Release Stress and Trauma through Inherent Body Shaking

I have recently discovered an amazing resource, that I am sure one day I will be trained in as well:) It is called TRE; short for Trauma Releasing Exercises. This is a technique that is designed to induce fatigue in the body through controlled exercises to elicit a natural tremor response from deep inside the nervous system. Once this tremor response kicks in, a person will experience various levels of shaking intensity. This shaking happens from alone, the conscious mind has nothing to do with it, (people can even carry on conversations while letting this process unfold).

This shaking response literally starts to unravel deeply buried stress and trauma stored in our tissues.  When we look to nature to start to understand our human bodies a bit better, we see that this shaking response happens in the wild. For example, in the wild, say a lion chases a gazelle, and the gazelle freezes (so much so the lion thinks it is dead). The lion runs off for a second to get his lion buddies to help with the feast, meanwhile the gazelle hops up suddenly and starts running away. The gazelle then shakes instinctively to release all of that pent up sympathetic nervous system energy (trauma-energy).

In humans we also have this fight, flight, or freeze response.  We are wired naturally to react in stressful situations- whether we are in a life or death situation like a car accident, or we get yelled at from our boss- our body responds in a similar manner. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and our hearts beat faster- muscles tense up- pupils constrict, and breathing gets tense. Because we have removed our species from the natural, primitive world (at least those of us in the West), the types of "danger" and "stress" we perceive has drastically changed. It used to be that every once in a while we would be on "high-alert" for that big animal predator, fight or run, then let the danger pass, shake it off, return to normalcy. Now-a-days, that predator never necessarily leaves. We can experience stress while driving, having an argument, hearing the kids screaming, hearing sirens, having a bad day, etc... and more often then not our sympathetic nervous system never gets a chance to shut off.  Our inherent stress-response system designed to activate for short periods of time, is now on constant over-drive. It is no wonder with most of us living extremely fast-paced, stressful, high intensity, highly stimulating life-styles that our bodies are screaming out. Long-term effects of constant stress have been linked to diabetes, obesity, depression, head-aches, infertility, lowered immune system, loss of sex-drive, and anxiety (among many other symptoms).

The good news is that the body already (just like the gazelle) has a built in stress-relief device, these are the neurogenic tremors that occur deep within the body in response to an extremely stressful situation. Most of us ( because "it is not socially acceptable") have turned off our body's natural stress-relieving mechanism and instead suffer from the consequences. Through learning Trauma Releasing Exercises, one has simple and effective tools to help the body naturally unwind stress and tension built up from the day (or from serious traumatic incidents).

The other day after watching a series of TRE videos, observing other people shaking, I ended up lying down with my legs up 90 degrees at the foot of the bed. I could start to feel a gentle tremor coming from my cervical spine, I allowed this tremor to grow on its own accord, and next thing you know my body was naturally unwinding and shaking totally on its own! I was amazed, this was the first time this had actually happened to me. Funny enough, earlier that day I had stated to my freeance' how I wanted to experience this particular form of release because I knew about it and wanted to know what it felt like. ( Ask and you shall receive :) That evening I allowed my body to fully unwind, move, twitch, shake, and twist into odd shapes. It felt so good and natural. I am definitely very curious about the long term effects of practicing TRE regularly, as I know it has helped many, many, many people recover from PTSD, trauma, and stress of all sorts.

The incredible importance of this technique will probably be discovered in years to come, when as a society we learn to take care of these bodies of ours. But in the mean time, just know that if you feel a natural shaking response coming on in response to a stressful or traumatic situation- LET IT HAPPEN... let it be. The body inherently knows how to take care of itself.

Stay tuned as I dive deeper into the science of stress and trauma, and learn more about TRE- perhaps even becoming a Certified TRE Teacher myself :)

(I can just see this easy method being employed by all the veterans, rape victims, and other groups of highly traumatized individuals).

