Resource Your Inner Wild.

Complete Your Stress Cycle.

Return Home to Yourself.

TRE (Tension/Trauma Releasing Exercises): A gentle, body-based practice releasing stress and trauma

In the wild, animals do not carry stress forward. After threat passes, they shake, discharge excess activation, and return to rest. This instinctive rhythm—seen in bears, mammals, and humans alike—is how the nervous system completes survival and restores balance. TRE is a simple yet powerful somatic practice—supported by research—that helps the body release stress, anxiety, and long-held tension by reawakening the body’s innate regulatory intelligence—the same instinct that guides animals back to rest after danger. Through a gentle seven-step process, TRE invites the nervous system to initiate a natural tremoring response—an elemental rhythm through which stored survival energy can soften, unwind, and complete its cycle.

The tremor reflex is ancient. It exists throughout the natural world. After a threat dissipates, animals shake—through muscle, skin, and bone—discharging excess activation before returning to stillness. Humans share this same biological inheritance, though it is often quieted by chronic stress, trauma, or social conditioning. TRE offers a way to listen again—to remember what the body has always known about restoring balance, without force or effort.

Because TRE works directly with the body rather than the thinking mind, it can be especially supportive for those experiencing:

    •    anxiety and panic

    •    chronic pain and physical tension

    •    insomnia and restlessness

    •    agitation or irritability

    •    fatigue and burnout

    •    dissociation or emotional numbness

    •    symptoms related to chronic stress, PTSD, and long-term illness

Like the natural world, the nervous system responds best when it is not rushed. As tension releases gradually over time, many people report improved sleep, less pain, more mobility, greater emotional management and steadiness, clearer focus, and a renewed sense of safety, connection, and resilience. One of the most distinctive aspects of TRE is that it requires very little talking—your body leads the process, responding in sensation, rhythm, and pause.

A Direct Path Back to Regulation

Stress does not live only in the mind—it settles in muscle, fascia, breath, and nerve. When the body perceives threat, it mobilizes for survival. When that survival energy cannot complete its natural arc, it remains held beneath awareness, shaping patterns of tension, vigilance, collapse, or numbness.

In nature, survival has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When that ending is interrupted, the body continues to wait. TRE gently supports the nervous system in moving out of survival states such as fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or overwhelm, and back toward regulation, rest, and grounded presence. This is not a practice of catharsis or force. It is a practice of allowing the body to finish what it once had to pause. Much like an animal settling back onto the tundra floor, the body releases only when it senses true safety.

A Note for the Curious Skeptic

If spiritual language isn’t usually your entry point, you’re not alone. When this work speaks of the body’s “wisdom” or “remembering,” it is describing observable biological processes: the nervous system’s capacity to sense safety, complete stress responses, and return toward baseline.

The tremoring response activated in TRE is a reflex governed by the brainstem and autonomic nervous system—not belief or suggestion. You do not need to interpret this work symbolically for it to be effective. Some people experience TRE as intuitive or meaningful; others experience it simply as a physiological reset. The practice works because of how the nervous system functions, not because of what you believe about it.

The Psoas: The “Guardian of the Gut”

At the center of the TRE process is the psoas muscle—a deep core muscle that plays a central role in posture, movement, and the body’s stress response. Anatomically, the psoas is closely connected to the nervous system and is commonly recruited during fight-or-flight activation, helping the body brace, run, or protect itself. I define the psoas as, “The Guardian of the Gut”—an interior landscape where instinct, protection, and survival energy gather. It is a muscle shaped by evolution, terrain, and the need to move quickly and rest deeply. In many ways, it carries the same intelligence seen in wild animals: alert when needed, relaxed when safe.

As this muscle begins to soften and release through TRE, the body often follows. Tremors may ripple through the hips, legs, spine, or belly—signals that stored activation is finally completing its cycle. What emerges is not collapse, but grounded presence: weight, contact, and quiet strength. You do not need to hold this symbol for the work to function. Whether understood as a deeply involved postural muscle or experienced as a center of instinct and intuition, the psoas often becomes a gateway through which the nervous system remembers how to settle. TRE honors both realities—the measurable anatomy and the lived experience of being a body shaped by the wild.

How I Offer TRE: A Four-Session Series

TRE is most supportive when it unfolds gradually, allowing the nervous system to build trust an settle into its own rhythms. I offer TRE as a structured four-session series, with each session building progressively on the previous one to optimize nervous system regulation and integration. The series is designed as a systematic introduction to TRE, providing both experiential practice and a theoretical understanding of how the body mobilizes, discharges, and restores itself.

