Summary
Certified TRE provider and yoga instructor Christa Bevan joins the Adoption Connection Podcast to introduce Trauma and Tension Release Exercises to the foster and adoption community. Christa shares her personal journey with panic attacks that lasted nearly two decades, explaining how talk therapy helped but left residual tension stored in her body — until TRE provided the physical release she needed. The conversation explores how stress and trauma get trapped in the body when the fight-or-flight response doesn't complete its full cycle, leading to chronic tension, insomnia, digestive issues, and pain. Christa explains how TRE reconnects people with their body's innate tremoring mechanism to discharge this stored activation, and how practitioners stay in control throughout the process — able to start and stop the tremors at will. The episode is particularly relevant for parents of adopted and foster children, covering how children naturally complete stress responses through shaking, flopping, and big physical movements, and how adults often train this out of them. Christa discusses window of tolerance, self-regulation skills, the difference between hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal states, and why TRE pairs well with other modalities like EMDR.
Key Points
- TRE uses simple exercises to initiate a natural neurogenic tremoring mechanism that helps the body release stored stress and trauma
- Stress gets physically trapped in the body when the fight-or-flight response doesn't complete — manifesting as chronic tension, insomnia, digestive issues, and pain
- Practitioners maintain full control during TRE — they can start and stop tremors at will, which creates the safety necessary for deep release
- Children naturally complete stress responses through shaking and big physical movements, but adults often condition this out of them
- TRE can address both acute trauma and chronic low-grade stress that accumulates over time without a single identifiable trigger
- People with serious mental health conditions being treated with medication should consult their therapist before starting TRE
- Most people are shaking and noticing benefits within three sessions, though body-aware individuals may progress faster
- Working with a certified provider initially is recommended to learn self-regulation skills and appropriate boundaries before practicing independently
Key Moments
How unfinished stress responses get trapped in the body
Christa explains the physiological mechanism behind stored trauma — when the fight-or-flight response doesn't complete its full cycle, energy gets trapped in the body and manifests as chronic tension, insomnia, digestive issues, and unexplained pain.
"And when we start to experience stress in our lives and we don't allow for that stress experience to complete its full cycle, it gets sort of stuck."
TRE as a backdoor to processing trauma without talking
Christa describes TRE as a "backdoor" approach that lets the body process trauma without requiring conscious awareness or verbal processing of what happened — particularly valuable for pre-verbal trauma, complex ongoing trauma, and people who are talked out in therapy.
"just do these exercises and get to tremoring. It was kind of like, like the gateway I needed when I didn't want to maybe revisit something that felt traumatic. I was like, well, maybe if we just do this body thing, then that will, I think because I'm a person who avoids negative emotions, right? So this felt like kind of like a backdoor way to kind of like approach them and maybe release them without having to kind of like face them head on. Does that make sense?"
Why kids naturally shake off stress and adults train it out
Christa explains that children innately know how to complete stress responses through shaking and big physical movements, but adults systematically condition this out of them by telling them to sit still, stop crying, and control their bodies.
"The thing is about this shaking response is that little kids can do it on their own. And you may have seen a child after a big cry or a big emotional experience."
Window of tolerance and self-regulation with TRE
Christa explains how TRE helps widen the window of tolerance over time, allowing practitioners to handle more stress before tipping into hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal states — essentially building resilience through regular practice.
"It's helping to, over time, restore that window of tolerance and actually help to widen it so that you can handle more stress before tipping over."
