Red Beard Embodiment Podcast
Alex Greene is on a mission to bring the power of embodiment to people all around the world. This podcast focuses on how embodiment practices, trauma healing, and knowledge about human nervous system can help us find our ground, discover new sources of meaning, and create connection in an ever-changing world.
The deepest change is embodied change.
Red Beard Embodiment Podcast
EP62 Neurogenic Integration: The Mystery of Spontaneous Movement
What if your client’s tremor, stretch, or undulation wasn’t a symptom—but a sign of healing? In this episode, Alex sits down with physical therapist, somatic educator and TRE Provider, Joel Begin to explore the natural, spontaneous movements that often arise in bodywork, movement therapy, and somatic healing—but are still largely misunderstood.
Joel shares the story behind his 2022 paper, “Characterizing a Common Class of Spontaneous Movements,” a collaborative work that brings together perspectives from across the globe to map out how tremors, shakes, and fluid movements emerge across therapeutic, spiritual, and cultural contexts. From TRE® and myofascial unwinding to Qigong and authentic movement, Joel helps us reframe these expressions not as random or pathological—but as beneceptive and healing.
Together, we explore the potential of spontaneous movement as a doorway into nervous system regulation, trauma resolution, and embodied intelligence. This episode invites you to see what might already be happening in your sessions with new eyes—and perhaps, to trust the body just a little more.
Key Highlights:
- [00:02:00] The Paper That Sparked It All: Characterizing a Common Class of Spontaneous Movements
- [00:08:00] What Is Myofascial Unwinding?
- [00:14:30] Modalities That Evoke Spontaneous Movement
- [00:17:45] Spiritual Practices & Movement States
- [00:24:00] Case Study: Spontaneous Movement After Surgery
- [00:27:00] When Movement Feels Uncomfortable
- [00:33:00] TRE®, Trauma, and the Polyvagal Lens
- [00:38:45] Understanding Freeze Through Biotensegrity
- [00:41:00] What Makes These Movements Arise?
- [00:43:30] Creating a Container for Curiosity
Links & Resources
- Joel Begin’s 2022 Paper:
“Characterizing a Common Class of Spontaneous Movements”
Read the full paper in the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork - Joel Begin’s Practice – Creative Pathways PT
- Continuum Movement: https://continuummovement.com/
- Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine: https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/about-peter
- Polyvagal Theory by Dr. Stephen Porges: https://www.stephenporges.com/
- Myofascial Release John F. Barnes
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All right. Well I am super excited to be sitting down today with Joel Begin and Joel is a physical therapist based in Henniker New Hampshire. And let me tell you a little bit about Joel and how I. how Joel first came on my radar. And then I'll tell talk a little bit about the conversation the exciting conversation that we're gonna have today about neurogenic tremoring and spontaneous movement. So Joel is a physical therapist a somatic health educator a primitive reflex clinical specialist a TRE tension and trauma release provider a safe and sound protocol provider a as well as a musician and a personal trainer and an exercise specialist. So very broad and diverse background. And he's the a physical therapist at his business creative Pathways pt. So Joel thanks so much for coming on for a conversation Oh thanks for having me Alex. I'm super excited to be here and to chat and to to have some fun. Yeah. Super. Cool. Well so let me just talk a little bit about how I got to know you and then also I'll want to talk a little bit about what it maybe it maybe is on the menu. Every time you and I have spoken our conversation's been a little bit meandering so so I don't wanna make too many promises 'cause I don't know for sure where our conversation will go. but we can at least set some sort of intention. So anyway I think it's probably been about two years now. And so Joel is a TRE provider. So TRE is the modality of neurogenic tremoring developed by Dr. David Bercelli and Joel's a provider. I'm a provider. And on a Facebook forum for providers sharing information. I noticed there was a thread I think it might even have been about physical therapy but Joel posted a paper that he authored along with some others in 2022. And we'll that'll definitely be something that we cover in today's conversation but it was a paper about describing spontaneous movement including the kind of tremoring we see in in neurogenic integration and TRE. and he sent me a copy of the paper and I read it and it was like a complete. breath of fresh air to me because it it put into language. It was a collaboration with I think 4 3 4 other professionals or Rolfer and Joel can tell us who else very a little bit international. I think somebody's from Brazil is in there. and but it basically the really quick summary that you can I hope I don't get it wrong is in lots of therapies movement in manual therapy modalities movement therapy modalities some spiritual practices spontaneous movement arises and sometimes that's shaking and tremoring. Sometimes that's stretching sometimes that's undulations. And the question being articulated in this paper is what do we know about this phenomenon? And and there are modalities that utilize it like TRE like myofascial unwinding continuum movement et cetera et cetera. there's modalities based around this principle but what do we actually know physiologically and neurophysiologically and otherwise? And and the breath part of the breath of fresh air. that I felt in reading the paper was in many ways I have exactly that same question. So for me coming in as a body work therapist structural integration trained and then later in Feldenkrais movement training I. From the very beginning when TRE first came on my radar that was exactly it was like wow I'm seeing this. I've had this happen. It's happened to me in body work it's happened to me in acupuncture when I'm doing body work. I see this sometimes. And it was only until I came across TRE did I even find somebody who was even talking about it in a substantive way. You know sort of mentioned here and there in some of my training but not a lot. And so what I really appreciate about Joel's paper is just asking the question of yeah where do we see this? How is it being languaged and how might we begin? And I like the word begin to ask meaningful questions about this and also acknowledging that this is largely absent from the existing body work literature manual therapy literature physiology fascial literature. There's just not a lot out there I think is the honest answer. and so it published in 2022 and I read it and I thought oh great. what a intelligent framing of this conversation and intelligent questions being asked. And and I hope that this leads to sort of more steps in the general inquiry. So in any case so I I got this paper and then Joel and I connected on Zoom over several conversations. And I got to hear not only what the led up to the questions that he and the his team put together in this paper. But it was the very interesting personal journey and professional journey that that sort of put you in this place Joel of asking these questions. And I and so I've been wanting to have you on the podcast for quite a bit now and so it's taken some time for you and I to schedule. And so anyway so what do we want to cover? We want to cover your paper for sure but I want to cover your personal background because that your own story of spontaneous movement and health was very interesting when you first shared it with me. And and I also want to hear about your the really unique ideas that you bring into your treatment approaches. I think all of these things would be really interesting for our conversation today. So. That's a quick preview. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Super happy. Yeah. Awesome. Well Joel what if we let's start with your paper. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. We can go there. yeah. And then we'll probably backtrack from there. So what fine. tell me the story. How did you how did this idea start to formulate how did you assemble this team? yeah. So how yeah how did this come about? And I'll just but I better read the title too. So it's the paper is called Characterizing a Common Class of Spontaneous Movements. And it's in the Journal international Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Body Work Volume 15 number three September 2022. So that's what we're talking about. It's a fun read. It's a fun read. If you haven't read It's a fun read. you know it's kinda light. I mean that's the thing you know we didn't put a tremendous amount of of heavy scientific work into it. But we did try to tell the stories of individuals that had some of these experiences and then some of the the experiences that that me and one of one of the researchers had in our movement world of working with individuals with spontaneous movements. But yeah a super fun paper. that that really did just bring in the question of what are spontaneous movements and how can we pull together some ideas to to better describe them So we came together in a in an interesting way. Budman was the which was one of the initial researchers that kind of did I forgot his first paper. He's basically out of South Wales or New South Wales in Australia. the environmental science so I think his specialty is in like soil sciences. But he was bringing together a paper about fascial unwinding I believe and I reached out to him and said this was a phenomenal paper. You know what Can you pause briefly and just quickly define fascial unwinding? I'll probably do this as we go like just I'll pause you just to get a quick definition. sure. So I think fascial unwinding that. so it's a form of that uses spontaneous movement. and I believe there's myofascial unwinding but fascial unwinding I think was at the time what he put together and his this description pertaining to the fascial system and its characteristics of being able to be an un unwinding phenomenon. I think he looked at a couple different theories behind that at the time. I dunno if that helps but just describe it really in layman's terms. So I think of I'll do my version of it.'cause I was John F. Barnes trained that sort of one common sort of myofascial release system. and there myofascial unwinding refers to the idea that sometimes you're doing body work and then a person might start to spontaneously move. Sometimes it's tremoring but that's not the most common expression that we see that we describe as myofascial unwinding. It might be twisting or stretching or these sorts types of movements. And the interpretation in this context is that the myofascia or the connective tissue is the movement is happening in order to unravel for a better word or stretch or reorganize the integrate you. Lots of lots of words. Yeah. And I think that's sometimes what can make it also difficult and exactly defining the other one is it usually feels like it's something that we're not doing. I think that's a big one. so a lot of times if you are the practitioner behind there the individual might say whoa you're moving me. and the practitioner might say no I'm not. I'm following you and you're moving. So sometimes that experience can actually be both ends. and I got questions there. Maybe it is. but yeah I think the body's ability to basically unravel unwind reorganize integrate all of these things come together. I think when we start to talk about I. Fascial unwinding in particular and if I know like Robert Schlepp has some particular theories behind this work John Barnes has some particular theories behind this work within the paper. that was something that we looked at different disciplines that sort of have this phenomenon happening with within that p their practices and like you said some are movement some are spiritual experiences or practices whether yeah. Kundalini yoga the shaker tradition some of these yeah. so it depends on where you are also too. And when you're kind what window you're looking at and where you're coming from but all seem to have this phenomenon. