How TRE Supports The Nervous System: A Somatic Approach to Regulation and Release

For most of my life, my mind tried to control and fix what was happening in my body.

My body often felt like it was slowing me down or getting in the way — almost like a barrier between me and the life I wanted to feel and live. To be honest I never really felt much in my body growing up, I felt disconnected from it and with that was consequences. I didn’t get to feel much, excitement, joy, grief, intuition my mind had to step in to help me navigate life.

Like many people, I learned to live primarily in my head. Pushing my body instead of working with it, listening to it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to feel I really had no idea how to gain access to a more embodied state of being.

I remember the first time I really slowed down enough to truly listen and learn from my body.

It was during COVID — a high-stress, uncertain time — and I was in Thailand. I had signed up for a nervous system regulation workshop on Koh Phangan, where I was first introduced to Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE).

We had just finished a gentle yoga practice and were lying on our mats in an open-air jungle shala. The instructor guided us into butterfly pose, the soles of the feet together, and then invited us to lift our hips into a gentle butterfly bridge.

As I held the position, my legs began to flutter.

At first, it was subtle — easy to dismiss — but then it became unmistakable. After a minute, we slowly lowered our hips back down and gently brought the knees together.

That’s when I felt it.

A soft tremor emerged in my legs — not something I was doing, not something I was controlling. It wasn’t coming from my mind. It was coming from within my nervous system.

Almost instantly, there was a sense of release. My mind let out a quiet sigh of relief: Oh… Thank God the body can help. I don’t have to do everything.

I rested into the shaking. The tremors moved into my hips — a gentle but fast buzzing and rocking — and then slowly traveled up my spine. Tension I didn’t even know I was holding began to melt. Space opened inside my body. I could feel inside of my body.

It felt freeing. Regulating. Alive.

In that moment, I understood TRE not as a technique, but as an innate biological process — a way the body releases what it’s been holding without needing the mind to direct or fix anything. It was a way back in.

For the first time, healing wasn’t something I had to think my way through.

My body was leading the way.

Since that retreat in Thailand, TRE has become one of my core self-care practices.

It taught me how to trust my body and finally gave my body a seat at the healing table. For years, my intellectual parts had worked tirelessly to regulate my nervous system. TRE brought them immense relief — they no longer had to do all the work on their own.

TRE hasn’t only helped me regulate my nervous system; it has also supported healing in my physical body.

Old shoulder injuries from CrossFit began to soften. Chronic neck pain — the kind that used to debilitate me for months out of the year — resolved. I no longer live with persistent neck pain, and when tension does arise, I return to TRE. The tremors often move naturally into my neck, releasing the holding pattern in a way that feels deeper and more lasting than anything I experienced through massage or chiropractic work alone.

It’s like having a built-in chiropractor — one that worked with and listened directly to the nervous system.

TRE has paired beautifully with the other modalities I work with and trust, including Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Network Spinal Analysis. Together, they support both the psychological and somatic layers of healing, allowing change to happen from the inside out.

Before going further, I want to slow this down and clearly share what TRE actually is — and how it may support your nervous system and healing journey.

What Is TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises)?

Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) is a somatic practice that supports the body in releasing stored stress and tension through natural shaking or tremoring, known as neurogenic tremors.

These tremors are not forced. They are an innate biological mechanism built into the nervous system to help it regulate, reset, and return to balance.

In the animal world, tremoring is instinctive. After a threat passes, animals shake to discharge excess stress and return to baseline. Humans share this same biological mechanism — but we’ve been socially conditioned to suppress it.

Shaking in the body is often misunderstood. It’s associated with fear, weakness, or loss of control. Over time, tremoring has become pathologized, when in reality it is one of the nervous system’s most intelligent self-regulating responses.

TRE gently invites the body to access this natural process again — without force, reliving, or mental effort.

TRE was re-discovered and formalized by David Berceli, though this tremoring mechanism has long been recognized across many somatic and body-based approaches. Modalities such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing also acknowledge the body’s natural impulse to shake as part of releasing stress and restoring regulation.

What makes TRE unique is that it gives this mechanism back to the individual.

Dr. Berceli was intentional in never calling TRE a therapy. He believed that if something is labeled a therapy, access becomes restricted — requiring a professional and creating barriers. Instead, he viewed tremoring as a human right: the body’s built-in capacity to heal itself. Although it can still be nice to have someone certified in TRE help walk you through the exercises to build trust and safety.

