E05 - Tremoring and the Yoga Sutras with Bonnie Pariser

Alex Greene speaks with Bonnie Pariser, a TRE provider and yoga therapist who runs Yoga Loca studio in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Bonnie shares how she transformed her yoga therapy practice by integrating TRE (Tension & Trauma Release Exercises) with traditional yoga approaches. Her unique journey from fashion design to embodiment work led her to discover that tremoring can dramatically improve outcomes for clients with chronic tension, anxiety, and trauma.

Bonnie explains how tremoring prepares the nervous system for yoga practices, especially for clients who are too activated to benefit from conventional stretching or meditation. She uses the Ayurvedic dosha framework to understand different nervous system states: vata (anxiety/bracing), pitta (hypervigilance), and kapha (shutdown). This approach works with the body's natural healing mechanisms rather than against them.

The conversation covers practical applications including emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and spiritual practice preparation. Bonnie shares examples from her classes and one-on-one sessions, showing how clients move from seeking physical relief to developing life management skills. Her integration of ancient wisdom with modern trauma approaches demonstrates how nervous system regulation can transform both therapy outcomes and daily life.

Listen to the full episode to discover how this powerful combination of TRE and yoga can transform your approach to nervous system regulation and embodiment practices.

Key Highlights:
0:00 Introduction 
1:49 Fashion to Embodiment 
4:19 TRE Training Discovery 
6:06 Yoga Sutras Connection 
7:06 Kumbhaka Breathless State 
12:09 Integration with Classes 
17:05 Emotional Regulation Practice 
18:44 Conflict Resolution Applications 
26:51 Ayurvedic Dosha Perspective 
27:20 Vata Derangement Treatment 
30:53 One-on-One Applications 
35:52 Personal Practice Evolution 
37:17 Tandava Dance Connection 
41:08 Kriya Spontaneous Movements 
50:58 Myofascial Release Integration 
52:50 Future Learning Directions

Links and Resources: 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YogaLokaNJ/ 
Websites: https://www.yoga-loka.com/     http://www.yoga-therapy-can-help.me/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoga_loka/ 
David Berceli - TRE founder and trainer: https://treglobal.org/about-dr-david-berceli/ 
Mukunda Stiles - Structural Yoga Therapy: http://www.innerquestyoga.com/aboutmukunda.html 
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: https://iep.utm.edu/yoga/ 
Swami Muktananda - Kriya yoga teacher: https://www.siddhayoga.org/baba-muktananda/ 
John F. Barnes Myofascial Release: https://www.myofascialrelease.com/ 
Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health: https://kripalu.org/ 
Ayurvedic dosha system (Vata, Pitta, Kapha):https://www.forestessentialsindia.com/blog/doshas-in-ayurveda-vata-pitta-and-kapha.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqHaN6UsWffV_qa9BSsmCI48Nk8fN9i3JTsydWxGncwSx9kh1dr

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Neurogenic Integration Podcast, where we explore the incredible potential of neurogenic tremoring beyond the basics. I'm Alex Green. And I am Sebia Sung Shields. Together, we'll be diving into how this natural innate process can be seen and applied across different professions, healing modalities, and in scientific research. Whether you're a practitioner, a coach, a therapist, a body worker, or a researcher, this podcast is for you. Join us as we uncover the science, share experiences, and explore how neurogenic integration is revolutionizing the way we approach stress, trauma, and well-being. So take a breath, get comfortable, and let's dive in. All right. Well, I am super excited to be sitting down this afternoon with Bonnie Pariser. And Bonnie is a colleague of mine, and we first met in the TRE world seems like many moons ago in Madison, Wisconsin, at some sort of shared training uh event. But Bonnie is a uh TRE provider and a yoga therapist uh based in Frenchtown, New Jersey, where she runs a yoga studio called Yoga Loca. And um I'm excited to connect with Bonnie today, especially to hear about one, Bonnie, just your your journey into TRE, because I always think you know why it is that neurogenic uh tremoring kind of is a hooks for somebody is always an interesting story. So I want to hear about that. As well as your integration using tremoring with your uh yoga therapy practice, and we had flagged maybe some conversation around looking at the tremoring practice not only from a Western neurobiological lens, uh, but looking at it from an Ayurvedic uh perspective or looking at it from the Yoga Sutras uh lens and um as you integrate it with your work. So that's what I'm hoping that we cover today. But thank you so much for taking some time. Oh, thank you for having me, Alex. It's been a long time since we've got to spend time together. We've we've had a global pandemic, people have moved, we've yeah, lots of people. We've had children. Right. Yeah, moved, yeah. Um very good. Well, yeah, let's just start with kind of like go back a little bit. Like how how did you even maybe before Tier E, like tell us just a little bit about um, you know, kind of how yoga became your path and and and uh embodiment work in general. Well, I was uh just mentioning before we started that I changed my daughter's room into a sewing room. My degree is actually in fashion design, believe it or not. So um uh when I was at FIT Fashion Institute Technology in New York City is when I took my first yoga class. It was my gym requirement, actually. And um I I worked in the industry for a little while, but while I was doing that, I was also taking a lot of yoga classes. And um, and I you know, I think like, well, I wasn't I don't drape fabric anymore, but I do drape people's bodies. So I'm still like you know, we need to tuck and move this a little bit over here. We you know, it's like the understanding of how fabric drapes on people has really informed how I understand fascia draping inside of people. Totally. I can totally see that. Yeah, that's interesting. And also allowing people to fit into the shape of their bodies as opposed to making clothes that ship sh fits on the shape of their bodies. So I started taking yoga when I was at FIT, and then I um career number two or three was opening up a yoga studio and teaching it full time. And in 2003, I think it was, I met uh Makunda Styles, and he's who I trained with in um structural yoga therapy. Actually lived in Boulder, Colorado at the time. Okay. And um when I was working with Mekunda, I studied with him for many, many years until his passing in in 2012. And I learned a lot about the body, and I learned a lot about um people's uh what was preventing them from moving with ease, uh not just in their physical body, but also in the energetic body and the mind body. Um and and then fast forward uh to I think it's 20 2010. One thing I should say is that my teachers have always called me in some way. I don't sometimes I don't know how I ended up where I met my