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. So go back to the team. So there's the one guy in in Australia and he was he had been doing some fascial unwinding research. Is that yes. all of us had a some experience with this that we were able to say whoa this is what is this? and cool. and then so I connected with him and then he sent me to he's said oh this something I was really interested but not so much right. Now here's my other friend Dorothy. So Dorothy have lost up in up in Canada. She is an IT researcher up there who does a bunch with structural integration work or sorry not structural integration. she looks at she works a lot with Tensity and the IT world. And What is it? What is so just like technology Yeah. And so so I connected with her and from our conversations there was a paper that had begun that she had started or all three of the other researcher is Fernando my name here. I'll find it. yeah. I feel terrible 'cause I call him Fernando Bertolucci. Yes. and I always stumble on his name. is he the Brazilian is that He is from yes. Yes he's from there. or Sao Pa. Sao Paulo. is I think so. I think that's in Brazil. Yeah. so he a Rolfer? Is that right? was a Rolfer I believe. I believe so yeah. He's an MD two. so he comes from the MD background and I believe is also a Rolfer yes. Gotcha. Yep. and he had developed his his own sort of working with the body at that time. I think muscle repositioning so he has a method and that he actually works with and I think it was actually 10 ary touch. It changed. So again lots of versions in how we are interacting with this but that was his work. so together they had started a paper a little while back. I wanna say Ooh when did I meet them? I was in seven or something. I wanna say it started like early 2023 or something like that. Oh so yeah. So that's when it began these ideas. And I jumped in as the end of the wagon saying whoa there's a paper going can I help out? And they were like well we don't know really sure where it's gonna go. And so. we got long story short we got it started back up. We got communication going again and then we it was also a little bit of timeframe from when it first had developed. So bringing in some different ideas and concepts and and it shortly came into form but oddly enough during that time when we were putting it together we got three people that just jumped right in with emails from coming from different researchers within the group that were just that said I have spontaneous movements and I found your paper and what was available for at the time and how can I get involved? And it was like whoa here's our some of our folks to study about this. so those were where the case studies came from. Case reports came from I. On that. And then we just compiled those took a couple case reports that we had from working in the clinic together or working in the clinic separately that we had Fernando and I and then put them together and then broaden in some of the language around it to to explore that more. Yeah. Yeah. What were some can you So Yeah. What were some of the modalities that you considered or include? And both. Yeah. Body work disciplines movement disciplines. you may not remember every single one but That's okay. I got a copy of it here. I made sure to pull it out 'cause it was written a while ago. yeah. A snapshot of the different approaches that you co that you brought together to that you felt had this commonality of spontaneous movement as significant enough to be lumped brought together in this comparative way. Yeah. So we looked at if we looked at basically some of the movement practices I think at the time we were looking at like Continuum continuum was one with Emily Conrad with sort of the undulating movements that she had. we looked at a spontaneous Qigong some of the movement practices that were there. I don't think we looked at any of like Feldenkrais work at the time. think it was Hannah Somatics Hannah Somatic was in there. Right right. there was one other that I think was a dance and I think that was authentic movement. as we looked at Mary Starks with some of her movement there the Somatic experience work by Peter Levine but TRE was on there obviously as well being a movement sort of and when just and this is maybe me jumping in our narrative flow but what you had al when you wrote this in 2022 or I guess that's when it was published but when did you do your TRE training? we'll come back to that but Yeah I think that was I think that was in 2000 'cause we were finished the paper a year before. It takes a while to go yeah of and balances. I wanna say it might've been around the same time. 2002? Yeah. Yeah. Most. Yeah I think so. I think so. Yeah. 2002 or 2001. Similar timeframe. So anyway. Okay. Yeah. So TRE somatic experiencing that you know has yeah. What yeah Yeah. So my TRE came in after my training came in after you know began this. Okay. Okay. Cool. Right. This is where it was really interesting'cause like I didn't really know so everything I looked at and I was able to find bits and pieces which makes it really interesting. but yeah so kinda looking at like the movement aspects of that. But then we also looked at like the manual therapy aspect specifically looking at 10 EG Touch which was one of Fernando's applications. the then there's the myofascial unwinding and John Barnes but I believe there was another version they also had of that also called like myofascial induction which they've changed some of the language around but and then there was another individual who looked at Barrette Dorko he was a pt but had a very similar approach of putting together tactile stimulation and then working with the bodies inherit flows of movement and in more of a therapeutic way. So we captured a little bit of there I'm sure there was a lot more out there. but starting to paint this picture of look Right. That how broad this is. That's what part partly you were trying to and then also like you you referenced Yeah. Kundalini Yoga, shakers. Yeah. Yeah the shakers right. some of the working with the deities and things like that or the gods that you know. But yeah I think there was another African culture that we looked at too. and I'm gonna get the name pronounced but Candomblé The Candomblé It's got it's I think well that's South South American. Sorry. Yes. Yeah. But bringing in these like trance states during movement to to act as like a stimulus to, again come into some of these spontaneous movements that all of these sort of together have said have health promoting benefits to them. and I think that was the big main you guys I don't did you guys invent this word? If you did I'm so proud of you. But there was a cool word in there. let me wait let me find Morphogenetic movements. Well no well okay. That's a cool word. Yeah. We didn't invent that. no. There was a great word. wait where the hell did it go? Hold on. hang on I'm gonna find it. I'm gonna find it. beneceptive. Oh no. Yeah I when I first fer that was a word that actually Fernando brought in and I remember saying I what does that word mean? But Okay. So there was well let me read how the what the because what the authors refer to these movements in general the spontaneous movements as beneceptive meaning rewarding appropriate and health promoting and draw analogies to reflexive behaviors like pandiculation natural stretching and idiomotor action movement driven by un unconscious intention. But yeah no that word beneception I thought oh that's cool that it has the perception of this being healthy. That's a great word. Beneficial for us. I had to look it up initially when it was suggested so. Yeah. what do you consider? So you mapped out again the way I introduced this a few minutes ago when I described it is I said that the paper acknowledges that there's these class of movements that are pretty poorly defined pretty poorly described and not super that in some ways I think of that as the and maybe there's a main point of the paper that I missed but I almost think of the main point of Hey look at all these things. and almost the reason I said a beginning earlier is it's almost like articulating that this is probably an area where there's some work to do. would you agree that's a that's the part of the sentiment of the paper? Yeah. Yeah. every paper at the end right? More research is needed and but to hope the goal I think in a lot of ways to say look look at some of these commonalities between all of these different practices. They probably all share a common phenomenon here. And are we accessing this or not? right. And obviously I love what you're doing Alex putting people together with that are coming from different aspects of these worlds where you're gonna find stuff and but the fact that being out there and some of these are being treated with just medications to make them stop because we don't understand them. Or in some cases where where we reported on some of the case reports individuals that we looked at were having a really hard time with them because there was no language. there was no but they were happening. Right. And the context I think in how we're I think this was a big paper and trying to bring in different context around around this. So we can change a little bit of how we're looking at it ask different questions going forward. but then also to start maybe even I seeing it in front of us. because when you start and I always find this interesting when you start talking to people about it they usually say oh yeah. I know I see that a lot actually when I do body work. And it's yeah. that's 'cause you're creating this Creating the context for the context for it. So these these emerge and spontaneously. I think that's the beauty of it in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. what when you completed the paper or published it and then it sounds some people would reach