TRE Los Angeles implements effective, simple stress reduction solutions that build capacity and resilience

My career began in the 1980s, providing community health education to distressed populations including IV drug addicts and youth in foster care and inner-city schools. I witnessed intense suffering in these communities; my desire to relieve this suffering spurred a pursuit for the knowledge, understanding, and skills necessary to bring health at its deepest level. Certified as a Registered Nurse, I also have extensive postgraduate training in complementary health modalities and emotional therapies, including direct training and collaboration with David Berceli, the creator of Tension/Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®). I have worked as a clinician, educator, and researcher in a wide variety of settings and have maintained a busy holistic health practice in Los Angeles since 2001.

The common thread through my career has been empowering people and communities in their quest for wellbeing. I founded TRE Los Angeles in April 2012 and see it as the culmination of my life’s work to date. I have been successful in creating a vibrant community of providers that has brought TRE® to diverse populations regionally. My biggest challenge is changing cultural attitudes toward stress: to help people and communities acknowledge the harm, yet realize that the key to their wellbeing is literally in their own bodies.

TRE Los Angeles implements effective, simple stress reduction solutions that build capacity and resilience. Our organization is built around Tension Release Exercises (TRE®), an innovative stress reduction method developed for high-conflict zones internationally. Lauded by the US Department of Defense for its “simplicity, brevity, and immediate effects,” TRE® is new to the Los Angeles region. Different than yoga or mindfulness practices, TRE® completes the stress cycle by activating the body’s natural rebalancing mechanism and is thereby inherently cross-culturally adaptive. It can be practiced by all ages and ability types. No special equipment is needed. Its cost-effective and evidence-based.

Our organization is the only one of its kind. We’ve taken what colleagues are doing internationally and woven these elements together to create a unique sustainable model balanced between education, service delivery, research, and community development. We train and certify providers via our professional education division. We hold regular community workshops and provide services to individuals in offices throughout the region. We design and implement programs for local businesses and non-profits, using part of this funding stream to offset a robust community-service agenda. We are committed to rigorous data-driven evaluative processes to ensure efficacy and efficiency.

We’ve spent our first 3 years developing a sustainable model, building a framework, training providers, and nurturing a network – all of this with a skeleton crew and on a shoestring budget. Our annual gross has increased eight-fold since our first year. This loan would bring energy to accelerate our planned growth trajectory.

This injection of working capital will be used to fund a robust marketing and public relations campaign with professionally produced digital and print materials, which translates into more people, more organizations, and more communities served.