E012 - Shaking Medicine with Dr. Keith Motes

In this enlightening episode, host Alex Greene sits down with Dr. Keith Motes, founder of Shaking Medicine and a PhD in quantum physics, to explore the fascinating intersection of science, spirituality, and therapeutic tremoring. Broadcasting from Thailand, Dr. Motes shares his remarkable journey from quantum computing researcher in Australia to becoming a pioneer in teaching neurogenic tremoring. The conversation weaves through multiple lenses—from quantum physics and polyvagal theory to Kundalini yoga, Qigong, and indigenous shamanic practices of the Kalahari Bushmen.

Dr. Motes reveals how his initial discovery of spontaneous movement came through a profound plant medicine experience that catalyzed his departure from academia to pursue full-time somatic healing work. Alex and Keith dive deep into the complementary relationship between psychedelic therapy and tremoring practices, discussing how embodied practitioners can better navigate medicine journeys and integrate trauma release. They explore the power of combining bodywork with neurogenic tremoring, emphasizing the importance of practitioners first embodying the work themselves. This episode offers invaluable insights for TRE practitioners, bodyworkers, and anyone interested in the deeper dimensions of somatic healing and nervous system regulation.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:
00:01:00 Introducing Dr. Keith Motes
00:04:00 Physics to Spiritual Practice
00:10:00 First DMT Plant Medicine
00:13:00 Discovery of Therapeutic Tremoring
00:18:00 Developing Shaking Medicine Practice
00:23:00 Indigenous and Shamanic Lenses
00:26:00 Kalahari Bushmen Shaking Culture
00:29:00 Kundalini and Yoga Perspectives
00:33:00 Quantum Physics and Vibration
00:40:00 Psychedelics and Tremoring Integration
00:47:00 MDMA and Trauma Access
00:53:00 Bodywork and Touch Facilitation
00:58:00 Sensing Energy and Presence
01:03:00 Games and Surrender Phases

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Dr. Bradford Keeney - Work with Kalahari Bushmen: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Way-of-the-Bushman/Bradford-Keeney/9781591432050 
Shaking Medicine Teacher Training: https://www.shakingmedicine.com/shaking-medicine-teacher-training 
Zen Shiatsu Bodywork

Connect with Dr. Keith Motes:
Shaking Medicine website: https://www.shakingmedicine.com 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shakingmedicine/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shakingmedicinefoundation/   

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

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 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. Good morning, everybody. I'm Alex and welcome to the Neurogenic Integration Podcast. I'm here in Boulder, Colorado, as per normal. And I'm here with my guest, Dr. Keith Moats in Copenyang, Thailand. And I'm really excited to have this conversation with Keith today. And yeah. So for those of you who don't know, Dr. Motz is the founder of Shaking Medicine, a school for teaching about therapeutic use of neurogenic tremoring. So something near and dear to our heart here at Neurogenic Integration, of course. And he's done a lot of work, has a fascinating personal story in terms of his initial discovery of neurogenic tremoring and therapeutic tremoring. And then very much in his uh evolution of teaching and continuing to explore the possibilities of this way of working with the mind, body, physiology, nervous system, all these good things. And Dr. Motz has a fascinating background as originally as a he has a PhD in quantum physics. And part of what I'd like to explore today is just uh Keith getting your thoughts on you know how do you frame, think of vibration and tremoring in the therapeutic use that we do. Does it connect to your work in physics in any way? This would be a theme that I hope to potentially explore with you. But in any case, I'm yeah, honored to sit down with you today, Keith, and really excited to kind of hear about your own journey. Thank you so much. I am very pleased to be here. It's an honor to be on your show. Thanks for having me. And I'm excited to share and talk all about therapeutic tremoring, spontaneous movement, and um yeah, the effects that that's had on my life, on people I've shared it with, and and to get to know you better, Alex. Yeah, I'm excited. So thank you. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, we thank you so much. We have a couple community in common through you've connected with Richmond Heath in Australia, with uh Gabriel in Australia, these are TRE colleagues of mine. I think you've met with Maria Alfaro in California. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a few we a few intersections. So I'm glad to have the chance for a conversation. Yeah, quite a few new sections. Hey, it's nice to be meeting all of these wonderful people and to network, make friends and collaborations. And now with with you, Alex. Thank you. Yeah, beautiful. So cool. Well, uh so yeah, well, Keith, would you be willing to kind of I guess I always like to start at the beginning a little bit, like like you know, as in your formative years, you know, you ended up studying physics. So I'm curious about that passion. And then, and of course, I'm uh I'm curious to how your passion widened. So, yeah, maybe if you could just share. Yeah, I'd love to. So I was studying physics in undergraduate. I really was quite natural at math and physics and interested in the sciences, wanted to understand the universe. It was a big passion of mine, and the only thing that made sense was to was physics in university for me at the time. So I said, why not? Let's do it. And that took me on quite the adventure through undergraduate, and then it took me to Australia from I'm from the United States, from Louisiana. So it it took me out of America and into a whole nother country, which was pretty profound for me, I must say, in my young 20s, to go over to you know across the world to do a PhD in quantum physics, focused on quantum computing technologies. Yeah, it was an incredible life and experience. I got a scholarship, it was paid for completely, and they even put money in my bank account every two weeks to live on. So I was like really set up beautifully and put a lot of energy into it, published a bunch of papers, re-researched with so many cool people, made lots of friends, and did really well. Ended up getting a citizenship in Australia. So I'm now a dual citizen of the United States and the beautiful land of Australia. So during all of this, all of this time, I was beginning my spiritual