You’ve may have heard Leckey and Petra refer to the shaking that animals naturally do in the wild after they go through traumatic experiences. We’ve finally found a video that shows it! Although it was taken by an amateur videographer, he or she was patient enough to allow us to watch what happens when an animal comes out of freeze.
In the video below, you’ll see an impala that has gone into the freeze response after having been chased and caught by a leopard. Before the impala went into freeze, it was running for its life, its system flooded with adrenaline, cortisol, and glucose. [Spoiler alert!] Luckily for the impala, a hyena distracted the leopard, and then two baboons chased the leopard away.
The impala shakes violently, releasing all that pent-up survival energy, then bounds off, never to suffer PTSD or other trauma- or stress-related diseases. Don’t you love a story with a happy ending?
Putting the impala’s experience into context: learning more about tremors
At some point, science will catch up with Dr. David Berceli, the creator of TRE. He’s been writing a book about therapeutic tremors, and in the video below, he compares them with the tremors recognized by other scientific fields.
In the field of psychology and neurology, tremors are largely viewed as pathological. In the field of physiology, however, tremors are considered positive. They’re credited with increasing flexibility, mobility, and circulation; reducing pain; and accelerating healing.
The tremoring we do in TRE is also viewed positively. It completes the discharge that was aborted during a stressful or traumatic event (see the video above) reducing anxiety and releasing the physical contraction we naturally experience under threat. Thus, through TRE, we can claim the impala’s happy ending for ourselves!