TRE doesn’t add anything to the system.It helps the body remember what it already knows how to do. It’s another approach that can feel like you are coming back home to yourself.

How TRE Helps Regulate the Nervous System

For much of my life, my mind tried to manage what my body was feeling.

When my body felt tense, anxious, exhausted, or numb, my mind stepped in to analyze it, control it, or push through it. I believed — without realizing it — that my mind was in charge of keeping me safe.

What I didn’t yet understand was that my body had been responding long before my mind ever got involved.

This is because the nervous system is always working in the background, scanning for safety or danger — not through logic, but through sensation, memory, and experience. It’s much faster than the mind can consciously process, the mind often just comes up with stories for the sensations we are feeling and often judges them as good or bad. This is actually where a lot of our suffering comes from the labeling of sensations in the body but that is for another blog post.

Understanding the Nervous System (From the Inside Out)

Your nervous system isn’t just something you “have”—it’s at the center of your lived experience. Its state influences how safe or stressed you feel, what you notice, how you interpret the world, how you sleep, and how much ease, joy, and well-being you experience day to day.

The nervous system has evolved into three primary states that you will move through as you navigate life. As you read them though try to reflect on your own life so you can begin to track where your nervous system is when you move through your day.

Ventral Vagal: Safety, Connection & Being Yourself

The ventral vagal state is a core part of the nervous system. When we have access to it, we can feel safe, present, and connected, even in the face of challenge.

In this state, you may feel:

• Present and grounded

• Connected to yourself and others

• Open-hearted, calm, and curious

• Joy, creativity, love, and flow

  
  

This state overlaps deeply with what Internal Family Systems calls True Self — the felt sense of being you beneath survival strategies. It’s not something you force. It’s what naturally emerges when the system feels safe enough.

This is the state our nervous system is designed to return to once danger has passed but many of us do not.

Sympathetic: Fight or Flight

When the nervous system senses threat, it mobilizes into fight or flight.

This state gives you energy to:

• Take action

• Escape danger

• Push through challenges

• Perform, achieve, and protect

  
  

This response is essential. We need it to survive. It also shows up in modern life through work stress, intense training, deadlines, performance pressure, and constant demands.

The problem isn’t activation.The problem is never coming back down.

When the nervous system becomes chronically activated, even small stressors can begin to feel life-threatening. The system becomes hypervigilant — scanning for danger everywhere and reacting as if everything is urgent.

Our culture often reinforces this state. Pushing through exhaustion, relying on deadlines for motivation, and wearing burnout as a badge of honor are often praised rather than questioned.

As a result, many people live in a near-constant state of sympathetic activation — anxious, driven, tense, and always “on” — without the nervous system ever completing the stress cycle or returning to safety.

Dorsal Vagal: Freeze, Collapse & Shutdown

When fighting or fleeing doesn’t feel possible, the nervous system shifts into dorsal vagal.

This is the state of:

• Freeze

• Shutdown

• Numbness

• Exhaustion

• Collapse

  
  

This response is also deeply protective. When escape isn’t available, the nervous system conserves energy to survive overwhelming situations. In the animal world, we see this when prey collapses once it knows it cannot outrun a predator — the body enters a freeze state and releases natural opioids to reduce pain and sensation.

This same survival mechanism exists in humans.

It is not something you are meant to live in — yet many people do.

When the nervous system becomes stuck in dorsal vagal, life can start to feel heavy, foggy, disconnected, or overwhelming. Motivation drops. Joy feels distant. Everything takes more effort.

Many people end up oscillating between fight/flight and freeze, bouncing between pushing themselves too hard and then collapsing — never fully returning to a felt sense of safety, connection, or ease.

Why Understanding Your Nervous System Matters

So much of the time, we try to fix ourselves from the intellect.

We analyze. We reframe. We try to think our way into feeling better. And while our thoughts absolutely impact the nervous system, the mind often can’t reach the deeper layers where stress, trauma and injury are stored.

That’s because your nervous system isn’t responding to logic — it’s responding to experience.

When trauma or overwhelm hasn’t been fully processed, the body can remain on alert. Even when life is objectively safe, the nervous system may still be scanning for threat, reacting as if something bad could happen again at any moment.

