Trauma Release Exercise: Finding safety in a stressed out world
I've often thought that the universe puts you exactly where you need to be exactly when you need to be there. And so when I found myself searching for a way to expand my career and integrate trauma release exercise with trauma informed yoga, in order to better serve warriors, both in and out of the military. I was absolutely thrilled to find the opportunity to study with not just any trainer, but one of the best in the business.
Donna Phillips
Today I'm so excited to bring you a very special interview with my trainer and mentor, Donna Phillips. Donna has over 30 years of experience in the health care, wellness and medical industries. She has degrees in exercise physiology, business and holds advanced certifications in both yoga and Pilates. She's an outstanding teacher. But what makes her really unique, and why I wanted to introduce her to you today, is that she also happens to be a trauma release exercise certification trainer.
She is passionate about bringing trauma release exercise to the world as a way to safely self regulate stress tension and trauma. We're going to learn a little bit more about what trauma release exercise is, what it does for the body, how it can help us connect and reestablish a friendly relationship within ourselves and safely down regulate the nervous system, so that we can really experience our lives to the fullest.
I had such a great time talking with Donna. And as always, every time we sit down to chat, I learned so much, and I think you will too. Please enjoy this interview with Donna Phillips.
Transcript
Ericka Thomas
Hi Donna Welcome to the podcast.
Donna Phillips
Thank you, Ericka It's good to see you.
Ericka Thomas 2:28
Yes, I am so excited to talk with you today about all things trauma release exercise. But before we get started, I usually start my interviews with kind of an icebreaker question so that my listeners can kind of get to know you a little bit better. And I was wondering, for you, who's your real life hero?
Donna Phillips 2:51
Oh my gosh. I have a few and I call them incredible humans that have really just played a big part in my life, in my heart. My number one would be my dad. Yeah, definitely my father. I had an awesome dad growing up. He's no longer here with us, but always in my heart, and just an amazing, amazing person inside and out.
Ericka Thomas 3:17
That's awesome. That's awesome. Where did you grow up Donna?
Donna Phillips 3:19
I grew up in Michigan, so I was born in the lower part of the lower part of Michigan in Ann Arbor and then when my dad retired moved up to a little town called Lupton, Michigan little spot. We carry our map, us Michiganders, with us so it was right up here. [showing spot on hand] And, yeah, when I was about 15. We grew up on close to 200 acres so I grew up in the boonies.
Ericka Thomas 3:51
Okay so, Michigan is pretty far from North Carolina. That's where we're recording today. So how did you make your way down to the lovely south?
Donna Phillips 4:01
Well, I love it here. I was living in Florida, and I met my husband. He was in North Carolina, and I traveled up here to marry the man, and then and start our family here. So, yeah,
Finding a the key
Ericka Thomas 4:19
That's wonderful. So, can you tell me a little bit about your journey with TRE? Kind of what got you to TRE? Because I know your background is in yoga therapy. And to me that seems like a natural progression. But, what were the steps for you? What brought you to where you are right now with trauma release exercise?
Donna Phillips 4:44
Sure. Well, you know, I work with diverse...I’m an exercise physiologist and a certified yoga therapist and a Pilates teacher so I've been working Eastern and Western medicine, forever. It seems like, and I work with a lot of diversified bodies. You know a lot of bodies that have been through a lot, a lot. A lot of autoimmune disease, bodies that don't work, whether it's an athlete that has been injured or somebody that doesn't have arms and legs. You know maybe it was an accident or a severe accident or a birth defect or a bombing something like that because I do work with military service as well.
So, over the, over the years, working with all these diversified populations there was one area that was so hard so from the physical part, whether Eastern or Western medicine bringing in that and movement was fine.But there was one part that I was finding that the human organism was having a harder time rebounding from, and that was stress tension and trauma.
Most of my clients would have a strong traumatic background and, you know, I'm not a talk therapist, I'm a bodyworker. So, having to get into the story wasn't part of my scope of practice. the story would come out, I'd listen and be able to work with them within my scope, but that was always something that was a challenge. And it was back in 2008, when a colleague and I were planning one of our yoga therapy ceu trips we have to get continuing education every couple of years. And on one of the websites. It popped up as a trauma release exercise. And I read about it and it was talking about it from a neuro physiological background. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this makes sense.