out 'cause they'd say hey we we see this. yeah. maybe I have two questions what has what what conversations have gotten started because of this paper. That's sort of one question. And then the second question is do does your team there the you and the group who wrote this is there a next step that you or any of you are working on or thinking of? So maybe those are the two questions. Yeah. well here's the last one. And in some ways I think what we thought was to see what this does and definitely I think on my end particularly there's definitely interest in bringing more of those stories to the forefront. so if there's folks that didn't have spontaneous movements and went through some experiences of working with that first of all love to hear from you but to start to almost Always interesting. Yeah it's always very interesting because I think the authenticity of that and capturing that phenomenon depending on what language or what framework we go through to to look at this it might change particularly and I think each individual kind of has their own story kind of coming in which is gonna be really fun. but I forget what the first question was. What was the First question was yeah did anybody yeah. what was there any outreach? Did people write to you and. a lot. You might be the fifth person that's read this. I counted for Well the first of many if I have I hope so. I'll tell you what I've I have shared it with at least 20 people like directly. so so I think that at least about that many have Yeah if you are looking to go out of where you are now and where you and the language that you're using to understand this and especially if you've put some of the pieces together for yourself and this can help you go outward more. and I do I believe every single one of these sort of frameworks gives us another clue about this phenomenon. It lets it gives us and going into it even playing with it might be fun but there are definitely different avenues of this that you start to see especially for me like the unwinding phenomenon. can it be done? of course you jump into the fascial research a little bit. where TRE uses quite a bit of oscillation and and I guess in some cases quicker movements in the beginning but not always the case, where John Barnes may start with a longer drawn out fascial tensioning. Well we're we're dealing with very two different two very different ways of receiving some of that information through the connective tissue. But both may actually lead to the same place And one may become the other. I don't know how often in John Barnes work I think it sometimes it it moves into tremoring but certainly in TRE tremoring often the oscillating quality of it will pause and then move into spiral movements and stretches and things of that nature. Well that word oscillation too and I think about a lot of times movement in general is being an oscillation property or experience so very in a lot of ways these smaller kind of fast oscillations are probably part of larger oscillatory behaviors. So we can have 'em both together and this idea of having almost choices and different variations of this I think that becomes a little bit of the art. I hear people talking about that all the time. But and I know I'm jumping a little bit here but even in some of the biotensegrity world looking at complex systems and things like that again emerging properties well that's spontaneous. And we didn't talk about biotensegrity. You mean that paper but. The idea of spontaneity within a system is largely part of that. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. can you talk about one or two of the, the case studies in the paper that come to mind where just examples the kinds of examples you used to illustrate the case studies. I think in one case that we looked at there were definitely some histories I think as there is with all of us but there was a recent surgeries for some of these individuals and that started off with some of these sort of spontaneous movements. And I'll I'll present too. The first one where he had a history I think it was a nasal surgery actually. That ended up leading to basically some spontaneous movements in the upper trunk. shockingly a lot of these individuals that the movements actually occurred more up here in the body and he got really interested in it and to the point where he was saying wow this is feeling good. So he this was It was beneceptive was be beneceptive yeah. So so he started following these well well this guy was he is a hard worker. he put in I want eight hours a day type of deal for a whole summer. and the stuff that he reported as far as not only his postural experiences changing but ease and movement. as far as like across the board even eye eyesight's tastes through the sensory systems he was giving so many awesome feedback. We didn't put this in the paper but he also was doing it when he received when he had Covid. And actually he said it took a completely different turn working with some of those sensations during that process that he felt really helped him manage a lot what was happening with his conditions. the other case report that we so he had a great time with it. He taught his friends it so after he had learned some of these things he was he went out and started teaching his family started teaching some of his friends and he's and it works and they're doing it now. So here's this idea of no formal training Right? right? But learned through the process and then went out. here's a role of we've seen this with healers we've seen this with healers that have done similar experiences I Right right and so that was a really fun case study. the other individual that we looked at he was an older gentleman both males his experience with some of this? I don't believe yes he had a a shoulder surgery too but he was an avid swimmer kinda growing up. almost like Olympic he was very active. but had a history of chronic back pain. and started it was a surgery that he had but then he started having some of these sort of what he described I think as almost like liquidy based kind of movements that he felt in his body. things just sliding and moving. And and from there he started to notice some of these twitches that really were disruptive to him he and they weren't comfortable. and in some cases actually were painful. I. So but during the process of this when we were asking him he did notice things changing. He saw things softening up. He saw his posture changing he saw his body getting better but even that he didn't have a context of really explaining entirely what was happening to him. Yeah. but I think throughout the process he he did say things are getting functionally easier for me but this process doesn't feel good yeah. it's yeah. Yeah. Those these two examples are great. It strikes me that there may be this, sort of percentage of people who the phenomenon begins. However it does for them. I've heard a lot about it in as I I've seen a lot of I've seen it I've seen the onset of it quite a bit through body work. That's one example. I've had a lot of people come where it began in meditation. I feel like that's another common onset where people are do say sitting meditation of some sort and it's out of there that somehow some movements start to arise and then they're wondering they get curious about that. I've had a lot of people where they the initiation of it was through some psychedelic experience. and where during some psychedelic medicine or journey or even in breath psychedelic type breath work spontaneous movement arises and then they're investigating it. But anyway and then just other ones too. Yeah. Post-surgery I've seen those kind of cases too. but it strikes me that some percentage of people like in a way the two case studies you gave are people who. get curious. they think it's beneceptive. they follow it they devote the time to seeing where it goes. They're a bit open-ended in their exploration. if there's a little discomfort they so so like some people may have that approach. And then I think there's other people who are pretty mystified who think something's wrong will try to inhibit it. get scared of what the phenomenon is or not necessarily scared by it but do not know don't have the sort of open-ended time to just give it space and the curiosity to it. So it strikes me in that larger group what I expect is a larger group of people who can't DIY. It completely that there's the role where educated professionals whether they're movement body work whatever it is people who do have a framework. It strikes me that the potential for facilitation is probably the lion's share of individuals for whom this starts would benefit from some skillful facilitation. I wonder if that's your impression as well or There's sometimes I jump in like the music context to understand this.'cause we got people that are really trained classically from three years old on and then you got other people that never did any training that play only by year. and you can still play music at the end and sometimes those combinations of the two actually work really awesome together. some of the best music can come from that. But yeah I think when you have a framework to go by initially whether you start in something like yoga or Kundalini yoga where you know this is easy. If this thing comes in while you're doing that it's oh you found Kundalini. Go with it. Right. You did it. Yay. It's like a or Qigong or spontaneous Qigong. It's the Qi has arrived go And it's easy ah yes. It's so different than if it just shows up. Yeah. And I think what's fascinating sometimes is well if there's I have kids that I work with that are in the classrooms doing the wiggling and moving and some will actually tremor their bodies. Sure. So here we are. Right? And there's no context around this. In some ways they're probably being told to stop but having a framework to work with this stuff I think really. I've always been told like you have to have a container. You have it has to be held in within a container. Otherwise you can spiral out and you can pick your containers. It's probably fine or jump between containers but have access to a container And I think initially with some of my own experience with this luckily at the time I was also going through PT school so I was getting both languages simultaneously. when I had some of these experiences show up in my life so it wasn't super scary even though I was kind being told like you got a brain tumor. These are all signs and symptoms of brain tumors which okay sometimes they can be but which is really scary if you're being told you're. Very much so. Yeah. Yeah. or you're being possessed by evil spirits be like oh I am. Well I didn't know that. Who did I talk to now? it just depends on who you meet along the way. It can send you in a Yeah. Yeah. No you're absolutely correct about that. Depends on who you meet along the Yeah. And if you meet somebody cool that kind of gives you some Hey you know what this is Hey look you found something the game changes. I always tell people I was lucky to run into Gil Headley before