teacher. I don't know where how I ended up meeting Wakunda. I know how I ended up meeting my primary yoga teacher. I moved out to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and boom, there she was. Um and the same thing happened with David Burcelli. I was somehow called to take a uh training in Krapallu. I had a uh weekend that I can get away without my kids, and I walked into the room and there was this big video with a bunch of guys in fatigues laying on their backs with their legs shaking. And I was like, What am I doing here? I know this. And I knew it from working with Makunda, where he would uh put his hands on me and my body would start to shake. So in in the yoga world, that would be called a kriya, which is a cleansing. The body is discharging energy and it's it's sometimes shaking, it's sometimes moving around, sometimes dancing, it's sometimes v uh verbalizing something. So I I have help had my body doing that, and I was like, what's going on? This guy's not a yogi. And so at the end of the three days with David, and he said, Okay, you just finished your first part of your training. And I'm like, Oh, I'm in a training, this is amazing, and I'm already finished with the part of it. So I was just so fascinated with him and the work that he was doing and the implications for what TRE gave people, that I I just continued on and I got the my certification as quickly as I as I possibly could. Yeah. And um and what I found, and I'll just skip to the Yoga Sutras quickly for a moment, is in the Yoga Sutras, uh, which is written by um Patanjali uh back in, I think it was 400 BC, and it's it's considered to be the handbook of the mind, but also considered to be the outline of classical yoga. So if we don't follow what's in the Yoga Sutras, we're not actually doing real yoga. And in the second chapter, where is the only part that he talks about asana or physical positions, he says the asana needs to be um comfortable, the body needs to be serene. The mind starts to slow down, and from that slowing down of the mind, kumbaka or a pause in the breath arises. And when the pause in the breath arises, the pause in our our being pauses and it stops, and we get to see the true nature of the self. Or we get to see yeah, with the true nature of the self. And when I I remember tremoring, laying down and tremoring, stopping, and then going, This is kumbaka. I have entered that state, my body is comfortable, there's no restless breathing, my mind is completely still, and I feel at one with everybody, I would all 40 of the people who are in the room with me. Right. And I thought to myself, this is a shortcut. I had already been practicing yoga about 25 years at that time, and I thought, this is the shortcut that can take us from this kind of self-centered, tense breath like that. We can lay down in tremor and we can get to where Patanjali says, if we go there, we will find the the true nature of our heart and the light. And yeah, I mean, wow. No, I really love that actually, and I want to jump in for a moment because um yeah, like it matches for me, um uh uh not not a yoga background, but Zen meditation has been a big part of my own background, and what got me into body-oriented work was breath work through Zen meditation. And and I just have a parallel story, which was that uh when we were when we would teach um beginning workshops uh as we were sort of doing introductory series with Zen Meditation, and when when I was new to TRE, I was like, oh, let's just throw this in here and see what happens. And um and and I just had that same experience uh several times where it was like uh you know, new group of people, everybody, uh sometimes they had flown in and then they go through this the tremoring process, and you know, it's the first night of the program. And this isn't like every single person had the same exact experience, but but as you pull the room, it's like wow, suddenly I'm not I'm not like in the airplane anymore. I'm not I'm just here and I'm not just me. I'm I'm and I'm part of this group, even though I don't know everybody yet, because we did it right at the very beginning of the program. And um, and sort of that that that ability to just shift into connection and and present like just being in the present moment. Um and we thought to ourselves, geez, what a what a great hack. You know, we just like this is like what what we're going for with a week-long, you know, meditation retreat, you know. Um, and so um yeah, I just really echo that that piece of it. But yeah, keep going a little bit with the colour. Yeah, you can you just have everybody tremor and say you can go home now. You got to I remember in one of the the advanced trainings I was taking, and um, and we were all practicing with TRE and we were practicing leading groups, and this one guy was leading our group, and I was just like like just in that state of complete ease. And he came up to me and he said, breathe. And I almost punched him. I was like, I'm not gonna breathe. I'm fine. I don't need to breathe right now. I'm breathless, I'm in the breathless state, and and I don't want, I don't need to breathe right now. And that's not, I think that um that may be something that people who are not meditators may not know, may not realize. And certainly I've been to enough beginning yoga beginner teacher yoga classes, and I was one once myself, that said, come on, make sure to take a deep breath in, a deep breath out. This is not what I teach my students. It's like don't hold your breath, but if your breath slows down and you're in a peaceful state, you're where you're supposed to be. And I see that in the classes when when people we do a couple of classes on my schedule where we do asana, yoga poses, then we tremor and we go into shivasana. And everybody is not everybody, but most of the people are in that breathless state of just total relaxation, and they say they've never had such a deep shivasana. And not unsurprisingly, those have become probably the more popular classes on the schedule. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, well, what so so going back to your, you know, that you you're you went to Krapalu and you found this and you saw the people tremoring in the the army guys and their fatigues and and and David and all of that, and then you little did you know you had just done the first part of your certification training, um and which you then finished up. So what how did you in the those early days, like how did you begin to put it into practice? Was that primarily a combination of groups and in-person? Like what what were what was like that initial exploration like? You know, which I know was like over a decade ago, so I want to hear like now what it's like, right? I want to kind of like like at the beginning, like I want to hear what that experimentation was like a little bit. I I still have students who will say, You you practiced on me. And so in the beginning, because we had to do a certain amount of classes and video them and send them to the person who was training us, I would gather as many people as I could. And I I was very fortunate I had a big student body that I