practice of yoga, basically. Is it didn't start off super spiritual, but it got me into this kind of what I like to call this alternative kind of path that you know, alternative medicines and alternative um practices, and really just just uh at first the biggest part for me was breathing with movement, simply that. It was like, wow, just for that yoga was super profound for me, and it led me into you know deeper aspects of myself, meditation, qi gong, and ultimately I I after quite a few years, I was plateauing for my yoga in the sense that like I didn't feel the growth that I was had gotten the first few years. It just kind of steadied off, even though I was still practicing. Um and I realized later that, and and this is part of what inspired me to do shaking medicine or to start this modality of shaking medicine, was I figured out how that essentially trauma things, this kind of energy was holding me back, and that's why I was plateauing in my yoga practice, which I really feel doesn't tend to, especially in the Westernized version, get into the deeper layers of the emotional body, the subconscious, the trauma. Like it does a little bit, but yeah, it's not really the focus of you know going to do yoga classes. So that that's a bit about that journey, you know, studying quantum physics, quantum computing, technologies. I just felt after a while, when after I did my first postdoc and finished my PhD, I was like burnt out a bit, you know, it was so much work from a beautiful kind of work, but work nonetheless. Um I was like, I need a break. I really want to break from academia and wanted to dive into my full spiritual path, straight away, like just give it all my time and energy, yeah, full time, yeah. So and here I am, like still eight, nine years later, still on that path and writing it beautifully. It's saving me, it's saving me well. I'm getting lots of beautiful support as well. The universe seems to encourage me to want to do this. Yeah, I love that. At some point, you know, in your you know, in your diminishing returns, you know, plateaued yoga practice, you know, it's so you know, somehow you kind of woke up to shaking, vibration, spontaneous movement. And you know, personally, can you share a little bit about that? How that how you happened upon it, how it found you. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. So I was I was in the last couple months or so of finishing my PhD. Maybe it was like three or four months away, something like that. And I was I I had a plant medicine experience that was really profound. It actually in a big way seeded a lot of what this is, and uh it seeded, I should say, my initial like openings into this realm, this spontaneous autogenic movement, the pendiculation, the trimmering. I didn't have words for it at first. It was just an experience where, like, you know, my only reference at the time was were exorcism movies I'd seen. You know, I was like, I was going through this experience, which was my first time on DMT in a very extended form that was like eight hours. It was like an eight-hour experience with a bit of magic mushrooms involved, and those really made it last a long time. Yeah, a lot of people don't know this, but mushrooms have actually DMT in them, but we don't normally feel that aspect because we don't have the MAR inhibitor to for our receptors in our brain to actually actually absorb them. But when you have that inhibitor, then all of a sudden you do feel it. And basically, my it was unexpected how deep this journey was, really. My friend, I was my friends, I was doing it with one of them. He he just thought, oh, you know, it makes it a little bit stronger. But no, it was like a hundred times stronger, and it was a whole another octave of experience. So it was long story short, my um it it turned this thing, maybe let's call it the ego, this part of me that was like this control mechanism, the thinking mind, the ego. It just like put it all to sleep. It said, okay, hey, we're turning off, and nothing's gonna remain but your primal instinctive mind. But it blessed me with the capacity to witness and feel everything that was happening. So it wasn't like I was like, I was gone. I was like witness to everything. My body just it just went on this journey of unraveling, of moving in ways I've never moved before, squeezing and kind of twisting and shaking, sounding. So sounds are coming up, vibrations, like resonances in my whole being, my whole body. And then in the midst of all of it, I felt this trauma energy from when I was a little boy just leaving like a few waves of it. So lots of purging. In the midst of it, I was like, wow, like I'm having some kind of exorcism, but it felt amazing, like it didn't feel like it was intense, like that was a very intense experience. But overall, it felt just so good, so liberating. It was like a rebirth, I would say. That's how I felt the next day, just like a new being. And this experience really for me sits at the this the seed of what inspired me to like go down this kind of path. Um to branch from the yoga into more somatics and to start teaching this trimming, which was at first very much like, okay, how do we combine it with yoga shapes that I already teach and know so well? Simple yoga shapes and get you know, get it moving through the body, all parts of the body, yeah, which by the way, we explore without the medicines, like typically, like it's a modality that doesn't need that. And so, you know, it can certainly in the right circumstances significantly complement the yeah, no, I anyone who's into that. I hope we can wants to do it, Shannon. I hope we can talk a little bit about that because the you know, yeah. So, first of all, yeah, thanks for sharing that powerful uh story. Um and to me, this, you know, similarly for me with TRE and neurogenic tremoring, and you know, usually that's not in connection to medicine, there, you know, psychedelics or medicine. However, there's there is so much going on with that as the field of psychedelic therapies expands and becomes more common. Where I live here in Boulder, my joke is that if you walk down the street, it doesn't matter if somebody's wearing a suit or they're an old lady or whoever. Every if you talk to anybody, eight out of 10 of them, you know, did a mushroom journey last weekend or something. Where so, so the the in some ways, the proliferation of psychedelic use is to me is so high, at least in the people that I encounter. And in my view, a lot of people find their way to tremoring uh arising out of psychedelics. So I'm hoping that if we can include that as one of our I'd like to sort of compare notes today