TRE — Trauma Release Exercises — is a six-exercise protocol developed by Dr David Berceli 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.
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.
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.
What a session looks like. Ninety minutes, conducted remotely or in person. The six 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.
Most people feel results in one or two sessions. Some need more. The price is £75 per session.
I trained in TRE because I had ten years of stored trauma from a devastating divorce that no amount of therapy was shifting. Talking about it kept me in it. TRE moved it through. That is what made me become a coach.
The work I do now is built on this principle. The body knows. You just have to let it speak.