1/9 | The Fundamentals Of Embodying Shaking Medicine

In this introductory talk to the Shaking Medicine Beginners Course, we explore the fundamentals of embodying Shaking Medicine (SM), a powerful, body-based somatic practice rooted in therapeutic tremoring, nature’s innate healing mechanism. Discover how SM encourages surrendering control, tapping into instinct and intuition to release trauma and tension, fostering balance in the autonomic nervous system through neurogenic tremoring and vagus nerve stimulation.

Founded by Dr. Keith Motes, Shaking Medicine reintroduces the world’s oldest medicine, reframing it as an empowering tool for healing.

Transcript

Hello!

Welcome here to my Shaking Medicine Beginners Course.

I'm excited to share this with you,

And I'm excited for you to be here to receive.

Thank you deeply for going on this journey with me,

For perhaps trying something very new,

Because shaking medicine is fundamentally different than almost everything out there.

We're looking to deeply let go of control,

Surrender,

And allow our therapeutic tremor mechanism for deep healing.

So I want to take you through some very important fundamentals before we get into the embodiment part of this course,

Which is the most important,

I feel,

To embody the medicine of shaking.

So what is it?

What is shaking medicine?

The focus of this modality is neurogenic therapeutic tremoring.

It's from nature.

Nature gave it to us.

It evolved.

It's within us all.

So this modality,

It's a somatic,

Body-based practice.

Somatic basically means body-based,

Where basically we can heal the mind and the body using this mechanism without necessarily needing to go into the story of it all.

Now we can,

And I do do that later on in my intermediate stuff,

We can certainly explore shaking medicine from that angle as well.

It's important to know that this is about letting go of control,

Surrendering,

And allowing,

Especially early on.

Later on,

We can focus it and cultivate our potential.

But at first,

It's really about just letting go and through this lens of this therapeutic tremor mechanism.

It's really beautiful,

And that's really what makes this modality so powerful in so many ways is its uniqueness and how we're letting go of control.

We want to move from our intuitions and instinct more than our logical thinking mind.

A little bit about me.

This was founded by yours,

Truly.

It emerged within me before I really knew anything about it.

My only sort of reference,

We could say,

Were exorcism movies I saw,

Which make it out to be scary and all that,

Trying to make us very fearful of it.

But it felt good,

So I went with it.

My body,

Long story short,

It felt like a bit of a rebirth,

A powerful rebirthing.

I had trauma released from early in my childhood that I didn't even know was there,

And it was affecting me.

There's certainly more to it,

But I'll keep it concise for now.

How this modality was seeded was an awakening within me,

Largely from my yoga practice at the time,

Deep yoga practice,

Meditation,

And then through the stillness of that,

I allowed this to move through me.

It stimulated me to create this whole modality,

Which we're now a non-profit based out of Australia.

History,

A bit of history.

This is,

You could say,

Perhaps the oldest medicine on earth.

It evolved in our nervous systems over a very long time,

The nervous systems of animals even before humans were around.

In more,

Let's say,

Biblical times and over the past centuries and such,

This has been heavily suppressed in different cultures and different times.

Long story short,

The powers that be,

I feel,

Often don't like their people to be empowered because then they can't control and have power over people and use them,

Which is an unfortunate truth that there's been a lot of that throughout modern history,

Even ancient history as well.

Part of this is to educate and create this reframe of spontaneous shaking.

It's not necessarily bad.

It's a good thing as well.

There's a very good type of spontaneous shaking called therapeutic tremoring,

And it's deeply empowering.

We want to remind the world of this and awake the world to empower people from within,

From the inside out,

To self-heal,

Self-regulate,

And come into harmony and balance.

A bit on the science,

I already said a few of the scientific things.

It's evolved in our bodies.

It's really genetically encoded.

I see it very much as a mechanism of the autonomic nervous system,

Which is our central nervous system and our periphery nervous system.

This mechanism is centered from.

.

.

It's like an electrical nervous system level hygiene for us.

It's a self-regulation mechanism,

A survival mechanism really in the wild.