I went to school and before I ran into some of this stuff But by the way everyone will like go on a trip go hang out with Gil Headley and take some of his courses and see for yourself inside the body. But it gives you a reference point And for me it was like well maybe with some of this stuff that's happened to my body I'm moving. Some of that stuff that I had moved through with some of those courses that I saw with my hands physically okay I can go with that. Yeah. It gave me an understanding at least to say I'm okay. I think I'm okay anyways. If I'm not I'll get some I'll get checked but let's see where this goes. Yeah. yeah. no. And I wanna I let's unpack a little as much as you're comfortable sharing with that personal story I think that would be great to to include Yeah. It's important. one just yeah. One quick question around the paper before I forget. I don't think this is in there but I just wanna ask is did you did the paper look at did you look at all about so you definitely looked at these the modalities that you included some of the explanatory frameworks involved. Did you guys discuss autonomic state changes or polyvagal state changing? did that come We brought in the parasympathetic you know what? We believe that a lot of this. Was the body accessing parasympathetic states which I think jives well with some of Stephen Porges work surrounding some of these processes of where our body heals. and if we can get there into those sort of default network states then that's where our bodies are gonna start to regulate the mindfulness work and that stuff is important but it's energy it's using energy. So and I think you mentioned that with the quietness spaces and things. So we didn't directly address it but we discussed about the parasympathetic state responses'cause what's what strikes me and I a curiosity I have for you is what strikes me is that of all the modalities that you guys included there the two I know best are, are TRE and somatic experiencing?'cause they're these are core things that I practice. But and in both of those there's a little bit of a the the sort of the explanatory model for understanding the spontaneous movement is a little is a bit similar. They they a polyvagal lens but also Peter Levine articulated the sort of the completion of the threat response cycle. And so in in Peter Levine's languaging this that that tremoring would be viewed as a. as a completion or a discharge of incomplete motor responses and would often correspond with the completion of sympathetic or fight flight motor behaviors. Or it might also represent a transition from the freeze immobilization sort of death state as that that tremoring might also emerge during that context. And that's also what Dr. Berceli observed. he found this sort of in real life context with a lot of intensity in war zones and things where he was seeing it emerge. And so I think both of them saw, really resonated with sort of the analogy of the human to the sort of the wild animal and this behavior commonly occurring around post stress. Again either fight or flight resolution or freeze immobilization resolution. And what I'm wondering is and so I know that's baked right into the thinking of of somatic experiencing and TRE but I'm a little bit curious about like continuum myofascial release the biotensegrity people maybe even the Kundalini yoga people. And I know you're not like directly an expert in every single one of those modalities but I'm not. wondering like no but I'm wondering like do, how similar or different is the explanatory model from these other frameworks as compared to this one that I was describing I think it's important to also look at where they're they so you discuss continuum right? and Emily Conrad and understanding I like to understand where the person came from that created it. Just like in music what why'd you create the song? And I like that question a lot because I find it so rich Emily had I. quite an interesting history. I think growing up where she had some actually really interesting injuries to her abdominal area. some of what I never got to meet her. I came really close but I think she passed right before she was coming out this way. But we had plans to connect. It was really bummed about that. really interesting woman just come but she yeah but I think she had a really hard time with some of her abdominal areas of her body to the point where I think she was actually creating self-harm in some ways without knowing it there was something that wasn't healing for her that was tied to something deeper. And where I think she first experienced some of these undulating movements was once one period at night where she was in bed and this is reading from some of her. From her book I think where some of these just movements she started to feel overcome her body and for the first time kind of feeling just at ease with herself. the John Barnes John Barnes had a pretty significant back injury that laid him out for quite a while when he was lifting really heavy weights at one point. at least again his story that was told by him and he needed to find solutions to some of that stuff. I think Feldenkrais with his knee injury in injury right? Yeah. Right. and then along the way you try to make people so people don't think you're crazy with what you're starting to explore and experience but it's happening. You're feeling better and you're not doing it the way that you were supposed to. So what do you do? Right but yeah I think I don't know. I zoomed out there but yeah having that that coming from some of those frameworks for those individuals I'm trying to get I can't remember where you're Yeah. Well I I had mentioned like the that the explanatory mechanism for Peter, peter Levine is that sort of the completion of motor responses. and also that transition from the sort of the shifting from sympathetic arousal into more into baseline parasympathetic or shifting out of from the free the thawing of a freeze so to speak. And I wonder if that languaging if there's parallel languaging in I can't remember in in Barnes work enough if there's that component I'm not sure. and I remember hearing in the back of my head you just want to tune into the right radio station you know Yeah. I remember that. Channel three. Yeah. channel three. Oh okay. I can't find channel three like I'm on channel nine or something. Yeah. Yep. but I think now I forget where I read some of this but the interaction between sympathetic and parasympathetic simultaneously and the wiring that we have here and but yeah I think in a lot of ways we look for very linear type of behavior patterns. We're either going up or going down and. Why can't we do both or simultaneously and I think again looking at some of the biotensegrity world the freeze for the freeze state in some ways. they deal a lot with like compression intention and I'm not an expert in any of that stuff. I've done a little bit of work with that group to understand some of their language but I asked the question about freeze states at one point and from my understanding when there's an actual equal balance between compression and tension when they perfectly align it's stillness but it's moving. movement from both of these in a way that's providing energy but they're canceling out and creating stillness. Yeah. Yep. so like thinking about this and starting to think about compression and tension when they're perfectly aligned how they actually can create stillness and balance but it's still kind of energy. and you use the word biotensegrity energy it just starts to be like whoa okay wait a minute Yeah. So but yeah I think at least in this paper when we were writing it at the time I think we we looked a lot at just trying to say the more of a parasympathetic response that we're essentially trying to achieve with the body and in those places. which we did put together like some criteria about how these things can come about and what are some of the characteristics about some of these things with there being like arising spontaneously like a criteria there needs to be some sort of like stimuli that you bring into the system that does that so for example like TRE we put put the body on certain stretches. certain pressures are usually being placed on the body depending on the position that you're in which I find really interesting different positions that offer different, pressures at the same time. but then also that parasympathetic response of being able to experience the letting go of kind of the body a reduction in tone perhaps but also like the environment that is being set up by the person or how it's being perceived by the individual. right. How's it being contextualized? Yeah. No it's so fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot when you start to look at those components even I think some of these states of consciousness shifts too of saying I'm feeling like I'm and I remember hearing some of my clients that are doing this in myself it's woo okay I'm getting I can't think about the detailed stuff that sometimes I think about. My brain doesn't wanna Right. Not in this space. I'm outside that mindful heavy place and this feels nice right? yeah. Funny I'm I don't know why I'm thinking about this right now. It's like a little it's a slight non-sequitur but maybe not completely but I'm again I'm thinking about people where their experience began outside of a where there wasn't initially a context or much of a con much of a container as you shared. and I'm thinking about Richmond Heath Richmond in Australia. and he's also a PT but his so his story was his he always describes his initial foray into spontaneous movement. And I think I I'm pretty sure for him it came during a vipasana meditation retreat or several of them. And then it set up a thing where something was just happening. and he always describes it as and I've heard the story other places too. I've heard it described in other contexts as well. But where suddenly he would find himself doing movements that there's no way he could consciously do that if he had decided I'm gonna put my I'm gonna put my body into this shape. Or things that might even look like a yoga posture or something that there would just be literally no way of him doing that intentionally. but because it was being led at a at another level suddenly so so I'm just thinking of these kind of. in a way more dramatic examples of expressions and the sort of the surprises that can emerge Yeah. Yeah. I think in the context that we put together as far as what things can come about. I think we use the word combinations permutations of different available movements that are that we have in sort of those automatic spaces of our brain. the brainstem in a lot of ways holds all of our automatic sort of properties so being able to have access to those those reflexively for that matter and I think yeah what does the body create? is it we're essentially creating jazz here. We're putting together some really different notes and creating some really unique sounds or some really unique in this case postures and the looking