 When our bodies function optimally, we are able to fully live the life we were born to live. We feel healthy, strong, and rooted in our divine purpose. When we each live up to our fullest potential, the world becomes a better place- body by body, mind by mind, and healthy action by action.

Healing through Somatic Bodywork

Somatics bodywork is one of the best ways I have found to treat neuro-muscular pain. The field of Somatics deals with the whole being: the mind, body, and spirit, through teaching the student how to gain awareness of those three aspects through slow precise movements. It is through the re-learning happening in the body, that the student learns where his/her muscular/emotional holding patterns are, and once bringing awareness to those points, can balance and reset their energies. This creates a much longer lasting effect then massage, for instance, because in Somatic bodywork the session gets programmed into the nervous system so to speak. The student is actively engaged within the session because he/she is consciously following the movements done to the body, because of this, the session as a whole, becomes more integrated into the consciousness of that individual, thus having a much longer lasting and deep effect then other traditional forms of therapy.

I have found that for me personally in my own experience, through witnessing clients of mine transform severe acute pain, or chronic pain in one single somatic bodywork session, I am made a believer of the power that lies behind this gentle art form. The first time I was introduced to Somatic Bodywork, I was doing a training through East West Somatics in St. George, Utah. After the 3rd day of having somatic bodywork done to me just for about an hour or so a day, I ended up purging all night long. I have had medicine journeys that reminded me of this particular purging experience, it was not pretty. The next morning I woke up still feeling off like I had caught a strange 24 hour bug, but more so it felt like a deep emotional clearing experience. Later that afternoon after class, I still felt off, and had to call my boyfriend basically to just cry for 2 minutes. Literally right after crying for less then 3 minutes, I felt a million times better and actually had the energy to attend the party being held that evening. IT was a crazy experience to feel shitty one minute, cry, then the next minute feel better. I would have shaken that experience off as perhaps being coincidental with the Somatic Bodywork I was doing, but I had a similar experience months later in Louisiana. There was about a group of 8 of us learning from our teacher together! We were moving through somatic processes on the movement floor, and on the table. After about 5 days of working together as a group, all of a sudden on the 5th night all of us felt ill. Some of us threw up that night, some of us threw up that morning, some (like myself) just felt weak and off. I would have written this experience off as being a weird bug that we all caught at the same time. The only thing preventing me from saying this out of my own experience, is because I felt in an altered state the whole day. It is a hard thing to describe, but basically it felt more to me like a shamanic journey experience instead of your usual common virus/sickness.

In my personal experience I see Somatic Bodywork as being a deep, profound cleansing/rewriting experience. I have seen a wide variety of reactions to this type of therapy. I have worked on a woman who slept for 24 hours straight after I worked on her. I have had people cry and have breakthroughs on the table. I have had a young woman come in with severe low back pain that had come on quick and hard, and within an hour she was totally pain free standing up off my table in complete shock. I have seen a man with chronic low back pain get off the table and remark that his back was better, after checking in on him later, his pain was still gone after weeks of that initial session. I have seen a wide variety of reactions to somatic bodywork. Most report significant pain decrease after the first session.

With ongoing treatment people have the opportunity to rewire their entire nervous system, thus creating a new multitude of possible outcomes for personal expression. If you are not held down in your mind and body by past traumas/poor posture/or stored emotional energies of any kind, imagine how free your mind and body would be to create the most epic version of you!!!  You can literally use somatic bodywork as a tool to free yourself of musculo-skeletal/neuro-muscular/ trauma pain. Once freed of this burden, you're free to have a vessel to do the highest biding of your soul. The body becomes a much more clear channel for the soul, without the burden of pain weighing you down.

Fundamentals of Living Pain Free

I have recently been reading this greatly informative book on how to manage pain! The following blog is a compilation on some of the major tenets I would like to share from my research.