a little bit on that topic, and if it's fairly cool. Yeah, okay. So all right, so but I've got a curiosity because so just you know, what I for me too, the one one thing I just want to share in common is, you know, when I first had a spontaneous tremoring experience, I think I told you when we met a few weeks ago, I was some I it wasn't with the plant medicine, but I was going through a Rolfing structural integration body work. And it was, you know, which was kind of intense for me already. You know, I was young, 21, something like that. And during that experience, my body just flipped into this big discharge, and in some ways, similar to, you know, as you described your experience, where suddenly just something took over at a primal level. There was sound, there was movement, there was heat, there were, you know, the sort of, as I love your language, the sort of the waves of trauma energy, so for lack of a better, for lack of a more precise term. That my experience was like that too. And I also had zero points of reference other than this is some wild exorcism that found its way to me. And so later on, it was when I, you know, when I found, you know, TRE was the first thing I found where, hey, somebody has a little bit of an explanation about some of these processes, and which gave me a foot in the door to study to, you know, I knew that other people knew something, some things about spontaneous tremoring, which was helpful for me to kind of find that there were other people thinking. So, what I'm curious for you is after you had this super profound personal experience and then the clear idea that this was a seed that you were going to follow. I'm curious, like, how did you did like, you know, you're a you know, you've got a physics background. Did you study this? Did you research? Did you do what did you sort of do after you had this original experience that you then pursued? So the first weeks, maybe months, it kind of it was sitting in my nervous system, affecting my life a little bit of just like integrating this very deep experience. Yeah. So I'd say the first little while was like, okay, let me feel into this new life, this new this rebirth kind of thing. This like, what was that? You know, yeah. Yeah, and then I set out to I met this guy at a at a festival, and he was getting into this kind of spontaneous movement, and we hit it off really well, and we started a we started a a practice um together and we we explored it and we developed it, and then after some time we kind of we had a falling apart. Unfortunately, I just felt like like this guy was not really walking the talk and got aggressive a few times with me, and just I was like, okay, okay, I want to let this go. And then I just kind of I let I I just did kept doing what I was doing, and I yeah, moved into like officializing it as this thing called shaking medicine. And yeah, I've been at first, you know, I started teaching my acro yoga friends in the park after our acro yoga cham, which which I'm doing a lot of here actually in Copenhagen. Every day there's acro yoga, and it's such a nice way to connect and get and play with people. So I'm really enjoying uh that way of playing. So yeah, I was teaching them and it it worked like it was not working as well as it does now, but you know, I was getting results and refining and experimenting. Um started teaching it at yoga studios, at festivals, um and of course kept embodying it within myself quite deeply, exploring it, just kind of like evolved eventually. People expressed that hey, like I want to do a um, I want to share this as well. So then like okay, we it evolved into teacher trainings and other courses. I was just like, I just find myself, I just keep doing it. Like it's so interesting and what it brings up and how it impacts people. I'd say like at this point, every single day I'm seeing profound like shifts with people through through this work, basically. And through the body work. That's another one we need to talk about the whole realm of body work with this. Yep, definitely. Yeah, and I'm just having these really beautiful sessions with people where we get very into the deep somatic layers where they're often like trembling to release and let go. So it just keeps getting more and more interesting, to be honest. So I keep following the threads and keep going. Well, when you teach, I mean, my I haven't gone through your course, but the my my sense is that you teach from a pretty experiential place that you know there were it's no sense talking about this too much until we can kind of wake it up inside each each of us. But for people you're taking through, you're introducing it to, I'm curious. Like, do you how much do you talk about biology biological aspects of it? How much do you talk about sort of the psycho-spiritual components of it? How do you can how do you contextualize this for your students in audience? I love that question. I uh well, one I tune in with who I'm speaking to, like and what they're place, what they're like, you know, where they're at. Are they like a mainstream corporate worker or are they like a yogi? So You know, it's I try to be relational actually and like you know get to know people and you know there's many lenses we can look at this and so what I like teach the teacher training per se, like we go deep into probably like four or five different lenses from the like scientific lens to the yogic, the qigong, even indigenous and shamanic sort of lens. So and there's definitely more, but yeah, after a while, like a you know a few lenses is plenty to look at for a changing human. Yeah. And they all I find that they all complement each other a lot better, you know, saying the same things for the same human bodies experience but in different ways often. So I see what's happening. I love that. Um without repeating your entire teacher training, which we don't have time for, but I would but like uh with the indigenous or the shamanic or even the qigong lens, like I love those lenses, but you know, outside of the you know, sort of western neurobiological lens. Could you share just like I don't know, one or two or three things that like like from those lenses, the shamanic, the indigenous or qigong, that that are that feel resonant for you, that feel important, yeah. Yeah, so let's go with the uh well, first of all, like this comes from nature, it evolved, so that's the the oldest like place I see the crystals found. It's evolved as a mechanism over a very long time in the nervous system of animals to bring us into self-regulation, yeah, to bring us into homeostasis. And so, more than anything, that that's really the basis of this