TRE in Get The Gloss – 21st Oct 2018

Does your body automatically clench when you’re under stress and you just can’t seem to let things go? Put down the pinot and shake it off. It could even trauma-proof your life.

But what I’m fascinated by are claims that a specific shaking therapy called TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) can radically transform the way we deal with stress, particularly old and accumulated baggage. We can all feel how stress creates patterns of muscular tension in the body – it might go to your stomach, your jaw or your shoulders, for example. It can lead to pain (back pain being a prime example) and have a knock-on effect on our behaviour – anger, road rage or even something more serious such as turning the stress inwards by self-harming. TRE is said to work by rewiring our nervous system, setting us free from those default stress patterns, which were set up to protect us. It’s been referred to as ‘trauma-proofing’. We can’t stop difficult life events, but they don’t have to break us.

It helps regulate your fight or flight response

Can shaking really do all this? It sounds a bit bonkers, but there’s nothing woo-woo about it, as I learned when I booked in for a session with Steve Haines, a chiropractor by background and the UK’s leading TRE practitioner. He practises ‘controlled shaking’ at London’s triyoga centre and privately in North London.

“TRE is a simple set of exercises to help reset the reflexes and habits in the central nervous system,” he explains. “When we have tension and trauma, the old parts of the brain become stuck in defensive strategies, making us tight and contracted prepared for fight-or-flight or freezing the body. TRE is a safe and easy way of releasing tension and waking up your body.”