History, Koshas, 3 Thresholds | 7/9

Explore Shaking Medicine's ancient roots and profound depths in this enlightening talk! From Mother Nature's gift to animals and indigenous shaking shamans (like the Kalahari Bushmen), through yogic spontaneous Kriyas, Taoist Zifa Gong, and suppressed traditions, to modern modalities like TRE and our expansive Shaking Medicine.

Discover the yogic koshas: why Shaking Medicine uniquely clears the emotional third kosha (trauma & suppressed feelings) that most practices miss, paving the way for true meditation and bliss.

Learn the three embodiment thresholds:
- Awakening your mechanism (beginner goal!)
- Making it second nature for daily intuition
- Animalistic homeostasis – effortless resilience

Empower your intuition, balance, and vibrant potential.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome back.

Today I wanna talk about history of shaking medicine as well as this concept of the koshas and the three main embodiment thresholds.

First though,

Let's have a little review.

This was our yin class out of all of these,

Are more relaxing.

So one of the things about shaking medicine is that it's not static.

It can be expressive,

Ecstatic,

And yang,

And it can be deeply still,

Meditative,

And yin.

And that kind of reflects in these classes I've been doing,

Some of them being stronger and some of them being more gentle.

And then we also have the balance classes like class one and class four.

So by softening a lot,

We can listen more to our intuitive and instinctive intelligences,

Which is a fundamental goal of this course is to start tapping into intuition and instinct and through this lens of therapeutic tremoring and to grow these intelligences,

Like ultimately to be an empowered,

Deeply empowered human being that's vibrant.

We have all three minds,

Our logical mind,

Wisdom mind,

And then the intuitive and instinctive minds.

Well,

That's four.

The wisdom is kind of like the head mind,

The intellectual mind,

But we want to use it wisely.

So there's that wisdom mind,

Intuitive mind,

Instinctive mind.

And shaking medicine is really good at balancing out all the logic we use all the time and getting us into feeling of intuition and instinct.

So this class looks at that.

We review our main strats of the range of motion,

Micro-moving,

A bit of squeezing,

And even in the softness and tiring out that can always be at play because it's all relative,

Right?

It's all relative.

What's yang to someone might be yin for someone else.

So we have to always be mindful that everything's relative.

I'm a physicist as well,

And Einstein's theory of relativity always sits with me and it just opens up this expansion of consciousness and to realize that everything is relative,

Like there wouldn't be light without dark.

For example,

So what else did we do?

We kind of gave this class of semantics lens and we have the analogy of charges we spoke about,

The onion analogy,

And one lens to look at the stuff that surfaces is the sensory motor amnesia and stuff.

And we want to titrate and pendulate into it.

So that's a sustainable practice to tune into things bit by bit and then relax,

Discharge,

And integrate that layer that's unraveled.

Yeah,

And so we stayed all in the back doing lots of stuff on the back and the side,

Belly and such.

So,

And shaking and shavasana,

That's one of the most powerful shapes to shake in because it's the most relaxed shape we can be in,

Really,

For most of us.

So very powerful.

Let's get into some history.

We have the history here of shaking medicine.

I'll summarize the history to give you a grandiose picture.

So we have,

First and foremost,

This came from nature.

It evolved in the nervous system of animals,

Even before humans were around.

So it's,

This is Mother Nature's gift to us.

That's,

First and foremost,

Where this mechanism comes from.

No one owns it.

In shaking medicine,

I don't claim to own therapeutic chimera,

Not at all.

I've developed a fun,

Creative style incorporating all kinds of wisdoms,

Particularly from yoga and qigong,

That explore this therapeutic tremor mechanism.

But that mechanism itself,

No one owns it.

It evolved in animals and indigenous cultures all over the world use it.

Like,

Notably,

The Kalahari Bushmen read Dr.

Bradford Keeney's work.

He lived with these guys and documented a lot of their practices,

Which has influenced this modality quite a bit.

Their take on it,

Like the idea that everything's circular.

And other indigenous cultures use it as well.

It's in shamanism.

You see it in the cathartic,

The ecstatic states of cultivation are when people shamanically are working with other people through touch or energetics or are giving like sort of deep trauma or trapped emotional sort of purging to people.