So we scheduled a session with a provider out in California, ended up spending the whole day with her and had such a great time. She took us through TRE. And immediately I said, sign me up! You know I got back home from that trip, and was immediately online looking for a certification training where I could learn more. And they just had started doing more of those back then, in the States, and that's my start to it.
So it was more my curiosity and my knowledge of knowing what happens in the human organism and getting that personal experience from a provider. Wow, it was very impactful in my life, and I haven't stopped since.
I'm a certification trainer, one of about 60 in the world. And I became a trainer back in 2013. So my progression was fairly consistent. Once I became, back then we were called facilitators or practitioners, depending on our scope of practice. So you know I just worked through that process and started teaching TRE once I was certified and noticed a phenomenal, phenomenal change in my clients.
People that I was only doing yoga therapy with and traditional exercise. I was seeing them come back and these are most with chronic pain autoimmune Fibromyalgia back issues that gamut of diagnoses was taking around two years. And that was with seeing somebody two to three times a week. Once I integrated TRE. Wow, the same changes happening but the three months, three to six months, really, so it sped the process up enormously.
Ericka Thomas 8:33
That is incredible. So, is that due to the connection with the nervous system that trauma release exercise where that taps into the body to kind of give those really, really fast results. I mean, you said a lot of things; chronic pain, fibromyalgia. I mean, these are things people struggle with for a lifetime.
Donna Phillips 8:57
It steals their life.
What’s going on when we tremor?
Ericka Thomas 8:58
Yeah. So what is it about that trauma release process that taps right in to where all of those things live?
Donna Phillips 9:08
Sure. Well, I can tell you, each of us is genetically encoded to shake. And, and that's our neurophysiology at its best. But it's been suppressed, it's been socialized out of our culture. So in TRE we're teaching somebody how to do something their body already knows how to do. The main thing we have to do Ericka is teach people how to be safe with it. You know, shaking somewhere they're afraid we're cold, you know something's not right. It's not working right, that's how we're programmed or we've been programmed at least. You know I wasn't taught how to do this as a kid or a teenager or as an adult. Going through college with how I studied the body.
So, a provider's primary purpose is to teach safety and to teach somebody how to work with their process and connect to the tremor mechanism. That is our goal. That's the hardest thing we do. Because what happens in the nervous system is when you start engaging and working with the neurogenic tremor, that's the, the tremor mechanism that I refer to,you're starting to work to reregulate the nervous system. When we can be in a sympathetic fight or flight or even a freeze area and the body gets stuck there. When we bring TRE in, the purpose of the tremor mechanism is to help reregulate the nervous system.
So our healthy nervous system goes up and down through the day right. Most of us, me included here I was yoga therapist yoga teacher all of this,I thought I was very regulated. No, I was stuck. So many of us get in that place, and it's not bad. It's just how the nervous system has been trained. So, as we bring the tremor mechanism in it, it starts opening up the body, reorganizing the organism, mentally, emotionally and physically, so that it starts traveling up and down through our normal day. And as we react to things we can we can come down out of it, and it actually helps to build more of a resilient pattern in the organism.
Ericka Thomas 11:17
Right. And that's really what people are missing that ability to quickly recover from whatever stressor, they are coming up against rather than like locking down into some kind of armor.
Donna Phillips 11:32
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what's going on. And each person is different. Each of us holds different, we know our genetics is a big piece of our makeup. It's about 30% of our health is really genetically based. It used to be a larger percentage but research is showing us a little different.
But research already also tells us that stress tension and trauma influence every system of our body. And so as we get stuck in these higher areas of fight or flight or freeze response. Wow, the systems of the body that start shutting down our elimination, our digestion, or reproduction system. These are the three primary systems that start shutting down. So when you start noticing your own body and seeing wow you know I'm constipated or diarrhea or different effects like I said with the reproductive reproductive system. All of these kinds of things are signs of stress.
So Ericka, $300 billion a year is spent on stress related issues in the workplace alone in just the United States. So bringing in something simple like TRE, is something that can help bring that number down hugely and really just impact each of us individually.
What do we mean when we say “trauma”?
Ericka Thomas 12:55
I love the part about trauma release that we can teach and learn to do this on our own. and do it for yourself whenever you need it, that once you know it, it's something that it's a permanent part of your toolbox to move forward, and handle all forms of trauma. But that word trauma is sometimes very confusing for people. I find that a lot of people don't acknowledge their own trauma experience as what we fear that word as. I know I didn't. And it wasn't, I mean it took me years to acknowledge the fact that I have some trauma unresolved that consciously I didn't understand as trauma. So, what counts as traumatic to the human organism?
