TRE® changed my life.
Not in a subtle way. It gave my body a way to begin releasing decades of accumulated stress and trauma — something no other method had been able to do.
What follows is my lived experience.
A Childhood Shaped by Trauma
I grew up in a family marked by generational trauma. Seven generations of my family have died by suicide related to bipolar disorder. Instability shaped my early years. My siblings and I spent had many sleepovers at neighbors’ houses. Looking back, I understand that my mother tried to shield us from what was happening at home with my Dad. On my tenth birthday, my Dad took his life. We still had my party, but my Mom moved it next door so all the kids would be out of the way.
After my Dad died, my brother physically and relentlessly abused me for years. I now understand that he struggled with bipolar disorder from a young age. At the time, I told no one. I believed that being a “tattle-tail” would be worse than the pain. We did not speak about any of it until I reached my thirties, and we never did go into deeply into it.
A Home Filled With Volatility
When I was twelve, my mother remarried. My stepfather brought two teenage sons into our home, and they were already deeply out of control and involved in a biker gang. I will never forget the first meal the seven of us shared. One of my new stepbrothers picked up his plate, flipped it upside down, and said, “This is f’ing slop.” My mother reacted instantly and slapped him across the face. That moment set the tone.
Instability escalated quickly. One year later, my stepsister died in a motorcycle accident. She and her sister had both experienced significant trauma before entering our lives. They were already drinking at twelve and thirteen. The environment in our home reflected layers of unresolved pain. Daily life revolved around volatility. Fights, arrests, robberies, and chaos with the young men became normal.
At first, I disappeared and stayed quiet. Eventually, I rebelled in quieter ways. My best friend and I became skilled shoplifters and even fenced items at school. At the same time, I threw myself into competitive gymnastics. It gave me structure, discipline, and fun, but it was mainly a reason to stay away from home.
My sister responded differently. She withdrew, wrote poetry, and stayed in her room. As I grew older and physically stronger, the dynamic with my brother shifted and the physical abuse stopped. Amid all of this, one beautiful thing happened. My mother had a baby boy. He brought a welcome joy into the house and softened something in all of us.
By my senior year, only my three-year-old brother and I remained at home. We left the city and moved to a small Alberta town. I left lifelong friends and entered an environment where I felt completely isolated with no friends. A group of grade twelve boys bullied me daily. I remember hiding from them in park and shaking with fear. Once again, I kept everything inside.
Because of these cumulative experiences, my ACE (adverse childhood event) score sits very high.
Early Independence and Repeated Threats
I left home at sixteen. I lived briefly with my sister, then with a twenty-two-year-old man I met in Calgary. He drank heavily and didn’t work much. I supported us by working as a waitress and teaching gymnastics. At eighteen, I moved to Vancouver alone.
During the 1980s, I worked as a bank teller by day and taught dance and aerobics part-time. Bank security was very different then, and our branch sat on the rough side of the city. Over nine years, I experienced about ten bank robberies. Always a man pointing a handgun or knife at me on the other side of my wicket.
The last robbery changed everything. A man wearing a skeleton mask jumped over the counter and held a sawed-off shotgun to my head. He forced me to empty every till. Afterwards, some of us shook and cried while others seemed completely immobilized. Only decades later did I understand that the shaking was my body attempting to discharge the trauma through tremoring, while others were locked in a frozen state.
Two weeks later, police caught him after he killed an officer during another robbery. I quit the bank soon after. Months later, I testified in court. I had studied his eyes and noted his height on the entrance grid. My testimony was key to his conviction. Standing inches from him in court (without his mask on) to identify his eyes, was profoundly destabilizing.
Five Years Under Chronic Stress Overseas
In 2002, I moved to Malaysia and then Indonesia to train Pilates teachers. The family of the Malaysian Prime Minister brought me in, and we introduced formal Pilates teacher training to the Asian seaboard. It was a remarkable opportunity that I was excited about, but it carried relentless stress beneath the surface.