Or giving is a weird word,

Not really giving it to them,

But supporting them when the person is ready.

And of course,

Like that would play into whatever shamanism,

Shamanistic parts,

Like the Kalahari Bushmen are shamanistic.

Their whole shaking shamanism actually is centered largely around the shake,

How embodied they are with the tremor mechanism.

And basically the more embodied they are,

The more of a kind of healer they can become to help others and have all sorts of deep,

Intuitive insights come through.

And they are more and more respected in their kind of shamanistic ways,

The more embodied they are with the shake.

So then it's in like the yogic culture.

Kind of related to kundalini and kriyas and a name for it that I kind of come up with that it's basically a spontaneous kundalini kriya.

Kriya meaning cleansing.

It's a cleansing of the nervous system.

It's kundalini because shaking medicine awakens our kundalini in a yin way.

You know,

A lot of people get this kind of awakening and I'm not saying you have to view it under this lens of yogic terms like kundalini,

But that's just one lens to look at what's happening.

And then because the tremor is spontaneous,

It's spontaneous kundalini kriya.

I've read yogic texts and such and different teachers will talk about how ultimately all of yoga is meant to be kind of spontaneous.

I think the ancient rishis and yogis and such,

They,

A lot of it just came through in moments of deep letting go and surrender,

Which I feel kind of happened to me when I first started shaking before I knew anything about it.

So,

And in my experience of embodying this,

A lot of these yoga mudras and shakes just kind of spontaneously emerged through as well.

So very powerful.

The Taoists,

I love this culture.

They have qigong,

Right?

Well,

Kind of a next step is zifa gong,

Which is basically spontaneous qigong.

And I should say both these spontaneous kundalini kriya and the zifa gong is largely lost in our current,

Our current like Western culture of exploring these things.

It's mostly just control that we're doing,

Controlling the mind,

The body,

The breath,

Which is powerful.

But what this does,

Shaking medicine does,

Is balances this out,

Teaches us how to let go of control and access,

Can help us to access some pretty profound experiences and states.

Notably,

The samurai warriors did it.

They,

From what I understand,

They kept it secret.

And it was one of their biggest kind of weapons for healing after traumatic fighting and getting injuries and such.

They could heal very quickly with this and move out of the trauma a lot quicker than their counterparts that were fighting.

And that's where,

Is a big reason as I understand it as to why they were so successful.

Recent history,

Well,

Religion,

It's been used throughout religious cultures.

You kind of see it,

Not explicitly,

But when you're thinking about people having like exorcisms or they're entering these,

Which are essentially like yogic mudras,

I feel these openings that are kind of weird looking or their eyes roll in the back of their head or their body's like quaking,

And it's pain,

Whether it's gently or very,

Like an earthquake,

Like ecstatically,

That was painted as bad,

Possessed by the devil.

So this was suppressed in those ways.

I think that's largely the seed of how it got suppressed in the West.

And then a little more recently,

You have like the Shakers and Quakers who essentially,

You probably had,

If you're American,

At least I grew up in the States,

You probably had the Quakers oatmeal,

It comes from them.

And they were a kind of,

Maybe spiritual is a better way to call it,

But a movement,

A spiritual movement where the shake was a big part of their practice and it empowered them.

They got quite big and made quite a big movement.

But then at some point,

The governments,

As I understand it,

Came in and kind of slowly stamped them out.

They didn't like that awakening they were doing.

And so they were suppressed.

In China,

They suppressed this sort of thing by suppressing the Taoist culture after kind of after World War II,

When communism really took over,

They eradicated Taoist philosophies,

Qigong culture,

And this sort of thing got lost largely with that.

Today you have like Dr.

Bradford Keeney,

Dr.

David Bersilli,

Who does TRE,

Trauma Releasing Exercise.

And as far as I can tell,

TRE and shaking medicine are the two biggest now shaking modalities in the whole world.

There's not many of us out there doing this.

And I have a blog on kind of the differences between TRE and shaking medicine.

Basically,

Shaking medicine is much more expansive and creative,

And Bersilli has like a six-step process that the teachers are meant to more or less share it exactly like that.

And they have one or two main tremor in shapes,

Whereas we have many and get it going through all the whole body.

So they're both good.

