The Body’s Release Reflex: Neurogenic Tremor, Somatic Healing & Presence with Alex Greene

In this episode we’re joined by Alex Greene - a Structural Integration practitioner, somatic educator, and founder of Neurogenic Integration. Alex first encountered spontaneous neurogenic tremoring while living as a monk in a Zen monastery near Honolulu, during a bodywork session that dramatically shifted chronic pain and reorganised deep patterns of tension.

Rather than teaching tremoring as a single technique, Alex approaches it as part of a wider nervous system and trauma-resolution ecosystem — integrating Structural Integration, Somatic Experiencing, IFS, Feldenkrais, breathwork, and hands-on bodywork. We explore how healing and awakening meet through embodiment, and why presence and curiosity may be the most underrated tools in any modality.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Alex’s Zen training — and why posture, breath, and stillness became foundational
• The tremor reflex as a built-in mechanism for release and reorganisation
• The intersection of fascia, breath, pelvic patterns, and nervous system regulation
• Why story still matters — and how physiology shifts meaning-making
• Parts work (IFS), somatic tracking, and building embodied emotional literacy
• Energetic sensitivity in practice: joining, resonance, and flexible boundaries
• Inherited and transgenerational patterns — and how they surface somatically
• Where somatic therapy may be heading next, and how the AI era may deepen the hunger for embodiment

Learn more: neurogenic-integration.com

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Transcript

Christabel Armsden 0:04

Welcome to the Future of Wellness, exploring self-transformation and holistic healing to unlock your inner potential. Hosted by Christabel Armstein and Keith Parker. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Future of Wellness. Today we're joined by Alex Green. Alex first discovered the power of neurogenic tremor while living as a monk in a Zen monastery near Honolulu. After experiencing spontaneous tremors during a structural integration session that dramatically relieved his chronic pain, he began a decade-long inquiry into the body's innate mechanisms for release and healing. Now a seasoned structural integration practitioner and TRE certification trainer, Alex integrates a wide range of somatic and nervous system modalities, including somatic experiencing, Feldenkrais, IFS, brain spotting, and visceral manipulation. His approach bridges bodywork with trauma resolution, exploring the interplay of breath, fascia, and the tremor reflex. Alex teaches internationally, working with physicians, therapists, and frontline workers across different cultures. He lives with his wife and daughter in Boulder, Colorado, where they enjoy the wild edges of the Rocky Mountains. Welcome to the show, Alex. It's a pleasure to host you today.

Alex Greene 1:25

Thanks so much. I'm happy to be here with you both.

Christabel Armsden 1:27

As we outlined in the bio there, you've spent time living as a monk, you've explored structural integration and walked the path of a healing practitioner for over a decade. If you were to trace the through line, if you will, what might you say has been a guiding question or principle for you?

