Below:
1. Stephanie Mines, PhD. creator of Jin Shin TARA
2. Kimberly Jonas, founder of Body Mantra
3. Chris Balsley, MA, LPC, PCC featuring David Berceli's Tension Release Exercises
Stephanie Mines, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the DOM Project and the TARA Approach for the resolution of shock and trauma.
The DOM Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing alternative health options for a broad spectrum of populations. As founder and Program Director, Dr. Mines is responsible for disseminating information to communities in need, especially people suffering from illness that results from shock and trauma, survivors of domestic violence, families and children, and people living with neurodiversity including autism and other sensory integration challenges.
Dr. Mines' latest book "WE ARE ALL IN SHOCK: How Overwhelming Experiences Shatter You and What You Can Do About It", (New Page Books, 2003), presents a comprehensive application of the healing system she has developed.
Jen: Hello Stephanie! Welcome to Being in the Body and Somatic Network Exchange.
Stephanie: Hi Jennifer. Thanks for inviting me.
J: Of course. I appreciate your time. So, I was wondering as you developed the Tara Approach how it supplements or complements Jin Shin.
S: Well, I began my investigation into the nervous system by studying Jin Shin. I was a student of Mary Ino Burmeister who brought Jin Shin from Japan to America for over twenty years. Actually it was in my practice with people that made me want to go further because I was seeing people who wanted to receive Jin Shin treatments and all of them had for whatever reason quite serious traumatic issues that they wanted to resolve, and so I became curious about other ways in that could be a resource for them. This curiosity actually led me ultimately to getting a doctorate in psychology studying neuropsychology and studying trauma with Peter Levine, completing his training program as part of my post doctoral work. Then, I studied even further with Dr. William Emerson investigating pre- and peri-natal trauma. I feel like my clients – the people who came to me for help – really led me on this path as I saw ways to be a better resource for them.
J: Wonderful. So, some people say that the somatic approach and tools enable people to stay out of fight or flight when they are triggered which enables them to make better choices because their neocortex remains involved. I’m curious about the science behind or the physical response to the Tara Approach.
S: Well, I think it goes even beyond staying out of fight or flight, and I will explain what I mean by that. I feel that the traumatic experiences that we have are not only overwhelming for the nervous system, they actually are almost like wake up calls to help us to understand how we’re put together. So, in the process of recovering from trauma, whether it appears to be just physiologically based, such as an accident, or it has an emotional-psychological component, such as an assault or an abusive experience or it is a spiritual trauma – that is, a person may have a traumatic experience in their meditation practice and feel overwhelmed by sensation during meditation…all of those events are not horrible events, even though they feel horrible and can have a lot of negative consequences immediately, actually, they are wake up calls to how our nervous system is organized and how our nervous system can be repatterned. Therefore, the lesson that is learned from recovering from traumatic experience, if you are guided towards recovery and actually total resolution, is that we can are resilient human beings. And, we are resilient on the physiological level, which is the neurological level, so it’s not just an emotional recovery. So coming out of PTSD, for instance, is not just an emotional experience; it is a total physiological experience, and that’s why the somatic approaches are essential. In fact you cannot resolve a nervous system, physiological overload simply through a conversation. There has to be a physiological change for resolution to occur. So, for that reason I fused the studies of physiology and the studies of energy with my understanding of how dialogue or neuropsychology could in fact create holistic, comprehensive package for the resolution of trauma.
J: I see. I would like to know a little bit more about your work with children, and also the prenatal roots of some of this stress we experience.
S: Thank you. These are my favorite subjects. I am led to my next level of inquiry by the people who come to me seeking support; seeking help. So, my work has led more and more to serving children, serving families and looking at the prenatal or earliest development or issues that are causative for setting a blueprint for how the nervous system responds to experience. So, the way that we respond, for instance, to a car accident, a difficult relationship, a crisis of some kind or a loss – any of those situations, even combat and war – the way that we respond is highly individuated and is based on the blueprint in our nervous system. That blueprint is established very early. This is true from a scientific standpoint; this is not just an idea. There is substantial evidence and there has been for a long time. We just haven’t put all the pieces together. But, our understanding of embryology makes it clear that the entire nervous system is in place very early – within the first month of the first trimester. So, already at that very early stage the nervous system is assembled and responsive from a very sensory, somatic, physiological standpoint to the environment. So the entire field for epigenetics, for instance, is based on this, on the fact that yes when a child is conceived there is obviously a genetic inheritance, but there is also an epigenetic influence that contributes to that genetic inheritance and actually starts to shape genetics and change genetics. So, because I want to get to the root of everything; I want to find the causative factors. I have explored embryology and I have also explored the sensory system – sensory integration issues, and this is what led me to work more and more with children and families. In fact, I’m now doing clinical trials with young children with autism. This is the fourth clinical trial with my system.
J: Terrific.
S: Yes. There have been clinical trials with aphasia, with stroke and with traumatic brain injury. All of those clearly are telling us about the behavior of the nervous system and the response of the nervous system to the kinds of interventions that are the TARA Approach.
J: Where were you conducting these?
S: Well, the stroke, aphasia and TPI studies were all done at the University of Colorado. And, the autism trial is being done at the University of Central Oklahoma in Oklahoma City.
J: You talk about in your book: We Are All in Shock, the “intelligence in our hands.” You teach a self care program and I’d like to know more about that.
S: I have a very strong empowerment and sustainability direction in my teaching, so I believe that the best interventions for resolving trauma in the nervous system are subtle and gentle, not cathartic. This is because what destabilizes the nervous system is cathartic, is overwhelming, so the antidote to that is a gentle intervention: gentle touch, gentle language that orients towards stimulating the nervous system to find it’s own health, its own symmetry, its own integrity. Because those interventions are gentle, I know I’ve demonstrated that they’re eminently learnable by anyone. I teach anyone who’s interested in learning, such as parents as well as professionals. So, professional caregivers, parents and students of the healing process all come together in my classes, and I believe that the self care application of the system, where you actually learn to treat yourself first is the beginning of my program. Everybody starts in that place when they learn my system. That is the most empowering and sustainable way to not only resolve trauma but to help your family, to help your community and I’m pretty idealistic. I believe that the whole world can be helped by understanding that the tools for healing are in our own hands.
J: Beautifully put. So, you split your time between here, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Mexico – those seem to be the main places?
S: Well, I have trainings here in Boulder. I just finished one a few days ago. And, I will be doing another training here in Boulder next year. I do have groups of students in Mexico. I now have nine about to be eleven certified practitioners throughout Mexico. I’m going to Mexico on Wednesday and I’m hopeful that very shortly I will have two certified teachers in Mexico. In Hawaii, I have about six certified practitioners, and I hope soon to have some certified teachers there. I have two certified teachers in Oklahoma City and five certified practitioners there. That has evolved very serendipitously and wonderfully that I’ve been teaching in Oklahoma for almost five years now. My program has grown there. I’ve had certified practitioners, but I also have trained quite a number of physical therapists and I’m now starting to train quite a few occupational therapists. So, I’m excited about that. They’re incorporating the TARA Approach into their professional practices. I am invited to teach in the UK. I taught there in April and I will be going back there in 2012.
