Recently, I’ve been experiencing a real-life example of how injury forms into chronic tension in the body. I fell three weeks ago on pavement, with a pretty bad sprain to the left foot, milder sprains in other joints, and bumps and bruises in many other places. Initially, the foot got all the focus and other parts had to compensate for it. Using crutches, holding my body in weird ways, not being able to sleep well…all of these impacted how I used muscles and whether they were able to recover.

A surprising influence has been the terror in my body when faced with doing a seemingly normal activity that I haven’t done since the fall. For example, a couple of days ago I was faced with the prospect of going up and down a flight of stairs. When I realized I would need to do this, I was flooded with fear and tension. I recognized what was going on and was able to talk myself down and negotiate the stairs. If I hadn’t been that aware, I could have held on to that fear for quite awhile. Bodies moving while holding tension tend to then develop more tension, and potentially cause more injury, causing more pain, causing more fear, etc. This is known as the Fear Avoidance Model.

Throughout these few weeks, I’ve been using TRE several times daily to try to move the tension out of my body. Often they are quick shakes when I’m resting for a moment, as well as practicing tremoring a few minutes before I get out of bed in the morning.  As my foot hurts less and functions more like a foot, I am noticing tension in my back, my right leg, and shoulders. I’m working hard to prevent this from becoming a chronic problem, but it takes a lot of conscious awareness and willingness to do things despite the fear. It’s really been quite an amazing process!