Each session incorporates:

    •    Guided TRE exercises, scaled and titrated to your current capacity

    •    Assessment of autonomic nervous system state, including recognition of activation, freeze, and rest patterns

    •    Instruction in supportive preparatory and complementary techniques, such as breathwork, neck and upper-body mobility exercises, and grounding strategies

    •    Integration tools, including structured homework, journaling, and short educational videos, designed to consolidate learning and promote long-term nervous system flexibility

This series ensures participants not only learn the mechanics of TRE, but also develop the capacity to observe, interpret, and self-regulate their nervous system responses in daily life. The focus is on safe, incremental progression, supporting deep physiological release while reducing the risk of overwhelm or re-traumatization.

Session One: Establishing the Foundation

In the first session, you’ll learn the foundational steps of TRE, including the preparatory exercises and how to safely access, pause, and stop the tremoring response. We begin by orienting to the body as a place of refuge, establishing safety through choice, containment, and awareness. We also explore how this practice can root into the rhythms of your life—your days, your seasons, and your natural cycles of energy and rest.

Session Two: Deepening the Practice

The second session deepens the TRE practice as appropriate for your system, including exploring more nuanced TRE positions and variations. This often brings heightened awareness of internal sensation, emotional tone, and subtle shifts between activation and settling. As memories or emotions connected to past stress or trauma surface, we continue to track how they move through the body without chasing narrative or meaning. The emphasis remains on sovereignty—knowing when to continue, when to pause, and when to offer the nervous system rest or support.

Session Three: Supporting Down-Regulation

The third session introduces targeted neck, upper-body, and breathing practices to support down-regulation, vagal tone, and a felt sense of safety. These tools act as anchors, offering ways to return to center when life pulls the system toward activation. They are taught as standalone practices you can draw on throughout the day, either to complement TRE or to support regulation when tremoring is not appropriate.

Session Four: Integration and Moving Forward

The final session weaves the series together, reflecting on how your nervous system has responded over time and clarifying what integration looks like moving forward. Together, we refine a personalized approach to using TRE and related somatic tools—one that honors your capacity, boundaries, and lived experience. Rather than prescribing a rigid routine, the focus is on flexibility: staying in relationship with your body as it continues to recalibrate and respond to life.

Throughout the series, sessions are supported by curated readings, short educational videos, and journaling and reflection prompts to support integration and embodied awareness. This series emphasizes gradual change rather than rapid release, allowing the nervous system to experience contrast over time—activation and settling, movement and stillness. Between sessions, the practice is one of noticing rather than fixing, cultivating choice, discernment, and a more fluid relationship to stress—rooted in trust in the body’s ancient capacity to restore itself.

Who This Program Is For

This program is for people ready to commit to the full TRE series and to a paced, body-based process of nervous system regulation. It’s well suited for those carrying stress, chronic tension, or trauma who want to reconnect with their bodies and build a sustainable TRE practice over time. This work requires consistent attendance, curiosity, and engagement between sessions so what you learn can be integrated into daily life—not approached as a quick fix.

Who This Program May Not Be For

This program may not be a good fit if you’re unable to commit to the full series or are looking for a drop-in or purely cognitive approach. TRE is most effective when sessions build on one another with continuity and follow-through. TRE is a powerful somatic practice, but it does not replace psychotherapy when therapy is indicated. If you’re not ready to meet your body where it is or to work at the pace your nervous system sets, this may not be the right time—and that’s okay. Like an Alaskan grizzly returning to the river after a storm, this work unfolds according to readiness rather than force.

Investment & Learning

The four-session TRE series is $200 per session, totaling $800. This reflects both the structure of the program and your commitment to lasting nervous system change. Each session is a deeply personalized learning experience and includes curated readings, short videos, and reflection exercises to support integration between sessions.

Please note: this is a course, not psychotherapy, and is not insurance-billable. I do not use diagnoses in this work—both because TRE does not require them and because diagnostic labels are often limiting. This program offers a safe, supportive, and non-pathologizing approach to embodied practice and regulation. Change unfolds over time, and this series is designed to support deep, sustainable transformation through consistency, education, and self-practice.

Whether you are navigating trauma, chronic stress, physical symptoms, or sensing a quiet call toward greater ease and aliveness, TRE offers a gentle, embodied pathway back to yourself—guided by nervous system science, held with care, and informed by the deeper rhythms of the natural world.

Learning TRE Together In Your Home

In addition to individual work, I also offer in-home TRE for families or closed groups who wish to learn and practice together in a familiar, supportive setting. Sharing this work in the home can create a sense of ease and connection, allowing each person to explore regulation at their own pace while being supported by the presence of others.

These offerings are held as closed series rather than drop-in sessions, helping build trust, safety, and a shared understanding of the practice over time. This option can be especially meaningful for families, partners, or small groups who want to cultivate resilience together and develop shared tools for grounding, regulation, and care.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO: