Thanks for joining my Shaking Medicine course.
It's a pleasure to have you here.
And in this first intro video.
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Let's first talk about a bit of what shaking medicine is shaking medicine is a somatic.
.
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Body-based modality for unraveling tensions and stress,
Anxiety,
Suppressed emotions,
Trauma.
As well as cultivating peace,
Tranquility,
Life-worth energy,
Groundedness.
Clarity.
All sorts of beautiful qualities that help us live and do the things we love to do in life.
It evolves through nature.
It evolved over hundreds of millions of years of evolution within the nervous system of animals.
For doing Exactly that releasing trauma energy releasing the kind of compression of our body when we experience traumatic events.
And it's.
.
.
Very easy in many ways because it's natural.
It evolved to do exactly that.
It's not something we have to.
.
.
Go into our mind and think about on a deep level,
It's actually the more we can get out of our mind and let our body or instinct.
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.
Awaken and do its thing.
The more easily and effective it actually is.
It's one of the most powerful mechanisms for letting go of this kind of energy and then on the flip side cultivating the beautiful energy that does serve us.
Now,
This shaking medicine is set up as a philanthropic,
Non-for-profit foundation in Australia,
But it's covering the world.
One thing I want to talk about is the stigma.
There's a big stigma around shaking in our culture.
Why is that?
Well,
Over a long time of.
.
.
Kind of suppression of us in our culture,
It's been kind of framed as something negative,
Like going back to the Roman Catholic Church or even like the.
.
.
Witchcraftery times,
People getting like.
.
.
Saying,
Oh,
They're shaken,
They need an exorcism,
Or they're possessed by the devil.
So it goes into religion,
It goes really deep into that.
And there are non-therapeutic reasons we can shake.
But this therapeutic tremoring is not that.
It's something beautiful.
It unravels us.
It lets go of the energy.
Actually integrate and let go of stories and tensions in our body that are just holding us back from doing the things we love to do.
And my wish for you is to be more free to be.
More spontaneous and easeful,
Living to be able to experience more playfulness and pleasure in your life.
Anything that you do,
Whatever it is in health and well-being or in work or sports or.
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Any kind of creative art form,
Singing art,
Whatever it is.
I wish that for you that this can help enhance that for you to do the things you love and share that love in the world.
So know that it's okay.
The shaking is like literally an instinctive mechanism.
Animals all over the world do it for a long,
Long time.
To release the trauma.
If a tiger is getting chased by Or let's say if a.
.
.
Say a deer,
A gazelle,
Or something's getting chased by a tiger,
A lion,
And it gets away as soon as it's in.
A safe place,
It can undergo the tremor mechanism and kind of release the energy,
Move out of fight and flight and into rest and digest.
A lot of us aren't doing the things to move out of fight or flight and into rest and digest.
And it doesn't have to be a super traumatic event to fry us.
It can be a bunch of small,
Stressful events over the course of.
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Years and decades that add up.
That can suppress us just as bad as one or a couple of really bad traumatic events like someone might experience in war,
For example.
So.
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Let me introduce myself.
I'm Dr.
Keith Mertz.
I started this Um,
With the intention of helping people all over the world access therapeutic treatment because it so positively affected my own life.
And.
.
.
I just saw that it's not that well known.
It's not out there.
So I've created the Shaking Medicine Foundation.
For bringing this to the world.
And it started back when I was doing my PhD.
I was really deep into yoga and started getting into Qigong.
And then one night,
I was in a deep trance meditative state and had this very awakening experience with my body.
Instead of being still,
It started awakening and shaking and shimmering.
My only reference point at that moment was things I saw in exorcism movies.
I was like,
Oh gosh,
I'm having an exorcism.
But I wasn't scared because it felt so good,
Whatever was happening.
So I allowed it and allowed it,
And before I knew it,
I was just,
Work up the next morning,
I just felt a sense of.
.
.
Being reborn,
So much energy that wasn't saving me,
It was just let go of.
And so from that point on.
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.
I started exploring it like,
Okay.
I had no reference point,
Never heard of anything about it.
I just kind of started letting that energy into my life a bit.
And then soon enough,
Books and modalities started coming my way,
And I started exploring with it and developing my own style.
And that evolved to me teaching my friends,
Like seeing if they,
If it would resonate with them too.
To doing classes at yoga studios or festivals.
And that evolved to people asking me,
Like,
Hey,
I want to share this too.
So it evolved into me doing teacher trainings and training other teachers in this style.
And so it's been a beautiful journey.
So far and I'm glad to be here now sharing it with you.
Let's see.
Some of the benefits we've spoke about that a little in the promo video.
Aches,
Pains,
Tensions,
Inflammation,
Stress,
Anxiety,
Trauma,
Suppressed emotions,
It can help.