is this, and that's the scientific learns, you could say. And then kind of the next level up or in the progression of the timeline of human history would be say like indigenous cultures, shamanistic cultures. Maybe you could even say biblical. This is important because these cultures are often very connected with nature and the body, and as a natural mechanism, they're often just tuned into it, and their cultures are supporting it from birth. And the most notable is from the work of Dr. Bradford Kewe, who's one of my biggest inspirations for this modality, uh, especially early on. And he went and lived with the indigenous Kalahari Bushmen, and they have this whole culture of shaking shamanism where basically they they become stronger shamans by how much embodied they are with this shake. And they have different levels where when they're first learning, they're getting the shake. It's like it's sporadic, it's moving and it's healing them. And then they talk about reaching a point where this the energy of the sheikh centers into let's say, let's start bringing in the qigong ones, centers in the dan tian at the pit of the belly. This major energy, important energy center of qi gong practice. Basically, the Bushman's pump, I see that centers there, that the shake at the pit of the belly. It centers it pumps, and kind of continuing on the qi gong lens, it what I see is it goes into that nerve plexus there at the pit of the belly, into the spine. So the energy of this shake goes into the spine, up and down the spinal cord, into the brain, and starts nourishing us from deep, deeply from the inside out. And this is when in the indigenous in the Kalahari Bushman culture, they start to become a shaker that can support others with the shake, which I think is really beautiful. And then as they keep progressing, they talk about dancing with the spirits, and it starts getting really spiritual, and I um yeah cosmic, yeah, yeah. Basically, I see that as they're raising the energy of the spirit, and qi gong talks about the spirit as well, the shame yeah, so I think qi gong is one of the best kind of in embodiment energy science for working with the energy that the shape and starts to cultivate within yourself. Because qi gong is kind of the art of grounding and working with this subtle qi bottle. How to breathe, move. So I I recommend anyone who wants to really go deep with making this like qigong is like a beautiful compliment to to embody in it. I could go on and on. Like I find myself wanting now to go into the yoga cleans a bit. Yeah, no, that would be great. Yeah, yeah. No, no, this that what you just shared was so interesting. Yeah, no, yeah. Please bring in the yoga glance. Well, there's a there's a common thing in yoga, they talk about kundalini, right? And this is a sort of myth, you could say mystical energy, maybe that they the yogis talk about awakens at the root of the spine, and it's you know, some people call it Shakti, the divine kind of feminine uh energy that once it starts moving, it it goes up the spine and travels through really the nervous system, the energy channels. Right. And I I see shaking medicine as a very potent way to wake this up because it's our natural state, really. Once we get the blockages out of the way, this primal life force starts to awaken. And really, this is a yin way to awaken this thing called Kingolini, whereas traditional Kingdalini yoga is often a bit forceful, a little bit young, I think. So it's a nice way to work with this feminine essence and waken it up in what I see to be a much more gentle, feminine way from letting go of control and deep surrender, relaxation, um, and start and to start controlling everything essentially to relax, like uh yeah, to get out of this. It's an illusion, anyway, to even think we're in control in the first book, so we might as well just let it get as well let it pass. Yeah, yeah. So cool. No, very I love hearing that those articulations, really appreciate that. These days I just I talk about it so much, I start to merge the uh sometimes. Yeah, that's perfect, but they just say work together. Yeah. So okay, so then that brings me brings me to another curiosity because in you know this general field of alternative medicine, healing, things like that, something that's common is that people will invoke the field of quantum physics by way of analogy. People who are non-physicists will frequently borrow on concepts, ideas, sometimes perhaps well, sometimes perhaps, you know, it's a little bit like the idea of cultural appropriation, but maybe it's uh scientific appropriation. But I'm curious for you, you know, who is a physicist, does the lens of physics, whether that be through resonance, vibration, does that the the does the lens of physics or quantum physics, does it how, if at all, does it play into your thinking, your wondering, your curiosities around this, these processes? Yeah, I think more than anything, it's affected the way I think about the world, about the universe, solving complex math and quantum physics puzzles and problems that get into all sorts of counterintuitive concepts like quantum entanglement and superposition and working into working in a realm that's very abstract, let's say. And the way that this it's kind of coming to me now, actually, that the way that this really has affected the way that shaking medicine has evolved, or let's say my personal embodiment practice, how I work with this kind of energy, is it's I see it as helpful in the sense that when we embody therapeutic trimming, are really embodying the deep capacity that we have within ourselves. There's really infinite possibilities. So, which it in a way is an abstract concept itself, this idea of infinity. So when I'm embodying, I really feel that there's infinite ways to move, there's infinite ways for the trimmering to to or the if as it evolves into kundalini or the you know more types of qigong practice. It's helpful to have this kind of I guess mindset of superposition, of like, oh, this and this, and then bringing that into a spiritual connecting spiritually. You know, we might get into concepts like like a duality, really, that in life, paradox is a big one for me that comes up. Often paradoxes show up in life, and usually there's a lot of gold to go look at the paradox because you know, there's there might be one part of us that's like, yeah, let's do that, another part that's like, no, don't do that. So then there's this kind of superposition of realities where something's not aligned or integrated, and we're battling with ourselves. So looking at the these paradoxes and doing trying to do more so myself as these lately, and often when I just look at it and breathe into it, and I'm like, oh, it just kind of fades away, you know, it melts. Vibration, that's a big one. So to the simple answer is vibration, everything is vibration to the atomic level, the photons are vibrating, everything we're made of made of is pulsing, essentially shaking, we could say. Everything is shaking, and so too can our body shake on this macroscopic way, and perhaps you know, as you get super sensitive to it, it starts to feel more microscopic or quantum deep on the inside and in the consciousness because it this work affects the subconscious mind, the nervous system. