One of our employees, Victor Seale, has become a TRE Facilitator. Victor was nominated by Hlokomela Clinic, an initiative budgeted for by Human Resources and supported by the College. TRE stands for Trauma Release Exercises. TRE helps those who have been traumatised by life events, and also relieves stress.
This skill will be invaluable for many of our staff and students, as well as the communities supported by the College. The SAWC is grateful that through the work of the Hlokomela Clinic, and our partnership with them, Victor is now able to facilitate the TRE process. To pass his final assessment as a TRE facilitator, Victor needed ten volunteers to work through a TRE session with him, and College employees, including our own CEO, Theresa Sowry, happily obliged. We not sure they would have been quite so happy to help, if they had known what was in store!
Similar in many ways to Yoga, Victor took his volunteers through some gruelling and challenging exercises, explaining every step of the way, what to expect, and how the exercise would work. Each set of exercises would release stress in certain groups of muscles, and evoke certain responses, and the volunteers were soon groaning as Victor elicited from them the required muscle tremor responses he was looking for. Afterwards Theresa Sowry expressed how much the session had helped relieved tension. Hopefully this is something we can encourage staff to do on a regular basis, with Victor heading the sessions.
TRE evokes a physiological body reflex reaction to release trauma, which does not necessitate a need to talk or even understand the trauma being released. TRE releases tension and stress in the body, and as the process deepens it leads to peace of mind, clearer thinking, and an ability to deal better with life and work situations. TRE was discovered by Dr Peter A Levine, in studying how wild animals deal with trauma.