Donna Phillips 13:54
Yeah, that's that's a big question. Hopefully I can answer it, not with a massive leap. Right, so there's big T little t. Right. And the word trauma isn't one that everybody likes to speak about, you know, we, we do store your body has a memory. So when we go through stress, tension or trauma whether trauma is a little t or big T. we have the story right in our brain. But we have that story held in our body. And we can look at all of it as trauma.
Every one of us has different types of trauma. So you know, and I've worked with a lot of people and they say oh I don't have any trauma. Well, that's fine, but you think back to when we were birthed, that's traumatizing, right. So we come out with it. And, and we go through it. It's the constant.
And there's many factors that can compound trauma in the human organism. But what we want to look at is with trauma and different types, right, because there can be a one and done, a slip and a fall, that can be traumatic. It can be shocking on the organism. We can slip and fall and break a bone. Right, I was water skiing, a year and a half ago and my hamstring tendon completely ruptured, one of the most traumatizing events in my life. Taken about 18 months to recover and I'm at that place now so it's good. But the journey and the path to recovery was huge. There are going to be different forms of abuse, the different forms of different things that happen within a person's life right. Different levels of abuse, the age that things happen, who's supporting us with it. So there's a lot around trauma that individually can come up.
But one thing cool about TRE is I don't have to know the story. People don't have to talk about it. The body in a TRE session, What it shakes off, it lets go.of. Next session, it's picking it back up. And, and I always tell everybody less is more. So we're not trying to in a TRE session, take something that feels like it's this big, it's a massive part of life and maybe we've held it and concealed it. And we're not trying to go ahead and take that iceberg, and to get it completely to melt down in one session, something like that.
And we may not even know all the parts to it. Parts are unresolved, may take weeks, may take months for some people that have larger pieces of trauma in their life. Might take years. And here they're even working with maybe a mental health therapist partnering in as they're doing and working with their TRE. So it can be lots of bits and pieces to it. Cool thing,TRE is individualized, so everybody can work in their particular process. Different providers have different skill levels to be able to help with all of that.
Ericka Thomas 17:14
yeah it's like it's like that saying, “How do you eat an elephant? Just one bite at a time.” That's exactly what this is.
Donna Phillips 17:23
Yeah, and I say you know we don't put a frozen turkey in the microwave. Right, so we do too much too fast, man that can come into some tough areas. Because what happens is that Turkey is gonna explode.TRE does work fast.
You know where the tremor mechanism comes from our brain stem.It's the fastest part of our nervous system. And then it can go limbic, it can go neocortex, right. So as we're working with this new piece of this new modality this new tool. We have to learn how to take it slow. Take it easy. Bigger is not better, right.
So we're working at a place where, in the beginning, somebody learning TRE is actually co regulating with their provider. So the provider goes through about a year of studying and working their personal practice and learning the various components that's needed. They're well trained. So that when they're working with somebody else and we don't always know the story the providers are actually working with this to support their person through their process as slow and as easy as they can work. Again less is more. I work with some people, when we get to the tremor mechanism time, they might only work for a minute to three minutes. Others might do 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's very individual depending on how your nervous system can handle it.
Using a less is more a approach
Ericka Thomas 18:53
So can we talk about that a little bit in more detail. Why is it so important to really keep that process slow, using that stop and rest throughout the process. And then I want to get into how to help people understand their intensity through that process in conjunction with that.
Donna Phillips 19:20
Yes so stop and rest. So TRE, so what is TRE? Let's back up a little bit and break it down a little bit more, and kind of give an idea of what a session is like. So TRE is a set of seven exercises. It's a modality created by Dr. David Berceli. David is a social worker trauma therapist traveled the world, and working with war torn or war torn areas David's started noticing that didn't really matter the culture, didn't really matter where it was that when a threat came in, and he was in different parts of the world in war torn areas so when the threat the bombers were coming, in the human organism did the same thing. It all contracted and all went fetal. And, and as it contracted down. What he noticed is, if they had in some areas they had children that they would go ahead and into these bunkers and the children would get on their laps. Well, it was amazing to David because the threat would leave bombers would leave the little kids would actually start shaking, they would go play but the adults were still all contracted. So David started looking at this and also looking at other other species and mammals and noticing that all mammals did the same type of process.