Alex Greene 1:44

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, so if I if I rewind my own life tape, I'm in my mid-40s now, but when I was in my sort of college years, I uh my interests were very um uh scientific in nature. So I thought I thought I would study physics. I was enrolled uh in a physics program, uh, but I got a little bit derailed at one point uh because I sort of took a side journey into uh philosophy. And I took a course on East Asian philosophy this um in my freshman year of college, and it sort of broadened my horizons in certain ways, and and and to my chagrin, I started to kind of question my strictly materialist sort of worldview that had kind of my guiding principle with with my sort of uh my studies. And one thing led to another, and I sort of started, as college kids frequently do, started to kind of question everything in a way as I wanted to explore uh other things so that what was most available for me was to do uh initial training in Zen Buddhism. Now, for most people, that's maybe not the most commonly available thing, but I grew up in a household where my parents were split. My father lived in Hawaii, my father had a significant background uh training as a Zen practitioner and teacher in a school in Hawaii. And I grew up going back and forth between the Midwest, the Twin Cities, and uh and Honolulu uh at different times of the year. But I had never been interested in this Buddhist stuff, Zen stuff. I didn't know even why the first thing as to what would be of interest about it. But when I was in my questioning mode uh with my my worldview shattered, I I asked my dad, hey, do they, you know, what is what does Buddhism say about X, Y, and Z? And he said, well, it'd be really hard to describe to you uh what it's about. But if you're curious, take some, you'd have to do a little bit of a uh an immersion to see if it's something that speaks to you or has any resonance. So I took the the break between my freshman and and cut and sophomore years of college and as three months, essentially, or 10 weeks or something, doing kind of a deep dive with daily meditation training. I learned all these all uh of these new things. And I found that it did speak to me significantly. And in the school of Zen Buddhism that I did that early training in, uh, yes, there were some of the philosophical concepts that come from Buddhism, but the attitude was when you're a beginning student, don't try to learn in any of that. Simply learn about your breath and your posture and do it through the form of seated meditation. And martial arts were a significant part of the that curriculum as well, um, and and physical labor and things like that. And so it was it was a very, very body-oriented um place and tradition. And some, and having been a kid, you know, sort of spending most of my time up here, I uh it was like totally a very new experience to pay attention to um stillness and breath and posture. And so uh it really hooked me in. I I moved to Hawaii, I finished my degree there, and upon finishing the degree, I did a sort of a three-year um uh full-time residential stay at that uh temple, kind of a the to sort of a traditional length of time to do sort of an immersion uh experience. So um, so that's what kind of really hooked me in. And uh the story that you read about how I first experienced tremoring or neurogenic tremoring, which may come up in our conversation, was uh I was struggling with a hip injury. So here I am, a monk doing martial arts, this and that. But I was I was in a lot of pain after a period of time because of uh like an imbalance in my in my pelvis. And so somebody took me through the 10-session series of uh Rolfing structural integration. It was very fortunate. Somebody came up to the monastery and once per week took me through this uh structured format. And it was very, very helpful. But most what was most memorable in some ways is that one day, uh midway through this set series of 10 sessions, I was laying on my back receiving this bodywork. It was a little tender what the person was working on, and so I was kind of breathing and this and that. And then my legs started to shake, and I kind of sort of thought, okay, try to stop it, and I stopped it temporarily, but then they started shaking again. And I kind of looked over at the bodywork therapist and I was like, hey, is this okay? She said, Yeah, you know, let it happen. It's some sort of release, just let it happen. And so I once I gave permission, there was just this um uh vibration that emerged. And first it was my legs, and then it was my pelvis, and she was completely just non-plussed and kept doing her, I think she was working in my rib cage. And this experience lasted for probably 15 or 20 minutes, and it was it was significant, and I had no context for understanding this. Was this uh was a Shakti energy moving through me? Was you know, I didn't have a lot of language about the nervous system at that period of time. Uh, but it was clear to me that there was some sort of night and day difference from when that happened and afterwards. Uh certainly something radical had shifted in the sort of the organization of tension around my pelvis, but it was more than that. I sort of felt like I had kind of released something. I felt lighter. Um, and so uh years later, yeah, at least six or seven years later, uh I was drawn back into the world of bodywork therapy, not as a recipient, but later as a practitioner. And uh it was in that work that I sometimes I would see similar things. Other people would go through, um, have these kinds of uh tremoring vibratory releases. And so that in many ways was the seeds of of how I studied eventually the work of um Tier E and Dr. David Brusselli, who's been a guest on your show. After my period of time uh coming out of the monastery, um, I just I I felt that I had learned so much about myself by kind of doing a deep inquiry into body breath and and posture. And uh I felt called to work in that field in some way. And so the first part of that was to come into the similar structural integration that had been so impactful for me. And um, over the years I've uh uh kind of built upon that and sort of found my own path uh therapeutically. So that's um perhaps a long answer to your question, but that's that's sort of the through line as I as I see it.

Keith Parker 8:37

We often grapple with andor talk about at field dynamics the connection between healing and awakening. And it's interesting to see your journey going from uh Zen monastery practice and Buddhist tradition, which is more an awakening tradition, you could call it, to studying all these different modalities and being a therapeutic facilitator or healing facilitator yourself. How do you view these two perspectives, healing and awakening? Are they separate to you? Are they similar? How are they conjoined? Or what are your thoughts on that?

Alex Greene 9:11

Yeah, they're they aren't separate to me at all. They're quite conjoined. Um to me, it's a little bit of a spectrum. So, so very often we are uh uh coming to healing work because we've identified some something that, some, something that we'd like to change. That could be physical pain, that could be a sense of disconnection from our body, that could be an emotional experience. So, so at least most of the people I work with, there's typically something calling them in a sense of problem that they're wanting to solve. And I'm excited when people's initial uh problems seems to uh seem to alleviate and when suffering is alleviated. I always think that's wonderful. But in my in my view, and and I've from the very beginning, what has always felt most interesting and compelling about doing this work with folks is I'm I don't just want to go from the negative experience to, okay, my back pain is resolved, or I don't feel as anxious as I used to be. Those are all really meaningful steps in somebody's journey. But where I get most excited is is so often they've made that step. And then now there's other things that they're, there's other awarenesses or questions within themselves that are starting to emerge that may not have even been there as to why they, you know, are are on a healing journey. Um, and so for me personally, um what has always uh gripped me so much about doing therapeutic work is I get to I get to see people where they are, uh certainly aligned with them around their goals, but I try to hold a space that as change occurs, I'm a listener and a another person curious about what else may be unfolding for them. Where where might they be leading them? What new questions are they asking? What uh what awakening uh may be emerging. So for me personally, the the sort of the path of awakening, which was very much the emphasis of my Zen training, and the path of therapeutic work, um I don't always talk about it that way with everybody that I work with, but on my personal level, I that's I'm I'm seeing those as very much in tandem.