at kind of the response of our body with the environment And I think now it's we can say in a lot of ways like our responses are faster than the nervous system. This gets really interesting right? If a nervous system is work moving at a certain speed yet reflexively we can move a lot faster. first of all what's the nervous system for? I have questions but vibration and oscillation properties can move through the tissue 12 to 20 times faster than that of what gets propagated through a nerve. I see. so being able to access that by doing something mindful almost setting the body in motion through a technique like TRE that then brings you into this other space. Yeah. we're starting to look at some of Newton's laws here right? Of once you set something in motion it can continue to stay in motion under the right circumstances. Yeah. We're gonna be on delay. We're gonna be a little bit behind with us kind of processing Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. and this is where. I think the following comes from a lot where we say follow it. Yeah. That's all you really can do. even in we know this with language and conversation right? we're we've already had this conversation in some ways. we're saying things that we know but we're truly improvising. and you're and what does a really good improviser use for a lot of this stuff? It's things that they trained with. It's things that they know that they're bringing to the surface in the moment in really different and unique ways. that allows for the in this way maybe the body to complete something or the body to experience something different. which I think is it's amazing that we've found ways into accessing some of this stuff and using this and it's cool. cool to be part Yeah. I get I that's where I get lost a lot just trying to wrap my head around and stuff. But y you but the more and more I think especially now with some of the sciences that are coming out I can't keep up with it anymore honestly Alex stuff is changing left and right and but in in cool ways that I think's just letting us say more and more you know what? Yeah just go with it. Because if it's working go with it.'cause what we thought was wrong in a lot of ways the idea that muscles actually don't move a lot and that they just isometrically contract but we move in the way that we do is still mind blowing to me. talk to the biotensegrity people they'll Yeah. Yeah. No that's scenario I want to go more into. I was yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. that's where you come back to the oscillation world and that's where again we say ooh look at people oscillating with Well yeah. Well something I was reading recently you might know about this more than me. I was reading I think some paper about I was trying to see every once in a while I look to see has is there any new any new paper that describes some tremoring whether it's spontaneous or something is there anything new in neuro neurophysiological research? and I was reading something about tremoring as from a sort of the perspective of the sort of muscle spindle in interactions and the paper and I'll have to dig it up. This was a skim kind of a thing. but this is probably not news to you but it was what struck me was that's being described was that that. That pulsation or oscillation is always happening and at a certain level. And then there's certain conditions in which that's amplified into perceptible and perceptible levels. and I found that an interesting way to think about it because I'm thinking about this from a TRE or a somatic experiencing perspective where what's the level at which we start to perceive this? obviously if you do something to set in motion neurogenic tremoring like through TRE most of the time you're gonna get quite feelable and quite visible. Spontaneous movement. Right. typically speaking somebody watching would be able to see that movement. And of course you can feel it. But so that's one level of amplitude of rhythmic oscillatory myofascial activity. but to me there's lots of examples where there's vibratory phenomena that gets set in motion. I've had this happen lots of time through for me it's be most likely with acupuncture but it could be any form of body work craniosacral therapy osteopathy hands-on Hannah Somatics Feldenkrais work. If I've been if my body and nervous system has been touched in a meaningful way then even though I'm not gonna likely to have big visible oscillations like I do when I tremor and TRE very often for 12 to 24 hours. There's a very perceptible vibration that I can feel. and of course now I can interpret that as energetically I could interpret it as chief flow or if I was in sort of TCM perspective which I think is a good way to look at it. But I've come to believe that it's also. My I also now believe that it's a quite literal vibration. it's just not big enough to be moving my bones around. and so now I'm thinking of it like this sort of this continuum or this spectrum of when I'm quote unquote in stillness well there's at the literal level there is not stillness. Of course I'm breathing and my heart's beating and the cerebral sal fluid is moving. So we know there's those movements. But even at the neuromuscular level what I gathered from this paper is that a solitary movement is happening now sometimes it's happening more. if I get Tai Chi or acupuncture or something I can feel it. but I'm not moving around. Nobody's seeing that. Well now I could do it. Even I do a breath work session or a TRE session and now I'm literally in a in the visible spectrum of tremoring. So now I'm thinking of this kind of continuum in a sense. Yeah. like tremors inside tremors or movement inside movement and even the like a postural sway of just standing there's gonna be a slower kind of sway. but yeah. Then go all the way to the other side of the spectrum the nitty gritty ones of where you might feel little fasciculations They happen in our sleep all the time and we know that they help with the healing process and the remodeling of the brain. so I think especially in infants in the beginning but yeah I think that's like. they're starting to become better language around that and what do you do with that? Can you respond to that? And but yeah it gets really interesting and I again I jump to like music a lot because I feel like in some ways they've started to have this conversation of hearing multiple melodies simultaneously and being able to hear several at the same time type of deal and different ones at the same time. but we're talking about listening and the ear the vestibular system that's organized to gravity. they're on the same line here. Cranial nerve eight I don't know. Just saying even though they're talked about very separately one organizes us accordingly to gravity and it you're talking about the auditory and vestibular are on the shared on the eighth the cranial cranial nerve. Yeah. they're taught very differently but they splice right into each other and I think what we're learning about nerves and how nerves feel and what what's going are they talking? I don't maybe Yeah. Yeah. yeah they're why they're split off the same damn nerve. Super interesting. Well I ask a lot of people that question and I don't get many answers but I'm very curious. Yeah it's well it's interesting that you say that because earlier you talked about so often we use the word follow follow the and what I and I didn't say it when you said that but a phrase that I use a lot with this is especially true in somatic experiencing. Where first we're going into felt sense but then it's oftentimes some spontaneous activity doesn't necessarily mean it's big movements. It just might be breath changes sensation changes small the head moving a little bit and a phrase I use a lot is listen and follow. that's in a sense the instruction that I give and the. The listen part is 'cause I even though it's maybe not I don't think of it as literally acoustic but the sense of listening to what's occurring. if you bring your and then the follow is then give permission or allow and so that pairing listen and follow is a common language that I use when we're tuning in Yeah. It's and it's probably some means of regulation that we're probably doing with the body a co-regulation within ourself. and and the music world we call and answer is a talking conversation that you have all the time in music but but some people are better at, talking and some people are better at listening and it sucks if you're with somebody that just likes to talk all the time and doesn't wanna listen or but that give and take a lot of times or following listening yeah there's something there. and we see it played out in a lot of other things too the other disciplines. So yeah I think we're coming into that space now and now we're bringing out okay we need to bring out language for this process and are there some common things that that we can experience and what do we give them for languages? Are we I ask kids this all the time 'cause I ask them what's going on in their body?'cause I work a lot with them. And they will tell you you push on your arm their arm and you tell them what else changed. They'll tell you if they know how to if they've given the permission to look somewhere. Sometimes they don't need to be done. Just oh I can feel something else in my leg. But I usually tell 'em say look everywhere not just here look everywhere and we're playing we're starting to play we're starting to practice this skill that's probably very much available. as we get older sometimes you press on something and he says well how does that feel? It's okay what else do you feel? What you just did like on my hand? But what else? what do you mean? So Oh yeah. That's so cool. Well well Joel let's yeah let's hear a little bit about your personal story. If you're willing you've alluded to hearing this conversation to while you were doing PT school. there was some there was something you were tracking and you were a little bit interpreting it from a TPT lens but sounded quite particular to you. Can you will you share a little bit about that? I think I just hit a wall basically when I was 2020 was I 23 24 at the time I just I'd gotten out of a really a really long-term relationship. I just built my house for two years and then just did my first year of grad school and I think I had some downtime that summer which was an interesting part of the program. normally they don't anymore but we had a so I wasn't gonna get a job. I was like I'm just gonna but that was when I first started to basically notice some really interesting things start to happen with my body. I just hit a wall And I remember one night saying all right I need to stretch my arms. and in particular I think I was also, so I was working with patients a lot of hands on work but as a student I was a personal trainer for 10 years prior to that so I was comfortable working with people. But what was interesting to me was all these techniques that I was learning and getting excited about and then I'd go home and try them on myself and they wouldn't