This book "Pain Free: a revolutionary method for stopping chroinc pain" by Pete Egoscue, applies mostly to those living in Chronic Pain, whose Chronic Pain comes from some sort of postural malfunction; whether they have a computer desk job, are a truck driver, or have sprained their ankle as a child and never fully restored proper function. Postural misalignments happen far too easily and far too often. Even those of us who think: "oh I am fine, I am already proper aligned" will probably have some twerks, twists, or compensation happening, however so slight. It is pretty much guaranteed that in our Western Culture today, we are bound to have postural compensations happening at one point or another. So even though this book is tailored to those in chronic pain already, it can do all of us good to learn about the basics of restoring human functionality.

When pain happens in the physical body directly related to the skeletal or muscular system, this book  is a great resource to learn how to dissect and decode where "you went wrong".  If you have a shoulder pain it could very well be stemming from when you injured your right ankle at 5 years old, and have had a slight imbalance in weight ever since. This slight imbalance in the feet will cause your hips to readjust and compensate, which will cause your spine to rotate slightly, which will eventually, after years of wear and tear, start to work on the left shoulder joint. A whole skew of problems will arise simply, because you have been so accustomed to favoring your right foot since you were 5. Now even at say, age 40 you can hardly tell that you favor your right foot, because it has become such an ingrained habit that this is all the nervous system takes for "normal". You have no way of knowing what a healthy weight distribution "should" feel like, because, geez, this is all you have known! "Of course this is normal. This is what I am used to!"

If you take your left shoulder problem to the doctor and complain of it hurting, well- the western doctors nowadays will probably put you on some pain medication- and if the pain still persists, will probably suggest some sort of surgery to you.

Say you get surgery, and 5 years later your shoulder will start to hurt again...

Well. It is simple why you still have pain:
You never took care of the root issue.

Which is:
restoring weight balance onto both feet, strengthening/aligning the hips, untwisting the spine, and working consistently on maintaining proper posture for your body-type. Unless you do the work, and address the core issues, which is actually what is tugging on that left shoulder, creating un-necessary wear and tear, then you will continue to have countless problems- never seeming to get anywhere with surgery and pain pills.

In Peter Egoscues' book "Pain Free" he lays out a very important message, I believe necessary for every human individual to learn and implement: learning to listen to the warning signs of the body, and understanding pain as an urgent message from the wisdom of the body.

Chapter one is titled: Chronic Pain: The Modern Danger of Ignoring an Ancient Message

That says it all.

We have these ancient, beautifully adaptable bodies that are now forced into an environment for which evolution never foresaw. Of course our bodies are SO brilliant: we are adapting rather well, and rather quickly to our given circumstances. But NOT without (most) people suffering.

At least 60-80% of us will experience back pain at some point in our lives.

There are countless of other statistics that lay out this base message: FAR too many people are in pain or chronic pain. Far too many innocent civilians get targeted for being the next subject of invasive surgery for something that could TOTALLY be prevented, treated, and worked with at home or with a licensed specialist.

If we have pain, it is the bodies message of warning us something is NOT right.

SIMPLE. If your body is warning you something is out of whack, and all you do is pop a pain pill to ignore that fact, eventually something even worse will result if you don't take action right away. If our red engine light comes on in our car, most sane people would immediately pull over and check out the issue and resolve it to the best of their capacity, or seek help. When it comes to our bodies, it seems like the general conscientious, is ?????? uhhh????

Even doctors seem to be generally unable to truly help.

"Pain is telling us something is not happening that should be happening"
"Chronic muscoloskeletal pain is a form of high-priority communication!"- says Pete Egoscue.

The human body has to be moving to maintain homeostasis.. It is not a system designed to be stationary. From a musculoskeletal perspective, the body is designed to move.  In our modern world today, we are demanded of less and less by external stimuli. What we now do for work and play in our modern society in general, demands less engagement from our muscoloskeletal system. The less we move, the less we end up being able to move.
What once used to be an intensely physical engaging environment; where we had to run away from predators, bend to gather food, squat to cook etc- has now evolved (or devolved) to sitting on a couch watching T.V, sitting in a car, sitting at a desk, and reaching into the refrigerator. So bottom line: If you don't use it, you loose it.


