Neurogenic Tremoring: Unlock Your Body’s Natural Stress Relief Mechanism
- Marcus Blacker
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
In our modern, fast-paced culture, many of us find ourselves living in a constant state of “fight, flight, or freeze”. This chronic state of over-activation is triggered when stress, tension, or trauma builds up in the body.
When we encounter overwhelm or threat, our nervous system instinctively contracts the muscles and fascia, particularly the deep core muscles like the psoas (deep hip flexors). If this protective, contracting response becomes chronic and is not resolved, it can lead to physical issues such as pain, stiffness, poor posture, anxiety, and a profound sense of disconnection.
But what if your body holds the key to unwinding this tension and restoring balance?
What is Neurogenic Tremoring (TRE)?
Neurogenic Tremoring (also known as Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises, or TRE) is the body’s natural way of releasing deep tension. It is a gentle, involuntary shaking reflex that originates in the brainstem and spinal cord.
This shaking mechanism is a biological process that all mammals share. If you’ve ever seen a wild animal tremble after escaping a predator, you’ve witnessed this innate recovery tool in action. As Dr. David Berceli, the creator of TRE, observed, this trembling allows the organism to discharge excess survival energy and return to a state of calm and balance.
In most human cultures, however, this natural response is often suppressed because it’s misinterpreted as a sign of weakness, illness, or loss of control. TRE is a simple and effective method developed by Dr. Berceli to intentionally activate this tremor reflex in a safe and controlled environment.
The Body’s Built-in Reset Button
The mechanism is powerful because it works through your nervous system, offering a direct path to self-regulation.
Bypassing the Thinking Brain: Neurogenic tremors are generated from within the Central Nervous System (brain stem and spinal cord), meaning they are not under our conscious control. This process bypasses the thinking brain (the cerebral cortex), giving us direct access to the unconscious system to bring about changes that conscious effort cannot readily influence.
Completing Stress Cycles: TRE is considered a "bottom-up" approach to trauma recovery. When the body contracts in response to stress (the “fetal response”), the opposite action—the tremoring—is believed to be the genetically encoded response that helps the body to come out of protection and resolve or "complete" the stress cycle.
Restoring Balance: By initiating these tremors, the body is able to “reset,” shifting the nervous system out of the high-stress state (sympathetic arousal) and back into a relaxed, restorative mode (safety physiology). This down-regulation helps the autonomic nervous system (ANS) find balance, which in turn slows down the release of damaging stress hormones and calms our emotional (limbic) system.
More Than Just Modern Therapy
The intentional use of therapeutic shaking is documented across history and cultures. Anthropological studies show that tremoring is part of healing and spiritual contexts worldwide, including the healing dances of the San people, Kundalini yoga, and spontaneous Qi Gong (sometimes called "the trembling horse"). These practices suggest that the wisdom of therapeutic shaking is an innate function of the human organism.
The Benefits of Embracing the Tremor
By allowing the body to lead the process, neurogenic tremoring facilitates healing across physical, emotional, and psychological dimensions:
Deep Relaxation and Tension Release: Tremoring provides a non-invasive way to release deeply held muscular tension and tightness, often accumulated around the core and pelvis. This can lead to improved mobility and flexibility.
Calm the Nervous System: It calms the autonomic nervous system, leading to a reduction in stress, anxiety, and improved mood. Research, including studies using Heart Rate Variability (HRV), suggests TRE can regulate the ANS and increase HRV, which is an indicator of improved autonomic function and reduced stress.
Physical Wellness: Tremoring helps restore mobility, improve circulation, reduce muscle soreness after exercise, and has been explored as a supportive tool for chronic conditions, including helping to relieve symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Emotional and Psychological Resilience: It helps support trauma recovery (including PTSD) by discharging stored tension or "trapped energy". Subjective reports show that people feel more connected to their bodies, more even-keeled, and gain enhanced body awareness and self-regulation.
A Pathway to Deeper Connection: For some, this process moves beyond stress relief, leading to a profound sense of well-being, inner quiet, and sometimes even heightened spiritual awareness.
Getting Started and Practicing Safely
Neurogenic Tremoring (TRE) is typically learned using a series of simple physical exercises or postural adjustments designed to gently stretch and fatigue specific muscle groups, activating the involuntary tremor reflex. These exercises work to extend the muscles in the front of the body, which reverses the unconscious protective fetal response.
You are always in control of the experience.
When the tremor begins, the goal is to observe and allow it to flow naturally, avoiding conscious control. To stop the tremor, you simply straighten your legs, roll onto your side, or sit up and walk around.
Safety is paramount.
The process is gentle yet effective, but caution is advised, especially if you have a history of severe trauma or chronic pain. If you are experiencing pain or discomfort, you can adjust your position or stop the process entirely. When starting, it’s important to practice self-regulation by beginning gently, tremoring for no more than 15-20 minutes, and allowing yourself several minutes of rest afterward to integrate the experience. If you are new to the practice or have severe trauma, seeking guidance from an experienced facilitator or healthcare professional is recommended to ensure you learn how to self-regulate appropriately and safely.
By welcoming this innate biological wisdom, we move from suppressing our symptoms to collaborating with our body's capacity for healing, creating a sustained pathway to calm, resilience, and integration.
Join Marcus Blacker for one of his neurogenic tremoring workshops at the Academy.
Marcus is an experiential integrative coach and regenerative breathing therapist with a passion for supporting clients in letting go of the layers of restriction and resistance that bind their breath and freedom of being.
His embodied practice and presence combines the art and science of breathwork, neurogenic tremoring, myofascial unwinding, somatic coaching and IFS therapy to create a powerful pathway to integration, with the breath acting as a bridge between the body, mind, emotions, relationships and spirit.
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