TRE's great,

I collaborate with them.

I just like the expansiveness of bringing in more spirituality and yoga and Qigong and such into this creation and to explore it more creatively and intuitively.

But yeah,

I collaborate with them.

And TRE's great for,

Yeah,

Those who need it.

I think those are really in the mainstream or are gonna perhaps resonate with that more where he uses pretty much solely a science lens and where I have a science lens with this too.

I'm a scientist as well,

A quantum physicist.

And let's see,

So just a reminder.

And yeah,

Now we have shaking medicine.

This is a nonprofit foundation.

Our aim is to share this with the world,

To empower people by awakening it within and using it for homeostasis or coming into homeostasis.

And I see shaking medicine,

What we're doing is like an umbrella that's welcoming all wisdom and knowledge that complements what we're doing here,

This mission of exploring neurogenic therapeutic tremor.

So let's talk quickly about the koshas.

Quickly,

But with no rush,

Of course.

The koshas is a yoga concept that I love to model in shaking medicine with.

It's like we have five sheaths called koshas and the outer sheath is the physical body.

The next sheath is the energetic.

The next one is the emotional.

And then you have like kind of the mental,

More subtle layer,

Like mental mind.

And then you have the final bliss layer,

Like getting into the spirit of who you are.

And I love this because most practices out there really are physical layer and then a handful of them are getting into more of the energetics.

And even yoga and qigong are very,

Like yoga asana,

Very good at the physical body.

Pranayama,

Very good at the energetics.

And qigong,

Lots of,

And we have Dao Yin with the kind of qigong.

It's like the yoga of qigong,

If you will.

And these are very good at the physical energetics.

But what's happening is then largely,

They're going from this to more meditative stuff,

Which is,

How I understand it,

Really meant to clear the fourth and fifth koshas.

So what's happening is most people out there are clearing the first and second koshas,

And that's about it.

And then those who wanna go further are trying to meditate and such.

But what I see is that meditating in a traumatized body isn't that effective.

And you see this trauma and trapped emotions and stuff really lives in this third kosha,

Which most of what we're doing isn't targeting.

Shaking medicine is centered on this third kosha,

Which is like the emotional body,

The trauma,

The subconscious,

And the really connected to the nervous system is a nice way to look at it.

And shaking medicine is a practice of the nervous system.

It's nervous system hygiene.

And so long story short,

It's basically really good at clearing the suppressed emotions and trauma,

Clearing and purifying this third kosha so that if we wanna continue on this kind of path and go deeper,

We can start to effectively do the meditative practices.

And in my own experience,

Meditating in a traumatized body isn't very effective.

Like there might be some benefit,

Of course,

But until we clear,

The idea of the koshas is you more or less,

You clear the outer and you work your way in.

And it's always gonna be cyclical.

We might clear the outer and then a bit,

The second,

The third,

And then we have to clear some more on the outer.

And then,

You know,

It can bounce around.

And every practice as well,

Technically can touch all the sheaths,

All these koshas,

But generally they focus and target a particular kosha.

So exercise is going to target the physical,

The diet and breath work and qigong is gonna target the energetic.

One thing I love about yoga,

By the way,

Yoga asana is it's targeting,

It's targeting the physical body,

But because we're mindfully breathing,

It's also getting into the energetic.

So shaking medicine fills a void in the world that's really a big missing piece of the health and wellbeing puzzle.

It's targeting this third emotional kosha.

So breathing and shaking medicine,

You know,

We wanna have a balanced view on breathing.

Like we don't wanna focus so much energy on breathing that we lose the shaking medicine practice,

But once in a while,

It's good to check in.

We want abdominal breathing as our base breath.

Basically how a baby breathes,

Like how do you breathe in deep parasympathetic rest and digest,

Which is efficient breathing from the abdomen.

It should induce rest and digest,

Support that.

You can think abdominal breathing or diaphragmatic breathing,

Or in yogic culture,

They just call it yogic breathing.

In Qigong,

They call it dan tien breathing.

So basically long,

Slow,

Deep breaths that's fueling the body with energy,

But not forced.

It shouldn't,

If it causes us to lose our breath or get tired out,

We're not parasympathetic breathing.

It should bring fuel into the body,

Energy,

And relax us.

