E010 - Nervous System Regulation for Chronic Illness with Lindsay Wolff

In this episode, host Alex Greene sits down with Lindsay Wolff, a certified health coach and mentor with the Primal Trust Program. Lindsay shares her powerful journey from experiencing debilitating chronic illness—including chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, and severe pain—to discovering the transformative power of nervous system regulation and somatic practices. After spending nearly a decade navigating the medical system without lasting relief, Lindsay found healing through a comprehensive approach that integrates bottom-up nervous system practices, trauma processing, and reconnection with nature.

Lindsay introduces listeners to the Primal Trust framework, explaining how it differs from other brain retraining programs through its three-level curriculum that begins with foundational practices like TRE (Trauma Release Exercises), functional neurology, and breathwork before moving into deeper emotional processing and parts work. She discusses the importance of titrating these practices for sensitive nervous systems, creating safety through gradual exposure, and building capacity over time. The conversation explores how chronic illness often stems from nervous system dysregulation following stress or trauma, and how practices like neurogenic tremoring can help discharge survival energy stored in the body.

Join our Upcoming Workshop: December 18, 2025 - Nervous System Regulation for Chronic Pain & Illness with Lindsay Wolff: https://neurogenic-integration.com/product/nervous-system-healing-with-primal-trust-regulation-tools-by-lindsay-wolff/

Key Highlights & Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Lindsay 
01:00 Primal Trust Overview 
03:00 Lindsay's Journey Begins 
04:00 Chronic Illness Algorithm 
05:00 Health Crash Experience 
07:00 Nature's Healing Power 
09:00 Discovering TRE Practice 
12:00 Body-Mind Connection Awakening 
13:00 Primal Trust Explained
 15:00 Bottom-Up Practices 
18:00 Brain Retraining Fundamentals
 21:00 Level Two Work 
23:00 Hero's Journey Framework 
25:00 Mentorship and Coaching 
36:00 Titrating TRE Practice 
42:00 Individual vs Group 
46:00 Nature Connection Experience 
48:00 Emotional Reservoir Concept 
53:00 Workshop Preview

Resources & Links Mentioned
Primal Trust Program: https://www.primaltrust.org/ 
Dr. Cathleen King (Dr. Cath): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-cathleen-king-dpt-951b6597 
Dr. Eric Robbins: https://drericrobins.com/ 
DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System): https://retrainingthebrain.com/ 
Journal Speak: https://www.yourbreakawake.com/journalspeak 
Dr. John Sarno: Author of "Healing Back Pain" https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446392308 
IFS (Internal Family Systems): https://ifs-institute.com/ 
Red Beard Embodiment Podcast with Dr. Cathleen King https://www.redbeardsomatictherapy.com/post/podcast-e29-discovering-primal-trust-ft-dr-cathleen-king 

Find us Online:
Neurogenic Integration: https://neurogenic-integration.com/
Instagram: @neurogenicintegration

Transcript

0:00

To the Neurogenic Integration Podcast, where we explore the incredible potential of neurogenic tremoring beyond the basics. I'm Alex Green. And I am Celia 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 very excited to sit down this afternoon with Lindsay Wolf. And I'm in Boulder, Colorado, as normal. And Lindsay is, I think you're in St. Louis today. Is that true? I am, St. Louis, Missouri. Happy to be here. Awesome. So Lindsay is a certified health coach and a mentor with the Primal Trust Program, which I'll talk more about in a little bit. And she works with guiding clients with somatic nervous system regulation and neural retraining. And as she said, she's based in St. Louis, Missouri, and she specializes in supporting sensitive nervous systems and people navigating complex health challenges. And um I got to know uh Lindsay through um uh Kathleen King, who's the founder of the Primal Trust uh community and framework. And if you haven't heard of it, uh Primal Trust is an online program and community of people that's that uh, and I'll let Lindsay share more about it, but it's about nervous system regulation, especially for healing, complex health challenges, things like chronic fist chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, um, uh things that have been uh uh chronic conditions that people have had uh trouble resolving. Dr. Kat is a physical therapist by education who's then done a lot of applications of functional medicine and integrating somatic practices, things from somatic experiencing, um uh all over the place, putting together kind of a comprehensive um community and program that has just uh really done been a been a successful one of uh supporting people with chronic pain, chronic illness. Um I've I've connected with her in that community quite a bit. Dr. Kat has been on the Redbeard Embodiment Podcast before, and so you could go back and watch an episode uh with her describing the the method and the work. Um but in any case, uh I connected with Lindsay earlier this year because um Dr. Kat recommended her. I was looking for for the neurogenetic integration community and community and platform, we wanted a workshop that on the theme of nervous system regulation for chronic pain and chronic illness. And so I thought of Dr. Kat and Primal Trust because they're so specialized in that area. And Dr. Kat said, you know who you really should work with for that workshop is Lindsay. And so that was the beginning of a connection there. So um later this year in December, uh Lindsay's gonna be offering a program um through uh the neurogenic integration platform, a two-hour workshop. Um, and uh she'll be sort of talking about the chronic health side of things and the primal trust framework and experiential exercises, and then I'll support by guiding a tremor experience in that uh workshop. So anyway, that's coming up, I think, December 18th. We can talk a little bit more about that. Um, in any case, that's a long introduction, but Lindsay, I'm so glad to have a chance to sit down with you and just hear about your own journey um in this world of nervous system work and and all of the above. So welcome. Thanks. It's so special to be here. I'm really touched by the community you created and um yeah, I'm so excited to share about Primal Trust and what brought me here, the crazy turn of life events that you know got me here. Yeah. Can we could we start there? Like kind of, you know, what what got you, what what brought you into this this domain of of work in the first place? Yeah, yeah. You know, my story is so representative of so