J: Wonderful!
S: Things are just expanding lickety-split, and I’m really eager to train more and more people so that they can carry this work into the world.
J: So that it expands.
S: So that it continues to expand and I don’t have to do everything myself, because I have been pretty impressed with the miraculous growth and my capacity to meet it, but I sure would like other people to be doing some of the traveling and teaching.
J: I was wondering when do you use language or talk therapy in your practice?
S: I train all of my students in a form of dialogue that I could say is similar to being a midwife in the sense that what we’re doing is really encouraging the person who’s in the recipient position to access their own healing wisdom. For instance, I like to suggest that practitioners ask stimulating questions rather than direct or manipulate dialogue in any way – questions that are stimulating the person’s own capacity to reflect upon themselves in a new way – so that they begin to experience their own responses from another perspective. For instance, in a course that I just taught, I was trying to explain the concept of stasis, which is just another word for habituation or addiction. And, I actually was explaining stasis from a movement standpoint. So, in this course, which was a training for practitioners, we were doing a demonstration treatment and a woman was having an experience of a movement in her hand that she was not making. She could see the movement and the movement was really important. She was making the movement in her mind, but she couldn’t make the movement with her hand. It was interesting because this particular person is a dancer as well as being a certified professional practicing therapist. Those two things sometimes go very well together! So, this person is a professional, performing, award-winning dancer, and here she was describing this very important movement with her hand but not making the movement. And that was an example of stasis. The movement was stuck in her hand. It was stuck because of a traumatic experience and so rather than the practitioner saying something like: “Why don’t you move your hand,” or “How come your hand isn’t moving?” The practitioner says something like: “What do you notice in your hand?” And, that way inspires the recipient to notice from the standpoint of her nervous system, what is the dynamic – he premotoric dynamic in her hand? And when she replies, as she did in this case: “I feel like I can’t move my hand even though I can see it moving. But, I can’t move it.” The practitioner can say something like: “Can you go underneath that inability to move your hand? Can you find something underneath that?” So questions that are evocative and that stimulate the somatic processing of the person; the person’s own reflection on their own somatic experience. That is the language that I encourage, not analytic or evaluative language, but language that stimulates somatic awareness.
J: Got it. So, your organization is a non-profit?
S: Right. I have created a 501-C3 nonprofit organization and the reason that I have gone that route is because I really believe in bringing these services of recovery from trauma and overwhelming shock to the communities. So, I am committed to serving, for instance families in Mexico, families in Hawaii, families right here – people who are struggling with conditions that the medical profession don’t really have solutions for, but which drain them energetically, emotionally and financially. For instance, families living with children who have some sensory integration problems like autism – the medical world is still justifiably in confusion and chaos around issues like autism or anything on the autism spectrum or sensory integration problems. They’re not really sure what causes it or what to do about it. They tried different pharmaceuticals, different therapies but many of these are not covered by insurance. Families are living 24/7 with children’s behavior that they don’t understand and don’t have tools for. They’re paying for these experimental therapies. To me that’s a tragedy. And so because I have tools that I feel are so sustainable and so empowering and relatively easy to learn, I want to put those tools into the hands of the people who need them. So, that’s why I created my nonprofit organization. So, the non-profit is called the DOM project and it is named for a man who I had the blessing to serve who died of AIDS and he began working with me at a time prior to the Protease inhibitors when science was able to find a way to allow people with AIDS to survive. So, he died of AIDS and my experience with him was so transformative – not only in terms of what happened while he was alive, but also in the way that he died that I was guided to name my non-profit after him. The TARA Approach is the treatment modality that I created in the process of working with the AIDS community and I now have gone on to evolve the TARA Approach for a broad spectrum of communities. I am no longer working so much with people with AIDS because the need in the US has not been so strong, but I am committed to the paradigm that I created as a result of that early inspiration.
J: What do you do when you are not working on the TARA Approach to take care of yourself?
S: Well, I treat myself and I love to move. I love to dance. I just came from a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class and I’ve been investigating that system a little bit more. I’ve always been very attracted to it – just playing with it. And I love to do yoga. I also love to hike. I did a wonderful hike here in my beautiful backyard of Eldorado Springs with my husband yesterday evening. And I have two grandchildren I enjoy playing with. And I love my daughters – I have two daughters. And I just enjoy their company very much. I love to read and I write poetry. So, those are the things I love to do for myself.
J: Great. Well, thank you so much. You’re a channel of wonder…
S: Oh! Thank you.
J: …really a blessing for the community. I appreciate it.
S: Thank you for the opportunity.
J: My pleasure.
END
Jen: It’s wonderful to meet with you today.
Kimberly: I’m so glad to be here.
J: Let’s begin with the name of your practice. You were telling me that BodyMantra was the name of your movement technique. It’s now the umbrella term essentially for all of what you do. So, how was BodyMantra born? And, tell me about its evolution.
K: Well, a number of years ago I had been teaching free form movement for a long time, which you might call ecstatic dance, conscious dance. There are a lot of general terms out there. And, I realized that something was moving through me that was very specific, that was really unique to how I approached the body of people, and the name BodyMantra came through. I was actually brainstorming with a friend. And so, BodyMantra was born. At that time, it was really about the movement practice. It was the perfect name. It was the perfect time to shift into claiming my own work, and then over the years, what’s happened is BodyMantra has really evolved. It began as movement, but even in the teachings through movement classes, it became very clear that it’s about a way to live life. It’s about consciousness, transparency, truth telling, ritual, and it became a natural evolution to start using the name BodyMantra for everything that I do: products, private sessions, movement sessions, because it really is an approach to live.
J: I’d like to know a little bit more about your background as well. You say that you’re a Reiki Master. How much do you involve Reiki and how does your practice differ?
K: I am a Reiki master. I’ve gone through the “attunements,” as they are called. That means that I’ve studied the systems of Reiki and understand the tools that are used specifically but also my vibrational system has been directly addressed, and that’s what’s called an attunement – to raise my vibration so that I can work with people in a certain way. But, I will say that I’ve moved away from traditional Reiki practice. For many years now, I’ve really involved into my own version of energy work. Certainly, Reiki is a basis in the sense that it’s primary tenets are about sensing in the body, moving energy in the body, attuning to energy in the body, and I do all of that. But I don’t use in a linear way Reiki systems and Reiki tools anymore. It’s really a much more organic, personalized process.
J: Your website states that your work is focused on the three principles that you mention: the body awareness, personal inquiry and intention space, and I was hoping you could address these, but I wanted to start with the dialogue with the body that you mention. I would like to know more about that and the way one engages in this dialogue.
