Understanding TRE

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) is a body-based stress reduction method developed in the early 2000s by David Berceli. While living and working in places affected by conflict, he noticed that children often shook after frightening events and then returned to play, while adults tended to hold tension in.

He also observed that some traditional societies treat shaking after stress as normal, while in Western settings it is often suppressed. This is his own account. TRE is not a traditional practice of any particular Indigenous nation.

People in many cultures have used shaking and trembling in healing and spiritual life. A few documented examples:

• The San of southern Africa hold all-night healing dances in which healers enter a trance. These are communal ceremonies tied to the community's relationship with its ancestors and spirits.
• The Indian Shaker Church emerged among Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in 1881, and its members valued shaking as part of healing and worship.

These are living traditions that belong to their communities. We share them only to acknowledge that shaking has a long human history, not to teach or reproduce them. To learn more, we encourage you to seek out materials created by the communities themselves.

Shaking can look similar from the outside while being very different in purpose and meaning. Here is how TRE compares with the traditions above.

This is separate from TRE. These are Indigenous-led ideas, and we point to them rather than speak for them.

• Historical trauma is described by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart as cumulative wounding across the lifespan and across generations, arising from massive group trauma experiences.
• "Soul wound" is the term Duran and Duran use for trauma experienced through colonial processes.
• Land-based healing is a major approach in Canada. The Thunderbird Partnership Foundation's report "Land for Healing" is a good place to start.
• Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs use Indigenous focusing-oriented therapy, a trauma model that is collective, land-based, and intergenerational.

Research on TRE is still early. A 2023 scoping review of 18 studies found possible benefits for mood, anxiety-related sleep difficulties, pain, and cognitive function, but noted that many studies used less rigorous methods, so results should be considered preliminary. Some critics also question whether the underlying explanation is biologically plausible.

TRE should be seen as a self-care practice, not a treatment for any condition.

We are not Indigenous healers and we do not claim to represent any tradition. We work to credit our sources, avoid borrowing sacred practices, and listen to the communities whose knowledge shapes this field. If you see something we should correct, please tell us.