help. And so I was They would not help is that you help me. No. So I was seeing them work with my patients but I wasn't seeing them work with me. And I was starting to get frustrated y and saying why can't this work for me? and just and was it when you say work on you was it like like what were you noticing as a as not optimal for you? Like pain phenomenon or Oh yeah I was uncomfortable. I think I had built my from this house from basically the foundation up. I re I really remodeled everything. I kept the skeleton but I had done quite an extensive amount of labor for two years without any rest. I had in my mind that I was gonna take on this project and then after that it was another project right? the brain says oh we gotta this isn't good enough. We gotta go do something else. So maybe that was but but now all of a sudden in school I'm sitting still I'm not moving that regular lifestyle that I was doing and distracting. And so all of a sudden now I'm having to sit for and study at night So I think over time that just built up and I. Started to need to do more exercise more mobilizations but it wasn't I wasn't getting to the level that I needed to clear my mind and to be able to sit with the studies and the work that I needed to. so I was just starting to get quite frustrated. And I think there was just one night where I was laying down. I was just I was really not in a good place and and I said I don't care. I need to move my shoulder. I need to bring this up. And I'm just gonna push as hard as I can. I don't care. I'm at that point. So I threw my arm back with everything I had and I heard a big pop and I said oh my shoulder. But then I said I don't feel any pain I said and then all of a sudden I saw my other hand start to tremor. So and it for me replicated the same thing I just did. I could feel the pull from basically the back of my shoulder just my arm going Ooh boom. And then same replication on that side. So a lot of times that TRE phenomenon right that we see left to right Yeah. yeah. So hemisphere's talking in some way. but at the time I didn't know that. I didn't understand any of the neurology that could have been happening there or what my body just experienced and but I felt some relief after that. It was a very clear and sometimes what I hear after folks that sometimes go in for learn TRE for the first time it's wow things just got completely what I felt. And but I think after that time I it wasn't like I just started tremoring from that point on. I. I was going back to school I think a couple months passed and then I started to notice just some movement in my arm And I said whoa. I was sitting with my buddy next door and I next to my lab and I said hey Tony look at my arm. And he goes yeah that's good. Yeah. You're moving it. Good for you. And I was like no. And you can see how this goes next right? No Tony no Tony I'm not doing it. And that's where I got I started probably getting my where make a psychiatric referral for you. yeah. or even better when you go to your professors and you say Hey look when you see their eyes go you need to get that checked out. I said why? I feel okay. I feel good. Yep. But so that started to basically I think when I started doing that I said well I'm gonna just I'm gonna squeeze with it. I'm gonna just actually squeeze the muscle And then I would get like almost an opposite motion that kind of came through. And then I'd say oh okay cool. Relief. So I had that familiarity of that sort of relief pattern. And then I saw something other another fasciculation start to happen higher above. And I said oh I'll follow that. So I'm running this in my head a little bit. Oh that's that muscle. Let me squeeze that muscle and then another motion would happen. So I just kept following that until some of the motions became a little bit bigger and a little bit more broader. And slowly over time it was this it was for me more of pulling and deep sort of fascial stretching. Okay. But there were definitely times and positionings that this was way easier to do on the floor. So like a lot of this I would play with and sitting but I eventually found my way to the floor. and started some of that work there and I couldn't get enough of it. I thought it was I could feel every time I went in this space and did some of this work I was coming out with just this vitality and this strength behind my body. That and of course feeling at ease wow this is great. so I did that. I had the summer off. I had I know I spent a lot of my time like in between that kind of walking outdoors and just collecting myself. But I saw huge changes. I saw huge postural changes. I saw a lot of my body come back to me in a short amount of time. So but I also put in a lot of that the hours behind that of time. Yeah. Yeah. I. I have questions on the speed of some of this work but a lot was there were times where there was a lot of just skin driving work. I couldn't get enough of moving the skin. It did seem like a lot of this went from the out outer shearing kind of movements to deeper in um mm-hmm. Which a lot of times is what we do when we're first born And and I probably should mention too I was a I was a C-section baby. I was preemie as well. who knows if that was a piece of not but that process just returning back to school was just like whoa. I had a very different perspective on the body and how things worked. And luckily along the way I had some folks that I was able to be in contact with this experience that. We're almost a little bit of a mentor in the process and say no you're good. You're exploring keep going. Right. you're in an okay place. This was my experience and I was like oh okay. but yeah so that was what I carried through and 15 whatever 15 16 years ago where that kind of started. But over time yeah it just settled and settled got less and less. And like you were describing more of that sensation of just being felt in the body just sitting here there's movements that are there but nowhere to the point of needing to they're not distracting. they're just part of. The voluntary stuff now. So I thinking about it from an integration standpoint and it gets confusing as I think in a lot of ways and I'm not saying that my body is like perfectly integrated or anything like that but it's definitely in a better place than I think it was at that time and in a more balanced place movement wise. and I'm more aware of a lot of those things that at the time I was doing than I think are like whoa. I was inflicting some discomfort on my body. I was unaware And so Amazing. yeah no. That's so cool. No thanks for sharing yeah that personal side. you mentioned a there was a few mentors. You were lucky to find some mentors who were encouraging and whatnot. Did you were did you were there any of the opposite ex. were there any of the opposite experience you were in PT school you have access to experts in physiology et cetera et cetera. what did you were you did you bring some of the the questions that ended up making their way into this paper 15 years later? Did you pose any of those questions to some of your the faculty? Yeah. Well I've always there were some interesting conversations that came out of that and there were definitely some perspectives that were like no we know movement's good. and keep moving let your body move. And there were those takes there were other people that were like I don't know what you're doing but I think you have a tumor and you need to get that checked out immediately. Oh Oh my God. oh my God I don't talk to you anymore. but then there were definitely like I don't know what this is but it's is weird. Yep.'cause it's everything in PT school is a lot about controlling the body putting it back to certain places with certain techniques or at least using those. I think the language is changing now. A lot of the fields are changing where we're coming to. More of a way of saying we're suggesting something to the body. But there's expectation behind techniques Oh of course right? And I think in this type of process it's definitely like what you get is what you get. And it's the fun part. Yeah. Yeah totally. Hopefully it's been acept whenever you get. You like that word? that. I'm gonna start using it. but alright well I want to be mindful of our time. Maybe we got let's do one more section which is yeah I guess I'd love to hear how do you you mentioned earlier people start to some So much of it is who you meet along the way right? like you've got a process going to do you meet a Qigong teacher? Do you meet a who do you meet? and some of those people are gonna be encouraging. and I thought to myself ever since you first. way going back 18 months when you so extensively weighed in on a question about my infant at the time I came to the impression of I was like wow anybody who finds their way into Joel's office that's some good karma. that was they met a unique person and a unique healer. So so I'm a little so so when you mentioned that earlier it depends on who you meet. That's what I was thinking today. I was like yeah well the people who find their way to you I think of those are some lucky individuals.'cause they're finding their way into a person with a significant personal experience of some of this stuff. And then also just the creative and sensitive person that you are. So could you share a little bit about like, how treatment works for you. it might be non-linear or maybe it's linear. Maybe you have a process. Like maybe you could just talk a little bit about how you how some of these ideas find their way into your actual clinical work with kids and adults. Yeah so it's interesting because I do work with both I work with kids adults and then I sometimes work with both of them simultaneously. And that's that sometimes gets really interesting teaching through multiple languages but together but in a lot of ways I'm looking for some of these I use them for tests now so I am a physical therapist that's as much as I tried to fight it along the way I was placed here. So I have to use that language in a way that I can also pull in this other stuff and honor it what I was taught through those experiences. so for me primitive reflexes gave me that opportunity to work with the spontaneity and also have language behind it. to present to people about some of Okay. Okay so unpack that.'cause lots of people listening are not gonna know what you mean by primitive reflexes and the field of reflux integration. So give us a little 1 0 1 on that at. primitive refluxes the movements that basically build us some of these within utero and the ones that are that once we start to engage with outside but our first interactions essentially with the environment come from movements that essentially are programmed in the brain Now, there's some other research that actually showed that some of the spontaneity may actually be there a little bit first and then the primitive movements. But we use those as our beginning as the movements that are in intuitively we know to start to interact us with the environment what are a few like the Moro reflex or the