K: That’s a great question. Really everything that I do is body centric, so whether someone’s coming to see me personally one-on-one, which is the personal inquiry piece, or I’m in their home – the sacred intentional space work – it’s still about the embodiment of that space: how they’re moving through that space and working with that space. And, of course, a movement practice is body centric. So, for me BodyMantra - and again, that name is so perfect, because everything I do is about where is everything that we’re doing is sourcing in the body. So, if I am asking a question about what’s happening for me personally, or a passage I am going through in my life, I am always going to encourage you to understand – where is that living in the body? And if you don’t even know what that means, that’s our work together. Our work is to then bring you into a level of body awareness that can help you then move through things more effectively, because I believe we hold everything in the body – all of our stories, everything that happens to us daily goes into the tissues and the cells. So, the more we can understand and have a relationship with the body, the more we can move that, and shift that and healthfully release things that don’t need to be held.
J: Sure. I’ve been fortunate to take some of your movement classes, and I have really appreciated the themes that you’ve introduced. Some of them are seasonal, but I wondered where you come up with them.
K: Well, selfishly they are all for me. (laughs) It’s funny because people ask me that, and truly when I’m coming towards another month, because I do monthly themes right now, I really tap into what’s happening for me. And, of course that’s affected by things that I’m hearing in my private practice, discussions I’m having with clients, with friends, with family. But, really, the truth is I try to make it very real, so that I’m tapping into something that is true for me and then transmitting it, and hopefully that’s resonating enough with the group, and then I start to hear even more feedback – people saying: “Oh, well let me to tell you my view about that and why that’s affecting me. But, I found that if I try to fabricate something that sounds good, but really doesn’t translate to my heart or I don’t feel it in my body, it doesn’t go very far.
J: Sure.
K: So, again, selfishly I love to name them and work with it myself, and then that seems to transmit to the group.
J: Right. And there’s often that collective unconscious – people are resonating with what you’re going through…
K: Exactly. Yes.
J: …the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm. How do you feel that your work helps people to ground themselves during all that’s going on right now?
K: (sighs) Well, I think it’s essential that we have places where we can go, people we can work with, to deal with this very thing that you are naming, because we’re reading it everywhere – there’s so much going on, even if it’s not named in a psychodynamic setting. We can see it in our political system, we can see it in our natural systems – all sorts of disasters are happening and calamities, and I think it’s essential for us to have a community, a support group, and also an awareness of the places where we can feel more grounded. So that as we watch the news and hear all of these stories - maybe from friends closer to home, but also on the global scale - our systems aren’t living in pure chaos all of the time. How do I take that chaos, look at that chaos but then allow it to move through my system so that I’m not completely undone all the time? Certainly it’s this work in times like this that’s even more essential, but I probably would say the same thing if things weren’t in such a state of upheaval on the planet right now, because I’m such a believer in this idea of really, fully connecting with self regardless of external circumstance.
J: So who were some of your greatest inspirations along the way?
K: Wow, that’s a long list. I actually practiced for a long time in movement with Vinn Marti who teaches Soul Motion – a very dear friend and colleague. And, that really spurred me in terms of the movement side of things, and (pause) I’m just in my system feeling… I’ve had so many incredible yoga instructors, because I live in Boulder – we’re in one of the yoga Mecca’s so I’ve had these incredible instructor who’ve filled me with a curiosity and that continues with a number of people in this town who hold me in that space. And then, the thing that actually came first to my mind that’s staying with me is students and clients – the people who are in my community because I find that their feedback and how they respond to this work and talk about this work and challenge me and provoke me in the sense of "What’s next?" and "Have you looked at it in this way?" I find that now that’s my primary fuel and feeding in the work.
J: Especially at a time like this when things are falling apart, it seems like community is so important.
K: Yes, and it gets sustained in its own right – the people who are showing up together in a community are so touched by what happens and how they are transformed and how they are seen and how they see others, that they take the time to connect and talk to each other, and not just in a social chatter kind of way. I’m really listening to conversations after classes, and when people email me – they are continuing these dialogues over lunch and with their families at dinner, and asking about how they can be supportive and support each other even more to be fully embodied.
J: You have 14 years in corporate work as well, and I wonder, do you continue to do that besides the other practices that you have.
K: I don’t, but I can say that it has served me in my work. I sell product and I have websites and all of those things that could be labeled as corporate, so it’s really served me in the sense of helping with my business. But also, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. I work with a lot of people who are in the 9-5 world... people who are in a more corporate setting who I work with and I can understand their perspective. I know what they’re talking about when they’re speaking about a lot of the hierarchies and structures that are set up in a corporate environment. So that has really helped me to embrace those people and understand them not just from a book perspective thinking that I know who they are, but really having been in the trenches and knowing what that feels like.
J: I know that when I’ve experienced a session with you, I have felt far more grounded and I’ve felt that the work continues well beyond the time that we’ve met, and things are getting processed and healed both in the session and as time goes by, but there isn’t really a verbal exchange going on, so it isn’t a traditional talk therapy, and yet I’m explaining a few things to you. I’m just curious; if you could explain your process a little more, I would appreciate it.
K: Yeah. That’s a great way to put it, because we’re certainly having an exchange though words a little bit in session, and my intention is always to bring in what’s called the conscious mind, the part of the mind that can help us, not hinder us. So it’s not the chatter mind that goes on and on that rambles and tries to figure everything out, but the part of the mind that can say: “Oh yes, I know that some fear is coming up,” or “I’m really having a lot of confusion,” but then, once we name those seeds of information, I always want to bring it then into the body, so that we do get out of the idea that we have it figured out or can figure it out and get to the end game. But stay in the question of that and understand how the body wants to move that and really let go of this idea that our English language can encapsulate the tremendous dynamism of the body and how much it can hold. So, there is a component of this work – and I wouldn’t want this to go away – there is a component that is mysterious and that I can’t explain. I can feel things happening. I can talk to you about it, but hopefully we can stay in that idea that you just explained, which is: I do feel more grounded, I do feel more centered. Maybe I don’t know all the reasons why, but there is something to that.
J: How can we carry the work that you do into our everyday lives? What kind of intentional practices do you recommend to stay in touch with or listen to this knowing that you teach?
K: Well, in many cases it’s very particular to the person I am working with. So, if I am working one-on-one with someone we may talk about things that they need to do specifically, like journaling or practicing speaking up in a certain way with their family or getting out into nature and talking a walk at least a certain number of times a week so that they can reconnect to themselves. So, a lot of times I’ll be tuning into what that person may want to incorporate into their daily lives, based on what we’ve worked with. Then, of course there’s the BodyMantra movement practice which locally I always speak to people about, because it’s a community that is holding conscious intention to continue doing their work in their daily lives, so it’s a great place to gather. And then, recently I have launched a line of essential oil blends. I’ve always worked with essential oils in my private practice, so there’s this natural extension to develop a line of oil blends that are really archetypes of what I see and have seen over the course of time with clients and students. For example, an oil called “Surrender” or an oil called “Truth Serum,” which is about speaking the truth. And these are all intended for someone to take and apply daily and have a daily ritual and speak a mantra and get in their bodies, so that they’re bridging the gap between sessions that we have, or the times that we talk. So that they’re not just floundering and it isn’t only our times together that they really get embodied and get in touch with themselves, but they’re really then extending that to create an intentional practice on a daily basis for themselves. It’s about personal empowerment. It’s not about me fixing you or making everything better. That’s a really old model of healing. I’m really in this new paradigm, which I think is essential for whomever I am working with – that I’m facilitating, I’m guiding, and then they get to step away and strengthen in that themselves. So, all of these practices including this BodyMantra Essential Oil Blends are intended to help with that.
