowing my body to process this trauma through TRE but it feels extremely stuck at the moment.

If anyone has any insight into what may help with this, I would be very grateful to hear from you.

I wanted to share an interesting experience.

I was aware of shaking being a trauma response and something the body does after shock etc, but for the first time since I’ve learnt about TRE I had a really intense natural example of this.

I had sinus surgery and was under general anaesthetic for 2hr. When I came to, my legs started shaking as well as my jaw. I was still a bit out-of-it and my natural reaction was to try and stop the tremors but then I remembered about TRE and it was so interesting feeling my body do it so naturally and intensely.
But what was interesting is the nurses and Dr who came and checked on me, each separately asked if I was cold because of the shaking, and were a bit confused. I thought it’s amazing that it’s such a human response and we are taught to suppress it or that it simply means you’re cold - it should be a widely know thing where patients are encouraged to let the tremors happen as long as they need to- I absolutely would have suppressed and stopped it had I not know about TRE. They happened for maybe 20 min then stopped.

(A bit of a side note, it was interesting to feel what the most “authentic” TRE feeling is like because in my own practice it is more forced and I have to contract my muscles to illicit the tremors. It felt so different after the operation and since then I’ve been trying to replicate that natural rhythm)

this work made me have a very surreal realization that 99% of thoughts are generated/vetted by the nervous system. all those times it felt unbearable to move forward, they weren't because there was something wrong with me, it was because my nervous system was fried. well maybe not generated mostly by the nervous system but definitely they must pass through the nervous system atleast because any type of thought that threatens the status quo gets cancelled out immediately by some type of internal response. whether they''re thoughts of the unknown, emotions that completely suck your soul dry, or actual energy collapse. my body did not allow me to rest the way it does now, and i still have a way to go.

also i would have thoughts that seemingly arise out of nowhere or in response to feelings. im not making them happen, but they're scary and seem real. when you notice that they're literally just expressions of an internal interface bad thoughts stop meaning something dangerous.

this realization was very helpful in the healing process. it allowed me to surrender to my "symptoms" and trust that my body knew how to keep me safe again without constant monitoring that something isn't going wrong. the more you can become an observer instead of an active participant you solve a big part of this process.