Christabel Armsden 11:29

Raising some nice pieces there around the potency of curiosity as as both recipient, right, client, and as practitioner. And really the power of presence, which is, you know, the the unspoken thread, if you will, between many modalities and healing methodologies, um really the core central piece. So we've mentioned you've studied everything from Feldenkrais through to family systems. Um we always say the most interesting things happen at the boundaries of disciplines, right? This areas of overlap, um, not only between the body-mind-spirit system, if you will, but between the approaches and the methods and tools. So is this curiosity and presence the kind of um the unique piece that you bring to your method as practitioner? What's the um the overlap and where you've extrapolated um your unique approach to working with clients?

Alex Greene 12:20

Yeah, I love, I like, I love the question. And I like the pairing of presence and curiosity, which to me isn't always they're not always uh conjoined in the same sentence. Uh, but for me, there's um curiosity is a word I use a lot in my teaching and my client work. It's and and so that's a word I have a lot of resonance with. I I agree with you that the common thread, you know, why is it that that um uh 50 different modalities all have significant value? Well, of course, because they're working upon different principles and different systems of the human organism, um, and uh uh this inquiry presence and I and I believe uh self-awareness and curiosity are in a sense baked into effective therapeutic work. Um I have something when I when I'm in my teaching mode, and I and I'm talking with my uh mostly TRE students, people who are learning to become TRE facilitators, um I like to share that in my view, cultivating curiosity for yourself and your clients is uh is an important thing to do, and that curiosity seems to be contagious. So that if I'm deeply interested in your experience, deeply, and we could say deeply present, but also deeply curious, curious to see what else may be true for you, curious to learn what may be unfolding for you, and I'm and I'm really in a sense of presence around that. My experience is that heightens the curiosity, the self, the self-directed curiosity amongst um uh our our clients. And so uh with my own students, I teach a lot about uh cultivating curiosity both in a nonverbal way and also in a verbal way to ask people um questions that are holding a space of of a reflective uh curiosity for their somatic experience.

Keith Parker 14:25

Could you take us through like a general way in which you might work with a client given a specific complaint, so to speak? Um, like do you lean into particular modalities as primary, or is it you know, custom blend depending on the person? Because you've studied a lot of different things, you presumably or maybe not, are integrating a lot of things. Like, how do you uh, generally speaking, work with a client from A to Z? Just curious about that.