J: I’m sure they’re wonderful.
K: Thank you. It’s very exciting. The line has 21 oils. There are some that are specific for men that I developed based on, again, working with a number of men; some specific for women having worked with women and hearing what they are diving into. And then there is a segment of the line that is for anyone based on, like I said, these archetypes that are basic principles that anyone can or may want to work with in their daily life: abundance, grounding, finding a central channel of focus, quieting the mind. There’s one called “Stillpoint” that I love – it’s about really slowing down. And, there’s no reason why we can’t have these things every day, and really take that extra five minutes to infuse ourselves with those intentions and mantras.
J: I bet it was fun to come up with the different mixes.
K: Oh yes!
J: I can see you in the kitchen playing around.
K: Yes, as I like to say the mad scientist with my hair messed up, and then I have test tubes with smoke coming out of them…
J: You throw a little in your food and on your body…
K: Exactly. And a little over my shoulder. Yeah, it was really fun and continues to be as I’m talking to people…
J: Sure.
K: …who are smelling them and using them. And also, of course, I’m coming up with more and more ideas, so I’m sure it will just continue to exponentially expand to support everybody who is longing for this and really dedicated to bringing this into daily life.
J: Well, the Earth and the community are lucky to have you. And, it’s been an honor to speak with you today. At any rate, I look forward to seeing the continued evolution of BodyMantra unfold.
K: Thanks you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
J: Thank you!
End
Jen: So, to begin, you explained that David Berceli created tension release exercises or TRE in response to a need in third world countries where people don’t have the time and money to go to therapy. Interestingly, the way insurance companies limit sessions now, it’s pretty tough to get down to the source of trauma via talk therapy even in the United States so it seems to be a technique that would benefit counselors. Can you elaborate on how and why it was created and why it is so effective?
Chris: Yes.
J: I know that’s a broad question.
C: I heard two questions, and the one I would like to address first is… there’s something about talk therapy and how it’s defined and what it does. We can really make more of an impact on our clients when we more holistically include a body approach; when we provide an emotional approach, as well as when we include and provide a linguistic or language based approach. Often people get stuck in one modality or another. We can create balance by addressing more the whole perspective. For example, when doctors deal with emotions and massage therapists think about what stress does mentally to their clients. Any time we can begin to branch fields, we begin to approach a more holistic way of helping people. And so, regarding talk therapy – you said it doesn’t always work alone, and it doesn’t. I don’t want to put down the talk therapists, but the truth is the trauma happens in the part of the brain that’s primitive and emotional – the limbic branch – and a lot of times, talk therapy deals with the cognitive experience or the mental reflection on the stress, and it can be good, but it can also miss what I think is the component of trying to connect into the experience of the human and their impact, their language on their body – body, emotion, language, mind. Talk therapy can miss the mark sometimes if we try to deal cognitively about the issue. Now, if we bring in the language: “Breathe for me. Try to do this. Hold a different position, walk it off, shake it off, repeat it to me again. Incorporate the body and the body senses it. We get this link to understanding of learning that’s mental, physical, and emotional – it’s really powerful. I think TRE’s do just that. They give you a sense of: “I have stress in my body, that’s very interesting,” and then we begin to move from a new perspective. We may have had an experience mentally, emotionally, and as a result, there is a place where we have a lot of stress. Can we aim to get there more often in our lives because of the health benefits, because the decreased high blood pressure and all the things that we talk about. Thirteen million dollars a year lost to stress related illnesses. You know, we can deal with stress on that level. We can create miracles, and they’re not really miracles – they’re just a different relationship to stress. So I think somatics is a key component – you know bringing in the body is a key component for anybody. And I think when the talk therapists choose predominantly to talk, branches over into somatic way of interviewing, they’re becoming very powerful because they are now entering more than one area of the body, and I think that’s where things get really powerful. And when somatic therapists can bring in more language and when more linguistic, talk therapists do more body – we start opening up and our impact is on more levels than just one.
J: Have you experienced EMDR ever?
C: I have. And what I like about it is that it’s so cut and dry, but in the end I feel like I let something go. That’s what I like about it. I no longer have that response to my trigger, because you just downgraded my trigger.
J: Sure.
C: So, it’s a somatic experience in that I can actually feel different to how I relate to the issue, because I did EMDR and now I think about my mother, the economy, my job status – whatever it is that causes me stress, and that trigger’s not there.
J: So, it’s diffusing the tension around the trigger.
C: Exactly. Or another word for diffusing is Peter Levine’s word: “hijacked.” When there is stress, we get hijacked: less blood supply to the front part, more to the back, so you become less intelligent. Our intelligence comes from the front part of our brain, but we’re not dumb. We just don’t have the creative capacity, because our energy is turned to being emotional and reactive. We sense life. We know we’re pissed off and angry and upset or scared or depressed, but sometimes we do things that we wouldn’t normally do, because the regulator is in the neocortex – it’s turned off. The filter that says: “Don’t do that,” when we are fighting with somebody literally is turned off under stress conditions, and the effect is an emotional effect, because we hate the fact that that’s happening. And, talk therapy can’t fix that if it tries to address it in the cortex. It needs to go into the somatic approach somehow.
J: The only person who I encountered who seems to have a theory that allows a cognitive process to release pain is Dr. John Sarno who wrote Mind Body Prescription coined the term TMS or Tension Myositis Syndrome, and it’s essentially a depletion of oxygen to parts of the body when people are under stress. He felt that just by acknowledging the repressed anger the pain shifted and I’m just curious about that. He believes that just becoming aware of a feeling connection can free some people.
C: Okay. So, we have body-emotion, which is kind of a mental approach.
J: Right, it is.
C: And, so he used an emotional approach – the feeling of letting go, which created an interesting pattern. You said he called it what?
J: TMS.
C: TMS. So, the TMS is part of not enough oxygen. Well, if we think about it, it makes a lot of sense, because when we get stressed we get tight. When we get tight we squeeze our muscles. When we squeeze our muscles we get less blood. The muscles become hard. Less blood, less capacity to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide to finish what’s called the Creb cycle. So, the tension literally doesn’t allow blood to flow through certain muscles. It’s decreased. That’s the decrease of oxygen.
J: Right.
C: Okay, so that creates a stress environment. We get tension. Oxygen is our fuel. Less fuel, more work to do, more panic. So there’s a turbo charge between our experience and our interpretation of it – when we keep thinking we have to tighten more. That’s why there are stress related illnesses. So one would break that. He went back to the mental go back to the source of the anger – forgive it, whatever his technique was – it created a break in that cycle which immediately softens the muscles. (deep sigh) And you can feel – you can look at a relieved person. That relief – you can see the oxytocin in your system. So, if he does that and you really release you’ll end up going (deep sigh) I felt something let go. Well, the chemical response to (deep sigh) is more oxytocin, less adrenaline. You can see it. Right?