can, you know, I didn't have to go knocking on people's doors and say, Hey, you want to come, let me show you this thing. I had uh a willing body to participate. Audience, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after I got my certification, I was still a little shy about it. So I was really leading group tremoring classes, and then I started to integrate it into actual classes also. And I will say there are some people who I I remember seeing a post on Facebook, somebody said, What yoga studio should I go to? And somebody suggested mine, and they're like, they do that tremoring stuff there, I hate that. So of course there are people who are uncomfortable with it. You know, it's not for everybody, just like not nothing is for everybody except maybe breathing and eating and sleeping. Yeah. Um, but I I I realized the the benefit of it and the impact it was having on people's ability to move their bodies and be at ease. So I started to develop these classes where that's what we did afterwards. So it's not like a vinyasa flow class, it's a very um uh targeted class, it's a therapeutic class. We're working hard, we're targeting muscles, I'm bringing everybody's mind so you should feel your bicep contracting, you should feel your tricep stretching, your hip flexors are stretching, your gluteals are contracting. That's all very much in structural yoga therapy, which is what I train with Makunda. And then we're laying down and tremoring. And um, and I what I found is that people who are coming, uh regular students, like longtime students of mine, are tremoring even during the classes that is not part of it. So they'll finish the asana class and say, okay, do whatever you want now, and then we're gonna go into Shivastana. And I'd say about half the class is tremoring. Is tremoring, yeah. They're like, yeah, I'm gonna do this before I go into Shivasana, because I know this is bringing me to a calm state. Yeah. And it's so gratifying to look out into the room and just see people like following their their movements, their spontaneous yeah. Um yeah, well, so so these days with like when you teach a group, like whether it's a class or in a retreat, I am I am imagining, but this is just a guess. I'm imagining you're probably not using the the sort of the this the TRE standard warm-up practice exercises. I'm wondering, I'm assuming you're probably using asana and other things. Is that accurate? Yeah, just the asana is that we're doing, and and as I said, the class is pretty targeted, and we're using the muscles a lot. There's a lot of contraction, there's a little bit of stretching, and so we're doing that, and that uh that, and then doing the butterfly bridge pose where we're lifting the hips and then taking the knees together a little at a time, and that gets the whole room tremoring. And of course, you're in a group, and there's some people who have been tremoring forever, not forever, for many years. So they're they're able to pull the class along. And I always give an option, I always give an out. And there's been people who have come for maybe three or four months, and then they decided they're gonna try tremoring, and then they're hooked. So I never impose it on anybody in these classes. They always have an out. If they don't want to do it, I give them something else to do. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, interesting. Do you so so kind of using the structural yoga approach as sort of part of it? Is do you have you done much? I'm asking this because it's something that I've been playing with a little bit, not in my teaching, but more in my self-practice and through some other teachers. But I'm curious about um uh do you do you explore pranayama, you know, breathing techniques and tremoring or as a precursor or any yeah, any other, I guess. I I always I always want to know what people what little experiments people are running. Let's put it that way. Well, one experiment I'm doing, this is not not usually an asana class. Although I have started, if it's a smaller class, I'll say, okay, we're gonna do this pose. Let's say it's a pose that people, let's say butterfly pose or bottle can asana, that some people are gonna feel very stiffened. We're gonna do this pose. Now I'd like you to lay down and tremor, and then I'd like you to come back up and try the pose again. Yep. Because I want people to see if it is actually increase increasing their range of motion and increasing their comfort and increasing just the overall. I was just here in this place, untremored. What does it feel like to be tremored? So that's one place that I like to play with, and I I will do that with if I know everybody in the class is already an experienced tremorer. I'm not gonna do that if if new people are in the class, but I will do that with a class of experienced people. And the other thing that I that I play around with a lot, because I I not only teach asana, but I'm also teaching a lot of meditation and theory and uh tantric practices and and pujas and meditation and mantras and all that stuff, and a lot of emotional work. Yeah, uh, that didn't sound right. A lot of understanding and reading our emotions and understanding the charge in our body. And so one thing that I I have done in uh at the end of one of these weekend seminars, let's say it is, um, I'll say, okay, like bring to mind somebody on a scale of one to ten, one being not annoying, ten meaning like you want to strangle them, somebody at like a five or a six. Bring that in, feel what you feel in your body. Yeah, inevitably people say, I'm tight here, I'm tight here, my fit, you know, my my face is like this. And if okay, so just feel what that feels like. Then we're gonna lay down and tremor, and we'll tremor about 10 minutes, and then we get up, and I I guide them through the same visualization using the same person, and inevitably people are like, Oh, I love them now, you know, or that's not the tightness, or I feel like I want to give them a hug. It's so funny. It happens. I mean, and I have to say that, and you you know this as a facilitator yourself. I'm not tremoring, and it happens to me. That's true. I'm like, I don't have to lay down on the ground, I just have to be in a room with people tremoring, and my perception of the person who's so irritating has totally fallen away. The negative perception has fallen away. No, a hundred percent. And it I mean, to me, this this makes you understand why uh you know, David, part of his background was in was in conflict mediation. You know, a lot of it was the trauma work, but but um you know, he did he he he has some great stories in the Middle East and and tremoring with with you know opposing parties and and that that's this the sort of the capacity for tremoring to diffuse some of the you know what gets in between um you know those lay layers of conflict w coming into sort of just you know connecting at a more nervous system level. But yeah, no, I I know exactly what you're describing in terms of um yeah, just taking the charge out of things. And I will say not everybody's happy about it. Right. People like their charges. Yeah, they're like, oh, I love