many people who enter into primal trust, so many people who are on the chronic illness recovery journey, or if they haven't recovered. Um, and it's it's almost become the more I do this work, I almost have seen sort of this like algorithm of what sets people up for chronic illness. And it's usually um an intense uh stressful event or some repressed emotional event that that creates a dysregulated nervous system. Often there's a trigger like mold or even like a chemical sensitivity that just creates um a tipping point in the biology and the psyche, really, that puts people into chronic illness. And and that whole framework of understanding chronic illness is not um really talked about that much in sort of the allopathic traditional um understanding of chronic illness in the nervous system. So my story is I was a very hardy athlete in college, I was a backpacking guide in Colorado, it was really just the picture of health. I went through some really intense um stress in college, was pretty functional for a few years, but now that I know the algorithm and sort of the arc of chronic illness, I can see okay, my nervous system was becoming more dysregulated. I was slight things were changing in my body, my eyes were getting drier, I couldn't wear contacts anymore, subtle things that the body was trying to communicate. Your nervous system is changing, but I didn't have any of this education and framework, of course. Yeah, and then I moved into a moldy house when I was living in Nashville after college, and it was so many people have the stories. Huge crash, catastrophic. Like I woke up, I remember it's May 25th, 2010. I'll never be the same. Just overnight, um, my health had completely crashed. I moved I was bedridden for almost a year with living my parents. It was just awful. And also the tragic part of this, the arc of this story is that I spent almost a decade bouncing from doctor to doctor, as so many people do. Um and then I my husband and I moved to Seattle to work to work on a farm and be close to a Lyme doctor. Shout out to Dr. Wakely, the best doctor I've seen yet. Um he he is a naturopath, but actually it was living on we lived on a farm 10 minutes from the ocean, right in the Cascade Mountains, and it was the regulation of being in nature. I think did it it opened my eyes to oh my gosh, I could take all the supplements in the world, I could get all the injections, but I was really starting to get into um DNRS at that time, and just it was like a a moment of enlightenment where I was like, wow, none of this physical these physical tools are really gonna do much for me if my nervous system is dysregulated. And um and so years later, you know, I'd done so many different nervous system programs, but Primal Trust uh was really the whole package for me. It still is, and why I work there now. I'd love to talk about it. Um, and I can get into it more, but that is sort of the arc of the story that brought me, you know, through a a truly like hellish experience. Just so many people have this experience. Yeah. Um, yeah. When when I mean and not to drudge up um uh pain painful or or or stressful memories, but I but I'm looking when things were pretty bad, you know, not yet on the road to recovery. What were you what was just what's a snapshot? What what's some of the primary barriers or or things that you struggled with? Yeah, crazy fatigue, just like crushing, bone crushing fatigue. Just could never experience anything like in my life, just a series of infections, um, Lyme disease diagnosis. I forgot to say that. Um, it felt like anything and everything. And the more I went to doctors, the more I got more diagnoses, crazy like hip pain, sinus infections. It was just like whack-a-mole. It was like one thing would resolve, the next thing would pop up. Yeah. Um and just also like, and primal trust does such a good job addressing this, like the identity of who I was just like shattered, you know. It was um, I was this like active, great student, athlete, and then I was like bedridden. It's like, who are you? You know, when your health is taken away, it's like your identity is especially as a young person, is just so enmeshed with that. So not fun, not fun at all. Wow. Well, maybe, maybe um so the nerd, so it sounded like you know, that change in setting and and kind of being being in a natural setting kind of opened your eyes to, you know, kind of uh, it wasn't gonna be the supplements, it was, you know, there was some some other way that that but then yeah, follow take us a little further on that. Like, you know, um yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm a person and I think a lot of people in this population of chronic illness are that are just sensitive, but also like deeply um in need of living in alignment with nature, even if they're not nature people, it's just the environment of our world, our modern world is so foreign to our ancestral DNA. And so after we left um Seattle, I came back to St. Louis and we we live in an urban environment and my health crashed again. And um, and so I knew that it was like putting the pieces together experientially. Like I knew my nervous system needed something, but I couldn't figure it out. And this was before I had any of the primal trust tools. Um, but there's also and there there's also this sort of like true self um rediscovery that had to happen for me to come back to the truth of who I am and what what kind of life I wanted to rebuild after after illness. I mean, you really have to have a strong vision for what you want instead of illness, like in in some as we call in primal trust, something to rewire toward. And um and so that has been you know, a theme of my recovery has been getting getting and living as close to nature as possible, but also my own true nature, um, who I am, and and constantly having to use tools of self-inquiry and understanding to know that I'm living and integrity with myself at every turn. That is such a huge part of recovery. Yeah. Um, and when you're sensitive, every little thing that you say yes to, but your body says no to, it will let you know. Yeah. And it's sort of annoying, but it's like this gift too. Like it's just um this true attunement to the self and to the nervous system. And along the way, um, years before I discovered Primal Trust, I discovered TRE. Um, from it was like the um, it was like a weird flyer on the side of a street. I saw it, where do you remember where and when? Yeah, it was in the central west end. This instructor's name was Robin. I can't think of her name, her full name, but it was um here in the city of St. Louis. Uh-huh. And uh I remember it said, you know, releasing tension and trauma from the body, and I was like, that's