J: Right.
C: I agree with him completely. Less blood, more issues. Mental is an absolute reason for the muscles to tighten. So is an injury. So is an emotional experience that scarred you. They’re all different things – that if we let go of whatever it is to let go in that domain, we become different. Here’s a great example of language. My anger was towards my father. So, you get the fact that I can soften my body with TRE’s. I can have an emotional experience in letting it go, but I can also speak and say “Father, I forgive you and I will never hold this against you.” Something happens when I speak my forgiveness and I go (sigh) and I am liberated from the jacket armor of the memory of the not forgiving. So it all interweaves. There is never one singular to effect it, because a good verbal intervention of speaking forgiveness creates a somatic and emotional experience. Letting go of it emotionally creates a somatic and linguistic experience. Letting go of it in my body I literally say: “I don’t feel that in me any more.” And when I use those words, I realize: wow I am different, I’m starting to re-pattern a new experience that I’m different, which is a felt emotional and somatic – you can see it. The shoulders go back, the stance is different. I’m trying to describe that they’re all interlinked.
J: Yes. Right.
C: If we forget the interlinked capacity we miss holistic healing.
J: I understand.
C: So, some people are linguistic or verbal coaches and they don’t touch. They’re verbal therapists and that’s great. We need them. And some people are well “I don’t do talk therapy, I’m strictly experiential” and that’s great. We need them. And people are emotional therapists and they deal with grief. Or psychotropic meds to get rid of our depression and mania. So, we’re always tying to take care of things in different modalities, and the MD psychiatrist who prescribes meds to relieve the symptoms which can be amazingly beneficial, because then people feel better, look better and move better. Or if we do dance therapy where we can just feel and dance and move better. Or we do talk therapy and we begin to drop the experience of the lack of forgiveness or my anger that I wear like a jacket or coat. They all do the same thing. They all work on the whole person, and I think that’s the goal of any true therapist should be to integrate all the domains into one form of therapy. So when I was at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy I taught psychotherapy and client counseling skills and verbal skills to the massage therapists so that we didn’t produce therapists who didn’t talk, who didn’t just go into a session and go zip the mouth. they could choose not to talk if the reason they thought it should be silent and honor the sacred space, but also that we taught them tols to use their language to deal with the body, so that they were more than affecting somebody in one dimension. Then when I went to Naropa University, I brought the massage experience into the clinical field. So I worked in the Somatic department. So, in psychology I brought body, and in body I brought psychology.
J: Bridging the worlds.
C: Exactly. And both of them have an emotional component so we keep going back to the body emotion language model or mind body spirit. I’m always trying to integrate those three components wherever we are.
J: I understand.
C: I can see it makes sense to you.
J: It did. I had a question. When you say that stress creates literal physical adhesions - other than muscular tension, are you referring to the nerve bundles that thicken, or are there other physical manifestations?
C: The answer is yes. Because you approach the same issue from, again, two different sides. So, the neuropathway learning is the thickening of the bundles. Every time we do something we have nerves that meet and join and form pathways and structures – long, thin structures in our brain – it’s a physical structure. So the more I think about something, the more I learn something, the more I dance, move, work in my body or in any way focus, I am creating thicker pathways. So if I focus with my body, my emotions, my language, I am creating a better pathway. If I say “rubber baby buggy bumpers, rubber baby buggy bumpers,” and I say it ten times fast – if I practice that every day, I create a neuropathway that makes that tongue twister easier to say. If I practice Tai Chi over and over again, I create a neuropathway on how to move energy in my body and I get better at it. If I do a different form of martial art, I get really good at deflecting incoming attacks. Those all create adhesion. Those all really create neuropathways that make the body feel because it’s there. And, it creates a mental process, because language and emotion are both locked there so again we’re separating mind body and spirit but that neuropathway is my body and spirit because if it says fear, that neuropathway triggers my body to contract in. It triggers my brain to go “Danger!” And in language “Oh shit, I‘ve gotta get out of here,” and it creates the emotions experience of (clenches up) and that’s high adrenaline and low oxytocin, so that neuro-bundle around “let’s be afraid” is me. It is my mind, my body – it’s all the same thing, and so the same thing holds true if the adhesion is in a different domain. That knot in your neck isn’t there by accident. It can be mouse (indicating typing) and then we do mouse all day and we drop our arm and as soon as I tighten up these muscles I don’t understand parasympathetic. I’m on the sympathetic speed up nervous system right now – my shoulders are up, I tightening these muscles. It triggers my speed up system. If I do this long enough, I’m going to get uncomfortable, activated, nervous, fidgety. I need to do this (relaxing), so it doesn’t matter if the adhesion is in my body, in my neocortex, in my emotional response to every time I see you because you beat me when I was a child I have a fear response, and I see you and I go (clenchs) and fear floods my body. Or if I have a language thing that every time I get into stress I go linguistically into love or hate. For instance: “I don’t like you. I hate you. You’re a jerk.” If I repeat this over and over again, I get better at it until I have a neuro-bundle that’s really easy for me to return to – which is “You’re a jerk, you’re an asshole. I don’t like you.” If that makes sense there’s a huge link and we’ll see if I can put it together. When we get stressed out, we can’t do things that are in our neocortex. What that means is we can’t do things that we’ve learned that way. But when we learn two plus two is four, after a while it goes into our limbic and permanent brain. What’s two plus two?
J: Four.
C: Spell Cat.
J: C-A-T.
C: You don’t even think about it, right?
J: That’s right.
C: So you could be under stress driving a car and I could say “Spell cat” and you’d be able to spit it out. Now learning is in your limbic and primitive brain. You could also call it instinct which is what you’re born with. And we call it reflex which is what you build over repetition. When we’re stressed out, we can’t access neocortical thinking: creativity, rational logic, but we can absolutely connect to things that we’ve practiced over and over and over again. If it’s bad stuff, we get real good when we’re stressed out to going back to that. Our response is just instinctive. You touch me and I go right into that response. I can see it’s starting to make sense that these are all linked together.
J: Definitely.
C: Therapy needs to be a full body experience. TRE’s deal with the body, but you noticed I never asked you anything about your history. We didn’t delve into what you were experiencing when you shook. I just said “Shake.” The therapist can get out of the picture if they want to because you just teach this and we can deal with the physical manifestation, which is emotional and linguistic – memory and what I speak, what my story is that I tell: I was abused as a child, I’m not powerful, I’m too scattered. And we tell that story – it becomes our reality. TRE’s can break those just like really good therapy in another domain can break those.
J: And then one’s life would shift automatically if they’re having different ways of responding physically.
C: Yes.
J: Because I was thinking about how you could be practicing TRE’s, but if you’re not changing the environment, then how is it really helpful, but maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the effects of the TRE’s help us to automatically shift the environment.
C: So, there is one more piece. Ready?
J: Yes.