Alright so David was, you know, working with all of this observing all of this, and with that came up with seven different exercises for people to start getting into the body. These exercises, the first six are traditionally standing seventh exercises the traditional way is to be lying down. Now in the lying down process, there's rest and stop. So, the lying down position is the last exercise. We have you in different positions first we're activating and other areas we're giving you control to stop the tremor mechanism. And then in another time we give you other opportunities to rest.
So, in exercise seven which is activation of converting the body neuro physiologically into doing the neurogenic tremor, it can feel uncontrollable, it can feel weird. It can feel odd. The first time I did it I thought oh my gosh this is the weirdest thing ever. but I thought, it was a good weird. Weird isn't always good. I'll define it was a great weird. I knew what was going on. And I could tell my organism really really liked it.
And in those days we weren't taught to rest and stop. So rest and stopping is number one giving, whoever is doing TRE control. If it's feeling like it's not good, it's not a good weird, it's not a good comfortable feeling. It feels threatening. You can stretch your legs out, pull your toes back and stop anytime, or you roll to your side.
Now there's a rest position, because this is exercise, and it can be fatiguing as we're letting go. We can feel like we've held the weight of the world on our shoulders and you wonder why there's a spot here right and the knots in the neck and the head and maybe headaches and migraines. Right.
So, when we're doing this process and the body is actually coming to a place where the knees are bent and feet are on the floor, legs might be parallel or the hips open just a little bit, And you're feeling tired, you're feeling like, or you don't know how you feel. You stretch your legs out so you can go to a rest. That might be a butterfly position or the knees can be together, or your favorite stretch.
Now the importance of resting and the importance of stopping are huge. Because, as you start noticing and connecting to where your nervous systems at, and actually noticing that it might have fatigue or some tiring or there might be some emotion coming up, some sadness might be going into anger, frustration irritation might be that you notice yourself dissociating. Which all of those things are perfectly okay and perfectly normal. The thing is, we're not supposed to get stuck in those emotions, right.
We're supposed to maybe touch on it, and then a healthy nervous system starts coming down. So with rest and stop, we use these two positions, or interventions that can also be containment strategies. When we're working especially with somebody new to TRE because number one they've never done TRE, they don't know what to expect. And, but more so we're helping them and guiding them through regulating their nervous system because they don't know how to do it. Right they don't, they're not used to going through and making the body shake. Number one, and then number two, how do you stop it, how do you control it.
Am I gonna take this as a threat in my body. And then my nervous system is going to go up and go into a dissociation or numbing response or an overwhelm. Well, we don't want that. That's what happens with trauma. So, especially when we have nervous systems that have experienced higher levels of trauma, the more frequency we bring in to control and rest and teach our people actually they do have control, and as they start getting activated they can come back down is teaching that nervous system to do this instead of being locked on.
Finding a sense of presence
Ericka Thomas 25:07
Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. So, how do you begin to explain or, I guess, help people wrap their head around when they are getting to the point where they need to rest? I know there's a scale of one to 10 right. But, even people who are familiar with that physical scale of one to 10, often don't know how to really connect to it.
Donna Phillips 25:41
Oh that hardest thing we do as a provider is figure out and teach somebody that one to 10 scale because we use it in TRE with each exercise. And what it is is one to 10 is actually telling me when we're teaching the exercises we start at the floor and we work up the body with each exercise. With TRE we teach somebody where their seven is most people don't.. Who goes to the gym and figures out what their seven is? Right, or they're an athlete or in the military, they don't know what a seven is, they work at a 10 or 20 or 50 right it's performance driven quite often.
And that's how the body gets trained and then here we come in and say we'll find your seven only 70% of your maximum. Hardest thing we do is that. So with each exercise it's giving me an idea though, if they have a sense of presence.
So sometimes the number seven isn't something that they can connect to. But can they connect to a movement as they lift their heel up and down or lift a foot up and down, can they actually connect to an area of their body? Stay present with it, or is there an emotional shift with it?
You know I'm watching each exercise as a provider I look at as a physiologist I'm looking at symmetry, asymmetry. I'm looking at range of motion, I look at all these kinds of things because that's what I do. But there's a reason and a purpose for every exercise. There's a reason and a purpose somebody connects or doesn't connect with an area of the body, none of it's bad. It's all a place of understanding where they may be and understanding where they may have stress tension and trauma in their life. Every system of the body, as I said, reacts to stress tension and trauma, some show it more. They show it sooner, and more prevalent, depending on our genetics, depending on what we've been through in life.
