A few months back, a task popped up on my company goals page: ‘learn something new that gives you joy’. Three weeks later, I was attending a TRE workshop.

I first encountered Tension Release Exercises, or TRE, in the Philippines. In short, it’s about initiating a natural shaking reflex, as a way to recalibrate the nervous system after stress. The method derives from observing other mammals. Zebras famously do that, as do dogs.

Our culture identifies shaking as a symptom of anxiety. So we learn to suppress it. TRE takes a different approach. It’s not a symptom, but a coping mechanism. Why should we suppress self-regulation? Let’s trigger it instead, and feel better. So goes the wisdom of this practice.

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In June 2019, I was invited to join a pop up retreat called ‘Camp Creative’ in northern Bali. My friends Samuel and Ai from the School of Slow Media were organising it. They gathered a bunch of oddballs from around the region. We spent three days together, working on a creative project of our choice. 

The retreat began with a constellation mapping exercise. It was my first encounter with the practice. ‘What will you give yourself permission to focus on?’ was our leading question. To find our answer, we were invited to write down our name, and three to five possible projects, on separate pieces of paper.

We placed the papers on the ground, forming a pattern. Then we stood on them in turn, and paid attention to our physiological reactions: what was tense, what was exciting, what felt inert or boring. Other external inputs came up. We would face an open window, a pond or a brick wall. All this contributed to make meaning. We used our bodies as a sensing tool to track our deep intention.

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Back in 2015, I enrolled in a life-changing leadership program with the THNK School of Creative Leadership. That’s where I met one of my most impactful teachers: a body-mind mentor called Andra Perrin. She trained as a dancer, choreographer, and martial artist – with Qi Gong at the core of her practice. As a brainy boy, I had a lot to learn from her.

Each day started with her, loosening joints and slowly moving to feel our own bodies as a space of possibility. More impressive were optional sessions in the late afternoon. During those, she trained out capacity to bring people along simply by walking in front of them, or tested our own reactions to confrontation.

One memorable exercise came close to Jedi Mind Tricks. We would walk towards another participant, shake hands, and aim to ‘take centre’. That is, so to speak, bring the other person within our gravitational orbit. Andra taught us various ways to do that: anchor deep in the ground, focus and breathe, stay calm. The most effective technique, however, was to project images behind the other person. ‘Julien will take over,’ she predicted as I approached a CEO, 15 years older than me. ‘He’s got a stronger imagination.’ Smile on my face, I projected rainbow-coloured butterflies in the background, and took over.

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When you reach a certain age, and a certain level of education, it becomes rare to come across original thought. ‘La chair est triste, hélas, et j’ai lu tous les livres.’ Fresh voices are all the more precious. I originally discovered Jean Francois Billeter through my interest in China. He’s a sinologist, and wrote remarkable essays on the art of translation and the work of Zhuangzi.

At about the same time I was training with Andra, I came across his philosophical opuscule, ‘A Paradigm’. The book articulates a bottom-up model for human action, stemming from the body. One core concept is that of integration: the development of new gestures opening new possibilities of acting on the world.  

As our lives are increasingly digitised, it’s all too easy to forget our own embodiment. We look to the mind for problem solving, and our sense of self. Occasionally, we might acknowledge emotions. Unlike AI’s, though, humans are beings-with-bodies. Our intelligence is an emerging phenomenon, arising from our bodies.

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At the TRE class, I met a movement therapist called Mary-Claude. She’s a Swiss woman based in Melbourne, with a background in dance and choreography. She runs group classes, and one on one body-mind sessions. In April, I started training with her.

Every two weeks, we get together in a studio space in Cheltenham. The session begins with ‘shaking it off’, loose dancing around the space. Then she’ll ask me what I want to focus on. I’ll voice a problem I’m struggling with, and start moving around to feel it in my body. We let the gestures evolve, then pause to consider what those spontaneous movements might reveal about my way to frame the problem. From this, we look for further movements that might open original solution spaces. At the end of the hour, I know what to do.

I’m a brainy boy with and arts background. I love language, and I’m good with it. Still, I also know the limits of language for problem solving. It’s our default mode of being in the world. We use it on automatic pilot, most of the time. Break the cycle – tap into bodily wisdom – and fresh vistas open.  Every time I do this, I remember this quote from Billeter. That nobody knows for sure the limits of what a human body can do.