C: You’ve got story – you said it – or it’s this. It’s not this or this – it’s this circle that you are drawing. That’s what it is. I’m either here or I’m here – I’m either sympathetic or parasympathetic. Neither one is the appropriate one. So, if that makes sense, you said well I guess TRE’s can break this or if you didn’t change your life… they are interlinked. If you break it, you will change your life. If you break your story of victimhood, it will change your body. And so that’s the whole piece that I think is so important about the whole body concept is that they’re just not separate. It’s just like a gem. If you have a huge three pound aquamarine that has surfaces, you’re looking through different windows, but you are looking at the same gem. You’re always checking the same thing out, but it can look completely different. So, make sure you deal with all of the concepts, and all of the perspectives, because if my body changes and my language doesn’t change or my emotions don’t change, I will eventually come back to that same body.
J: It’s like a roulette ball.
C: Yeah. If you keep coming back to “I’m a victim, I’m a victim, I’m a victim” – it’ll go back to that. And, if you never speak that story again – and instead you say, “I’m empowered. I’m a good person. I deserve success.” All that good life therapy stuff – life coaching works, it really will change people, because their story changes. They stop going: “Oh I’m no good.” They start going: “No, actually, I am good.” And you see pride show up in their body, and dignity show up, like: “You can’t treat me that way.” And it’s all again the same thing.
J: Do you know Martha Beck’s work?”
C: No.
J: Well, I really appreciate that she encourages you to go to the end feeling of what would it feel like to be the way you want to be, and really practice that feeling and then things shift to get there.
C: Which is also the Secret – it’s about: get in the car and feel the car, because when you feel, then it can come to you. That’s the law of attraction. So, when we started our interview, I asked: “What’s the end state that you want from our interview?” So I was going to: What’s the end result you want and we can design to that perspective.” Right?
J: Right.
C: So, that’s the same. Yes, I like her work. I don’t know it, but that’s exactly why I am asking you: what’s your desired end state?
J: Martha has you treat boards – instead of the red car on the board – it’s similar to what you are saying – she has you choose pictures that make you feel that absolute freedom and it might ultimately be a red car, but it might not even be a red car. We get these pictures of what we think we want. So, that’s what I liked about her – she has you go to the end feeling and then, life will take care of it.
C: So she does a diorama or a dream board?
J: It’s a star chart – like a dream board.
C: So, I do my dream board and every day I walk by my dream board. Now, I may have a ritual of touching my dream board and going (sighs). But as I walk, in my consciousness is driven in every day; I create it with my body, my hands, my experience, my language, my story. It is this; it becomes powerful. And then as I pass it every day, I drag it into my soul: I am good, I am successful. And as you do that you create reality on another level. You’re making it so. The Bible says: “As within, so without. As above, so below.” When I can bring the story of that beautiful future into me and it exists in me, my cells, my body reflects it. Then it just comes to you, because it is your inner experience and that’s the law of attraction. When it’s here and alive in your body, in your language, and in the emotional field of I feel it. Bringing it to you at that point is just easy. When we do a dream board, I live on a dream board. My dream board is 4 x 8 ft. It’s a dry erase board. And I have stickers and articles and magnets and they change all the time and I wipe it clean. I want to know that if I’m a really good father that it’s not just an idea. I want to show you something. (Opens laptop) So, this is my mind map. (The background displays a variety of images) What I mean by mind map is that it’s a way that I map my whole entire life.
J: Okay.
C: But the background picture is my image that’s my dream board: loving daughter, marriage, physical capacity, martial arts, presenting, peace, and so every single day of my life I come onto this background and I’m drawn down into what are my priority one’s and two’s, but I’m living this in my head.
J: Exactly.
C: And, it’s just so much easier to live that truth when it’s inside and outside, it’s intentional, it’s spoken, it’s emotionally engrained in, it’s linguistically engrained in, and it’s somatically ingrained in. Then I change my reality.
J: I can feel, having experienced the TRE’s, that I feel my feet more on the ground and I almost feel like a cat, like I could respond to something quickly without it having to be fear driven. I feel energized.
C: And it’s more than just exercise, because I know that we only did… I took probably 15 minutes, but do you feel different than if it was just 15 minutes of yoga or 15 minutes of dance?
J: It feels more powerful, yeah.
C: Exactly. So, something happens when we release that. You feel your feet more.
J: Mm Hm.
C: My experience of you right now is that you’re more grounded.
J: Right.
C: You’re more vertical. And you’re questions are slower than when we started. So what if the world got more grounded?
J: Yes. And that’s where I wanted to take it next.
C: So we’re training level two. I’m level three. There are only five of us in the country. We’re the trainers. We train the other level ones and twos to do individual work and group work. David Berceli keep saying: Just go shake.” He just says, “I want grounded people in the room.” Everything else is a dance. I can’t write about it. I can’t quantify it, but the thing is when I take some of you students and I put them in front of 10 people and I watch them run a group, all I’m looking for is: are they grounded? If people freak out, do they freak out? Do they get lost in the story? Are they trying to go: “Check out neurobiology and I’m so brilliant,” or are they just grounded and saying: “SHAKE.” So when you said: “I feel my feet,” my experience is that you felt more grounded to me just then. That’s what these do. When we’re – another concept: centered. Grounded is centered. It’s not, but for our concept, it is. Okay? Grounded and centered are profoundly different experiences. But, grounded has a sense of internal view, right? So when we’re fighting stress, we’re leaning into something or leaning away from something, okay? We can’t be grounded, centered in our body and be in the past or the future, which is where we always lean. Always. So, when you’re in your feet, are you thinking about anything else except being in your body? You’re in the present moment. And, in the end, the present moment is where the gift is. That’s why it’s called the “present.” Get away from the future, get away from the past and that’s what it feels to me what you are in – just a very strong sense of “I’m here.” Nothing spectacular, but I’m here. It’s not flamboyant. It’s not flashy. It’s just I’m in my body – I’m embodied.
J: And the more people we can teach this to… I have such a deep longing to have our planet unfold in beauty and love and harmony. So, it’s passing this information on and really teaching people.
C: David says the same thing. A million people have now seen these exercises, and David’s just going: “We need to relieve the stress and suffering in the world. I don’t want to research this stuff. Don’t put me in a test study. No. You want to study it, go study it. We’re going out and we’re going to make more therapists, we’re going to make more teachers and facilitators. Get it out there. The world needs it now. I don’t give a shit about research; just go do it. That’s what he keep saying: “Just shake!”
J: So what is your schedule looking like? I know you are going to Durango end of September.
C: Durango in September. And then another one in Boulder in October. It’ll probably just be an evening event. And then in November in Singapore again and then I think I have December off. And then we start again in January and February and then again in March. And so I’ll probably do a spring certification in Boulder. So, how are you after your TRE’s now?
J: I feel terrific. It didn’t bring anything up. I was expecting something emotional.
C: Just shake. Sometimes it is. And that’s why you want trainers to be ready, but you know what the most common reaction is?
J: What?
C: Unrivaled laughter.
J: Oh yes! I had that experience in EMDR. 45 minutes. The therapist had never experienced that. I could not stop laughing, but I realized that he said something good had to have been going on.