It's part of our biology,

And it's been optimized over a very,

Very long time.

The scientific term is neurogenic therapeutic tremoring.

It's absolutely amazing for trauma,

Tension release,

Stress,

Anxiety,

Suppressed emotions,

Bringing us out of fight and flight and into rest and digest where the healing functions of our body operate well.

It brings us into homeostasis.

It's neuroscience.

It's neurogenesis.

It recreates the pathways in the brain-to-body connection.

It really helps stimulate the vagus nerve,

Which is connected to most of the organs of the body.

It relaxes that.

It soothes it.

Working wonders for bringing us into a relaxed,

Calm state.

There's three main categories of benefits.

That's to heal the stuff that's afflicting us that doesn't serve us anymore.

Then mid-range is to bring us into homeostasis,

Like the wild animal in nature,

Ever-present,

Ready to act instead of react in any given moment at peace.

Then the third thing is on the other end of the letting go is the cultivating what does serve us.

It can really help us cultivate our energy,

Better sleep,

To cultivate our crafts in life,

What we love to do,

Our embodiment,

Our work,

Our projects,

Whatever it is,

Our music,

Art,

Our connection,

Our connection to spirit and spiritual cultivation in that way.

It works on the physical levels,

The energetic,

The emotional,

The mental,

And the spiritual.

Again,

I see it as very nervous system,

Like electrics of our body centered focus in how it targets and heals us.

But of course,

It trickles out like a web to all these other categories.

It's great at alleviating aches,

Pains,

Tensions,

Stress,

Anxiety,

Suppressed emotions,

And trauma.

And because a lot of our chronic conditions are rooted in these things,

It's great at healing or at least helping to support and heal root causes of things,

Whereas Western medicine largely medicates and deals with the symptoms but never,

Or often rarely gets to the root causes of things,

Which is why they'll have us taking medicines for the rest of their life.

This is great at cultivating our human potential.

Another way to look at this is,

If you're a yogi,

You could say this is yin kundalini yoga.

It's a powerful way to awaken this power within us.

So that very much happens to quite a bunch of people who do this,

Especially those who stick with it for a while,

Not even that long,

Because basically as we use nature to get the gunk out of the way,

Just our potential,

Our energy,

It all just kind of raises and rises naturally.

What are some of the aims and outcomes of this course?

Well,

We want to awaken this mechanism of therapeutic trimmering within you.

We want you to sustainably cultivate your relationship with therapeutic trimmering and do this safely and effectively and all of that.

Sustainably is key,

So less is more in this approach.

The beginner's course is really,

I call it the,

It's designed for you to reach the first embodiment threshold of shaking medicine,

Where it's basically understanding this by having experienced it,

To awaken it from within so you can start to use this tool in your everyday life.

Access,

So be able to access it and turn it on and off easily enough.

Maybe it's not like super second nature yet after this course,

But that's the goal of the next course,

The intermediate course,

Is to make it deeply second nature.

The goals of this is to learn to navigate it safely and effectively and to sustainably cultivate it,

Learn to trust it and such like that.

Those are some of the outcomes of reaching the first embodiment threshold of shaking medicine.

We want to use this tool to really grow our instinct and intuition.

We'll be getting out of the logical thinking mind and moving into allowing this trimmering to move through us.

As I kind of mentioned earlier,

My goal is for you to be empowered with this,

To access an innate ability to self-heal,

Self-regulate.

We should understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary shaking as well as therapeutic trimmering and non-therapeutic trimmering,

Which we'll talk about more in the classes.

If you have any conditions,

Major conditions,

Non-therapeutic trimmering conditions,

Mental health concerns,

Or big physical injuries,

Broken bones,

Surgeries,

Are pregnant,

These are some of the reasons to be,

Not necessarily not do this,

But to be extra cautious.

Most therapeutic trimmer,

Most spontaneous shaking,

If you're in any average sort of health,

Nothing like super major going on,

This is going to be very therapeutic and it's very safe for,

Generally shaking medicine is very safe because we're using something we're born with.