Ericka Thomas 27:44
right and then taking that effort scale outside of the physical effort. Because there's times when we have to start with the physical. It’s very difficult to talk to somebody about a scale of one to 10 of effort, emotional effort or mental effort. And a lot of people walk in the door thinking that these exercises are so easy. They're too easy, right. They're too easy I can't feel it. And so to take that outside of the body is quite a challenge, takes time. So that's where this becomes more of a practice.
Donna Phillips 28:30
Mm hmm.
Ericka Thomas 28:30
Kind of just gently poking the bear.
Donna Phillips 28:37
You poke the bear, I'm not poking a bear! Yeah, so you know the TRE practice is just that now each exercise starts telling me where somebody's comfortable and they're not comfortable.
You know I work with a triathlete, a triathlete or a marathon or, you know, like I said, a professional athlete or somebody. I know, I'm not going to be able to fatigue that body, but can they actually come in with a sense of presence. I can connect them from their foot to their knee. Maybe if they don't feel it, because they run so many miles a day and those legs are frozen solid right, the freeze response, the fight or flight response can be in certain areas of our joints, our bones, our skin, our muscles.
We look at and we contain that and only really put blinders on and say, oh that's only happening psycho emotionally. It's not happening in the body, or vice versa. So every bit of what we're talking about is emotional, mental and physical and we can give that one to 10 scale and give each place its number.
And I like people to check in and I have charts and different things that could coordinate with various feelings in the body. Or words that are familiar are more emotional than mental, so we can put words to numbers. And we can put color to numbers so we can do a variety of things. If somebody doesn't feel an area I integrate their senses into it to feel the area of their body and see what it feels like and get their hands going or look at their body and see if they watch the movement and what does that look like to you. So we can get creative when somebody can't connect to an area or an emotion, or maybe emotionally or mentally so we have different things that we can try.
The connection to story
Ericka Thomas 30:37
Well, let me ask you a little bit more. You said you were talking about how the body can kind of be cut off in certain areas where we can freeze just one area of the body. And when those areas start to thaw. How important is it for the client or the practitioner to really connect with any kind of story that may or may not come out? Is that a priority? Or is it something that we need to just let go of and just observe what the body does, and not get hung up there.
Donna Phillips 31:22
I think that answer is depending on who you talk to, you know, As I said my scope of practice is, is the body. A mental health therapist might give a little bit more answer from their perspective. But I do know there is a physical story and a mental story with each part. Now TRE the tremor mechanism is coming from the brainstem. It may deviate past the limbic brain which is our emotional brain and go right toward that neocortex where we have a story, and you think all right stories coming up.
Now there may be unfinished story that needs to be part of the process and yet there's no emotion to it,right, or emotion comes up. Right. And I don't know why I'm crying. I don't know why I have big tears, or I'm laughing uncontrollably but nothing's funny. Right, so there can be different types of things that surface. And we don't always know what the story's about but the body's unleashing a process that it didn't get to finish.
We might not have any of that we might just shake or we can have all of it. We might have emotion. I can tell you all, well I got all sorts but a few stories in my with myself with things that I did in my life as a little Dare Devil in my 20s and was terrifying. Some of the scariest times in my life, I processed it through TRE, and I had no fear. You know I'm swimming scuba diving with sharks and chased out by a bull shark and pulled up the side of a boat scariest thing in my life, you know I'm thinking I'm gonna get eaten eaten up! Didn't have one bit of fear. Now what else I'm thinking is why am I not afraid? Scariest bit of my life. Right! Yet you know my body processed that whole part, without emotion.
You know I talked about my dad earlier. Well, I held on to grief for a long time and then about when I started TRE about seven years after his death. I processed that. I had huge emotion. I knew the story. I knew exactly what it was. But that was a whole different type of process where I knew what was going on. Each time I had somebody with me, that could help me co regulate that. When these big things were coming up in me I had a provider there. Where even though it was a provider, and almost a trainer with the one. And even with that time I made sure I had okay I could feel something coming out and I made sure I had somebody with me so that if something was bigger than I could handle, they could take care of me and get me up and make sure that I was good and and coming back down in a safe manner. So you know with story in the body, or emotion psycho emotionally. If you know, if we think something is pretty big that's coming out, having somebody with you is important, if you can ignite if you can have that or even somebody online these days.