hating that person. And now I can't hate them anymore. Darn it. And as I also were uh work as a spiritual mentor, and and and a lot of the times when somebody's having a difficulty with this or that, like a uh revolving like not revolving, a consistent difficulty with a coworker or with a uh family member, will say, Well, tremor before you go see them. Yeah. I've had people who say, Well, now I figured out that if before I I go to work early, I park in the parking lot all the way in the back, and I sit in the car and tremor for ten minutes before I go into work. Yeah. Or I go there during my lunch break and I tremor. Because I mean that is to me is very spiritual work. How can I diffuse the situation so that I can get along with this person? Yeah. And I can be at ease in my body, they can be at ease in their body, and maybe I'll even come into that breathless state, not because I'm holding my breath because I'm about to punch them, but because there's nothing to be agitated about. Right. And the Yoga Sutras talks about, you know, uh desire and aversion. You know, like and not like, it's that this this dual dualistic uh thing they're always fighting, too much, too little. It's always this or this, and we're always going like that. And if we had a good tremoring session, that's cut. The two opposing polarities become one thing. Yep. And there's nothing to pull us out into the inhale, exhale, or that rah-rah, rah. So it's really profound. You know, look at it from that perspective. I mean it's profound anyway, but yeah. Do you with with the Yoga Sutra work, uh yoga philosophy in general, is that how do you weave that in both to classes and retreats in general? Like um um yeah, are are there's times within a retreat setting that are more um yeah, are you drawing these kinds are you lecturing on these things or do like how how does this come up in your in class I'm just talking constantly. So I am I am weaving philosophy into what we're doing to the struggle or to I mean, more and more now I I find that what I have to tell my classes that life is gonna irritate you. Please don't do it here. You know, so like asking people to be more conscious about if they're Doing something that's good for their body or not good for their body. Because especially yoga in the West is all about push, push, push, you should feel it, you should feel it. And I really want people to understand that it not everything has to be a hammer, right? Sometimes things can be something can be a feather. And that's what we're train, we're training ourselves to be calm and chaos. So we are creating a little bit of chaos, but we shouldn't be the ones that's that's lighting the fuse in our own self. Right? So that's self-regulation that we practice in TRE. You know, are you getting agitated? Is it time to rest? Can you feel if your nervous system is amping up? I'm really I really try to push that home to people. And I said, well, you know, we're practicing an asana. We're gonna practice it in TRE. And when you leave here, practice that with your family. Are you irritated? Can you step away? Can you breathe? Can you go in a room in a closet in tremor? Can you do a jumping jack or something? But um so I am talking about philosophy a lot and with that aim of finding steam sukkamasana, which is steady, comfortable position, and that's from the Yoga Sutras. That's what starts that whole thing about, you know, not a restless breathing and going into Kumbhaka. And then with retreats, um, I'll I'll have a topic of a retreat. So so I I do uh a couple years ago I did a three or four-day retreat up in the Berkshires. It was a TRE retreat, and we did TRE light asana and meditation. And so we had the ability to look at the emotions and how they were how they were changing with our practice, and also to see how our range of motion was changing. And I do I do a lot of uh afternoon retreats. There's a salt house nearby, so we go into a salt cave and tremor. That is amazing. I never thought I'd be I never thought that no no. Salt houses are it's a little wounded. Pause there. Never heard of this. Tell me about it. Yeah. Well, you've heard it, I mean you're in Boulder, Colorado. There's gotta be salt houses there. Okay, there's some salt houses, but yeah, yeah. But I've never thought about tremoring. So yeah, what it what what it what what what's it like? Um it's just it's it's funny because it's not a real salt cave. It's a it's uh a garage that somebody converted into put salt on the walls. Yep. And it is just so still and peaceful. And when you lay down on the salt and we're on blankets, and it just conforms to the shape of your body. Oh, you mean like like like um so it's not like um it's not like uh like there's actual s grains of salt. It's not just like Himalayan salt rock on the wall or something. Right, there's Himalayan salt rocks on the walls, and then there's like big chunks of granular pink salt on the ground. That you literally lay in. That you are literally laying in. And whenever I'm there and I'm lecturing, I'm always digging a little hole to see if I can get to the bottom of it, and I still haven't. Haven't gotten there yet. I have no idea how much salt is in there. But um uh my understanding of pink of pink salt and salt is that it's supposed to clear negative energies. So there they go. Right in salt. The place to do it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and that's been a popular retreat. We do spend time outside of the salt cave talking about TRE, what the implications are, why people are there. What are they what do they want from TRE? What do they want from learning this practice? Nice. Um yeah, so the retreats are kind of like that. It I won't just throw TRE into another type of retreat, but I but most most of my longtime students know it's coming up at some point. It's coming up, it's coming down. It's such an amazing tool to get us where we want to go, so why not? Right. Okay. Well, tell can you share a little bit about your the one-on-one work? Because you know, retreats are about you know the what's oftentimes what's common, what's what's common between us, but um one-on-one work is often, you know, these this maybe share a little bit about what are the kinds of what what are the kinds of reasons that you that somebody might do one-on-one yoga therapy and how TRE fits in with that. Um yeah, share a little bit about that. Because I think of yoga therapy as a little bit more of a custom of a clinical um approach. I mean, not from a western, not not, you know, what from a from a yogic um lens, but but yeah, share a little bit about what that's like. Yeah, sure. Um so uh one of the things Makunda taught is that we're never treating the diagnosis, we're always treating the person. Yeah. So, you know, when somebody comes in with their their reports, their diagnosis, I I'll politely read and I'll say, okay, here, you can have that back. Do you want to keep it? I'm like, no, no, no, that's okay. Let's hear what what you need. And um, so Mukunda used to teach also with an Ayurvedic perspective, not Ayurvedic, like what are the best foods for you to eat, but what what are you when somebody