Alleviate all of that,
And it can help cultivate presence,
Peace,
Ease,
Pleasure,
Resilience,
Clarity,
Energy,
Strength,
Flexibility,
Balance,
Centeredness,
Spontaneity,
Mobility,
Playfulness.
Creativity,
Intimacy,
Relationships,
Expressiveness,
Performance,
Faster recovery times.
And a lot more.
I decided to read that off just so I wouldn't leave out any of these things.
And it's applicable in.
.
.
Any of those things,
Health and well-being,
It's like hygiene for your psyche.
It's cool.
It's like,
Okay,
We have a good diet for our dietary hygiene.
This is like hygiene for our psyche or subconscious mind.
It's really cool.
Performance,
School,
Work.
Sports.
It's really good at helping us get into that flow state.
Recovering,
Recovery,
Trauma,
Sports,
Injuries,
Etc.
It can complement so many other practices.
Growth and development,
Therapy,
Birthing,
The birthing process,
That's an interesting one.
Don't learn this if you are pregnant,
But it has been reported to help women give birth a lot more easefully,
Like significantly.
And that includes them having a less of a chance of having like.
.
.
Post-bathing trauma Yeah,
So there's so many ways it can help.
That's.
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To be safe with it.
Some contraindications are basically if you have any major.
.
.
Medical condition,
Especially mental health condition,
If you're diagnosed with like PTSD,
If you're easily overwhelmed emotionally,
Like maybe a panic attack.
If you've had surgery recently or if you've broken bones,
These are all reasons why you might not want to.
Do this right away.
Or at least reach out to me first so we can speak about it.
But if there's nothing too extreme going on,
Then probably you're going to be okay.
Just take it easy.
Go slow and gentle at first.
Less is more.
Think of this as something you're bringing into your life.
And.
.
.
You're not going to shake out all your trauma in one go,
Especially if you've been cultivating.
This trauma energy for decades.
It's going to take more than one session to let it go.
So it's more about like,
If all that's bundled up like a big onion,
You're like peeling away one layer of the onion.
At a time in this Shaking medicine complements and helps you to do that.
So.
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Self-regulation this is important so what we'll do with self-regulation is we'll stop and start through the process the the trimmer mechanism so it's important to be able to turn it on it will turn it off at will and this helps us to regulate the intensity to ground.
And know that,
Of course,
You can rest any time you need to rest through the journey.
Make any modifications you need to make.
I want to make lots of suggestions in the class and offer modifications.
They're depending on your unique self and where you are in your level of of where you are in your body,
Then please.
.
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Add to the modifications or rest more if you need.
So take it easier in the practice if you need to be a little easier than what I'm guiding.
And conversely,
If you need to be a little stronger,
You can take it a little stronger.
Frequency of practice.
Definitely at a maximum.
Don't do more than one of these classes per day,
One of these three classes.
And then But really tune in if it feels like it's moved a lot for you.
Take a few days,
Maybe even up to a week between each class.
But minimum,
I wouldn't do more than one class a day to start with.
And then as you cultivate a relationship with your trimmer mechanism.
You'll be able to better and better judge how often you can practice,
Whether it's daily,
Every couple of days,
And that'll likely change as you progress as well.
And some quick tips for activating the trimmer.
We get there.
Activating the tremor is,
There's a few key foundational things.
Move as slowly and as relaxed.
As you can in the range of motion that I'm going to be offering.
So we'll be moving.
Different parts of your body to kind of get the trimmer going and we do that as slowly as we can and also as relaxed and surrendered as we can.
The more you can relax in your body,
The better in general.
And.
.
.
Also,
Trust your instinct and your intuition.
Try to turn the thoughts off.
And do all of this as best as you can in this moment with where you are now.
And no worries if it's challenging at first.
It can be a process to.
.
.
To be able to shut everything off,
Especially if everything you've been doing has been controlled stuff,
Even yoga class,
Pilates,
It's all.
Controlling the mind,
Body,
Breath.
This is.
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Learning something fundamentally different.
Letting go of control.
A quick summary of this course.
We'll have three classes,
Around 50-ish minutes each.
These are the practice classes.
Don't do more than one a day.
At a maximum.
Um,
And the first class will be kind of balanced,
The second will be a little more active,
And the third will be more passive.
And it's designed to.
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.
To bring you into deepening into your therapeutic tremor mechanism.
Each class will warm up the physical body first.
We don't just jump into tremors.
We want to be.
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.
Present,
Grounded,
Have the physical body warmed up and then maybe I like to add a little Qi Gong to kind of tune into the internal energetic body.
And generally,
I'll do some voluntary shaking.
After that,
Before going into therapeutic tremoring,
Which is the focal point of each class where we'll spend the most time.
And then there'll be a nice juicy rest at the end.
And let's see.
And there will be a few short talks throughout where I'll just go deeper into some of the theory.
And science and history and such around shaking medicine.
So let's begin our first class,
Shall we?