Story v. State
Ericka Thomas
Yeah, and is it true that the body sometimes holds on to a story that doesn't match what we think our story is?
Donna Phillips 36:15
It can. It's something that maybe it's a partial story. It's not all that it wasn't completely processed, or it's how the body, how the body embraced it and how the mind processed it or didn't process it, or what other parts. How old were we when it was processed. So I'm an adult now, when it happened I was a kid, can be a completely different psycho emotional process and physical process.
Sure, when things like that are happening, working with a talk therapist to help for them to go ahead and be working in conjunction. I work with a lot of talk therapists, mental health professionals, and with their patients. And what I found is I started getting years ago I started getting phone calls from therapists, hey Donna Can you change your TRE session for the day before they meet with me because wow they're thawing out and we're coming into some new areas, and it's a really, really good experience for them. So, can it coordinate together with the story? Uh huh. Do I, as a provider, have to know the story? I don't, I don't, but we're always working with it in one way or another, both physical and psycho emotionally.
TRE as a Co-modality
Ericka Thomas
I think that trauma release exercises a fantastic co modality for pretty much everything,
Donna Phillips
Everything. I agree with you completely.
TRE I've taught as young as three years old, and his oldest 92.People with, not all their arms and legs or parts, or maybe they're in a wheelchair.
It doesn't, it doesn't matter. We are as I said earlier, each of us can shake. Each of us is genetically encoded to let go. We are not supposed to go through everything in life and not have a direction to let that go and come back to normal. You can go online and watch you know the gazelle getting chased by the lion or the polar bear you watch all these other animals. Yet, we are mammals also. We're supposed to be at the top of that food chain, or the hierarchical place we don't mind, maybe not the top of the food chain, depending if you're poking that bear.
So, we should be able to engage it in but earlier, as I said, it's been socialized out of our culture. So we're weak, we're weak, we're in pain, something's not right. If you've ever come out of a surgery and woken up without 100 blankets on top of you because your body's letting go of the surgery and the anesthesia. Well, that's the body letting go of that part, right. The anesthesia, it's the body's getting forced to death. That might not sound good, but that's how the body perceives it.
I went through a shoulder surgery, a couple years ago. Well that shoulder did a lot of its own releasing because of what happened with the repair of it. Great psychological story. It's like emotional because fix me up. But the body got cut and all these things had to be repaired. And so the body had its story of letting go, no emotional part, no bad story, but the body had to unwind. So as we go through different types of trauma, little t and I would call that a surgery a big T. Not a little T, but did it happen in a car accident and you didn't know it you woke up with it, or was it a plan to fix you up and repair you can be two different stories.Two different stories right in the body.
Ericka Thomas
Yeah, different stories and yeah, yeah, there's just not a conflict, but just you're not agreeing exactly on what's happening, and you don't know why.
Donna Phillips
Knowing the Why is a big part I think of any type of recovery and giving it purpose and giving it process. We don't always know the Why can't always give that answer. But if we can let some of that go as you were saying, do we let it go, or what do we do. I think that's an individual answer. That, it's it's nice to say oh yeah just let it go, letting it go can be a part of who we are. Right. Right. That's not always easy, or you know, there can be a lot of different attachment around it.
Who is TRE for?
Ericka Thomas
So, who benefits most from practicing TRE? What kind of people could benefit from practicing trauma release exercise on a regular basis?
Donna Phillips
Everyone. And I mean that with all sincerity. I've yet to find somebody that can't. The biggest part and the hardest part is learning to connect to yourself. I mean I don't care what people do for a living. I don't, you know, doesn't matter what other modalities you need to do. It networks, great, because each of us is supposed to be letting go of stress tension and trauma.
You know, I had a great yoga practice this morning. Prior to that I did some cardio, great time, can I let go with some of that, I can. But if I'm doing a stronger cardio workout or brought in a more of a weight bearing yoga practice then if I didn't stretch properly and make sure that my body recovered well after it. I'm building up more tension in my body. If my breathing patterns had restriction in them. Well gosh my diaphragm is going to be tighter. So TRE is going to come in. It's going to help release the diaphragm let go of tight muscles, it's going to try to re orchestrate the organism so it's coming back into homeostasis. It's coming into balance, that's its function that's its purpose.