Yeah,

So there's lots of benefits.

We spoke to that.

We want to have fun releasing what doesn't serve us.

It doesn't have to be hard work.

We will need some discipline to show up and do our practice,

But we can have fun.

We can laugh.

We can enjoy.

Even if we cry or things get hard at times,

We can have fun feeling that and knowing that on the other side of that is more grace and ease and peace in life because there will be waves,

No doubt.

We want to come into and at least towards homeostasis.

It's all about the journey,

Right?

Not always about the destination and cultivate our human potential.

In this course,

We'll experience about 20 shapes,

Maybe a bit more,

To move the trimmers all through us,

The different parts of the body.

Particularly,

We want to open our roots,

Which are like the pelvis down or the roots of our body.

We'll get the big muscle groups tremoring the core and into the spine.

These will really be the focus.

Then,

As we progress towards that second threshold,

Which I highly recommend you do if you enjoy this beginner's course,

We'll be able to get it more and more easily into even the subtle parts of our body and not just the bigger muscle groups and such.

In this course,

You'll learn the fundamentals of shaking medicine and be able to apply it into your own life,

Hopefully.

Another big goal of this is to educate the world.

Help us do that if you get any value out of this or you love it at all.

Please share it,

Basically,

Even if it's just telling a friend to come do the course or if it's sharing it to a million people,

Whatever it is.

It's all very helpful in educating the world.

Safety,

I spoke a little bit to that.

Generally,

This is very safe.

Basically,

It's anything major,

Major mental health issues,

Non-therapeutic tremoring diseases,

Big physical problems,

Injuries,

Broken bones,

Pregnancy,

Trauma,

PTSD.

These are all reasons to be extra precautious and maybe not to do it.

I don't want to say necessarily don't do it.

Be extra cautious and maybe you don't,

But maybe you do because there's a lot to say to how this can potentially help with a lot of our chronic issues.

We need to soothe the logical thinking mind and help you understand what shaking medicine is,

How to approach it,

And such so the logical thinking mind can just rest and relax.

In the embodiment,

Particularly,

We want to move into the feeling intelligence,

Intuition,

Instinct,

Feeling,

Sensations.

We want to be in feeling,

Being present with our senses,

Be present with our senses.

Well,

To keep it safe,

We'll frequently stop and start.

It'll create this cycle that's very important to keep in the safe,

Especially as you're perhaps just learning it,

Frequently stopping and starting in the stopping ground and integrate.

We'll do body scans,

Create reference frames for comparing and contrast to learn.

From a feeling sense of what this is doing and to tune in to know,

Okay,

If we had enough,

We'll be asking these questions.

Do we need to keep resting?

Maybe we've had enough today.

So even if you need to rest more,

Please do listen to your body,

What it's telling you.

So rest whenever you need.

A sustainable approach is more.

We have an analogy,

I call it the onion analogy,

Where all the charges from our life get pent up and bottled layer by layer.

Years and decades of this,

We might have hundreds of thousands of these things.

So really,

When we're doing shaking medicine,

If you could just dissolve the outer layer,

Or even a bit,

Or maybe it's a couple layers,

But just peel away the onion bit by bit.

And if you can just regularly do a layer,

You're making amazing progress in your journey to vibrant health and living.

And this helps us as well to shake too much,

Which can cause our body to react.

And basically,

If we overshake,

We can create this reaction in our body where then it takes longer to integrate.

Ideally,

We can integrate a session within a day or a couple of days,

And then do the next little bit.

But if we go too far,

Too deep,

We could get sick.

Different things could happen where we might need many days or even weeks to rest,

And that overall slows progress generally.

In this,

Everything is a guideline,

A suggestion,

It's an invitation.

So it's not important to get every suggestion I make.

I'll make a lot of suggestions for you to try out.

Less is more,

If you can even get a few of them,

Especially when it comes to the therapeutic trimmering.

You're making amazing progress in building up your relationship with your therapeutic trimmer mechanism.