sucking reflex or. Yep. So some of these the doctor checks for in the beginning and some people there's stories behind each one of these reflexes in a lot of ways of what they're useful and purposeful for. but oftentimes there are first kind of protection pieces also too that allow us to interact with this new environment coming out. So the Moro reflex in particular is that one that sort of some people leave the first breath of like arms open legs open type of deal and they check for that by taking the baby and bringing it backwards. And if you see that you have an intact nervous system essentially. but one of the first oscillations right essentially is this kind of motion going out arms over the head legs straight out and then everything curling back in to the body. think of just with those motions of. Of what we do from CrossFit overhead movements with the barbell. to some of the fetal positions that we bring it encourage people to go in when we see it with TRE right? Are we engaging with some of these reflexes are in some ways. But we we know that those sort of reflexes amongst others like the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex those are basically movements that allow the integration of the vestibular system the auditory system but also get us rolling on the ground and it looks like a fencer pose where the arm and the leg come up like this and then you look over and almost like a little bit of a warrior in some ways Interesting. right. you start making connections but I don't know if they're entirely but there's these are useful for us to start to build our body and but also our brain and we're not thinking about them. They're just there and there are there know there are certain tests that you can do. and a lot of these are sensory based and movement based to check to see if these pop up on an individual. And we know now with a lot of things like neurodevelopmental conditions autism OCD that these some underlie or at least are significantly related to some of these conditions we find them in a lot of these individuals that have them. But the same thing with individuals that have injuries or to the brain or to their spinal cord. even though post covid we're seeing some of these things when these movements don't follow through and normally they clear out a lot of them and then become postural reflexes that we can then use to orient ourself to gravity. But they're usually a lot of them are cleared by the by 12 months. And if they're not then we call them retained. So those are the ones that I'm looking for in individuals So there are certain tests that you can do to see even just like having a person turn their head to the side. And if an arm bends then possibly there may be that reflex that is available and that's retained putting taking your finger and kind of drag it across a person's face across their lips for rooting that we would use to first learn to feed with as an infant. If that happens or we see puckering of the lips type of deal then those are all things that we can say oh. These are retained right? These are distracting and they're reproducible in a lot of ways when we test for them. Some of them are not full-blown movement patterns that you would see textbook and some people look for those. but and now I was trained in a lot of ways is sometimes you just get bits and pieces of some of these motions and a lot of times when I work so I'm looking for those initially with kids and I have a whole list of reflexes that I go through to test for. for especially with children but the same with adults. looking at and somebody shared with him maybe it was you that it's what you're talking about isn't rare maybe even 40 50% of adults or something or upon testing would have some retained reflexes is or in that neighborhood. I find them all the time. I find them. I find them in the eyes. I find them in the hands. I find them in the feet. I they're there and they're not always disruptive to the person's function. I think that's important to say just'cause they're there doesn't mean that it's a problem it's a problem. Yeah. But for some folks that may have like I was working with a woman the other day who I I checked my eyes with everybody and she was having knee pain and I looked her to the right and her body immediately fell forward so looking in some of these ways of these sort of imbalances that can sometimes happen or just how we're wired with that can have an effect on a lot of different things. So yeah. I. this is it's an it's a place that I look a lot with the kiddos and adults that I'm working with. And then from there we for a lot of the kids I try to interact with those movements. I get them to do things and usually a lot of sensory work to those areas. and but I do with adults I use TRE quite a bit to allow that as another gateway point for them to sometimes see for themselves but allow them to drive and interact with some of those movements in a very different way. So let me linger there for a moment. So with adults if you're feeling like you wanna you're liking the I guess let's call it an induction process something happens when TRE elicit something how is it that you introduce that? Do you you give them a full blown the whole shebang all seven a full formal process or do you do a is there a more in the flow way that you invite that. Yeah. so a lot of times people will these reflexes I can show right? I can do something to someone and then say did you see that? And a lot of times they say no I did not. Right. But so I can show them the spontaneity right there I'm already starting to teach them about the fact that their body can spontaneously move. And the whole idea behind some of these reflexes too is bringing people into them in some regards or some sort of a sensory experience with that part of their body and them having a conscious experience of it right? So what does TRE do? In a lot of ways it brings people into some of these Conscious awareness. Yeah. Can bring in that mindful piece through a reflexive behavior. So I love TRE in that regards that I usually pair the two together in a lot of ways. I'll have people doing specific movements and things that are being mindful of those areas. And then I'm using TRE to help them identify within that. Sometimes allowing those behaviors to actually go deeper into and that's where it gets interesting because a lot of times I do see inside TRE lot of these sort of reflexes and movements occurring. Right. And I can help them Yeah. Well so that's its own really interesting. Yeah. That's its own interesting piece. So it's like you're saying that whether when you watch people tremor let's use TRE as our framework here. When you watch people do TRE whether you've been talking about whether you've previously assessed or talked about reflex reflexes when you're observing tremoring phenomenon because you're you have a trained eye around a you have that lens of reflexes. It sounds like you're saying a lot of the movements that you're seeing elicited in TRE you're seeing the traces and the evidence of retained reflexes. Is that correct? Yeah. Or parts of them. Yeah. and so I that I can then bring in the full one and give them an idea. And even so I know with TRE sometimes we use the word like interventions right? So that might be one of my interventions. changed. I don't call it that anymore. I call it facilitations now. good I got sick. I got sick of that word. It just sound it is a clinical word but I don't like it anymore anyway. right. I like facilitations. But yeah it's helping it's helping with the completion. So if I my mind says well it looks like they're trying to this looks like it could be part of that and maybe it's not. It might not be. But I think a lot of times you do see an individual trying to roll right? You see those initial kind of rockings and rolling. So but it's different right? It's not we're not dealing with an infant anymore. We're dealing with a mature adult for with adults and even with a a teenage kid or something like that or a five five-year-old. they're beyond these places of just this linear progression. So people that just do the linear progression of oh you need to bring the brain back to these steps again I don't it's in a it's a hush posh of a lot of things. And so we gotta work in a non-linear way in in what comes up on the fly type of deal. There's an arc there for sure. But sometimes it's very clear oh a body's trying to get itself to roll and twist into that side. Here we go. So in the moment I might try to facilitate that manually with the person. I may give them the idea and say Hey allow yourself to go in this direction. Does it feel like you wanna go left or right? test those sides. Which one do you wanna follow? And usually people are like oh I want to go this way. Go for it right? but other times I might if I see that repeated a lot throughout our experience it's okay I saw this a lot. I'm gonna give it as an exercise. So here's my pt part of saying your body's trying to do this repetitively. It's looking for something inside that motion movement. Inside movement. Why? Why take this home for an exercise too and drive the mindfulness of it? Yeah. so I'm I find a lot of times I'm jumping sides. I'm jumping into the extreme mindfulness. Now I'm jumping back into the extreme reflex aspect and just monitoring and saying okay what is this person doing in the moment? which I got from some of the TRE work which was definitely a little bit of a game changer for me of how my thought process worked. But I trusted it. I said these guys David's obviously done his work and and I've seen that with myself and some of my own body's experiences. Let's let's practice this. And it does have a place there I feel like. and just but knowing which side or which of the fence that you want to be on at different moments I think can be really helpful. with Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Can you think of and maybe and this might be our closing note I'm just maybe you can think of one one one client example that just stands out. I'm sure there's lots but maybe one where one that sort of stands out to you as and I where I guess where I'm thinking where spontaneous movement definitely definitely had a major role whether that's TRE or something else. But where in your view that was very much a very important aspect of some transformational process or healing process for them. Yeah. Any just wondering if any case examples. I. where I met my best teacher is what you're asking here. Yeah exactly. So in school actually or I think it was my second year this woman came through her name was Megan. She was 19 years old. and she had she had a chorea. She actually we she was in the paper that we put together too as far as a case report on movement collaboration. And she was just a sweetest girl. She was a gymnast who grew up in just had the most beautiful movements elegant movement. But got ended up had she had Huntington's chorea. So she started to have which is a degenerative neurological condition Can you say the word again? I missed Huntington's