Right, so, so when we're when we're working with. When we're working with TRE, no matter if you're three years old or you're 92, you have all your parts or not. You're all over the place when we look at parasympathetic and sympathetic spots in our nervous system. Mentally, emotionally, physically, we could be scattered, we could be completely dissociative and frozen.
TRE can work with all that, but you need to be working with a provider, with a certified provider when you have more of these things going on. David created TRE to be an independent practice. He taught it mostly to third world countries that didn't have access to therapy talk therapy different therapeutic modalities.
So, that was its purpose, really, it started growing in the United States, later than sooner. A lot of people start things in the US and then it spreads out, but it's just becoming more prevalent in the US now, as more providers as, just like you Ericka and myself are getting the word out more and more. You know I'm incredibly passionate about this practice because I've seen so many people recover and live life again. And I work with people quite often that don't know how to find their life to live it again.
When they don't need me, and they're independent and doing that practice on their own. Yay.
Ericka Thomas
Yes, I love hearing that from clients when they tell me, this is life changing.
Donna Phillips
It is, yeah. When they don’t work and now they work right there's no function to there's dysfunction. And the way we talk, we talk more traditional right Western exercise movement right we look at dysfunction versus function. That's TRE. Its grabbing the dysfunction it's reorganizing it again.
What are the Benefits of TRE?
Ericka Thomas
Yeah, so let's talk about some of the benefits of a regular TRE practice. What can people expect when they begin? At the beginning of a TRE practice, first couple weeks, three months to a year. What kinds of things start to come back online for them?
Donna Phillips 44:20
So, again, each person depending on what they have going on in their body this may change a little bit. Right. When, when you learn TRE we recommend that you start with a practice two to three times a week. Now, I generally see, most people need four to six sessions, before they're comfortable doing it on their own. They may come, they may come to you or another provider and try it once and then get home as I'm going to try and I will try it at home, see how you feel with it, go through the exercises, start each one. There's a purpose for each exercise. And then, and then see if you're comfortable with it. Even if you're comfortable with it. Go back to your provider, try another one you're going to learn, it's going to create a process of growth, of change, of exploring to get creative with how your body is actually moving and giving you some good explanation about what is happening in the body. Right.
As you're learning self regulation. Usually it takes, you know, a body a little bit of time for that self regulation to really start occurring. And being with a provider, you're co regulating with them the right, the providers teaching you how to stop, how to rest, how to move different positions as they're talking and you're negotiating the whole process really learning it, but two to three times, I would say, for the first month, getting an idea. Once you get into exercise seven is when we're starting to time the tremor mechanism.
So some people might only do it, you know, a minute to three minutes. When I'm working with fibromyalgia clients, chronic pain clients or coming out with a lot of a lot of autoimmune and a lot of stuff. Then I have to really work on that scale of how much is too much, so less is more. So I backed them down and started really light, and it's important because they have such a fragile immune system. And they might say alright let's see how you feel. Because the integration. 24 to 48 hours is really important. How are you sleeping, are you noticing things triggering you? Have you noticed any changes through your body that if you know it can be heart rate, blood pressure, these kinds of things that we can take pretty easily.
Maybe somebody triggers you're pretty easy. They're not triggering you, well that's a good side effect right. Wow I don't sleep. I'm sleeping. That's a great side effect, you might find that when you get triggered you want to go eat a bucket of ice cream. Right. Hey my Sweet Tooth is going down. That's a good one. I like that one. But, these are things that we start noting of importance even in the first week, but as your nervous system starts getting accustomed to regulating using the rest and stop on your own you're going to notice, depending on the degree of dysfunction of systems of the body, things coming back online.
I worked with people that have IBS C and D. Those are common things I see all the time. Within a week or two of TRE quite often, that diminishes substantially. So that's the digestive system right and the elimination system coming back online. Menopause dysfunction with, with the monthly cycle for ladies, these are other things that can see changes, generally I see the digestive system come online before reproductive system come online, but it's very individual. How many times a week or the shaking, or doing TRE I call it shaking quite often. That's the progression. You know there's there's several things that we can observe. We can individualize for people because different people have different things that are important to them and different issues they're looking at.
So, remember TRE works the whole person. So when you're when you're noticing. You know your kids are doing this or they're doing that and you're on edge with them and maybe you started doing TRE a couple of weeks after and you're thinking wow they're doing that and they got some of the neighbor kids over, and they're not bugging you. Okay your nervous system is starting to down regulate, you'll start seeing benefits.
