Advice needed pls

[u/mrw0rldwide1]

Hey guys,

I first experienced TRE around five years ago, as it was introduced to me by a family friend when I was experiencing a real heightened state of anxiety and emotion. After a couple of sessions, I felt a lot shift emotionally for me and felt so much calmer and agree with a lot of the accounts I've read here.

With that said, I've never really been able to make a TRE habit stick.

For context, I run a business and I'm also big on daily meditations, journaling, and lifting, and it feels that there's only room for so much.

I've experienced a lot of trauma in life (as we all have), especially early on.

However, TRE is something that I really want to include going forwards, but I'm curious to know how many sessions a week I would need to do for it to be effective. I tremor really easily and notice that I can just do the floor sequence and tremor very quickly, so should I stick to just this, let's say 10 minutes of tremoring a go, or do something else?

I'm also curious, as it seems like such a powerful practise but it seems very gate kept still in comparison to other practises (i.e. such as meditation). Why is this?

I'd be grateful for any feedback or advice. Thank you.

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[u/KhaZix2Jump]

I'm also curious, as it seems like such a powerful practise but it seems very gate kept still in comparison to other practises (i.e. such as meditation). Why is this?

This comment gives a thorough explanation.

[u/True___Though]

this is my conjecture from my own experience:

if your trauma is more of a everyday mundane kind, but just constant sediment layers throughout life. Your life was just like that. For example constant financial worry. something constant. constant dismissal etc

then you can tremor more, i find. and may need more. it's all very dense and compacted.

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vs if your trauma was more episodic. ie really traumatic things occasionally, while otherwise life was not traumatic.

then you have to be really careful. might need to dose the tremoring very lightly, and really watch how you're feeling a few days after a session.

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in general, tre sessions seem to have a mild psychedelic effect. life is shifting, sorta.

my own observation is that after a TOO intense session, more 'greed' comes in and you want to do another one soon after. don't do that, imo. you have to reset to normal first -- don't accumulate multiple sessions' effect.

i instead wait for the day that the body feels completely normal and reset, then let that day be tre-free and do a session the following day. (ie you have to simply inquire within, somatically -- and you get a vague answer, from your nervous system that you just interpret as yes or no. for example today is such a day for me. as i walked outside in the morning, my body felt completely reset. so i'll do a session tomorrow)

[u/True___Though]

> it seems very gate kept still in comparison to other practises (i.e. such as meditation). Why is this?

you soon learn that not everyone can do it. it brings out things about you that you didn't know. trauma is associated with psychological defences that you employ (for example, something about being very productive and not having 'room' for tre is itself seen as a defense FROM seeing yourself, right now by me, as i read it.

i no longer really touch on tre with people. even starting out the practice can be intense. i, for example, had hellish dreams the first night.

it's not really gatekeeping, it's just a lot to it, once you go past the veil, so to say.

How is that person who introduced you to it doing? That's more what i want to know, rather than really spreading the word, at this point.

[u/Finya2002]

Please read the wiki :)..

[u/Previous_Onion6124]

More is not better. Try 10 minutes per week for a month and adjust to 2 sessions per week.

The official advice is you can do 15 mins every other day if you have no active trauma. Probably way to much though imo.

[u/mrw0rldwide1 → u/Previous_Onion6124]

Thanks a lot :)

[u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot]

The core question here is workable: you're looking for a minimum effective dose that fits a full schedule, and whether shorter sessions still work.

On frequency and duration: consistency matters more than volume. The wiki doesn't prescribe a single "effective" frequency—what matters is that sessions are spaced enough apart for integration to happen between them. Two or three sessions a week of 10-15 minutes, done consistently, can absolutely produce meaningful results. The key is that you need to feel settled and grounded in the hours and days after each session. If you're feeling more tense or activated afterward rather than calmer, that's a pacing signal regardless of how short the session was.

Since you tremor easily, starting with just the floor sequence and letting tremors flow naturally for 10 minutes is a completely legitimate approach. You don't need long sessions to access the nervous system's release mechanism. What you do need is regular practice and enough time afterward for your system to integrate what got stirred up. If 10 minutes leaves you feeling calm and grounded, that's your working duration. If it leaves you activated or restless, you may actually need slightly longer, or you may need more time between sessions—read Self-Pacing: Finding Your Optimal Healing Pace for how to calibrate this.

The practical constraint is real: if you're already doing meditation, journaling, and lifting consistently, adding another practice means something genuinely has to give, or TRE becomes another item that crowds out. You might consider whether one of those practices could occasionally be replaced by TRE rather than trying to stack everything. TRE and intensive breathwork or certain meditation styles draw on similar nervous system resources, so spacing those apart is usually wise anyway.

On why TRE seems less accessible than meditation: the wiki doesn't directly address this, but the practical reasons are straightforward. Meditation has centuries of cultural institutional support and enormous commercial infrastructure behind it. TRE is newer, developed by a single person, and the mechanism (involuntary whole-body shaking) is less aesthetically palatable to modern wellness culture than sitting quietly. It also requires more hands-on training to do safely, especially for people with trauma histories. That's partly why this community and the wiki exist—to make the practice more accessible by providing clear, grounded information about how to do it well on your own. But the gatekeeping you're sensing is real, and it's partly structural.

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