me. I have so much tension. And so I went to the workshop and it blew my mind because I was like it was fascinating to me that I could access this level of involuntary tremoring the body. Yeah. And I became, I mean, I almost get emotional even thinking about that day because it was like it was talking about, I mean, thinking about coming back to our true nature, like the repression of this expression in the body, like what? Where why is why isn't everyone talking about this? Right, right. Um Yeah, it was it was very, very profound. And I still tire, I still do the tremoring every single day, just in little bits, like um, so that was sort of a major turning point for me in in really um bridging the mind-body divorce of chronic illness, you know, being so in my head with supplements and drugs and antibiotics for the Lyme, it's such a like a heady mental experience, right? And testing your biofilms and and all this, yeah. Oh my god, it's yes, but there's no conversation about the body in the just the trauma of all that. I mean, it's it's such a bizarre, I mean it's actually not bizarre because I've been in the medical system enough where I'm like, wow, this really is the most divided system ever. Right. Um, so yeah, that that when I started doing TR, I was like, I have a body, what like it's amazing. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Um okay, I I just lost my train of thought. But um, okay, but super cool. So maybe, maybe, um, maybe zoom forward for a minute and actually, yeah, can you just tell us a little bit about I mean I explained primal trust in the rudimentary way that I can, but could you just sort of share for for an audience who doesn't know what primal trust is, um could you give an introduction to it, including if if this isn't adding too much, kind of how it locates in that bigger field of of brain retraining. I'm thinking of things like DNRS, which you mentioned, Gupta, things like so. Could you just kind of like tell us about primal trust and situate it for us in that in that field? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. What makes primal trust different and special is there there are three sort of levels to primal trust. And the first one, uh, Dr. Kat does a really good job at um pacing the introduction of the tools because a lot of these programs just sort of give you, they kind of like throw you into the deep end. And so the first the first bulk, maybe a couple months people spend are really these bottom-up practices of TREs in the first level, once you kind of get into it, um, a lot of functional neurology, eye movements, breath work. Um, there is some a big part of it is visualization, which a lot of other programs share. Okay. But it's also very much rooted in polyvagal theory, which is sort of mapping out the state of the nervous system at any given moment. And there is so much empowerment in in primal trust for people who have been thrown around from program to program because you are creating calm in the system without needing a supplement, a consultation, you know, paying anyone. I mean, right primal trust is a subscription thing, but it's very yeah, it's very affordable. Yeah, and then you're you're you're learning inside out tools, regulation tools. Yeah, I mean, and really like tools, like gosh, you'll use your entire life. If you're in a human body, it's like you need these tools, like they're just so essential for living in you know, the stress of life. Yeah. And so the first couple months of Primal's Trust are spent in that um really bit by bit, and I call it with my my clients, I mentor it's sort of like snacking on these tools all day. It's really a lifestyle. So um, you know, having having the ability to do some functional movement or functional neurology eye movements like before you get on a meeting or do anything stressful. Yeah, it's and that is how essentially you kind of like make friends again with your body and nervous system because you're you're showing it a new way and you're you're sort of like reparenting the nervous system. Yeah, it's like this is this is sort of it's almost like I say a lot, it's like kind of like having a chiropractic adjustment, and like all day you're kind of just like coming back into alignment a little bit more, a little bit more, and eventually the system sort of learns to hold that regulation more. Yep. Um so that's the first chunk of contrast. And like can look, can I jump in for a quick second? Yeah, yeah. Because because I I did not go through levels two and three, but I went through level one, so I I followed that curriculum. And and to me, the other the other thing that was um useful, at least for the way my brain works, I mean, in some ways, I already knew the polyvagal physiology and this and that. Although, you know, some of the the the commentary with the cell danger response uh was was a little bit newer for me, but but so something I appreciated about the way that uh she constructed the program is that there is sort of like it's like here are our um without getting overly technical, but not getting but but being specific and technical enough, there was kind of like that left-brained science. It's like, well, what is the what's our newest, most current understanding of stress physiology from a polyvagal perspective, from a cell danger response? And and to me, I think that's useful. So she introduces some concepts that then, you know, you then are getting into experiential work. And as you say, you know, learning kind of what makes you tick and learning to sense and feel when you deviate from regulation, when you're moving closer towards a regulated state, and being able to hone your sense of that. And then what are the things that steer things, you know, and and um whether that's breath, whether that's movement, whether that's eye work, whether that's whether it's a resourcing or something sort of through a visual visualization. Um, but I think for a lot of people, getting that um to me, there's this marriage of kind of a left-brained framework and then inviting the right-brained experiential practices that help um guide things a little bit. Totally. I think the educational part is really essential if you're doing this work to understand um the brain science of how you know how a neuroplastic brain works. You know, when every time we choose differently, that's like neuroplastic gold. We're like it's it's uh it's not just random doing this visualizations and corrective exercises. It's like a truly changing the structure of our brain. It's really exciting. Yeah, well, so so well, I uh so then that you know, there I mean, I don't know if you're gonna go into levels two and three, but that but what I was gonna jump in there with is you know, this concept of um neural retraining, and that you know, that implies and I've heard the term um limbic, I think they I I mean limbic training or something like that. Maybe you could maybe you could explain a little bit about what is meant by that brain retraining. What unpack that a little bit? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I think when people speak about limbic training, but they're addressing the limbic region of the brain, which is sort of the fear amygdala center, where a lot of the dysregulation happens. And um, so much about the training, the brain training, is you know, the brain is all about association. So if Dr. Kat gives this example in the level one training holding this tennis ball, and if you've been told your life, this tennis ball is horrible, this tennis ball is evil, like all this conditioning, your nervous system will be like, oh my gosh, get me away from that tennis ball. Right. But if you're told this tennis ball's amazing, it's gonna change your life. Your brain's like, I want that. Right. And it's just such a it's just this sort of computer of association building. And so that is kind of, I think, the heart of a lot of these programs are just trying to create a safe association with um with stress, with with you know, not eliminating stress because that is we live in a stressful world, but it's building the nervous system capacity to have these sort of widening circles of of ability, capacity mentally and in the nervous system to just handle the stress of life um a little bit more easefully and gracefully. And we still live in human bodies, like this isn't about this sort of fairy tale of living in a symptom-free, like perfect body. Right. It's just expansion capacity um and teaching the nervous system, slowly training it. Incremental training is a phrase used in this industry a lot of sort of challenging the nervous system with new exposure, new experiences. And that can be a way that we limbic train, we train the limbic system to have more capacity and change associations. And kind of change the like the set point. Like if you think of the amygdala like a thermostat or something, it's like incre incremental, you know, sort of progressive incremental change might be able to change the threshold at which it really kicks into gear. Or things like that. Is that part of it? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like giving it little I well, I will say this sort of brings me into the level two, the spirit of level two, which, you know, some people have amazing capacity building symptom clearing experiences in level one alone. But ultimately, I think the once we I think of level these these sort of bottom-up practices like TRE, like um functional neurology, is almost like training the nervous system to to get into the emotional processing work that often is the true origin of what has dysregulated the nervous system, whether it's a trauma, um, you know, just the things that we experience in life that are emotionally overwhelming to the nervous system. You know. So that so a big part of primal trust and this work uh is is called the cultivating an adult main personality. And in parts work or IFS, it's the self-energy. Same thing. People call this a lot. Just literally yesterday, because I do I do IFS with clients, and and and just yesterday, I have a client who's who's uh primal trustee, I don't know what you call yourselves, primal trustee or something like that. Um and um and yes, and and I I I love that component of it because yeah, there's there's a it's to me, I know exactly what's meant by that adult main personality. And I and I love that language. And you know, in IFS we we say capital S self, but I often substitute that for your adult consciousness or or and so it's it's I really like that parallel a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're I like your wise one, you say a lot. Um, and that is uh sort of so we can kind of train the physiology to be able to handle the trauma processing from the um the sort of psychic, psyche state of the self, you know, going into the body, feeling more safety and more security um within the body to access trauma, access. I mean, it doesn't have to be big trauma, it can just be, you know, being a people pleaser, being a perfectionist, yeah, yeah. Yeah, all these qualities are tremendously burdensome on the nervous system. Yeah, it can be. Yeah. So um yeah, that and then the love, you know, primal trust is I I was a member for two and a half years before I became a staff person because it it's just this sort of curriculum for living a whole regulated life. There's a lot of framework around the hero's journey, the Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, um, living a values-based life, having difficult conversations. Um and then ultimately what we call in primal trust the pit, getting into the core root, root, root emotion of what um sort of drives the nervous system in into dysregulation or drove it into in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's a lot. It is a lot. Well, well, okay. So you felt you were in the program for a while and then you felt the call um evidently to to step in to the the level of mentoring and teaching. Can you share a little bit about that? Um yeah. That decision, but then also also what that, you know, what is your your work as a mentor and a and a coach? What what's that like? What does it entail for you? Yeah, I think uh mentorship is really it's it's so life-giving for me. I mean, I really, it really just is very moving personal work for me because I feel my greatest credential is having gone through, you know, over a decade of this ride. This crazy re-le repatching my nervous system in life together. Yeah. But it's you know, mentorship is really about um holding space for another person's um journey with through through the primal trust content. A lot of it is about facing resistance. Um, the resistance we we face to do the practice, to go into the harder emotional territory. Um but it's like it's such a joy to just be with in presence with people who are so in their heart wanting to get their health back, like just the most sincere, sweet people that have been through a really broken system and some inevitably end up in primal trust. And I just really get it. And that enough, I think, has just been awesome chemistry for me and my my the place to start with. Um and then I'm also gonna be I teach some of the level three classes, which is our like sort of more expansive curriculum around um a tool that I that has been the most helpful for me in my re-regulation journey is uh Nicole Sachs journal speak, which is um an expressive writing technique