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So cool to hear those reflections. Some something I think Does that kind of make sense? It does. Well, so something I think about sometimes is so, you know, my you know, kind of lean back into my Zen training and in our Zen training uses a kind of uses a fairly similar, kind of uses the Qigong sort of um and Taoist kind of philosophy, uh, but especially this idea about kind of microcosm and macrocosm. So something I think about sometimes is, you know, we engage, we engage here at the body. We can think of the our individual human body as the microcosm, but you know, in Taoist thinking and the this sort of like what's the relationship between the individual and the universe or the cosmos? And and I sort of wonder if one of my I guess ways that I experience and hold tremoring and vibration is that I'm I'm tapping into the nature within me, which you know, I am, you know, I am nature inside, but I often find that is it connects me to something that feels, you know, sort of more whole or bigger. This and I find this is especially true if I'm doing my practice and maybe I'm in a natural setting where it's easier for me to feel the larger sort of natural field around me, you know, at the level of the trees and the mountains and the land, but you know, but beyond that as well. So so personally speaking, I sometimes I some I think of my tremoring practice as something that connects me deeply inside, but that it somehow also connects me to the greater field of experience as well. So that's like one way that I hold it a little bit. And I just I don't know, maybe curious if you think in those terms at all. Or I love that. I deeply resonate actually with that. I I guess my interpretation or what that's bringing up in me right now is that when I am trimmering, one one way to go about it is to think, okay, we're centering ourselves, like so qigong helps center in a line. And it's like if any if there's any density or tension or charge in my system that's pulling me out of center, then I can, you know, by relaxing, let that trimmer away as my nervous system comes deeper and deeper into center. And the centering is essentially merging with all that is as it is, the universe, ourselves, the ground beneath us. And that merging is like it's like allowing our vibration to become like communicate, maybe that's a good word, with the environment around us and be transparent. Yeah, so this kind of merging or dissolving is one way to look at it. Ideally, the mind is at rest. There's not thinking, it's just this stillness, this a meditative state essentially, which this often gets people into spontaneous states of meditation because after a bunch of release, it's like often like the deep stillness. The Kalahari Bushman talk a lot about this, the process has lots of waves and cycles where we'll go into like ecstatic like releases to deep like states of stillness, um everything in between to expressing the emotions, crying, screaming, bandiculating, all kinds of beautiful things, which moves that that trauma energy, the anxiety, it moves that the trapped emotions, which I'm seeing more and more. It just it just feels like these things are the really the underlying cause of so many of our problems. It's not the it's not the it's well, I don't want to say it's not anything particularly, but it's often this like a stuck emotional energy that needs to be like let go of to calm the nervous. Felt felt and moved, expressed, acknowledged, yeah. Well, let's let's let's talk about the psychedelic connection a little bit. If you came for and I'll just maybe I'll thought yeah, well, yeah, I mean well what I'll my what I'll share is context first, which is so sort of maybe two pieces of context. So one is it's pretty, you know, in the let's see, 12 years that I've you know, sort of offered tremoring and TRE as sort of as one of the tools, you know, in addition to body work and somatic experiencing and things. I would say um quite a few people, you know, people come to they hear about tremoring or TRE various ways. Sometimes they hear about it because it's it's through the connection of trauma. Sometimes they hear about it it's good for anxiety reduction. Sometimes they hear about it for it's improv it's improved their friend's sleep, whatever it is. But I would say a pretty common thing is that somebody has done, maybe it's been their first or just they've done a psychedelic journey. Maybe that was psilocybin, maybe that was MDMA, I guess not technically a psychedelic, but a gen or whatever. But some medicine work where part of their experience was spontaneous tremoring. And sometimes in my the clients that I've held, sometimes that tremoring that's woken up via their psychedelic could be ayahuasca, could be whatever. In my experience, it's been with many medicines. And now tremoring is happening in their body. They may also be tapping into other kinds of emotional work, discharge, trauma layers, sometimes, or sometimes it's only physical. But it's as though it's awoken up a tremoring, somatic process. And now they're wanting to integrate it and work with it not only in not only during medicine work. So I've supported a lot of people coming where psychedelic or medicine work is what stimulated it. Now it's alive in their system, and so now, naturally speaking, they're looking for what do I do with this, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of one thing. And so I'll curious about your thoughts there. But then the I'll just say my other piece now, which is then the opposite. People who already are tremorers, and now they want to see is they're getting interested in medicine work. And because they're already a tremorer, naturally speaking, it it shows up during their journeys. Again, ayahuasca, MDMA, whatever it is. And many of ketamine, many of them are saying, This is wonderful. I'm so glad I know how to let this my body express. I'm so glad I have this practice because now I go into my medicine work. I know