TRE, Trauma Release Exercises, is a 6 exercise protocol that releases stored tension from the psoas. The psoas is the deep muscle that connects your spine to your legs. It is where the body holds trauma. Not metaphorically. Physically.
It is worth knowing where it sits, because almost nobody can point to it. It runs from the lower back, through the pelvis, to the top of the thigh. It is the muscle that lifts your knee and the muscle that curls you up. It is also, and this is the part that matters, the muscle that pulls you into a protective shape when something frightening happens.
When something overwhelming happens that you cannot fully process, the body stores it in the muscle tissue. The psoas tightens and locks. Over years, this becomes chronic tension you stop noticing because it has been there for so long it feels like baseline.
That word baseline is the whole problem. People do not come to this saying their psoas is tight. They come saying they cannot sit still in the evening, or that their lower back has been like that for years, or that they wake at 4 and cannot work out why. Nobody experiences held tension as tension. They experience it as their personality.
TRE works because it triggers the body's natural tremoring response, the same response you see in animals after a near-death encounter, where they shake for several minutes and then walk away as though nothing happened. Humans have suppressed this response. TRE restores it.
We learn the suppressing early and we learn it from everywhere. Sit still. Calm down. You are fine. Stop making a fuss. The shaking is embarrassing in public and so it gets held, and a thing that was designed to take 4 minutes does not finish.
What a session looks like. 90 minutes, conducted remotely or in person. The 6 exercises are gentle physical positions that fatigue specific muscle groups. After the exercises, the body begins to tremor on its own. You lie down and let it happen. It is not painful. It is not dramatic. It is the body finally completing something it began years ago.
The exercises themselves are undemanding. If you have ever done a stretch class you will recognise the sort of thing. There is no strength required and no fitness level to meet, and anything physical going on for you can be worked around, so tell me beforehand and we adapt.
The tremor is the part people cannot picture. It usually starts in the legs, and it feels less like shivering and more like a vibration that is happening to you rather than by you. You are entirely awake. You can stop it at any point by straightening your legs, which is worth knowing, because knowing it is what lets most people allow it in the first place.
The 3 things people worry about beforehand are almost always the same.
That they will lose control. You do not. You stay present throughout and you can stop it in a second.
That they will cry, or that they will not. Some people do and some people do not and neither means anything about whether it is working. Something can shift without any emotion attached to it at all.
And that they will do it wrong. This is the most common one and the least founded. The body is doing the work. Your only job is to stop interfering, which is admittedly the hardest instruction most capable people ever receive.
Afterwards, most people are tired in a specific way. Not sleepy exactly. Heavy. The usual advice is to have nothing much on for the rest of the day, drink more water than you think you need, and go to bed early. Some people are unusually hungry. Some feel flat for a day. All of that tends to pass on its own.
Some people notice a change after 1 or 2 sessions. Some need more. There is no set number, and anybody who tells you there is has stopped describing bodies and started describing a package.
As for what it costs, I would rather tell you directly than print a number on a page that will go out of date. Ask me and I will answer plainly.
I trained in TRE because I had 10 years of stored trauma that no amount of therapy was shifting. Talking about it kept me in it. TRE moved it through. That is what made me do this work.
The work I do now is built on this principle. The body knows. You just have to let it speak.
More like this
What trauma actually is, and why the definition changed everything. https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/what-trauma-actually-is-and-why-the-definition-changed-everything
TRE, Brainspotting and Flash EMDR, what they actually are, in plain language. https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/tre-brainspotting-and-flash-emdr-what-they-actually-are-in-plain-language
Why I do this work https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/why-i-do-this-work-nervous-system-regulation-and-somatic-release
If you would like to talk about whether this is right for you, email me at anna@annalouoflondon.com or message me on WhatsApp at https://wa.me/447738470156.