Alex Greene 14:55

A common pathway that I'll share would be I'm gonna use an example. Um, it's funny, maybe five or 10 years ago, 80% of my clients were women, maybe 20% with men, and now it's completely flipped. I mean it's probably 80 to 90 percent are men uh uh these days. And so the my the hypothetical client I'm imagining right now is a man, possibly my age. I'm in my 40s, or it doesn't really matter what age this person is, uh, who comes in and they want to connect more to their body. They want to connect, they want to have more clarity as to their emotional experience, being able to articulate, sense it, feel it, name it, and articulate it. There may be reasons why. There may be, there may be difficulties that they're having in external relationships, their jobs, something like that. Or it may be something deep, just personal for themselves, a sense that they are they're not fully able to connect to their their experience. So so using that, that's a that's a that example is a pretty common one in my work. And uh very often I start with a toolkit of uh Peter Levine's work, Somatic Experiencing. And what I like about the somatic experiencing approach is it's it's pretty, it's pretty open-ended. What it what it mostly I do that in a seated, not yet a touch relationship. I'm sitting there with a person and I'm asking them to learn just to sense and feel and describe their own sensory experience. Some people have had practice with that. Some people that's new, that's new. Uh, wherever they are on the spectrum, I'm starting to learn a little bit about how do they relate to their own uh somatic uh self, their own physical uh sensation. Not only am I learning how they are in connection to their own uh physicality, I'm I can start to introduce to them just the simple simple nervous system concepts that that weave through any of the work that I do. Things like tracking sensation, which I've already named, uh observation of breath and how breath can influence uh our somatic awareness, how our senses in general uh relate to our somatic state, you know, the difference between if your eyes are sort of in a tunnel vision mode versus if you have the ability to see widely and take in visual and auditory uh information around you, uh, the ability to sense and feel the furniture that you're sitting on. How is your body in relationship to the ground, to the field of gravity? Um so I do a lot of early skill building around somatic awareness. We develop a uh a rapport of describing and sensing that. I hope to show the person that that when we start to pay attention to things and just and and do small things, change our breath a little bit, direct our awareness. Um, when we're when we are in presence with ourselves, changes uh surprising things. Some people uh begin to tremor or they they start to connect to their emotional experience uh simply from from from this sort of embodied self-inquiry that I'm describing. So so very often that's a a place that I might be uh I might be in that container for quite a while, um, but I might be there for at least two to three sessions of this kind of somatic skill building. And at that point, we we might branch into a few different directions. If the person is really focusing on um uh if they're if if what they're really trying to understand is um emotional inquiry or uh stuff that's showing up in the uh in relationships or situations outside, then I might start to move into the framework of the internal family systems and introducing the concepts of parts. I find parts work to be really, really helpful in terms of organizing our inner experience. And if my hypothetical man's goal is to be able to describe his um uh sense and feel and name and articulate his emotional experience, utilizing the language of parts is a good way often to start to do that. Now, in addition to that, so very often, so like we've kind of in a way by parts work, we kind of headed more towards the brain. It's more towards the mind, the cognitive um experience. Although in my work, that's still always connected to felt sense. Um, so there's always that bridge there. With that same client, I'm very likely to also pursue something that's more directly embodied. So after that somatic experiencing beginning, we're very likely to move into learning TRE. TRE is, and I do it on my body work. Treatment table where I have the person go through a simple set of movements uh to gently fatigue and then stimulate some vibration and then learn how to relax into that vibration in the muscles and then see where that goes. And you guys have have talked about that process in the conversation with David. So I'm often inviting, showing people how to access their nervous system through tremoring, um, and and in addition through uh uh collaborative touch work. So leaning into all my body work training of structural integration, myofascial release, visceral manipulation, um, starting to introduce hands-on work and how that may facilitate the person. So my work is fun. I mean, this may be a little bit self-serving because this, this, I'm never bored because I get to I get to cross these different realms, sort of working on the table, getting to work with the body and the tremoring. I get to sometimes uh be more at the level of cognition and looking at the parts relationships, and sometimes um a blending of all of those things. So um, yeah, that's that's my best description of how of how I might work with a new with a new client in a common example.

Christabel Armsden 21:16

How important is the narrative or story, Alex, in your work? You mentioned there bridging between mind, right? Or we might say field in our model and um embody and the importance of embodiment, where we have the story or narrative, we might think of that as the content or information in the field dynamics model. How relevant is that in in your process and what you experience?

Alex Greene 21:38

It's a little bit different for every person. I mean, uh something I resist sometimes as somebody who's studied a lot of uh somatic modalities is there'll be this, you'll hear this comment like, as though the story doesn't matter at all, or the narrative doesn't matter, and the issues in the tissues and and um uh let go of the story. And and there's times when those are very, very appropriate indicators, but I'm not of the opinion that the story doesn't matter at all, or that it's somehow deprioritized. I think the uh in my view, the person's self-understanding, the story, memory is is correlated to that's sort of one side of a coin, and the other side of the coin is their their embodiment in relationship to that, which could be tension patterns in the muscles and the connective tissue, the the tuning of the autonomic state, you know, where we are on the polyvagal curve, for the anybody familiar with that perspective. Um, so I think there's always a physiological side of the coin, the the the the what's happening at the body, and then there's a psychological side of the coin. Now, um I I uh what I agree with is that if we only try to address things through um if somebody's issue is with this uh the meaning making and narrative, if we only stay in that channel, uh like say, for example, through talk therapy or something like that, uh there's a good chance that they not getting into the resolution or maybe perhaps a limited um traction with that. I I think a real power of any somatic work, whether it's yoga, breath work, TRE tremoring work, hands-on body work, is that we can temporarily sort of set down uh thinking, we can engage through sensation. And then very often um when we then return to the original context, if there's narrative, story, emotional qualities, we may say see it in a new way. We may see that it's that as our physiology changes, uh the feeling state going along with the narrative is shifting already and opening new pathways. Sometimes a person, when we can kind of get into a more embodied state, sometimes what feels like the truth starts to feel clearer, like somebody's clarity as to okay, how I really feel, or what I maybe even what I need to do or how I want to hold this. Sometimes people's stance has shifted after we've explored through the physiology approach. So uh for me, I'm I I I see them as as related, and there's times we would kind of go back and forth um uh depending on the circumstances.