born out of the work of Dr. John Sarno. Some people may know him as he wrote a healing backpage. Yeah. So the the essence of journal speak is this expressive um 20-minute writing, and it's not about uh writing about the story of what happened, it's like just the raw, unfiltered emotion, and that is sort of where we kind of go in the deeper end of primal trust. There's so much I there's so much to it, Alex. I know I feel like I'm I'm throwing so much at you, but um No, no, no, it's very interesting. And it to me it it makes sense, it it hangs together. Um cool. So you teach you teach the journal speak framework, you know, people you uh that's part of it. In the mentoring work, is that is that one-on-one stuff? Are there group containers? Like what what is that what is that like? Yes, there are group, there are uh let's see, I think we have about eight mentors now. Um I work one-on-one. There are other mentors who do group, um, kind of group coaching. It's more affordable, it's kind of a community experience. And we're one of my other ambitions at Primal Trust is we're like we're really reformatting our community. We have so many people joining every month. So we're really trying to create a cohort experience where you join, you have your people, you have a a trained guide to take you through, and so you're just kind of not lost in the abyss of content. And that's one of the really special things that kept me in primal trust so long. There's so many opportunities for um to have a buddy, to have a a mentor, a group you kind of journey with. It's just so much more fun, too. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It's kind of like a throwback to your backpack. Didn't you say you did wilderness guiding? Yeah, there's like maybe a few parallels. I don't know. I don't know if there are, but totally there are, yeah, there really are. It's kind of a full circle thing for sure. Yeah. Interesting. Well, what um what have you seen, you know, you mentioned that tremoring in TRE was was was very valu has been very very valuable for you. It sounds like you're a regular, you know, you find you access that regularly and and have found how it serves you. Well, what do you yeah, what do you see with others with with and and it is, it's introduced in level one, it's um Dr. Robbins, Eric Robbins, and that's how I know Dr. Kat is through is through Eric. Um so they give they give that primer there. Um yeah, how what have you seen or heard with with others um uh the tremoring component? Well, yeah, I'm curious about that. Yeah, totally. You know, I think a lot of people in this population have a tremendous amount of fascial tension, myself included. I'm still kind of working out, and maybe you can we we can like you can educate as I talk about this because um there's so much um physical tension in people who have long chronic illness. And and as they say, the issues get stuck in your tissues, and so it's always a tool I direct people to who have stiffness, tension, just a feeling of bracing, you know, the nervous system and the physiology are stuck in like a bracing, protective. It's it's physical, but it's also emotional. It's like I'm some a client just told me yesterday, like I'm so scared of life, I'm so scared of like life coming at me. It's just so um, it's such a fight or flight or even a shutdown kind of posture toward life. And so the TRE I think can um also I think one of the powerful things about it is reintroducing some physical releases without necessarily having to get into the whole story and trauma in in the mind of what happened. Yeah, it's just sort of this like natural discharge. And I think that that can feel really safe for people with chronic illness because it's just it just is it's sort of like taking the charge out of the whole going through it mentally experience. Does that track for you? Oh, it totally tracks. I mean, there's people and and you know, it's not a it's not an either-or, and there's also in-betweens because you know, there's some people when they tremor, it is a pretty emotional experience, or it very much does connect them into um, you know, their their thinking of memories and their and and um you know, and if they learn to do it with self-regulation, then that's constructive. That feels good, that's part of a processing experience. But for as many people as there are like that, where there's a strong um connection into memory and emotion, uh I would say that's maybe only a third of the average tremorer. Maybe two-thirds is that um that during the tremoring itself, it's not a particularly um emotional or psychically oriented. It's a it's a pretty bot uh sensation-based uh practice. Now, later on they may get the the sort of benefits or or a very common experience is somebody tremors and and later on some emotion surfaces that that hadn't been able to as easily um or they can express themselves in a different way. Um but I totally agree with you that there's a lot of folks where it's like being able to set aside the cognitive lens for um and really just truly try to find the body imprint. And does the body want to do anything in terms of um expressing movement or letting go, as you said, of fascial patterns in TRE? We talk about the like the posture of trauma, like you know, the kind of bracing that you that you that you refer to. And I think that's one of the really direct things that neurogenic tremoring can can help with is just literally um open up uh you know, we we use the slide when we teach where where it's sort of like a jellyfish kind of pulsating that's sort of one half of the slide, and then the other half of the slide is like a human rib cage in the heart and the lungs and the diaphragm moving. And and our and I always say, you know, okay, when we teach TRE, we kind of go through a lot of different pieces of the neurophysiology and the theory. But then I get to that slide and I say, you know, the the the common sense understanding of TRE is in fact maybe the most important one. And our our common sense way of describing the function of tremoring is that organisms under stress or threat tend to compress and contract and restrict mobility of their of their tissues and the flows, the rhythmic flows of things like breath and and other flows as well. And that and so that organisms under threat, they tend to restrict. That's a that's a and that's true for amoebas, and it's true for um, you know, sort of like true throughout like all segments of the animal kingdom. Um, and it's true for mammals and it's true for human beings. And that, and that Dr. Brusselli's, in a sense, initial insight was, well, people can I see people contracting all the time because he was in scary war situations. And and