exactly what to do. I can follow that. And sometimes it opens up new areas of my tremoring, brings me to new that wasn't happening when I wasn't doing my medicine work. So it's as though the medicine work is sometimes amplifying people who already have a shaking medicine or tremoring type of a practice. So I've kind of seen it in both of these directions. And in my view, there's a really important linkage. And so I'm, yeah, what are what are you seeing and hearing and what what are your what are you thinking about this intersection? Yeah, yeah. Well, I've had quite similar experiences as you, first of all, in both these regards, that people often find it for the first time on a journey, like like I did. And so that's very much not that's not uncommon, let's say. I've in this regard, there's a couple things that I see that people either they like like to me, they were able to intuitively like allow it and trust that it was a good. Thing or they get scared of it and they contract and it actually takes away from the experience because they don't know what it is. So, particularly for those people that you know get frightened of it, which is the cultural conditioning of our society for a long time around this children. So it's understandable that anyone feels afraid or scared of what's happening. So it's I see plant medicine and shaking medicine or any therapeutic trimmering practice or any really autogenic movement or somatic modality, these this sort of realm of practices would say is very complementary to the plant medicine experience because they're about like shaking medicine, for example, is about letting go of control, which is what really the medicines do. That's I'd say that's their primary role. It's like in particular psychedelics, let's say. That's my main experience on that experience with the other ones you mentioned. But the I'd say these really get people to in their minds to start to for the ego. It's like a medicine for the ego, is a good way to look at it. It shows us what's alive, what's present, what needs to be shifted. It can be inspiring to inspire us with creativity and just so much. It gets this control mechanism to just surrender and move into presence and feeling. So shaking medicine, I tell people this regularly. I feel like it's one of the best possible ways to prepare for a psychedelic journey if you are planning to do it. Because just as you said, so often when people are embodied in this, especially if they know about it before, they can soften into it during the journey. And many people have told me that their favorite part about their journey was just being able to lie there and tremor and instinctively move for hours or however long, you know. So these are my some of my thoughts. Very important fusion to anyone I feel anyone doing plant medicine work needs to be at least aware of this, educated of what this is. If not, and I'd even say like they should be working with this together, probably because it's so complimentary. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking of one client in particular who is kind of doing some long-term trauma work, comp, you know, complex drama stuff from childhood, working with working from many different angles, doing EMDR therapy, doing a regular tremor person somatic experiencing work. And but also uh psychedelic work has been a big has been a major component of his ongoing healing process. And most recently, and most recently, and I mean I've been working with this person for four or five years, and with a lot of success, you know, non-medicine based, and uh recently in some of his personal MDMA work, he was able to both both at the conscious level at the mind level, but also at the body. It was interesting that it was the body that led him to this. His body went through a certain set of movements, vibrations and other kinds of movements that led him much closer. It's like his body was telling the story, and it led him much closer to the kind of the original incident, one of the one of the early primary, you know, traumatic incidents that he hadn't had a lot of conscious access to because it was very young and quite traumatic, therefore, therefore, you know, you know, kind of dissociated from. So, but his MDMA work, and he and again, he's been tremoring for four or five years, by letting his body lead the way, he then got into a much clearer awareness of the original context from an embodied perspective, from a but he, but in a way that he felt safe enough to be there, not wasn't overwhelming and quite integrating. And so then in our work afterwards, a lot of it is around integrating, you know, what he learned and remembered was the you know, could be integrated in other in other ways. But to me, this was such a clear example of where, in my view, in a sense, I believe he, in a sense, needed both of these things. He needed to trust his tremoring. The MDMA for him really facilitated him being able to follow it with less fear, with and then end up doing a piece of very delicate trauma work that I'm you know, there may be have other routes to get into this, but but this was a really successful example in in my in my experience. So just kind of thinking about oh my god, yeah. That's like that's I see that like people who struggle to get the trimmer mechanism, it can definitely work that way. Of uh the medicines can be combined to help them embody this as well, like through a you know, guided session. And actually, just the other day I worked with someone. You know, I'm I guess I'm blessed to be in a place where these things are legal, and he had a little bit of we did a uh session, a body work session, Zentai Shihatsu Shaking Medicine Trauma Release sort of session, and he had his first journey of mushrooms, his first ever means a little bit, not a lot, but and his a lot of the session what ended up being him tremoring just through presence, touching points and breathing, and he was just going deep into release, and he'd never accessed that before. It wasn't through words, it was through intention and presence and touch and energy and a little bit of magic mushrooms to to help him let go. And he let go in a big way, cried and just had an amazing release. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it'll be very interesting to follow this. Well, let's that's a good you're that you're giving us a good transition because I because I thought it would be fun to talk about body work too. And so you just you did that's I I love what you just shared. I love what you just shared because there was shaking medicine, there was medicine, a plant medicine, mushrooms in this case, and touch work, body work facilitation. But and that's a big passion of mine, you know, because my original therapeutic work is as a hands-on bodyworker doing structural integration, body work, and then other things, myofascial release, energy type touch, you know, zero balancing, things like that. And so when I first found TRE tremoring, it's because I would so frequently see my clients, and like had happened to me, you know, when I told you in my original story that not every session, not every time, but sometimes I'd be working with people and I'd see a little bit of vibration or sometimes a lot of vibration and discharge. And so it as a bodywork therapist, it always seemed important to me that geez, if you're gonna be touching people, it would you should probably you should know what this vibration is. Not only know what it is, you may want to know how to facilitate it. What do you do when that arises? How do you support it? So that's been so that's kind of been a thing of mine. And I've evolved, you know, I now do some teaching specifically to body workers where I seminars where I teach them about tremoring, how to what to know about it, how to be a little bit safe with it, but especially how to how to use the skills they already have as a bodywork touch therapist to support and uh provide a container that facilitates and supports the unfolding of a neurogenic tremoring. And you, it sounds like you've been really uh diving into the zentai shiatsu. Zentai shiatsu. Exactly. And yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts and compare notes around what's different or what's what are the benefits of involve of having two people touch involved in with people's tremoring or autogenic movement. I'd love to hear your what you're discovering with that. Oh man, so much. I'm discovering such a rich tapestry of possibilities, finding that it's people to be held in such a way that their nervous system can do that release, you know, is it's ultra powerful to for say a therapist, a body worker, to build a sense when someone's like at this precipice of their body wanting to like literally crack open through the quaking is profound. And actually, your job as a bodyworker all of a sudden gets effortless. It gets easy because all you're doing is listening to the how their nervous system wants to unravel, and we can do that from our centers. So, like this effortless action of woo-way of doing it. So listening to this, being able to find this is really, really potent. The most potent probably aspect like when we get to these places, we're getting deep, right? Like, you know, tie massage is it's kind of more physical body stuff, you know, working with the muscles, the fascia. Like it's deep, mini massage, you know, it's working the that physical layer. But when we can go deeper into the energetics and then the charges of the emotions and the trauma, and actually like feel that and hold space for that in people, then we facilitate them to transform it. We hold space for that to happen, but that can only happen the way I see it anyway, is if we're embodied with it, like it's I feel like first of all, it's this is quite of an intuitive medicine that's learned best through embodying it, right? So it's developing our felt sense intelligence. So to to work with the body, it's like some step-by-step video isn't, I don't feel is going to really get you to feel what I'm talking about, the charges in the body, the vibrational energy, everything's vibration, yeah, bringing it back to quantum. So if you are a body worker out there looking to get this first step, is to if you aren't already embody it yourself, like you can't, yeah. I don't think you're really gonna sense that in people if you haven't sensed it in yourself, right? Right. Very important, and a lot of it is intuitive. Like I was I'd been doing it, I don't know, like a year or something, and I gave one of my friends a big hug one day, and I just like whoa, I felt her charges, like trauma energy. It's like, whoa, what is that? And then I realized I could hold her in that when I realized what it was, I could hold that breathe, and then she like like dissolved onto the ground into this like deep state of letting go. And so it'll it'll just it'll definitely happen by embodying it. You'll start to feel it in others, and that's not to say, like, of course, we can teach things uh that that could get you going and stuff. So that's definitely possible as well. Yeah, embodying it. Well, yeah, no, I love that. I mean, that's I love a few things. I like the I liked your comment, you know, what you can sense when some when somebody's at the precipice of uh you know something starting to move or flow. And and I agree. I mean, to me, what was so exciting to me in my early couple years when I first got into body work passionately, you know, 15, 18 years ago, something like that. It's like I I learned over a couple of years, it it's it gave me a tangible practice where I could confirm everything everything I had ever learned about, you know, sort of energy flows and and what we can sense and feel. It's like it gave me a very practical setting uh where you spend enough time hands-on with bodies where you're in an in an attuned state to yourself, to the person that you're with. If you're staying open and listening, I think any anybody will discover wow, there is so much that we can sense and feel in terms of the interaction between this person's energy body for lack of a better term, or their nervous system and your own, your own breath, your own presence, and the dynamic exchange between this organism and this organism coming together. So, so to me, there's there's almost a limitless amount of sensitivity that can start to emerge in if you're looking if you're open to it, if you're looking for that. And so, so I totally agree with this richness, but I'll say one other thing. This might be something about my personality, is that I'm also like a little bit impatient sometimes. And and so something that I loved, and this is kind of going back to when I first found TRE as a method, something that I was so so excited about was sometimes I would have clients come to me as a body worker, and I the term I would use would be a cold body. And what I meant was this person's not very awake yet to their own sensations, they don't yet have a lot of sensation for themselves, they don't feel themselves. Um they don't have a strong connection to how they sense emotions in the body. And to me, as a body worker, I could sort of sense that when somebody they maybe they didn't have a yoga practice or they hadn't done something to wake up their mind-body connection for themselves yet. And