a client walks walks in, what are they presenting with? Are they presenting with a vata or an air ether derangement or non on refinement? Is it hitta, uh which is fire and water, or is it kha, which is water and earth? So it's elemental. And one of the things that always amazed me and when I was apprenticing with Makunda is that he may have, and we'd sit, I'd sit for a whole day watching MC clients, and he may have um five clients. They all came in with back pot back pain, and he would sit closer to them or further away, his voice would change, his directions would change, and everybody got a different prescription. So what he was doing was he was reading the dosha that the person was entrapped in, not what their constitutional dosha was, but what is the dosha that's happening in them right now. So vata, which is the air element, is the primarily the air element, is the one that we will see uh most people come in with. Because vata is when the air element is is in an unrefined state, and it usually is like and people have uh very little range of motion, not because necessarily their muscles are stiff or because their connective tissue is short, but because there's this anxiety and this fear or this holding in the body, like bracing, that is not allowing them to move. Ah, okay. So it's kind of like uh if you had your uh parking brake on your car on and you tried to drive down. I just drive around. You're not going anywhere. And it's not because your car is not working, it's because you forgot to take the parking brake off. Yep. So when we see Vata derangement and people are like this, but they're like, My shoulder hurts, can you give me an exercise? And I can give I can give them twelve exercises to do, but it's all gonna be like this. Right. Right? And they're not gonna have a range of motion because there's this bracing. Right. So, um, and I I when I took I took my certification with Makunda, and then I assisted him many times, so I got to see how his teaching evolved. And one of the things he evolved to was he said, you have to teach him the joint frame series, which is a series of uh joint movements, and it's 21 movements, and it may take a new person 40 minutes to do, and I'm thinking, people are not gonna do this. But what it does is it lowers VAPTA and it increases range of motion, and it starts to relax people, and they start to get in their body, because so much so many of us are disincar incarnated, so people come into their body, their shoulders drop away, their joints start to move. But I know I'm on the east coast, you're not giving I'm I've had people walk out of my classicals and say, today we're gonna do the joint frame series, and like, not me, that's too slow for me. So, what can we do with people who are walking in like this? Right if you lower their vodka quickly, yep. Da da da da da tremor. Right? So when I see now when and so I started to look at this from a tremoring lens just to see that you've taken somebody's body who's like a block of ice and you're turning it into softened butter with tremoring, and now they can do exercises. Now the range of motion shoulder is gonna be more like this. Yeah, yeah. But that's not necessarily gonna happen. No, I'm I'm so often thinking of the inverse. I'm so often thinking of stretching and you know, whether it's the standard TRE sequence or doing other asana or so, yeah. I'm I'm often thinking of like, well, what then supports what then might deepen someone's tremoring or this or that. But I'm I'm I'm I'm but I'm very interested in this, which is like, hey, use the tremoring to open up the availability, and now let's apply ourselves to, you know, uh what other other therapeutic work. So that's is it's interesting to think in that perspective. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I had a uh first responder who came in with um pretty severe back pain, and I can tell uh and he had been in multiple hairy situations, you know, how buildings falling on him and stuff like that. He has a lot of trauma in his body. And when he would go to stretch, it was always like this. So just think again about your car with your parking brake on. Two parking brakes. There was no way he was gonna make any progress moving his body. And in fact, I would even be concerned that he was gonna cause more damage by doing these unnatural to him movements. But he certainly wasn't gonna get rid of his back pain. Right. So I taught him to tremor. And I was thinking, well, he's got a lot of trauma in his body too. And I will say that did not, we didn't have that relationship that the trauma started to come out, but he felt a lot better. Got it. I mean, his body really changed and it softened. And we then never even talked about exercises because he would come in and tremor. I do some fascial release on him, some manipulation, and it made a world of difference to him. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so so from a dosha perspective, so vata is a key one. Does it relate to the would you what's you do you have thoughts around tremoring and the and other um I think you use the word derangement or something? It's not a very kind word, I will admit, but yeah. No, no, yeah. So yeah, what what's your thought around? I mean, because I I you know, I definitely don't think in a Ayurvedic perspective very much, but I you know, I think in a with my own clients, I I often think from a sort of a polyvigal lens, and it's like you have the people who are more sympathetic dominance, and we have people who are more in a in a freeze physiology, and people who and and different flavors of that. And so like that's like maybe my own lens of sort of like, okay, well what what what sort of yeah, we'll just call it a different word. So the sympathetic is the pitta. Yep, right? Person who's the fire, let's go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I'm always running from the crisis. Yeah. And the um the freeze person is kha is earth, they're kind of frozen in place, and they're unable to move. They're unable to make take steps forward, steps forward in their life. They're unable to leave a bad situation because they're just kind of frozen in place. Yeah. And and oftentimes their body, their body's frozen a different way than than the vapta. Like you can see somebody with a vata derangement just like this, but the kha tends to be uh a little bit more um a lack of muscle tone, so hyper flexible, a little bit bigger in the body, and also kind of more Eeyore like, you know, it's my birthday. Yeah. So and I I actually birthed one of those, and um I birthed an Eeyore. And um, and uh I taught him to tremor when he was probably about ten or eleven. Right. And you know, I gave my both of my kids full permission to be on their phones when they were tremoring because I knew they wouldn't do it otherwise. Yeah. And um, and I see my son has it on his calendar every night to tremor. Wow. Whether he does every night or not, I don't know, but he does know that it helps. It helps him feel better in his body and helps him to stay a little bit more motivated to actually do the things that he's got on his list to do. Got it. Yeah, super