So maybe you even do this course another time,

And then it's very likely you'll get new,

Awesome things out of it each time,

Because the therapeutic trimmering mechanism moves us uniquely every time we do it.

And with more experience,

You'll probably pick up more suggestions.

So just leave the ones that don't work.

It's like if I'm doing,

Say,

A squat in the warm-up,

Because there is a warm-up phase,

It's like,

And you can't do a squat.

It doesn't matter.

You don't have to be able to do everything in the warm-up to be able to do shaking medicine.

So modify.

I offer modifications,

But it's hard to offer every possible thing.

So even use your intuition a bit.

If there's a movement or a shape that's just not working for you,

It might be like grab a pillow or just change the angle or do it in a chair more gently,

Whatever is needed.

The goal of shaking medicine is to find what are called the shaken stations and let go and surrender and allow them to move us how they want to move us from our instinct and intuition.

Things can come up,

Hard things.

Like most of the time,

Shaking medicine is a very pleasant experience.

It's very empowering and very enlightening.

And it's like,

Aha,

All these beautiful realizations and stuff happen.

But sometimes we have cycles of like,

I call it purging,

Like the old suppressed emotions or trauma will start to come through and it just,

Ah,

It wants to,

You know,

Or the old injury,

The pain and the muscles are resetting or the fascia or whatever.

And we start to feel these things and it might feel unpleasant.

So there are certainly cycles where you might have challenging times with this and that's okay.

That's really,

That's part of any healing journey,

Any any modality,

Pretty much health and well-being modality where we're healing.

This is a process of healing and often we have to heal it and we have to feel it to heal it.

And this goes deep,

This letting go,

It really goes deep into the trauma,

The emotions.

There's always the more surface level physical body and the energetics,

Which is great.

But yeah,

Just know that things,

Basically they get numb and frozen in our body and as they shake and vibrate open,

That energy,

That charge moves to the surface and we start,

Sometimes we start to feel things that were long numbed out to our awareness or sensation.

So generally don't overdo it,

Titrate into these,

Like feel it,

Yay.

It's like,

Wow,

Because on the other side of processing that is generally more energy,

More vibrant living.

So even if there's phases of hard times,

On the other side of that is better times.

Frequency of practice,

I feel to get like,

To make progress,

Like reasonable progress,

Like a minimum of a class,

A journey a week is like,

Is kind of a minimum to see good progress.

If you can,

I'd say at least to three or four or five a week and know that,

I don't want to say exactly how much you need or don't need to do because it's very individual.

And you might could do one every day for five days and then all of a sudden it's like,

Wow,

You actually do need to rest for a day or a few days.

And so know that the frequency can change as well as you go.

So you might feel good the first three classes in a row and then,

Oh,

Big wave moves through.

So on that fourth day you need to rest,

Maybe the fifth day too,

That's all fine.

So I don't want to say like,

You have to have a rigid practice structure.

You want to honor,

Actually honor the waves and how you need to integrate.

Shaking medicine is very cyclical.

And if you're really sensitive,

Like,

Or you have any of these precautionary things I spoke to,

Then one-on-ones are an option.

I do one-on-one personalized coaching.

And this is for those sensitive folk who want a more tailored approach or maybe your normal health and you just want that extra one-on-one session to just make your progress more efficient and to get inspired in your ways that are unique to you.

And so use this community,

Contact us,

Contact the community,

Contact me for support.

Okay,

We're almost there.

So summary of this course,

Four classes,

Four and discussions in between.

Each class is uniquely themed.

I don't think I ever taught one shaking medicine class the same.

This is a creative style where each class can be unique.

So if you're ever going to do the teacher training with me,

I encourage our teachers to be creative.

The classes in this beginner's course are,

I have two of them that are kind of balance between yin and yang,

And one of them that's more like strong and active,

And another it's more passive.

We'll do a lot of different shapes to get the tremorine again through the body,

Different parts.

And which means like,

If you don't get one shape,

Leave it for now,

Come back to it later.