chorea. Okay. Yeah. And so it comes with dyskinesia which is like involuntary aggressive kind of movements where there's not a lot of kind of patterns again right? Things that we sometimes see in TRE but again not not pathology. Right So this was after probably a year or two after I think I was exploring some of my own stuff so I had my own little bit of a language and feedback system that I was using with some of this and I wanted to help her she came in and talked to our class about her condition was trying to educate us and the whole time I think I was just feeling wow like I wonder if I can do anything. I wonder if I could do anything. And I'll ask her afterwards. She and she's just really brave little girl and she was with her mother but the whole time she could see her kind of fighting gravity and working to keep herself upright. she's amazing. She ate 9000 calories a day and she was skinny as a rail because she had so much movement. That's what you mean. so much energy that she had to control so that a lot of the spasticity that was happening and the dyskinesia that she was with what was left of her voluntary system that's what she was able to do. But she probably weighed 90 pounds soak and wet. Wow. Okay. and but she was so positive and just talking about and being there and helping us understand her in this condition. So I asked if I could work with her a couple times during the week just as an exploratory project for me to understand more. And and she was like yeah sure. Mom was like I'll bring her by once a week. So I said okay why don't we just start and I started with the first lemme use my PT tools. Why don't we do some hand exercises where we bring the arm up and let's stretch the back? And the whole time she's she's bucking in chair bodies but she's doing it. She's saying This is fun. And I said oh this just feels like there's something missing. Obviously. I said and I could just feel myself getting closer and closer and saying all right what if I try some manual things with her? Right. And I'll try to allow myself but I couldn't keep track of her. She was so fast with some of these motions. And I said okay what if I just what if I just grab her hands and I just connect. Now there's some of these arts these practices in I want to say push hands and Tai Chi right? Yeah. I didn't know about 'em at the time but I was like I just need to I need to make contact 'cause. My body knows contact I if I can feel her I can find that prestress of that. I'm aware of that. I feel like I can move faster in. So I found that sort of position with her and then I think from there it was I had ideas like let's bring our arms up together but again still fast. And then I just felt my body just go immediately into some of these responses of I she was pushing me out of my equilibrium and then I could feel my body correcting itself very much in the way that I had practiced working with these reflexes. So when I recognized that I was like wait a minute okay I can just push this back this way. But when I did that I we both would hear like an auditory response of powow. So there was some sort of reorganization that happened simultaneously reflexively for both of us. At least auditorily for me. I recognized it. What do you wait what do you mean auditorily? You mean like you literally heard a sound? Like I felt something move on me. It was a pop kind of crack. And then I heard on her pop and crack. Okay. So there was like a joint popping type of a sound. yeah. which a lot of times happens when there's a reorganization at a joint the cavitation occurs but what do we know from that something is stimulated somewhere that now allows the joint to reorganize. So that was a first experience of kind of working with some of that. But it felt stable. All of a sudden. There was a stability that came in. Again very similar to some of those practices where I was moving with with some of the unwinding phenomenons and finding and looking for coming now it's two two bodies to get two nervous systems together two nervous systems together. Yeah. So this we would practice and move and it did it took on a very oscillatory kind of movement practice. But I starting I'm starting to look a little bit like her and we're sharing some of these movement patterns but still coming back to some of those responses letting my body reconnect with the ground with and just reorganize co-regulate however you wanna look at it. because I could move I could work through her and then use all use the ground or coming from my feet a little bit. Yep. So but over time what ended up happening was there would be a slowing and then a pause. So but there this these stillness that sort of came out she was always moving but they held for about 30 seconds of just complete stillness. And at one point she Which was rare for Rare for yeah for her the there weren't really rest points. So we were together creating rest points. they were temporary but they were happening and to the point where they were coming across to her as scary like almost like she would yell and say that's never like that. what is that? it was unfamiliar and but her body was still and mine felt in a very kind of still place as well temporarily until it needed to move again. So we followed that for a little bit and the responses that I got we would have multiple pauses that over time became a little bit longer each period but very similar to TRE her sleep patterns were better at night. she was she was able to basically have the digestion was a little bit different reported from mom. She had movements available that normally she would have very much difficulty with. So I still have a lot of questions as to what happened how many sessions were you able to spend with we did seven or eight sessions together. So enough to see like this was pretty significant. and a lot of it I look at is the same stuff we're doing with the manual following. It was just for me she was a little bit just faster and it was a little bit more aggressive with some of the like forces that we were using because she had so much tone to her system. so that was a pretty and still to this day I she drives some of the interest. but I also wonder as we start to be go become more advanced with this we start to become more in tune with each individual system. What happens when we start to stack 'em. Yep. And maybe people are already out there doing that work in some ways. so but I'm curious when you Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious too. Yeah. Yeah. Two systems running independently but operating simultaneously with awareness. what what starts to happen? I don't know. Reminds me a little bit we talked about push hands and Tai Chi for sure but there's and I haven't done a lot of this but there's the discipline of of contact improv. Are you familiar with yeah. Yep. a bit of yeah. Being in relationship through contact and movement sharing weight. yeah there's a yeah no you're right. I'm sure there's that the way you ended up working there's commonalities probably with lots of things. and I think it speaks I think it speaks to us finding a an accuracy within this for ourselves and yeah the trial and error process that it seems like each of us go through but then refining it over time and becoming more accurate and. Essentially more energy efficient with that. And can we leverage it? can we leverage it in more ways because we are we're not wasting as much energy in the beginning. which I feel like at least for me that was a process that definitely happened. can you leverage some of this process in ways that allows healing to to present faster? It probably is very fast but in this way do things that we're just not doing yet? And I don't I'm curious Yeah. Yeah. That's a great that's a very cool early early teacher for you. Yeah. Yeah. And she still has me going back to the drawing board. Every I can approach it every day and be like were we just dancing? I come back to that too and say were we just being weird together? And that works. I gotta look at it through that lens too. But no there was something relating to the mechanics of this all that but she was just fast. She was fast. and the only time she had that other stillness from my understanding is a couple days before she passed that was the only other time where there was a completion in her system Wow. Interesting from what her mother said or sleep I think during sleep too. she was able to achieve places of stillness. So but where her mother saw her I asked her and said where when was the last time that you did see her in those states where she wasn't And she said the last two days before she passed that's when I saw her in that state of just ease. Yeah. interesting. Yep. So I don't I'm curious of what's what can we do with some of these conditions too that we're finding? I think there was a study recently published right on MS about the effectiveness of TRE and so yeah. Yeah. How light treats like in the natural world right? Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. It's Wow. Well Joel we covered a lot of ground. I there's more ground I would want to cover but it's probably this will probably maybe I'll hopefully I'll be able to rope you into a follow up conversation at some To be continued I mean there's yeah I think this stuff is fun. I'm still exploring there's I got lots of information too if people are curious and going down the rabbit hole a little bit more. And please reach out. and if there are stories that people have about some of the early experiences if they especially for individuals that didn't get trained and then had some of these experiences. Yeah I would love to hear from you.'cause I do think in the future putting together a paper that looks more at some of the natural phenomenons of this process would Yeah. Yeah. Would be a good direction to Yeah I think so. I think so. and and yeah. Yeah. And of course if there's Well yeah. Well that's a and yeah. No totally. And that's a there's a part of this neurogenic integration project is the intention is really to create to facilitate conversation and information sharing across this basically what you're what you've done in the paper there that's the hope of this too is Steve and I we come out she comes outta chiropractic world I've got the body work background. both of us have the TRE as our our main training in neurogenic movement. but again why I was so Motivated inspired by your paper is I loved the broadness of that. How do we how where do we how do we look at this from other professional lenses biotensegrity reflux integration et cetera but also but not only professional how do we just collect information from humans? And so I'd love to I'd love to share in that effort with you of just collecting these stories and case studies and we'll certainly direct people to you and your efforts to keep going on the research side of it. I hope we can support one another in that. Yeah. Rock and roll. Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Okay Joel let's land here. But thank you so much. Welcome. Thanks so much Alex. All right.