On the other note though, if you're shaking too much. You're not giving enough repair time in between session recovery time. That's the integration. Because TRE affects every system of the body we want to know if you're shaking too much. Maybe Ericka says alright we're only gonna do five minutes. You went home and did 15, you call her I'm not sleeping, or I'm having some bad dreams. All right, she's gonna say how long did you shake? I’m not really sure that usually means you did too long.
All right, so she's gonna tell you to back it on down. These are things Ericka, that the benefit list can be massive because stress impacts all of us. Yeah so finding those important niches, the things that we are noticing that might be nothing to one person can be huge to another.
Ericka Thomas
That's part of the beauty of the practice as a whole because you can individualize and personalize it for yourself and your own process. You don't need an appointment, you don't need anything you can just make it what you need it to be. And kind of become your own expert in your own body, to be able to get back into your own skin. And notice what you notice going on there without getting stuck in it, without becoming overwhelmed in it, and then just being allowed to live there safely in your own skin.
Donna Phillips
That's the key is finding safety, and to do that you have to make friends with yourself. You have to come in and it might be meeting somebody that you hadn't seen. Ever.
And then it can be very emotional I've had people say oh my gosh and they just start crying and. How are you doing, oh my gosh I can feel this part of my back. I feel like I've just met a sibling that I've never knew. And it's just it's just a glorious happy cry. It's good emotional. It is meeting that place and there can be a lot of fear in different areas of our body. So, the resistance part is that part again where we're working with somebody, so that they can kind of lock arms with us not to dive into the story, but to just be with this process as light and as little as needed, so that we're not trying to do more and more and more big stuff and and not know how to control it, or know what the outcome is going to be with it.
Ericka Thomas 16:10
Yeah, this is great. I just want to thank you! This conversation was awesome. We could go for another hour.
So Donna before I let you go what do you have going on now, with trauma release exercise? And is there a way that people can get in touch with you, they want to work with you or just kind of reach out for more information about what we've been talking about today.
Donna Phillips
Sure, well I've been involved with. TRE - TFA - TRE For All organization for a number of years. I've been on the board of directors. Since 2015, I just came off term last year. I was chairman of the board. So, working from a global perspective, I've been doing that for several years. I'm a certification trainer so I do trainings.
But Dr Berceli and I last year started a program called the MTT program the mentor to trainer. So it's a pilot that he and I created to work with purpose selected providers that have a certain level of competency pretty high, and bring them into the program so that we can add to your program to become a trainer. Right now it takes about seven years to become a trainer with that they've been doing in the past. And I thought wow that's way too much. We can clearly, bring this down and have a really great program.
So I have about 20 MTT’s that I've been working with, David and I've been working with, for the last was a year ago this past January. Then they should be finishing at the end of this year and they are working with about 60 to 70 provider trainees, so I manage all that. So I have about 100 trainees around, most of them in North America. And that takes a good majority of my time.
But, you know, growing TRE to the next generation is my goal. It is David Berceli school and TFA school so supporting that the best I can do with what I give. I specialize in modifications because each exercise can be modified, because I work with diversified bodies, my hope and my passion is that care can be for three years old to 100 years old and doesn't matter what you have going on in your body or what parts you have or don't have. You can do this work safely, you can learn how to do it, and unwind, live life well and live life to your passion and your purpose. That's why I do what I do and I love doing it integrates with everything Ericka as you well know you've heard me say 100 times. And if somebody wants to get in touch with me, email me at trewithdonna@gmail.com or get a hold of Ericka, she knows she has all my phone numbers.
That's what I'm doing and that's how to contact me.
Thank you so much for letting me join you today.
Thanks for listening to The Work IN. If you like what you heard, and you want to learn more about how we can shake off stress and tension reset the nervous system and connect with the body. Go to elementalkinetics.com/inquiry and book a 30 minute free call to see if trauma release exercise is right for you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
I’m Ericka
Whether your fight is on the frontline or the home front, past or present, personal or professional... chronic stress & stress injury can be a debilitating enemy.
Join me as we explore natural balanced ways to work through the body to re-establish safety in the body and find recovery for lasting resilience to all sources of stress, tension & anxiety.
I offer online, on demand private sessions, courses & memberships for individuals, small groups and corporate clients looking to build resilience and recover from stress injury.