Dysfunction in the body doesn't necessarily have to main pain, or chronic pain. Dysfunction in the body is anything that is not how nature intended it to be. Such as: poor posture, sagging/rounded shoulders, turned out feet, hunched over spine, loosing the natural S curve in the spine...etc. Which unfortunately in today's world is almost impossible not to come across. When the body is working in a state of dysfunction, something is under-working, something is over-working and various areas in the body are overcompensated. Eventually dysfunction will turn into pain, if not chronic pain, if left unchecked.

If you decide to suddenly go to the Gym because you have been reading this, and you are all inspired to get your body back in motion, beware. Because if you are living in a state of musculoskeletal dysfunction and you hit the gym hard, you will only be compounding the dysfunction, and driving it deeper into the body if left untreated. For example: if you rotate your feet outwards and you hit the treadmill, pounding onto your poor knees with an unstable base, eventually you will find you will start to get knee pain, or something will sprout up as a result of compounding the initial outward foot problem.

My point being, with this whole lengthy blog post, that in order to live a pain free life (keeping in mind that emotional pain, acute injury, organ imbalances, and influences from the planets are of course connected to posture, but are a separate issue from what we are talking about here), one must take responsibility for the functionality of the human organism.

ONE MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for your BODY.
End of STORY

You must start to notice your posture, your imbalances, and your postural habits. How do you walk? How do you sit? How do you habitually stand? Everything we do throughout the day programs and informs our body. Unless we can at a root level, rewrite/reprogram, the body to maintain proper balance/homeostasis, we will continue to run into issue after issue.

In this easy to read book, Pain Free, Peter Egoscue will give you exercises starting from the feet working your way up the body sequentially, that will realign and strengthen the necessary muscles, joints, and ligaments to maintain proper posture and function.

Even if you are not in pain, or chronic pain now- becoming somatically aware is important to maintaining good health and function of the physical body. So I encourage everyone to start to pay attention to how you walk, how you carry yourself, how you stand, how you sit, how you sleep. If you notice dysfunction I would recommend buying this book as a start and doing some of these prescribed exercises. It would probably also be very beneficial to find a trained professional in your city that can help point out holding patterns to you, that you yourself might overlook. They will also be able to tailor specific programs just for you to help you overcome any sort of imbalance in the body. I would recommend finding a somatic practitioner, some examples of methods I personally like and trust are: Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technqiue, Egoscue Method to name a few. I have also heard great things about the Mckenzie Method in treating all spine related issues. I know someone who cured her herniated disk through using the Mckenzie Method. It just takes a little bit of research and dedication to finding a method or approach that works for you.

And remember, if you don't use it you loose it. So to be a functional, happy, healthy, pain-free human being on this Planet, it takes education, re-education, and re-membering the amazing functionality of the human design. Anything can shift, it just first needs the awareness that IT has to shift, then the space to shift, and the new information it needs to shift into.

Blessings be!

If you want to reach me for a personal consultation, or have any questions feel free to email me at nori@noriannadiesel.com or check out my website at www.noriannadiesel.com

Welcome!

Welcome to Natana Somatics!

This is the name of my personal business where I specialize in massage therapy, movement therapy/facilitation, and somatic bodywork!

My intention for this blog is to create a resource for people to go to concerning issues around health, pain, posture, and all things related to healing through using the body as a tool and guide!

I am going to be making more videos and building up my youtube channel! I will create links from here to there- both sites will work in tandem!

I am ready to start showing up to the best of my ability in the world, and I am ready to fully be supported in every way and every direction to allow myself to keep doing my "work"!


Until the next blog, where I will go into detail :)