he said, Well, uh if we just stay like that, then that but is there something that brings us the other direction? And he saw people tremoring organically and spontaneously and and and and eventually he sort of clicked for him. Like usually we just think that somebody's just in some fear state. That's why they're tremoring. But hey, maybe that's just the un maybe that's the opposite. It's like if we have a way of bracing, maybe we have a biological process of unfolding from that bracing. And there may be other ways to unfold from bracing than just tremoring, but it seems to be a pretty key biological one because we see it in the other animals and and things like that. So I think that so again, coming back to the common sense version, it's like organisms restrict and they brace, and then if they if there's not safety, and and but there is a way to undo that and and when they feel safe, and then they can come back into a uh a felt sense of expansion, and fascially there's more space, and mentally there's more space. Um, so that's kind of the um that's the very common sense model that what when we think that that we think tremoring is essentially just opening up bracing patterns. Wow, so amazing. Something I love Dr. Kat has offered about entering into tremoring with a with a more sensitive population is she had this cool idea of making like a playlist of songs like that start from like a slower um tempo and kind of pick up the pace. And I definitely have those too. And sort of having like a peak tremoring experience, and that was when I started to sort of open up and um have more emotional releases when I tremored, but it was really nice. I would start with like cello music, sort of slowly letting the body on, you know. I hear about those you know, fascial unwinding. Sure. And then and then as the tempo like goes in the strong the the song, I love I love the tremor to the cranberries, it's just like it gets me going, like feels so good. That would work for me too. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just so good. And that was when I started to have more of just the tears and the and also the repressed joy, you know, the repressed joy of missing a decade of my life and like loving the cranberries, loving whatever it is, and just being like, oh my god, I'm in my body. It just feels so so good to have that release. So I think that like when you're in a real um functional free sort of dorsal vagal shutdown state, like so many people who enter primal trust are TRE is like a very um, you know, it's getting to know this really, really natural part of our body, our physiology, our biology. And then as we kind of move up the polyvagal ladder and get out of such a frozen state, that brace state, the emotions can kind of start to flow. So like it totally I've noticed that in my clients, like the more they TRE, the more they start to feel. It's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Super amazing. Yeah. Um, I have I have felt through my work it with some of the primal trust community, um, not only through them, I mean I've learned this additionally, that that there are um uh I've had to widen my sense of um kind of like of I've had to I've had to I've had to expand my sense of what the right um cadence and dosing is for tremoring. And because because I I work with people and what I what I really try to do now is not make many assumptions because just because I've had 10 people with uh fibromyalgia, and on average they tend to need, you know, if they tremor too long, then it flares up their symptoms. But that there's always the exceptions to that. But this idea that uh you know, something that was not all that included in my original TRE training, but now has become pretty clearly part of the way I work, is this idea of some of titrating down to very sometimes very small doses of you know, sometimes 30 seconds, 60 seconds, as sort of the initial um, you know, some systems that are more sensitive, they they require a smaller unit of um um application initially, and then to see, and then how does that reverberate through the system and integrate? And then, you know, typically speaking, we would then sort of expand as capacity builds. But I'm curious for you, and it sounds like for you on your yeah, what what have you seen with that, both for yourself or for others in the prime trust community? Yeah, titrating Tier E. I mean, it's yeah, titration is such a important way. I mean, it's it's sort of like being in what we talked about, the dolphin personality. It's it's sending the safety signals to your body of like, I'm not gonna blow you out of the water. Yeah. I'm gonna do this in a safe, graduated way. And that really can build a lot of safety with the system. Um especially for personalities who are just like so eager to heal, you know, like rushing to heal. Yeah. So I think um that's why I like this like approach of like slow music slow slow music or just like opening space up to lie on the floor and just if nothing happens, it's okay, you know, releasing the expectation of a big you know, breakthrough moment or something, you know, just letting it be like um I have a lot of tension in my hand, I'm at work on the computer a lot, hand in shoulder. And so sometimes I I would just start my TRE journey with letting my hand kind of flop around, you know, just unwind that fascial unwinding. And it wasn't like this whole body tremoring, it was just like, oh, um, wants to do that. And um and that was a way of not comparing myself to the way I was trained to do it or the way I saw it, just like respecting the body's unwinding experience, like however it wants to start. Um, so I think eliminating the the pressure, you know. A client actually said to me yesterday, I'm I'm afraid to TRE because I see these people on Instagram. I know these huge I know they're being like like like a demon's being exercised out of them or something, like they just look terrifying. And so just coming back into like yeah, I mean there might be a few of the TRE Instagram channels, but there's all these sort of in my mind, it to me the the biggest um um the biggest um uh uh the people the where I see the most um where I see that tendency the most is is with the you know I is is with the modern breathwork movement. And I think I think breathwork is phenomenal um and is a really cool thing that breathwork has proliferated in the ways that it has. Um but the where I see the um but I guess it's not only that, I even think I think some of the fascial release channels, you know, they really try to select for these big cathartic demon-releasing kinds of experiences. And we see and we see those things in TRE, but like usually there's like something that leads towards that. Like that's um it's it's contextualized by lots of sessions that aren't like that. Um so I do sometimes think that there can that we can that that that aspect of expressive release, whether it's through TRE or through breath work, which can also be very expressive. Um, yeah, it you know I guess that's the way that Instagram works is like, you know, things really want to select for things with high drama, but that's a little bit of a disservice. Yeah. It's to me that that that bias is a disservice to the the industry a bit. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think also with titration, like and coming into this as a really gentle safe way, is I you know, I like to do my TRE practice um alone in a closed door. Sure. And I see it's taught you know and facilitated in groups a lot. And I think that that can be just an individual thing, but my the more like loose and wild I've gotten in my practice, I'm like, I don't really actually want anyone to watch me TRE. Totally. Yeah. No, well that's what I that's what I tell clients and students all the time. Is like that's actually something I really like about TRE, is that there's some people who are going to do their best work, like with the one-on-one facilitation. You know, there's co-regulation, somebody can, you know, they're being witnessed. So there's powerful things in that one-on-one container. Um, but uh and some of those people might say, oh, doing it alone, it's just that feels that feels off. I can't even really do it. Um, and then there's other people for whom their their sweet spot is absolutely the privacy of their own home. No one, no one else is there. Anything can come, maybe their dog is with them or something like that. So for other people, that's the really rich um and useful container. And then there's other people who like some something about being in a group, like you can sort of feel the others or lean into the the group, and you're you there's community, but you're not being singled out. For other people, that's sort of the conditions under which they get a lot out of the practice. Or There's lots of people who get something different out of those different um depending on the context, they may have a different experience. But to me, it's such an individual thing in terms of how it how it meets a person best. Totally. Well, I want to we were talking before the interview about this beautiful video on the um neurogenic integration website. We just put that up. We just put that up, yeah. Okay. And you're filming in Norway, is that right? Yeah. Well, so that's so Steve, so Steve and I were the ones who started this neurogenic integration um platform, and she's in Norway. And so this past summer, August of 2025, uh, I was there with my family, which was fun. We were there for about a month, and uh we did some just travel, but then but Steve and I did a bunch of work on the neurogenic integration materials and this and that. And then one thing we did was we did a cool one-day immersive um uh session for people who were already pretty regular. Um, there are people who'd been tremoring with Steve um you know for quite some time in their regular community, but we wanted to kind of have just this immersion day for, and so it was fun because we we did group work, we in court, we did some breath work, I did some Feldenkrais work, and then what we part of what we played with is sort of like sometimes we were indoors, sometimes we we were the we were we had a uh venue right along uh a river, and so we we set up along the river, we spent some time where people could find a spot uh to just to tremor on their own. Some people kind of like you know, just wanted to be right there, like you could there are these rocks you could get to just sort of nestled on the river. So, you know, we kind of combined it a little bit with um uh part of the framing is that um, you know, we think of nature as out there and and it is in a sense, wilderness in the natural world and Mother Earth, and it's also in here, you know, and that I think that things that connect us to our intrinsic biology, like TRE or other practices, we can kind of develop this intimacy with our own natural state. And then there's just something fun about um uh kind of connecting inside and outside of you know, being in natural spaces that I think can be moving, moving and powerful. So that that's so so and we had a film uh video guy there, which was cool because then we had such a fun, playful day. And and and so that, and so we just put that little he edited it, put that, and then so it's now on the homepage for the um neurogenic integration page. But I'm glad you got to see that. Well, yeah, I thought of it with just this just this thought of like discussion of different styles of TRE. When I saw that video, I was so moved because I was like, wow, this is these are humans doing this very natural, unrepressed process in nature. Like, is there anything more human than this? Like, it was just so amazing and beautiful to me. And I mean it just it just brought this sense of like wow, like freedom, freedom to be a human and all of our expression, all of our like quirks and weird biology, and and and like including all that is like, yeah, we are nature, and that is a totally natural expression. And and it kind of goes back to where we started in this conversation, it's like there's some there's some sort of repression of our nature that often leads to chronic illness. And often when we have a major emotional event or trauma, like the body probably does have the instinct to tremor, but we don't even we're so detached, we're so removed from that. And so I'm so excited you're doing this work, Alex, because it's like how if young kids knew about this biological response as a young age at a young age, like think about how totally amazingly different it could be. Well, what's cool is there's a ton of people working on that. There's this like consortium of people all around the world who are who are doing that because you're not alone in thinking that that that teenagers and kids you know that that that um uh learn and and mostly it's sort of learning about it from a um capacity building framework, you know, not so much of you know um from a uh trauma recovery framework, but more from a um uh a resiliency building and and but but this idea of giving that as a tool to youth, uh I totally agree that that's uh a big opportunity. Luck luckily, there's people really making good headway with that. That's awesome. Yeah, I just taking the stigma out of like living in a body and what it wants to do and how it wants to express. I just think that's so important. And and also with the sort of spirit of of primal trust and