cool. Um, yeah, what else? What other just I don't know, clinical anecdotes, um ways that you in again thinking about that more one-on-one setting, ways, ways that um yeah, I don't know, anything else on that type of thing. Well, one thing that I find really interesting is when I have clients come in and they say, Oh, this happened and this happened, because you know, when when a client comes in for a bad back, which is really what most people are coming in for, bad back or neck, then if then once they start to tremor, we're not we don't do as many asanas anymore. And then when they start to tremor, we're not tremoring when they come in anymore. Now we're talking about how do I make it through the day, how do I make it through Thanksgiving? You know, so it becomes more of a spiritual mentoring practice. And then oh, they come in like this, this, and this happened. And I'll say, Did you tremor? And they go, Why didn't I think of that? So I find that interesting. Even my husband who does tremor, and I say, Well, did you tremor? And he's like, Oh, why don't why can't I remember to do that? And that's what people say, like what that was a perfect thing to do. Why can't I remember that? And I say, Well, that's what keeps me in business. I mean, uh, you know, I wish people would remember, especially in in the situations when they explain those and they know, and I'm not saying tremoring helps with everything. I know it doesn't, and it's not my ex my personal experience either. But there are some situations that people have had success once they've tremored in in resolving it quickly and painlessly. So I'm going with those, you know, and that's where you found tremoring was helpful before. So let's do it again. And then for people who are trying to develop a spiritual practice, I always suggest they tremor first. Tremor, sit up, do your mantra, and do your meditation because your mind is going to be at a better place to sit and more available for whatever that practice is. Exactly. And I find for myself, and there are times when I when I was certifying, I tremored every day for like two years, and I don't anymore. And then sometimes I'm like, God, my mind is so scattered, and I go, Oh, let's tremor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was gonna ask you about your personal practice. Like, is it sort of it's kind of as as need, or you can you can tell, or what's what's your own relationship to tremoring? Well, certainly if there's something that's really charged, I'll make sure to tremor a lot. Yeah. And and then um I'm sure you probably have this in your spiritual practice too, that you kind of things are cyclical, like you'll remember to do this aspect and this as and tantra has a lot of a lot of flavors. You know, it's like it's not all just okay, we're gonna sit and meditate. It's like, oh, we're gonna do this mantra, we're gonna do this practice, gonna do this puja, you're gonna do this fire ceremony. It's like a lot to choose from. And um, which is you know one of the things that that is very attractive to me. I like to have all that stuff and colors and fires and incense and things like that. Um, and then sometimes I also know that my practice needs a lot of movement, so I might go through that, and then some reason it drops, like I'm traveling or something like that, or it there's just not the space to do it, and then I stop and then I'm sitting and meditating. I was like, what's missing? Why am I not as grounded in this as I um as I was two weeks ago? And I realize the movement, I'm not moving. And it's not, and I'll say it's not always tremoring. There's actually a practice in uh Tantra called Tandava, which is very similar, and that actually tremoring helped me to understand that practice, what I which I learned many years ago, and I've practiced it over the years. And it's it's kind of like a dance, it's a very slow kind of movement. It's almost if you looked at it, you might think it was like uh qigong or tai chi. But everybody's movement is very different, and it requires that you completely surrender to the m movement. You asked about breathing, and it does start start with pranayama, and there's a certain music that's played called a raga. And raga can either be morning, afternoon, or evening. The music is tuned to the time of day, and so you play that raga for the time of day that it is, and you allow the music to move your body and the prana them the breathing to move your body, and it's very like I didn't understand how to surrender my body to dancing because I love to dance, and I consider myself to be a pretty good dancer, so I couldn't surrender it until I tremored, and I'm like, oh, that's what it means to let something uh some other force move your body. Yeah, so I feel like I won't say I'm I'm good at the tundava, but I I I have more of a feeling of what it is to let this movement, and then sometimes it is shaking, you know, sometimes it is like this kind of vibrating that happens. So sometimes my movement practice is that, so it's not really what we might say is pure tremoring, trembling on the floor or whatever, it's different. But you are moving your body, and um and uh when I when I tremor, I'm I'm more of uh what we call in like the John Barnes myofascial word, an unwinder. Like I don't tend to just lay there and vibrate. I tend to get up and move all over the place. I remember one training I pushed David halfway across the room, like like the tackle, and he just he just walked away from me. I was like, what? What just happened? He's like, I'm not taking your hostility. I mean, he said it in, it was it wasn't in a negative way, you know. It was like this is what that was exactly what I needed to hear. Yeah, yeah. And um uh so I I kind of no pun intended danced between that just and this kind of unwinding. Yep, myofascial movements. Which I I find is, you know, I I was doing it very quickly in TRE, and I sometimes revert to it in TRE, and I actually had this amazing unwinding thing at the last seminar, myofascia release I was in, and they had somehow they had me on my head. I don't know. They're like, oh, you must do unwinding. I'm like, no, this is called something else. This is called T just letting following your body. Yeah. So sometimes my practice looks like that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, super cool. Well, you it the earlier in the conversation you mentioned that there's there's a precedent in uh well a word, kriya, in yoga, and uh referring to spontaneous movements of various kinds, sounds, uh postures. Share a little bit more about that. And and also like Yeah, so I I I'm can I'm I I've I'm I'm familiar with that term and I I've I re I've read stories of of that even before tremoring. Um I remember I'm remembering uh a client who would go into spontaneous um shapes and movements and and and and frequently um uh yeah sometimes people can go into movements that they couldn't v they could not voluntarily do. That if you wanted to do a particular movement or position, you it would be challenging. But if the body leads the way. So but but I don't know a lot about sort of how Kriya is viewed. And so I wonder