so for me in my early days doing, you know, 10-session series body work, I would get people who have a cold body, and I loved working with people with a warm or uh body where everything was already connected and woken up, but it was a challenge working with cold bodies. So something that I started to lean into was that if I showed them just the basics of you know, using the TRE format, you know, just a butterfly position, doing if I could show them how to stimulate the a vibration in a neurogenic tremor, one that might open up that might that that would give our sessions more life because they're now you so even though it's sort of in a sense an artificially inducing it, not waiting for it to emerge organically, but using the TRE process to get it going, it's like that could make things accelerate things a little bit. And then I would tell them, please start to do this on your own a couple of times a week, play with this a little bit. And what this really helped for this impatient side of me was that it was like that started to do some of the work of waking them up to their bodies. And then my work doing the rolfing structural integration, everything happened more quickly, more easily because it was speeding up the process of them connecting into their bodies and their nervous system. So, so even though I love this idea of like purely just allowing, I sometimes bring in the artificial catalyst of, you know, let's just let's get this thing cooking a little bit and see what that does for you. I think, yeah, that's beautiful. I I like when I go into the therapeutic trimming part of my class or any hetogenic movement, it's I see it, there's different phases of exploring, and we can have fun, we get creative, and I see this kick starting it as you say. It's like having a strategy or a way of starting to feel what the sensations in the body are that say, hey, something wants to shake here. And lately I've been more leaning towards just calling them games because they're in and of itself, it's not the it's not the the thing, the thing, but it's a good thing to help get to the thing. It's like not to get attached to the thing, and we can play other games too. We don't have to be attached to one game. And then once we once we find the trimmering in some way with some game, some I like to be playful, you know, keep it lighthearted mostly. And we go into the surrender phase where it's like, okay, I'm in a let's call it a shaking station, and I'm gonna just let go of the game now and just be hang out, uh let it move us, make sounds, yeah, move us how it wants to. Go into the surrendering to it, and we might dance between back and forth between things, but I think it's a good teacher will use intelligent games to to kick start the process for sure, and bring people on the journey and to yeah, I think that's important for sure. That's so cool. Well, Keith, what have we missed? What is there any other angle? Any what anything else you want to share? What would help you feel complete for our conversation? Well, I loved how we just naturally flared into all I think all the things we mentioned we wanted to speak to. So, what else would there be? Well, I'd like to share that this is a powerful way to bring us into, I like to call it animalistic homeostasis, where the whole point of the mechanism is that it's the way animals in nature and we are animals according to science. We are animals that can vibrate our way back to to balance and harmony or homeostasis, and um yeah, this is a powerful way to do it. And what's unique about this kind of work is to is it's fundamentally about letting go of control and allowing and surrendering to something within us. And this is unlike a lot of stuff out there, not nothing, but a lot of stuff out there we're we're controlling in some way. Even our yoga practice, let's say, that's always a good example. We're controlling the mind, the body, the breath, which has its place. It's important. It just needs to be balanced. Like everything in life, it's really about striking the right balance, I feel. So balance balance with letting go of control. It's a trust that actually your nervous system is super intelligent, your instinctive mind, super intelligent. It knows from nature how to vibrate you back to peace and harmony and move a lot of the problems that are so common in our society, stemming from stress, anxiety, suppressed emotions, trauma, this sort of thing. And also as the channels, as the body clears, you know, it's this stuff isn't just about letting go of all that ickiness, it's about cultivating our fullest human potential. It's about awakening that kundalini. And when the path the path's clear and the energy comes to this state of balance and harmony, more energy to do the things we love happens. We access like more states of love is a good way to look at it. People here have been asking me, what am I doing? You know, because this stuff has infiltrated all aspects of my life. Like it doesn't matter what I do in, it it shines through in some way or another, the deep somatic works of this affects all of life, really. And anytime we're closer to homeostasis, life is just betting. Yeah. So we've been calling it, I've been telling people it's just like a it's like a giant love orgasm. Like it's like shoo, like it's if just I believe this unity, this merging with the universe is it might as well just be what the vibrational field of love, and uh, and so it's sort of emerging into a state of being, this love energy. So yeah. Well, so yeah, so powerful to hear your journey, but your reflections. I love how you share and uh yeah, articulate and hearing your descriptions so so uh enriching, enriching for me to have this conversation. Me too. Thank you, Alex. Wow, that was uh I've had a really good time sharing and chatting and discussing. Thank you again so much for having me on your podcast. And oh, it's incredible getting to know you. I want to get to know you more and keep the conversation alive. Well, let's make sure that happens. Well, and for the listeners, we know we haven't set a date yet, but I've I've Keith has agreed to come to the to do an online workshop for our neurogenic integration, you know, member community thing. So we haven't set the dates, but at a minute, but we'll at least get them once, maybe more than once. We'll see where we'll see where things go. But so yeah, but Keith, no, so glad to have made this connection, hear your story, and I hope that there's plenty more to follow. It's a pleasure and honor to share, and I can't wait to share an embodiment journey with you all. Yeah. 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.