C: Look at how TRE’s affect the body (demonstrates). Look at laughter (demonstrates similar shaking).
J: Oh right. Yeah.
C: Is the same.
J: That’s why it feels so good.
C: So, I told this to the people in Singapore, and it was so sad, because it was at the end of our allotted time, and I said, “You know it’s usually laughter,” and these two women just cracked up. And then it was time to go and I said, “It’s too bad. I wish I would have said that earlier,” and one of the women said, “I was stopping my laughter.” And sometimes it’s tears and sometimes it’s this laughing, crying, laughing, crying. Sometimes it’s nothing, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just that everybody’s different. I didn’t have a big emotional release. I can tell my story about being sexually abused. Not a problem anymore. I can get up in front of a room and go, “Yeah, this is what happened. My victimhood came from this, now I’m doing this. You can try this.” And it came from shaking out the story.
J: Exactly.
C: So I didn’t talk about the abuse, but I shifted my relationship to it. So, get the word out. It’s works. EMDR, whatever it is. We’re getting people to regulate, to be in their bodies. It’s not fantastic and bright and incredible. It’s just can you feel your body? Can you stay with your sensation? Can you exist in this perspective, rather than jumping into your neocortex to solve things. This is knowledge (pointing to front of his head or neocortex) and this is wisdom (indicating top of head or amygdala). When you’re here, you’re accessing wisdom – you get wise answers. But when we’re here (indicating back of head or limbic or primitive brain) you don’t have the same access to wisdom, so I believe that we all know exactly what it is that we need to do, and this sense of hijack blocks our capacity to do it. When we remove that capacity, we can be kinder and more loving and isn’t that what it’s all about anyway? No matter which one we’re talking about – if we’re in trauma response we’re not being loving. It’s literally an antithetical experience – is your heart open or is it closed? In corporate…by the time I get in and am really there, the question are: Can you love when you’re letting someone go, can you love when the product is almost out the door and somebody drops the ball and you go roar and you’re all upset? Can you love in that moment? Can you love in the next moment? If you think for an instant that your capacity as a leader goes down because you are soft and loving at that moment, you’ve missed the power of God, you’ve missed the power of intention you’ve missed everything. Can we be more loving? Period. So, that’s my message in corporate.
J: That’s wonderful. So, when I was listening to the other interview that featured you, you talked about leaving a practice of something like 20 years of counseling and teaching, and you went into coaching. How do you feel synchronicity plays in your life? And do you feel like TRE’s really make people capable to make choices that they might not otherwise make?
C: Two different questions.
J: Oh right. Well, how about synchronicity first.
C: I believe in God profoundly. Christian Judeo, sure. But also, there has to be some concept of One somewhere. And so my connection is always great until somebody says: “Well there is only one way. You have to think our way.” With that said, I don’t have a name for deity. I just know that I have a relationship with my maker, whatever that is. And I started rubbing my parents feet when I was 12 and I learned a magic trick. It was called 100. I would rub as hard as I could for 100 times and that was my… I didn’t know how to do massage. I just made circles and counted to 100. But the response was almost flawless. People would go: “Oh my God. I am so relaxed.” My Dad started saying to his tennis buddies: “Just let him work on your shoulder for a minute.” And I’d grab the shoulder and the tight spot and do 100 and I’m 12 years old. Getting recognition from that – that touch was not sexual, and it was okay and it was helpful. So, I grew up knowing that I could get – I knew feminine approval for touch, but masculine as well in a nonsexual way. I joined the military, I got out and had to make money and somebody – a friend of mine I gave a massage to said “I’ll pay you money for that.” I started doing massage $35 an hour in 1984 – you know? And so I got out of the military and I kind of did massage on the side without having a license, and then somebody said… and this was the hey day of insurance. They said, you can make $100 hour if you’re licensed as a massage therapist in these states where it was a no fault state, and so I went back and got certified as a massage therapist in 1991, and then found that I loved the profession. I started talking more, and it because talk therapy. And I thought, well I’m already doing it again. Then I went to Naropa and got my MA in counseling, and all this was true synchronicity, because I worked in 100 different areas, but always this body, healing, make the world a better place has been this driving force. I never woke up and said I want to be a therapist or coach. I always woke up one day already doing it. So, I met this gentleman and our wives ran a jewelry business together. My wife’s partner was his wife. And, actually, when I found out that he taught coaching, I was disappointed because to me coaches could be trained in 6 months and a psychotherapist took three years, and he actually, truly convinced me that I needed to turn my world upside down. That first argument was: “I’m teaching at the Boulder College, I’m teaching at Naropa, I’ve got a full private practice,” and he just looked at me and said I promise this is going to be a better choice for you. And I moved and dropped everything, and I haven’t looked back. And the reason I say that boils down to I’m not a therapist anymore. I keep my licensure up and I do help people who have issues, but one thing I picked up in coaching which I’d never really nailed before was what learning was. And, I realized that even being a teacher at graduate levels of core faculty and in Masters programs and at the Boulder College of Massage, there was never that piece for me. And so, you asked about synchronicity – when I learned about learning through coaching, all my therapy got better, my bodywork changed, and I went “I get it. I’m not going to do the therapeutic, pathological model anymore of something wrong, something broken, something that needs fixing” and I switched into what we talked about earlier – the understanding that was is inside is outside, and how we create. He picked me up and dopped me inot a premier international coaching and said I will pay you to take my program as a full time employee, and he paid me and we’ve had some very interesting interactions where I really was forced to learn about this work on a very deep level and my life has changed. My income has gone up, my capacity to deal with problems has gone up, the depth of my marriage has increased. While I’m not saying it’s the panacea….it the most recent synchronicity that somebody knocked on my door, we met and he said, “Stop and come do this.” And so, when you wanted an interview, I thought: Who knows where this interview could go to the next person. I woke up one day as a veteran and was approached by an organization to go train soldiers, and I’m like Oh my God, how in the world does an ex Boulder, Naropa graduate end up standing in front of thousands of soldiers training them. And as a veteran it was no greater love than to give back to my country and the synchronicity was just a party two eople met at a party and we hit it off.
So, synchronicity lives in every role of my life and it is the driving force, but when I get stressed out, I miss my connection to that experience. So, the more I do TRE’s. I’m going from here to a massage. I get a massage every week if I can. I exercise like you – not quite every day, but 4 or 5 day a week and I do TRE’s and it’s about: Can I become better at regulating when I’m disregulating – when I’m upset? I want to always be loving to my wife and kids. I’m sorry, when I’m stressed out I’m grumpy and unkind. I don’t want to be that, so can I always find a way to come back to: “Oh this is what I want to be.” And that’s what the TRE’s and all of the other work allows me to do.
J: So you answered both questions. Well, great. One final question: I was wondering if children respond to TRE.
