Meet Maria Alfaro, a seasoned yoga teacher turned TRE® facilitator and certification trainer, with over two decades of experience in guiding individuals towards holistic well-being. In her exclusive MysticMag interview, Maria shares her journey into TRE®, insights into its practice, and the transformative benefits it offers for mental, physical, and emotional health.
Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and share a few details about your professional journey?
My name is Maria Alfaro. I’m Italian, but I’ve also been a United States citizen since ’97. I’ve been a yoga teacher most of my adult life and, in 2004, I got introduced to TRE® and, since then, I’ve facilitated it now for over 20,000 people. In the meantime, I’ve also become a TRE certification trainer, working with professionals, mostly psychotherapists and bodyworkers, so that they can teach this work to their clients. I’ve facilitated many trainings all over the world, including Canada, the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia.
What exactly is TRE®?
TRE® stands for Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises. It was created by a psychotherapist, Dr. David Berceli, in war zones in the early 80s. The theory behind it is based on the concept that we contract under stressful circumstances, such as a bombing. He observed young children below school age and noticed that they tend to shake and tremor in such situations. At that time, he put the two things together and created this theory: if we are designed to contract to protect ourselves, we should also be designed to release this contraction.
However, since this release actually happens through shaking and tremoring, we tend to block it because it doesn’t look good. Shaking and tremoring are usually associated with either disease, weakness, or weirdness, so most people don’t want to do it. Still, it’s very common despite that. People observe it all the time and it’s even in the common language. We hear phrases like “I was so nervous that my legs started shaking” or “I was so angry that my hands were shaking”. People say things like that all the time.
Dr.Berceli created TRE by designing seven simple exercises that are supposed to reactivate this natural tremor mechanism through gentle fatigue and stretching of the muscles in the legs. This natural tremoring response can alleviate the stress and tension of everyday life, including common activities like sitting around in chairs too long, but it can also alleviate the symptoms of more intense life events.
What are your private sessions like?
Since COVID, I have been teaching mostly online. I still do private sessions, also online. They usually start with me explaining to the client what it is about because, since it’s a bit of a strange activity, it’s important that the mind understands what it is about, otherwise, it can stop the tremoring from happening.
A session is usually around 90 minutes. Of those 90 minutes, I spend around 15-20 minutes talking to them, explaining what it is about, asking about their injuries, etc. so that they get accommodated to the practice. Then I lead them through the TRE practice, which takes about 45 minutes. Then, at the end of the session, there is time for debriefing their experience. Finally, I give them after-care instructions and answer any questions they may have. For people who ‘ve already had a session, I also provide support through online classes, so that they can keep doing it.
You also offer public and corporate workshops. What can people expect from those?
They are similar to a private session but they take a bit longer because there would be more people involved. I facilitate these introductory classes for fitness studios, physical therapy studios, corporations, businesses, etc. A class/workshop usually lasts around 2 hours. I usually explain the origins of TRE and physiology and the neurology of it and how to take care of themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally during the practice. After that, I lead them through a session, which takes around 45 to 50 minutes.
Then some of the participants will share a few words about their experiences because when people share, it makes it more real for everybody else. Finally, I leave time for after-care instructions and questions.
What different certification trainings do you offer?
While my trainings are open to everybody, most of the people who decide to be trained in TRE already have a practice through which they help others, either in a physical way, such as yoga instructors or somatic experiencing practitioners, or in a psychological way such as a psychotherapist.
I do wish to point out that this is not my idea. I’m part of a big nonprofit organization operating in 90 countries. The training is similar, although not identical, in those 90 countries. Here in the United States, we do it in 3 2- day workshops: Module 1, Module 2, and Module 3. There are also sessions that people have to do between sessions, for personal growth or to facilitate the work for an individual client and eventually for a small group of people.
The process lasts between 10 and 12 months. When a person goes through the sessions and gets certified, they can then use this work in any capacity they prefer. They can do it individually with their clients if their practice is about that, or they can teach workshops. The only thing that they can’t do is to train other people to teach it.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
I would like to say that I’ve been a teacher and practitioner of many healing modalities for many years. Those modalities include meditation, Tai Chi, different kinds of bodywork, massage, etc. What I’ve learned through those years of experience is that everything works if we dedicate time and energy to it, and sometimes money. However, there is nothing that with such a little investment of time and energy can create such a profound release and positive change in people’s lives as TRE® can.
After people have done it for a while with some regularity, like a couple of times a week, they no longer need to do the preparatory exercises to elicit the tremoring because it becomes their natural response. Once the mind is on board, it’s fairly easy to make it happen. People can do it after any of their physical activities or even just by lying down and relaxing. A few minutes of tremoring here and there can really make a big difference.
Many of the people I worked with have reported incredible improvements in their sleep, digestion, and stress levels, as well as in the way in which they react to stress, how well they can concentrate and a significant decrease in pain associated with sciatica, Fibromyalgia, TMJ and more. Doctors say that stress is the number one killer: most of the conditions and symptoms that are caused or made worse by stress can also be alleviated by practicing TRE®.
Another important thing to take care of is our immune system, which tends to go down when we have adrenaline and negative chemicals running around in our system. If we have less adrenaline and cortisol in our system, the system is being boosted, and we don’t need to talk about why it’s important these days to have a strong immune system, right? I rest my case.
To learn more about Maria and TRE California, you can visit trecalifornia.com