the journal speak work is like um the in journal speaker, we there's this sort of idea of this like emotional reservoir that just keeps filling and filling with trauma in the body, and then we get to a point in our lives and it just overflows into the system and expresses either as migraines or back pain or an autoimmune sure. And so discharging that survival energy in the body with tremoring is just I think oh, I just wish every human could have this tool to not have to have the chronic illness hell hellish nightmare that's only people do. So yeah, well hopefully I mean, I don't know. I I mean I I mean there's a lot of stressors in the world and there's a lot of a lot of um disruption and bad things, but like um I don't know. I I I I mean by personality I tend to be a little bit optimistic, but but when I but the way that I see you know things like primal trust when I came to TRE and and other frameworks, like to me it really it gives me a sense of optimism because in my mind, I don't know if you agree with this or not, I don't think it's so um you know learning to to learning something about your biology and autonomic nervous system, becoming aware of it and learning that it's adjustable and steerable and and then not only at the biology level, but as you say, more at the level of the psyche and our sort of our our you know access to our sort of authentic self versus not. Um I don't know. As I spend time in this world, yeah, it's challenging to do these growth grow learning and growth and re-regulation processes, but then I've also seen that like it's like pretty doable. Like, like there's there's like it's totally possible. There's so many success stories that it gives me kind of an optimism that that that the information is getting out there, and and maybe that's one thing that's good about our hyper-technological world is that we can, you know, that that like these these tools and even the way Dr. Kat developed her framework, she didn't have to sort of invent every piece. She said, Oh wow, Stanley Rosenberg did this great stuff with the Vegas NERV. Oh, cool, you know, Peter Levine does this. So so she was able to pull things that worked. Um, I think that's sort of a feature of our contemporary world where people really are uh learning from each other, hybridizing, repackaging. Uh I think that's helping accessibility and getting the message out there. What what do you think? Totally. Oh, I think it's I and I think it's really exciting, life-giving, amazing work. I mean, it's like I I find that yeah, I think it's important to kind of yeah, reframe that as like getting, you know, it's getting to know yourself on a really deep, beautiful level. And that's kind of the whole invitation of this work, is like, you know, um, understanding your true nature, understanding who you are underneath all the limbic responses and the conditioning, and that's just like such an incredible opportunity. And sometimes, you know, it's an uncomfortable path to get to the point where you have to learn those things. But yes, I think primal trust does a beautiful job of weaving together really the best of the best in what the modern, like recent neuroscience, and making it accessible and also making it a lifestyle that it's like you don't have to do an hour of brain training every day, you can just take little chunks and breaks, and you know, like and it really comes back to just building the skill of attuning with the body, like, oh, I noticed I'm shallow breathing, like having that continual ability to come back into presence with the body is like what a what a beautiful way to live. It's just so good, it feels so good to be connected to yourself. Yeah. So I think it's it's an exciting time for sure. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, okay, so let's let's maybe finish with, you know, anybody who's gonna join us on December 18th for the um program. Um, and yeah, I think you and I were gonna kind of roughly divide the time where you maybe you had 45 minutes to an hour of uh on the primal trust side, and then we will segue into some tremoring um tied in with what we've been uh doing with you and then sort of conversation and debrief. But yeah, maybe just get what what's uh what's a snapshot version of what we may cover in in your in your piece. Sure. I think um my goal with this workshop is to introduce kind of a menu of the level one practices so people can get can we can practice them together. I'll teach them. And then for participants to leave with just you know one one or two of these practices where they feel a really good response in the body. It works for their physiology. You know, sometimes people like the eye movements, we can try some breath work. Um we can even do some what we call havening, which is just having the running the hands down the sides of the arm as sort of a self-soothing, self-containment um practice. I will introduce uh yeah, a sort of yeah, a menu of practices that that you can use to self-regulate throughout the day or share with your kids. So that this is like I I teach another workshop called nervous system regulation for busy people because it's like this stuff is so simple. I mean, you can really activate the vagus nerve in like two minutes and feel so much calmer. So it's it's simple, it's accessible, it feels um really, really doable, like you don't have to know a lot of the science, and it's understanding um how your body, what your body wants like it says yes to essentially. Right. And when we when when the body says yes or so, we feel um a parasympathetic shift, sort of a calming of the mind, a calming of the body. Often when we work with the vagus nerve, you'll feel salvation, tearing of the eyes, um this sort of response that the body's being the vagus nerve is being activated. So yeah, I want it to be quick, simple, um little things that you can do through the day to regulate. Cool. Cool. Yeah. That sounds very fun. Well, Lindsay, boy, I really appreciate taking time just to hear about your personal journey and how much uh meaning and joy and enthusiasm you have for your your work. It's it's very cool to hear about. Yes, thank you. Thanks for taking the time. It's it feels um almost surreal to be, you know, this this deep into this long journey and be like, wow, I I really made it out. I made it made it through the other side, and and now the last part of that hero's journey is bringing back what you learned to your community. So I'm really happy to be doing that. Very cool. Yeah. All right, good. Thanks. All right, thank you. That's it for today's episode. We hope you found inspiration and new insights into the power of neurogenic drawing. 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.