In many ways, parts of you that influence the nervous system still believe you are living in the past — in the original moment of danger, overwhelm, or helplessness.

This is why curiosity matters.

Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?”We can begin to ask, “What state is my nervous system in right now?”

Am I in fight or flight?Am I shut down or frozen? Or do I feel regulated, connected, and at ease? Can I ask my body what it needs? What it is trying to communicate?

When we get curious in this way, we stop blaming ourselves — and start listening. Sometimes symptoms aren’t just something to fix—they can be the body’s way of asking us to slow down or pay attention to what hasn’t been processed yet.

When the Body Is Ready to Let Go

Sometimes healing does require witnessing the story. This is where I deeply love IFS — creating space for parts to be seen, understood, and met with compassion.

And sometimes… the body doesn’t need to tell the story again.

When the nervous system can feel that you are safe now, it often just wants to release what it’s been holding.

This is where TRE can be so powerful.

TRE helps the body process stress, trauma and injury stored in the nervous system — without needing to relive, analyze, or fully understand what happened. The body completes what was once interrupted, and the system naturally reorganizes itself.

Both approaches matter.Both serve different layers of healing.

And together, they allow healing to happen with more ease, less effort, and far less force.

Who Can Benefit From TRE?

The short answer is: everyone.

TRE is about waking up and reconnecting with an innate healing mechanism that already exists in your body. You don’t need to have experienced major trauma to benefit from it — although if you have, TRE can be profoundly supportive.

Being human is stressful.

There is pressure from work, relationships, family, finances, expectations, and simply navigating day-to-day life. Even when things are “going well,” the nervous system is constantly taking in stimulation, responsibility, and demand. Having a place where your body can release all of that — without effort or analysis — is incredibly valuable.

If you train hard, push your body through intense exercise, or carry old injuries, that stress lives in the tissues and nervous system too.

TRE can support:

• Releasing chronic muscular tension

• Supporting old injury healing

• Preventing injury by helping the body discharge excess strain

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The body doesn’t differentiate between emotional stress and physical stress — it just holds it.

It’s a way to let your system unload what it’s been carrying so you don’t have to keep holding it inside. It creates more space for ease and joy and who doesn’t want more of that!

What TRE Can Support

People use TRE for many different reasons, including:

• Nervous system regulation and stress relief

• Social anxiety and performance anxiety

• Phobias and chronic fear responses

• Recovery from emotional or relational trauma

• Healing and prevention of physical injuries

• Chronic muscle tension or pain

• Insomnia and difficulty settling the body for rest

• Burnout, exhaustion, and shutdown

  
  

You don’t need to know why your body is holding tension for TRE to help. The body already knows what it’s ready to release.

Benefits of a Regular TRE Practice

With consistent practice, many people notice:

• A greater sense of calm and regulation

• Faster recovery from stress

• Improved sleep and rest

• Less reactivity and hypervigilance

• Increased body awareness and trust

• More access to ease, presence, and connection

• A felt sense of coming back home to themselves

  
  

TRE doesn’t force healing.It allows it.

And over time, the nervous system learns that it no longer has to stay on high alert — it can release, reset, and return to safety again and again. This creates nervous system flexibility.

Want to Get Started With TRE?

If you’re curious to experience TRE for yourself, you don’t have to wait.

I’ve created a free guided TRE video on my YouTube channel that walks you through the last exercise to help you activate the healing shaking mechanism. If you enjoy it please like and subscribe to my page.

I have also attached a poster of all the TRE exercises with guided instructions.

If you’d prefer more personalized support, you’re welcome to reach out to work with me privately at info@kyliefeller.com. I offer one-on-one TRE sessions over Zoom, where we can move at a pace that feels right for your nervous system and build confidence in the practice together. I also offer a group class for people who have taken at least one class with me and feel comfortable joining the group.

You can also find other certified TRE providers through the official TRE Provider Directory, which lists trained professionals around the world: https://treglobal.org/tre-provider-list/

And if this work resonates, I’m currently in the process of creating a TRE + IFS self-help workbook designed to support both nervous system regulation and parts-based healing. If you’d like to stay updated on that release, I invite you to join my email list or follow along on social media.

You don’t need to push or fix yourself to heal.Your body already knows the way — sometimes it just needs permission and support to begin.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions info@kyliefeller.com 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqOTm_gFKNo