PEOPLE, PLACES & PRODUCTS Ripple 19 News


Trauma: Time for a TRE change


Since Dr David Berceli brought TRE to Australia this year, I’ve


run Trauma Release Workshops workshops for bushfire survivors in Victoria, flood survivors in QLD and earthquake survivors in Christchurch, New Zealand. While bringing TRE to people recovering from life threatening traumas is invaluable, I’ve found my real passion lies in reaching those of us who, like me, feel we’ve been driving through life with our handbrakes on.


Not entirely on or enough to stop me dead in my tracks, like those


whose worlds have been shaken apart in New Zealand or washed way in Queensland, but enough to notice I didn’t have that spring in my step, glimmer in my eyes or bushiness in my tail that I once had in the past.


That’s the way it is with trauma; we don’t have to have a life


threatening event to accumulate tension and pain in our bodies or have emotional responses that regularly overwhelm us or habitual patterns of behaviour and thoughts that affect the way we live our lives.


For some, it’s the full catastrophe, their bodies internal ‘emergency


brake’ bringing their lives to a screeching halt in a few life changing moments, while for most of us, trauma sneaks up quietly and discretely, slowly tightening the screws on our lives without us even realising.


In my 30’s if felt like I was not so much hitting the wall as the


wall was hitting me. I gradually couldn’t run due to chronic calf pain, couldn’t swim due to dodgy shoulders, couldn’t work the hours, couldn’t get excited about the hobbies and pursuits of my younger years. I just couldn’t keep doing the things I’d always done that had kept me happy.


What I know now though is they weren’t really keeping me


happy...they were just keeping me from feeling all the overwhelming experiences my body had intelligently stored deep within me until I was ready to integrate and resolve them.


No different to anyone else mind you, nothing overly dramatic


or even close to life threatening. No repressed memories of abuse, abandonment, major loss or grief. Just a life full of all the usual things we don’t think of as traumatic but experienced as overwhelming to my body at the time.


That’s the key with trauma; it’s our bodies that respond no matter


what the threat is. Whether it’s an earthquake, a bully at school, a surgeon’s knife, a stressful job, concerns about appearance, circumcision, worries about money or maybe when mum didn’t come when I cried. Ultimately, it’s my body that responds, so it’s through my body that the resolution of my trauma lies.


There’s a lot more to the story of trauma of course; how the


resolution of trauma provides a rare opportunity for growth and transformation or as Peter Levine describes it, “while trauma may be hell on earth, its resolution may be a gift from the Gods.”


How Tanzanian midwives know to keep mothers standing after


birth until their bodies have completed the involuntary shaking and trembling that releases the trauma of birth, sometimes for up to ½ an hour; how underlying most chronic health conditions there is an adrenal system constantly priming the body for fight or flight in response to unresolved stress and trauma.


How Ariel Shalev found people who left the emergency ward of


a Jerusalem hospital without their heart rate back to normal were highly likely to develop PTSD and how humans have evolved two very different ways to calm ourselves down; one that keeps us socially engaged and another which is potentially lethal by shutting us down as we ‘freeze’ into immobility.


How TRE provides talk based therapies a vital resource to


concurrently address these defensive body physiologies that underlie most of our psycho-emotional struggles while enhancing body work with a self empowering process to minimise the return to habitual tension patterns between treatments.


How in addition to controlling the body or consciously relaxing as


with many forms of exercise, there’s another way that allows the body to unwind itself more deeply through automated tremors and movements beyond the limits of our conscious control.


How this innate tremoring resource described by Bradford Keeney


in Shaking Medicine as ‘the oldest medicine on earth ’ has been misunderstood as a sign of shock in western society and how many of us live lives with unresolved trauma leaving us plodding through life with the handbrake on.


And then there’s Dr David Berceli and his simple exercises


to invoke this innate resource within each and every one of us; developed in response to mass scale trauma where it’s not possible or necessary to provide one on one therapy with every survivor; sparked by observing children in a bomb shelter shaking while none of the adults were because they 'didn’t want the children to know we were scared.'


Dr David Berceli has shared this simple yet profound process


with more than a million people around the planet and is returning to Australia again this November and December; showing us how to release' stress and trauma without having to feel overwhelmed and without needing to recall or talk about specific events; teaching us how to safely lead other people through these exercises and most of all, showing that through the resolution of our trauma, we can be shaken free into the bodies, minds and lives we were born to live.


Richmond Heath is a Melbourne based Physiotherapist and TRE Instructor sponsoring Dr David Berceli’s Australian Workshops.


More info and early bird rego via www.trauma-release-exercises.com.au or phone 0409 357 964


Courses|Workshops|Events – www.livingnow.com.au/CWE


Melbourne November 12 – 14* Sydney November 19 – 21* Perth November 26 – 28* Auckland December 3 Christchurch December 4 – 6 Brisbane December 10 Canberra December 11


1 day workshop on first day in Melbourne, Sydney & Perth


*run by Richmond Heath from Trauma Release Australia


More info and registration via www.trauma-release-exercises.com.au


OCTOBER 2011


“TO HAVE ACCESS TO RELEASING TRAUMA WITHOUT HAVING MY CLIENTS HAVING TO RELIEVE OR RE-EXPERIENCE TRAUMA EVENTS IS VERY EXCITING. TRE IS THE MOST REWARDING WORK THAT I HAVE BECOME INVOLVED IN WORKING WITH CLIENTS.” CAROL SWANSON, PHD, PSYCHOLOGIST


DR DAVID BERCELI HAS SHARED THIS SIMPLE


YET PROFOUND PROCESS WITH MORE THAN A MILLION PEOPLE AROUND THE PLANET AND IS RETURNING TO AUSTRALIA AGAIN THIS NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER


“TRE IS A ROUTE TO HEALING I HAD NOT EXPERIENCED FROM ANY OTHER MODALITY. I HAVE BEEN A PHYSICIAN, A PSYCHIATRIST, AND A GESTALT SPECIALIST FOR 35 YEARS. I AM NOW TEACHING TRE TO ALL MY CLIENTS AS A HEALING MODALITY.” DR MELANIE SALMON, MD PSYCHIATRIST


“AS A PSYCHOLOGIST, I AM SO EXCITED TO HAVE DISCOVERED TRAUMA RELEASE EXERCISES. DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE SIMPLICITY OF THIS PROCESS. IT IS DEEP AND PROFOUND WORK. I AM RECOMMENDING IT TO MY CLIENTS AS A PROCESS THAT BEAUTIFULLY COMPLIMENTS OTHER FORMS OF TREATMENT.” KARIN HANNIGAN, PSYCHOLOGIST.


Workshops With Dr David Berceli


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