Basically try different shapes and our strategies we'll go through until you get a shaken station.

Especially if you struggle with it at first,

Just find any shaken station,

Even if I've moved on and hang out there for a while,

And that's what starts to build your relationship with it.

So we'll do different shapes and strategies for tuning in.

Yeah,

And the flow of a shaking medicine journey is we do a physical warm-up generally,

And then an energetic warm-up,

And they kind of merge,

You know,

They kind of go together.

And then for the majority of the class we explore therapeutic tremorine,

Which is the emotional body,

It's the electrical nervous system,

The central nervous system.

If you have any of these major conditions,

Again,

The focus might need to be more on like this bit,

The warm-up,

And then a lot less on this at first.

And that's where tailored one-on-one approaches are good.

Or if you do do this,

And regardless if you think you have a big condition or not,

Anytime you feel frazzled or overwhelmed,

It's like,

Just cut it out,

Do less,

Rest.

You can always come back and do the rest of the class later,

Though you'd still want to warm up.

So,

And one of our goals here of this beginner's course is to feel the sensations in your body from your nervous system that are signals to say,

Hey,

There's some therapeutic tremorine that wants to move here,

So we'll learn to feel those,

Sense those,

And to be able to allow it from there.

And then when you build a relationship of what it feels like to have a body,

Like when it wants to tremor and shake,

Then you'll better be able to use it.

And that's part of the basically understanding this by experiencing it and learning to turn it on and off,

And when to allow it in your day-to-day life.

So using this course,

Really you just need yourself,

Comfortable clothing,

Relaxing space.

I'll do talks throughout which cover important theory,

And this will probably be the longest talk,

This first one.

Option to play music in the background.

I'm not going to put it in the video for copyright purposes,

But by all means put some of your favorite music in the background.

And there's kind of,

In this course,

There's two phases to the tremorine process to look at.

That's the discovery,

That's where we'll,

I'll give you strategies and shapes,

And to learn to listen to those signals and sensations,

To find those places where your body wants to tremor.

And then from there,

Phase two is to just simply surrender to it,

Listen to the music of your shaking station,

And just hang out in it.

And even if you're not doing anything else,

And we'll oscillate in and out of inquiries and surrendering to the shake,

And by all means at any time you can just keep surrendering to the shake and leave my suggestions behind,

Hang out with what's serving you.

Though do rest.

When I invite in a rest,

At least rest that much.

That's important,

Is stopping and starting the shaking for safety.

That's one of the most important parts of keeping this safe,

Especially early on as you're learning and building your relationship with it,

Is to regularly,

Like,

Stop it and start it again before,

Because you're learning it and you don't want to go too far,

Too quick.

That's best way to not do that.

Please,

You know,

I'd love to hear you share and post or message me.

If you want to share it with the community,

Your experiences,

Your questions,

I really invite that in.

That's really powerful,

Really beautiful,

Supportive way to get support.

I love,

I generally also offer very detailed answers to questions and such,

And it's just such a nice way to ignite and inspire the whole community.

So journal about your experiences,

Write some notes and then share it with us if you want,

Or if you don't,

You can also privately message me,

Or you can decide what's to share and what's to private message,

Of course.

A combination is great.

And my,

Basically,

Yeah,

I invite you to cultivate the discipline to do this enough,

Ideally to make it at least second nature,

Which is,

You know,

The end of the intermediate course goals,

Because right now it's a very important time where basically,

You know,

It might be hard to show up to your practice to do your health and well-being practice,

But if you show up,

If you carve out the discipline to do it,

Not rigid discipline,

But aim to show up,

You know,

Those few times a week or so,

Do the journeys and basically make this second nature eventually.

So I invite you to show up for yourself to,

To,

Yeah,

Do this shaking medicine with me,

Because it's deeply empowering,

It's deeply enlivening,

And,

And it will support you to thrive,

No doubt.

I'm here to support you,

Reach out anytime,

And thank you for being a pioneer by,

In this world,

By embodying something that might be weird for many people,

This shaking medicine.