if you could share a little bit about that. Uh yeah, and I won't be able to get really technical or detailed because I don't really know that much about it myself. There is there is a Kriya yoga, uh a branch of yoga called Kriya Yoga, and that's something different. I mean, that's a purification, but that's on not the physical level. Um my teacher Makunda was a disciple of Swami Mukdananda. Do you recognize that name? I sure do. Yeah. So Swami Mukdananda was known for holding peacock feather, bopping people on the head with a peacock feather, and then they lay down on the floor and start shaking. Right. Yeah, and you can still see that in some archive footage. Yep. That people are just thrashing all over the place. Yep. So um when I started uh uh practicing with Mukunda, training with Mekunda, and he would just put his hands on, you know, just as an assessment, because we all had to have an assessment, and my body would start to just vibrate a little bit. Yeah, and then um and then I was going to him for a lot of private sessions because because I adored the man and I wanted to know what he knew and I wanted to learn it, and I wanted to, you know, be the best yogi I could be. And there was a couple of sessions where if he would start to just move manipulate my body, I would start that whole unwinding process. And there was one one of those uh times he he taken me into like this past life experience because of this pain in my shoulder was just like it was wild and it was exhausting and it was amazing. And um so I just so that Crea of this discharge of this energetic charge and TRE we would know it as the the tissues are holding the story, right? We've got trapped emotions, we've got especially in the psoas, you know, and it's going up into the limbic system. We've got it's all in our tissues. And he had a way of being able to, if you needed to express it, you could. And of course, as you know, not everybody can do that. I'm not saying that like, wow, I can do it. It's not a thing. Right, right. So when I first met Makundan, I was and I I understood these to be kriyas that I was discharging a lot. Yeah. And it would happen then even if I was going to a kirtan, like a call and response chanting, if there was an intensity of sound, I would start to shake. Certain mantras, I would start to shake. And I knew it in that term. I'm doing a kriya, it's okay. I'm just Discharging. And then of course it it's softened. You know, I don't have to shake all the time. I don't have that response because whatever was trapped inside of me went out. There are other kriyas that some people some of your listeners may be familiar with, like using the gauze in between the nose and swallowing the gauze and purging it, or drinking salt water and purging. And these are all Kriyas, and I and they of course they have a place. They're all working very much on the physical body, as far as my understanding is. And also they're more manipulated. I mean, you got to choose to swallow that gauze and pull it back up, right? Yeah. That has to be a conscious choice. But when your teacher touches you and you start doing that, that is not a conscious choice. So I thought there was, you know, the way life is that I ended up with this teacher whose disciple would hit people with peacock feathers and they would tremor, and then he would touch me and I'd start to tremor, and then I walk into David's training. And I'm like, oh, now I know how to kind of bop people on the head with a feather and get them to allow their bodies to release and have a Krea. Yeah, no, I mean that was that was kind of my own uh sort of a parallel was that when I first had a tremoring discharge, was I was getting bodywork, like kind of Rolfing style bodywork, but it was at a Zen Temple, and it was like during a retreat or something, and and and it was after hours, and then I had this spontaneous discharge, just pretty much like TRE. And the bodyworker held it as, okay, well, it's a release, you know, and and doesn't need a particular term, and and it was very powerful. And then and then eight or so years later, when I had trained in that method of bodywork, and so I'm working on a lot of people, and then sometimes either small or big versions, a similar experience where people would go through uh discharge processes. But I um but then when I found TRE, what I was excited about was it um one, I I'm enough of a I'm I'm interested enough at this at the level of science that I wanted to know the sort of the neurobiology piece as well as kind of the context with um yeah, just uh trauma and you know, you know, there's a whole different lens that I was able to appreciate through, you know, through through the TRE lens. But most of all, it was that rather than just waiting for the stars to align, or you know, I guess I didn't have the ability to peacock peacock feather people, you know, with a hundred percent uh track record, but but no, but that there was a methodology to reliably uh invite this response, like to me, total game changer. Yeah, right, exactly. That's exactly it, is that you can reliably have people clean cleaning it out. And even from uh you mentioned Jon F. Barnes' myofascial release work and and and the spontaneous movement through unwinding is a is a key piece there. And I had trained in that before I did TRE, but it's a similar thing where people who had a lot of experience, yes, they would they and they know about it, they would allow it. But um for kind of what I used to call cold clients or the people who came in, like just because at the seminars everybody's easily going going into unwinding didn't mean that didn't mean that that was as common in my uh practice experience. Um and and so again, once again, having a methodology that's actually about waking up spontaneous movement is a can be a gateway towards so many other processes, um spontaneous movement processes. Right. So yeah, totally. Yeah, I had actually an uh an experience of a really big unwinding when I was in an acupuncture section session, and they I was uh is a Zen Buddhist, and and he was doing that scraping on my back and was just like and then he just said to me, Yeah, we'll work together. We can work together. Because you're always because when you've had that, um I've had unwinding on a table too, a massage table, and the first time I had it, and the massage therapist went like this. Yep. And that was the the last time I unwinded the biggest. Yeah, you're not gonna go back there, right? Right. And I've told some other people, and I tell I tell this to the people I teach a lot of TRE too, also some of my private clients, that when your body is ready to unwind, you may go into massage and get a massage and you're gonna start unwinding. Just know that. Sure. Right. And if you feel safe, which is a big thing, if you feel safe and the therapist is holding the space for that, you can do that as well. You might do this well. I think people need to know that. Yeah. Because they don't you don't want it to be a surprise. Agreed. And actually the first time, this goes even back before Makunda, and this will be probably sound familiar to a handful well to many of