10/21/2026
People often ask what TRE can do for them, and what I’ve gotten out of the practice myself. To answer that, I have to go back to 2012, when I first encountered TRE at Kripalu.
The year before, I had worked with Bessel van der Kolk, best known for his book The Body Keeps the Score. I was fascinated by what I was learning about trauma, how the body holds on to it, and the ways he helped people release it. But I found myself wondering, as I imagine many people do: How can we do this for ourselves?
As a longtime yoga practitioner, I have learned the value of self-study and of practices that help us move toward greater awareness and consciousness. The idea of having a way to release tension and trauma from the body on my own was incredibly appealing.
As fate would have it, I walked into a workshop at Kripalu taught by Dr. Bercelli that addressed exactly that question. The moment I saw TRE on the screen in the classroom I had just entered, I knew I had done this before. Only, I hadn’t known it as TRE. I had experienced it as a kriya, a practice from yoga.
Kriya is a Sanskrit word that essentially means “action.” In yoga practice, it often refers to an action intended to clear or cleanse something, whether in the body, the mind, or our energetic system. Kriyas help shift energy that feels stuck or held. Tremoring and shaking can arise spontaneously in yoga practice and are understood to be a way of releasing energy and restoring a sense of clarity and calm. That was what drew me to TRE: the recognition that our bodies have their own way of releasing tension, and that we can learn the steps to initiate this process ourselves.
When something traumatic or stressful happens, it can come with a big charge of energy that we aren't always able to digest and integrate.
As with food, some people have trouble digesting wheat or dairy, while others have no problem at all. We each have a different tolerance for the things life throws at us, and we all have different capacities for processing the energy that comes with them. Sometimes, an experience is simply too much for us to fully digest while it's happening. When that happens, the charge of the event gets held in the body, a bit like a chunk of undigested food. It doesn't feel good, and it can affect how we feel, how we respond to things, and what we're able to do. Rather than becoming an integrated part of our experience, it remains something we're carrying around.
The shaking and rocking that happen in TRE helps the nervous system process these experiences. You might think of it as breaking that big, undigested chunk into smaller pieces that are easier to digest.
And just as we don't want to force our bodies to eject that undigested bit by throwing it all back up, we're not looking for a dramatic cathartic experience with TRE. We don't need a huge emotional upheaval or a messy release. What we're looking for is something much gentler: a gradual letting go, like a pressure cooker slowly releasing steam.
This is why it's important not to be too aggressive with TRE. We want to work with the nervous system, not overwhelm it or risk retraumatizing ourselves. The gradual release can help us feel more whole, with less of that frozen, stuck energy taking up space in our bodies and minds.
Over the years, I've used TRE in a number of ways. Sometimes I've experienced big waves of energy that seemed to discharge something without any particular story attached. (That can happen!) Other times, I've used it to ease the discomfort I feel about something I need to do, or something I feel I should have done differently. I've used it to help me fall asleep and to discharge an excess of energy when I feel like there's simply too much buzzing around inside me.
TRE works differently for different people, and even differently for the same person at different times. But one of the things I value most about it is that once you learn how to work with the process, you can practice on your own.
Of course, working with a facilitator or in a group can offer something different. It's a bit like brushing your own teeth versus going to the dentist for a cleaning. You feel the difference a professional cleaning makes!
However you use TRE, you will find that it can offer a sense of completeness, of having a little more room inside yourself to move, breathe, and be. And in these stressful times, that feeling of wholeness and expansion is something we could all use a little more of.