C: If they can follow instruction to do enough of the exercise to trigger their body, absolutely – I don’t see why not. The only major contraindications that David shares are abdominal surgery, vasectomies, hernia operations, any surgical interventions or hernias that are unhealed or surgeries in the last 60 days. So, as long as it hasn’t been that, it’s pretty much anybody. My daughter’s first shaking was at age 4. I have a videotape of a 4 years old going: “Whee, Daddy, I am shaking.” You know, they see us shaking on the floor. My wife and I try to shake every day, so probably five days a week we get together and shake, and then our kids will see us shaking and they’ll step over us and play on the computer. Daddy’s bouncing on the floor. So I’ve personally worked with someone as young as 73, and as young as 4. Teenagers love it. In fact, one of my people that’s going to level two right now works in the system for adolescents, and he’s teaching it to kids in an institutional program. A psychiatrist called him and asked: “What are you doing?” And my friend thought oh-oh and asked, “Why?” And the psychiatrist replied: “Well, you know, this client’s getting better.” And my friend explained, “Well, that’s not my client.” The psychiatrist replied: “I know. I’m asking what you’re doing because he learned something that make him better. He learned it from another kid in the cell block. That kid learned it from the kid you taught it to.”
J: Oh my goodness!
C: Do you realize that we now have discovered a form of therapy that the kids love so much that underground and off time they are teaching it to one another. Does this sound like therapy to you? They are teaching each other the TRE’s because they like it. They say: “Dude, you’ll feel better. Try it!”
J: Right! That’s amazing.
C: Kids love it so much. It’s such a freeing experience for them, and they haven’t had the experience yet of holding all that crap in as most adults do. They just take it in and hold it. They’re not there quite yet. They’re learning to hold it, but it’s much easier for them to let it go, so they love it. They think it’s a blast.
J: Well that’s wonderful.
C: And if they’re not ready for it, the worst that happens is that they don’t shake. There is no invasiveness about it.
J: I see.
C: If they’re ready to, it’ll work. If eople are emotionally ready to do the TRE’s… I had a potential client call and say, “You know this is really, really disregulating. It’s like the body told her to stop. Well, the body will tell you when to stop, when to start, if it likes it, because you could go “Yeah, that felt good.” Well if it felt good, do it again. And that’s the simplicity of it. If you have a surgery, most of the time, people will shake and they’ll say, “Well I just broke my arm.” And their body will shake except that arm. Because the body knows that it shouldn’t, the body’s wisdom is that this is too fragile – don’t send a vibration there because it could hurt it. And so the other side is I watched somebody with a broken arm who is one of the military units and his arm was in a cast, and he got to shaking, but then as soon as he shifted his pelvic shaking – that’s the stuff you did, his right arm started bounding up and down on the floor and nothing else, and he was like “Holy! Check that out.” And in the end he was dumbfounded. He said there was this ache in his arm since he broke it, and it just wasn’t healing right. He said: “I feel fantastic. This is the least amount of pain in my arm I’ve felt since I broke it in Iraq.” And so, the body is wise. It sends the autogenic tremors, which is what they are. Automatic tremors – it sends them where they are needed. If it’s bad to have them in a certain area because the tissue is damaged, it won’t shake there. But if a place is constricted and tight and needs blood, it’s go right there. So, every body’s shaking is different. There is wisdom in it. I have seen things that shouldn’t be seen – David has a video of a woman in China – when the earthquake hit, she went in to save some kids in one of the schools and she as holding up a piece of the roof and she damaged her knee. I want to show you. (He goes to the wall.) She was on the wall and another technique is that we’ll have people on the wall shake – they’ll just leave them there until your doing this (shakes hard). And her knee went like that and came up and she went, “Ah (in Chinese:) Everything is fine!” And it was just done. There were kids that died – a total huge trauma, but her knee was damaged because she caught part of the roof, and then here we were done. That happens in every workshop. When I’m in a room with soldiers, and there are 70 soldiers in there, 80 % of them have back pain. I’ll ask: “How many of you have back pain?” They’ll say: “We’re in the army. We have back pain. Of course we do.” And, at the end, I can tell you that I’ve had dozens upon dozens maybe 100 of those sessions that we did where not one person raises their hand at the end when I ask: “Do you still have back pain?” It’s all gone. The entire room loses back pain. So, when I see something like that, it’s just a byproduct of the TRE’s. The body is so wise that when we step out of the way and let it do what it needs to do to start healing, back pain can just disappear in a session. I see it all the time. I can’t guarantee that it happens for everybody but I can guarantee that I’m not in as much a state of absolute awe when I see it now. Part of me goes: “Yeah, well, that’s what the TRE’s do – they just heal things spontaneously.” It’s a very common experience for me to witness amazing healings. I get the honor of being in front of people who go through things and then they walk away and say: “I can’t believe where I’m at in this moment.” And it’s an honor to make my living being able to stand in front of people who go through that kind of healing. I’m witness to a lot of amazing things.
J: That’s incredible.
C: You talk about divinity? I get to do this for a living? My God! I stand in front of soldiers, and I think: I get to serve my country again! You know? War is an abomination. We need to get rid of war. Military is wrong. But people are willing to give their lives so you and me can drive on freeways. (tearing up) When I’m in that group where the suicide rate is over 100 times more than the regular population, and these are the men that fight to serve our country. And they willingly, unfailingly are giving their lives and their time. And the suicide rate is so high and the PTSD rate is out the roof and I’m standing there teaching this and they’re getting it. You can see the lights going on. I’ve done this for 7,000 over the course of three years. Synchronicity? There I was: an ex long-haired, Boulder hippie, Naropa graduate standing in front of these guys offering them training. Synchronicity? I was in China when I adopted Shawna. We went to the workshop in Singapore. We came from China to Singapore and Tonya was with me. 70 people in the room, and I said, “Please don’t rush her. She’s not quite used to people yet.” They sort of parted this path in the room. And I started walking towards her, and she went: “PAPA!” There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. These people were amazed. They said, “My God. You’ve only had her a week and she knows you’re her Daddy and she’s Chinese like we are. I mean they were just like: “Who are you? Of course. Come to Singapore, and present! Synchronicity?
J: What a blessing.
C: Absolutely gorgeous intelligent healthy – daughters who didn’t have a chance in the world before? I mean that’s as far as I go on pity, because I’m the recipient of this being Dad. I had to throw that out because you talk asked synchronicity. I get to see amazing stuff. I get to live amazing existence, and I feel deep gratitude.
J: And your clients and the people who work with you are blessed.
C: Yes. And I’m selfish. I get to make this my living. And so yes I am doing it for them, but I have to bless the selfish nature: I get to live in the body and get this experience of “Wow, I’m doing important work.” So yea, they do get it but I have to admit that I’m kind of selfish, because I love the confirmation. There’s just something about standing in front of them and doing God’s work. This is where I’m supposed to be. I’m following the path and things just keep showing up. Julio going: “Drop everything and be a coach.” You saying: “How about an interview?” Somebody else asked if I can do an interview in Spanish. “Okay!” Synchronicity all over the place.
J: Well, thank you for your time.
C: I don’t know about you, but I got pretty jazzed just then!
J: Oh yeah!
C: So, I want to thank you for offering me the opportunity.
J: Of course – my pleasure.
End.
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