And so,

And yeah,

There are other breathing and shaking medicine I explore.

I've been developing a whole kind of spontaneous breathwork modality for the purposes of this beginner's course.

Really this just baseline abdominal breathing is what we need to know for now.

So you can always come back to that at any time.

And by doing that,

It'll relax us.

And anything that relaxes us can help us go deeper.

And anything that,

And by going deeper into the churning,

It can help us relax,

Creating this cyclical kind of loop.

So the three thresholds of embodiment.

So this is just a generalized framework.

It's not a absolute,

Nothing is absolute.

It's all relative.

So there's the first threshold,

Which is the goal of this beginner's course,

Really.

To basically awaken and remember your trimmer mechanism,

To understand it by experiencing it.

Just learning about it isn't gonna do much.

We have to embody it.

So understand it by having the experience of it.

And to feel the benefits as well.

And then we wanna be able to access it more and more and start to build trust in it.

And to navigate it safely and effectively.

We should start to be able to turn it on and off,

Even if it's not very easy yet.

Maybe it still takes a bit of effort in trying.

Not saying at this threshold it's necessarily super easy.

It likely will be easy enough.

But it still might take a bit of showing up and earnest dedication to,

Okay,

Do the suggestions,

The strategies I'm giving you for that discovery of your trimmer mechanism.

And you start to slowly and sustainably build your trust for it and access it more easily.

Now the second threshold isn't much farther away from the first threshold.

Of which the first threshold,

You might even get there after the first class.

But definitely by the end of the beginner's course,

The goal is to be able to tick these off.

And then the second threshold is a little farther away,

But not so far.

For most people,

10 to 40 more sessions or so.

And this is where,

Basically,

It becomes how it's meant to be,

Which is second nature.

It's,

Remember,

We're awakening something within you.

You're not really learning something new.

So you wake it up enough that it's part of your life easily.

It's super intuitive.

It's super,

At this point,

Easy to use.

You can easily feel when sensations in your body arise that say,

Oh,

Hey,

Maybe some tremorine wants to happen here.

And it's just easy to turn on and use and complement to our other practices we might be doing or in our life,

Like before we go to bed or when we wake up,

You know?

Stuff like that.

So we start to transform our trauma into post-traumatic growth more and more.

PTG,

We wanna move from PTSD to PTG.

And the intermediate course,

Which is about 15 full embodiment classes,

Is designed to get you well,

If not all the way,

Making this intuitive at least well on its way.

Yeah,

So the third threshold is magical.

If you reach the second threshold,

It's almost as though the third is just a matter of time because you intuitively and easily use this mechanism.

And this third threshold is animalistic homeostasis,

Which is like that wild animal,

Which,

By the way,

The wild animals,

They're born with this.

It's in their instincts.

So they use it every moment that they get frazzled or distressed.

They bounce back and bang,

They're in homeostasis again.

So they never really go far from homeostasis.

And that's really how we're meant to be,

Too.

It's just our culture for a long time now hasn't supported this sort of healing.

It's kind of suppressed us,

Really,

Instead of empowered us in many ways.

So here,

That onion analogy,

More or less you shed the whole onion.

You discharge all of your charges,

All that pent-up energy that largely is frozen and numb,

And we likely don't even know it's there,

What it is.

We might have a sense that something's there,

But then this just unravels it,

Discharges it,

The shaking medicine.

And then it sets us up when we're on the journey towards this homeostasis state,

Because,

Again,

It's all relative,

So this is just a generalized framework.

But basically,

This sets us up to cultivate ourselves deeply to do the higher meditation practices,

If we want,

Or the advanced yoga and qigong stuff,

Or whatever you're into,

Music,

Your work,

Your athletic sports,

Your arts and crafts,

Your body work,

I'm a body work therapist,

So it definitely helps me be really sensitive to what I'm doing and the energies and the person I'm feeling.

So it can complement basically all of life.

And this work makes us extremely sensitive to the subtle energies around us,

Especially those of which shaking medicine can discharge,

Because that's what we're practicing,

We're discharging,

We get really sensitive to that.

In a beautiful way,

Because simultaneously,

Because it's a tool that we're using,

We're also getting super resilient.

So enjoy the next class,

And I'll see you there.