“When I was shaking, my mind was so calm; even calmer than my meditation.” When a client told me this, I was initially surprised. Here’s someone with a meditation practice—someone already familiar with stillness—who found something deeper through shaking. It’s a beautiful paradox at the heart of TRE: we move the body to still the mind. We tend to think of movement and stillness as opposites. That if we want a quiet mind, we need to sit very still and wait for the thoughts to stop.

January has a way of pulling us in twenty directions at once. New projects to launch, resolutions to keep, diets to maintain, routines to establish. The mental load can feel relentless. Here’s what I’ve noticed: when we’re caught in that whirlwind of planning and willpower, we tend to live almost entirely from the neck up. We push through and grip tighter. We try to think our way to calm or plan our way to contentment.

Five years ago, I started shaking in meditation. I thought something was wrong. I didn’t know it was the beginning of something transformative. I didn’t know anyone could shake like this. And I sure didn’t think I’d spend a year learning how to teach this to others. Shaking brought me back to life after I went through burnout and depression. It rewired my nervous system and released years of tension, dissociation and shame.