your listeners. First time I tremored was when I was in labor. Yep. And I was just like, Moo, and I remember telling my husband. Before or after or both. During. During. It was a tough labor and a painful labor. And I said, just make it stop, make it stop. And um he couldn't. And I wish I had known, and that's something I tell pregnant women, even though we don't necessarily have them tremor in this country. I tell them, You are gonna if you tremor, let it happen, because that's gonna be really helpful. Yeah, I really wish I had known more about it. Maybe it wouldn't have been so long. And then even before that, we we uh when I was in um karate, we have this uh special training, which was like four days of just nonstop practice. You know, we were exhausted, we were beaten up, and uh we would do Kibidacci, which is horse riding stance for an hour and a half. And inevitably, as soon as we started, somebody would start tremoring. Sure. And then a lot of people would start tremoring, and then some people would fall on the floors, and then some people would pass out. But it was just the weird, like what is going on? And now I realize it was that stress. It was so stressful to think about holding that for an hour and a half. You had to discharge it somehow. Yep. Yep. Yeah, so like what you were saying, like knowing the scientific reasons behind that, you know, so many things like start to fall in place now. I think about uh children who self-stimulate by rocking or by bouncing or chewing gum or eating you know, potato chips. It's like all of that is trying to ease out the nervous system. When I meant the child the I'm not saying that the children are eating potato chips, but um when we as adults are doing that or pacing myself, self-soothing, our various self-soothing strategies. Yeah, yeah. So knowing the the science behind that is it's just you go, oh, now I you're not just trying to drive me crazy. Yeah, you're trying to help yourself. You're regulating this your your your approach to to self-regulating the nervous system. Yeah, no, really helpful to have that lens. I 100% agree. Super cool. Um yeah, well, what's what's next for you? Anything I I always like to sort of close the conversation with what's coming up, uh what's what's a new thread, what's what's alive for you right now. Yeah, what what as you sort of look towards the next you know, coming up on the horizon, what do you see? Yeah, well, I'm really excited about the uh MFR trainings. Uh it's a it's a very different mode. I I also do a fascial release, it was from a student of John Barnes, where it's follow, it's an on it's a lead unwinding. So when you feel the tissue starting to go like that, you actually follow it. And I started using that actually in my assists in uh TRE where David would tell us to move the move away from this, you know, if the shoulder's going like this to push it away. I started to push it in. And I talked to him about that, I did it on him, he thought it was great, and I find that that really helps people to follow their unwinding. So I do another uh thing, uh cranial fascial um release that you're doing that the whole time, which is why I started doing an auré, because it just, you know, it's what I was already seeing. Um so now this John Barnes method is like holding and feeling the subtle movements under your hand of the fascia fascial matrix moving. And it's like five minutes, you have to hold it for five minutes? Ah. And um it sounds it seems boring at first and until you realize how interesting those five minutes are. Yeah. Yeah. Because the first training I took, the first weekend I took, I heard 120 seconds. Uh-huh. And then I even said to the woman who's doing the second, I said, He said 120 seconds. She said, No, he didn't. That's what you heard. That's why people take the sessions over and over. It's like, oh duh. So it's very different for me in that holding and feeling the fascia loosening and not this movement, not this like this way, this way, or tremoring, you know, the movement that way. And in my yoga classes, I do a lot of pulsing. So I'm starting to think about this in a different way, about longer sustained holds while giving people the option to also move if they need to, because some people just can't hold, they go in too deep and then they're they're done. Yeah. And also seeing how to integrate the the myofascial techniques, the MFR, John Barnes myofascial techniques, within tremoring. Yeah. So I'm kind of excited to see how that happens. 100%. No, no, that I I when I'm when I'm in person with people, I use crosshand release um and various uh approaches from MFR, and I I find it wonderfully complementary to supporting TREs. Uh um, so yeah, no, I'm excited to hear how what you learn as you continue with that. Yeah. Yeah. And the rebounding, I I I for had my first rebounding, so that's when they rock the body, right, right, right. Just in case people don't know. So you have somebody rocking your body like you're a barrel of water. And I was like, eh, I know that. And the instructor said, and when you're when you're getting rebounded, your body's not gonna know what to do. And it's gonna, there's gonna be some chaos. And I'm like, oh, not me, I'm a tremorer. And then this woman was rebounding me, and I'm like, my body does not know what to do. I was like, that is so cool. I still have so much to know, so much to experience. Just because you tremor doesn't mean it's everything. And so you know, she's rebounding, and my neck is doing something completely different, and one leg's moving, not the other leg. I'm like, what the heck is going on? Oh my god, she was right. My body doesn't know what to do. So um, I'm excited to learn more about the rebounding and what his theory is behind it, and how people respond, and how that rebounding may be different than the TRE, and how unwinding might be different from the cranial fascial release that I do. So Yeah. And it's so it's not true you can't teach an old dog new tricks. There's still many more. Hey, all right, good. You're learning new tricks. I like it. Yeah, super cool. Well, Bonnie, but I really appreciate time for the just uh hearing how you're following your curiosity and exploring these different different angles and and bridging it into a yoga context and super fascinating. Thank you so much. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, awesome. And yeah, we'll include in uh the show notes, website, all the all the different ways of contacting you. So, yeah, listeners who want to know more about any of these um applications and Bonnie's experience, uh, we will make sure that she is easy to find and follow up with you. So awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you. That's it for today's episode. We hope you found inspiration and new insights into the power of neurogenic droning. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe, share, and leave a review. It really helps us reach more people interested in this transformative work. And if you want to dive deeper, connect with us. Or to learn more about our sessions, courses, and upcoming trainings, head over to neurogenicintegration.com.