Cultural shock, heat, and pollution required adjustment, but the racism and corruption weighed far heavier. I witnessed disturbing levels of political and police corruption and navigated proximity to elite and royal families and organized crime networks. I stayed for four years because I loved my students and believed in what we were building. That decision came at a cost to my well being.
During that time, two motorcycle robberies left me injured. One severe enough to require hospitalization for concussion and stitches. I remember shaking in the hospital while nurses tried to stop it with warm blankets. In another incident, a man held a knife to my throat outside my apartment. I fought back and escaped. Later, a physician sexually violated me while treating me for food poisoning as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
On Christmas Day in Jakarta, a man was beheaded inside the Catholic church next to my apartment. The next morning, I gave notice and left Asia as quickly as I could.
Spain: Speaking Up
In 2007, I took a one-year contract in a small town in Spain to train Pilates teachers. I believed it would be a beautiful next chapter. In hindsight, I should have secured a trial contract. I loved the lifestyle and I lived on the Mediterranean. I embraced the siestas and built meaningful friendships. The instructors I trained were dedicated and eager to learn. I made an effort to learn the language.
Several months in, the instructors came to trust me and shared what was happening. The studio owners were tyrants. They had brought them all from Argentina and they were holding their passports and restricted their ability to leave. They pushed them into exhausting schedules with no regard for their well-being.
At that time, I was still living in chronic pain. My nervous system was already depleted. I was not just exhausted — I know now that I was deeply afraid. Once I understood the full reality of the instructors situation, I faced a big decision. It took time to build the courage, but I could not stay silent.
Confronting the owners by myself was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I remember my body shaking as I cried and spoke directly to what I knew was true. I would not be complicit, and I resigned. A close friend from Canada flew over to help me leave safely. My employers refused to pay my final wages. We attempted to recover it but were unsuccessful. We reported them to the local authorities and left the country. A year later, the studio closed.
Looking back, I understand something more clearly. I did not just go there to teach…I went there at a time when someone speaking up mattered.
When the Body Breaks Down
When I returned to Canada in 2008, my body carried the accumulation of years of unresolved stress and trauma. I still had debilitating low back pain, severe insomnia, and constant hypervigilance. A backfiring car triggered panic and motorcycles made me jump. Loud music and noise overwhelmed me. Teaching was difficult because I could not concentrate. Walking into a bank and seeing a vault made my stomach drop. I sensed something remained trapped inside me, but I could not name it.
For the next decade, I searched for answers. I pursued talk therapy, physiotherapy, massage, chiropractic care, acupuncture, spinal injections, hypnosis, EMDR, Tai Chi, sound therapy, and much more. Many of the approaches helped in specific ways but I never felt that any of them resolved the core issue.
Discovering TRE®
In 2018, everything began to shift when I discovered the method. For the first time, I understood that my triggers did not originate in my thoughts. My central nervous system was on high alert and my body felt trapped . As I practiced TRE® consistently, my body began to tremor into patterns that mirrored past experiences. Memories surfaced and huge emotional releases followed.
My nervous system began to process what it had carried for decades. Over time, my triggers diminished. My back pain eased and sleep improved. My ability to focus and teach returned. I felt steady again.
TRE® did not fix everything. Healing for me, has been many layered and ongoing. But TRE® definitely gave my body an easy way to begin releasing what had been held for far too long.
Why I Teach TRE®
I teach TRE® because I have lived the cost of unresolved trauma in the body. I have also experienced what happens when the body is finally given an easy way to begin releasing it. This is not about mindset or pushing through. It is about allowing the nervous system to complete what it could not complete at the time. TRE® gave me that starting point.
I teach TRE because it continues to help me. This method will always be an integral part of my life. If any part of this story resonates with you, know this. Your body is not broken. It is responding exactly as it was designed to. You just need to give it permission to release what it has been holding.
Want to understand more about the science and mechanics behind it?
Check out https://kellermethodvitality.com/blog/tre-basics-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/