Keith Parker 24:39

A brief pause to thank you for listening to this episode. If you're looking to take the next step in your transformation, find out how we can support you with our popular energy healing training, one-to-one private sessions, free resources, and more. Visit energyfielddynamics.com to learn more. You mentioned earlier about things changing in your practice, you know, uh a client profile that might have been dominant female shifting towards a male in over the years. A lot of the study that you've done is very somatic-minded, very physically grounded, very embodied, as you said. What has been your experience? Um, and maybe this has been something that's changed over time, of what might be classically uh described as more of the energetic domain, um, empathic experiences, noticing quote unquote energy flows, that kind of stuff. What do you notice? Um, and how, in a certain sense, how relevant are those skills maybe to doing uh truly holistic and integrative work as as your um your background certainly suggests?

Alex Greene 25:47

Yeah, I really, I really enjoy that question too. That that you know, looking at things from um from the language of of uh energy has been a big, a big interest of mine. Um and let me let me see how I how I should put this. Uh sometimes the way I think about it is through my the Zen and martial arts training, that's a very eastern perspective. And and within that uh tradition, there was a big emphasis around uh energetic awareness and sensitive sensitivity through the that that may be true in in Zen broadly, but it was especially true uh with the the particular lineage and the particular teacher that that guided guided us. And he himself was uh the the person who founded this particular uh Zen temple in dojo. He just was one of these people who uh first through raw talent and then later through very significant training, was just very, very adept at both sensing and creating in other people a uh uh uh sense of energetic flow. And and um the term in in our tradition would be ki, ki, like the ki from qi in in Chinese uh uh vital energy, but qi i is sort of the joining of ki. Uh I so I was really lucky because here I am this scientific skeptic. I would not have, I would, I would, I would have had no uh place to hold uh woo concepts like energy, but uh but I was fortunate that he was able to work with me in ways that there was just no ambiguity. It was it was became very obvious that this is very real phenomenon. And so that's part of what really drew me to the tradition was to try to understand more uh about that. So then as I proceeded into my therapeutic work, what I actually the way I often describe the sort of the first, this is an arbitrary number, but approximately the first three years of my uh structural integration practice once I was working full time, was that what I really thought of at that time was there that there was this sort of progression of uh what I was able to, what I felt I was able to sense and feel through touch, through my hands, in terms of um the sort of new layers of uh feeling, getting sensory information, sometimes emotional information about the person. And I believed in all of this. So I didn't luckily I was open to it. I knew I I through my Zen training, I had already experienced that um when we're in in presence with one another, the the the Zen terminology might be you know, sort of becoming one with. So if we can become one with uh somebody that we're engaged with through any situation, then there's the more we are one with the person, the more we can sense and feel uh because of the the joining of the experiences. And so I I knew a lot, I sort of had had a start with that through the Zen training, but actually what really told me I was on the right path with body work was that I felt that week by week, month by month, client by client, my ability to sense and feel um about a person, not through verbal, not through visual channels, but through touch and through also not through touch. So sort of just the um the the interaction of energy energy fields. And I also felt that my own presence um was in not through what I did with my hands, not through what I uh did, what through my knowledge, but through my uh if I was in centered awareness uh via my own breath posture and presence, that that was part, a significant part of the therapeutic influence of these of these encounters. So I so I so so I had this, I so I thought I think of these three years as almost like an apprenticeship with the human energy system. I knew a little bit about it, and I intentionally didn't seek a lot of outside perspective. I didn't go running to 50 different things that talk about because it was it was obvious to me that I was dire that I was learning what I needed to learn in my own way, which I thought would be most useful. Later on, I got very curious. I love, I love reading what uh Fritz Smith, the founder of uh Zero Balancing, he he does an amazing job of talking about energy flow, uh other lots of other traditions too. So so I've become curious about the languaging, but I I needed that time period to really uh sort of find it, find it for myself, really trust it, trust my ability to be in connection to it, uh, and then sort of move forward from there.

Christabel Armsden 30:54

Appreciate you sharing that journey, Alex. It it speaks very much to the principle of energy work, energy experience of energetics being uh experiential, that being one of the most useful avenues in which to engage with the material rather than theoretical, and trusting your own sensing journey, right? Trusting how your body or psyche presents that energetic exchange, we might say, or recognizes the energetic interface that's happening at the um various levels of relationship, practitioner to client. You've spoken there very uh nicely from your perspective around this engagement in a one-to-one field, right? Recognition of uh energy flow between practitioner and client. Many healing traditions also think of the body as storing not just personal, but maybe ancestral or collective information, transpersonal. And I wondered if in your work you've encountered anything along that line through tremor or somatic releases that are transpersonal or ancestral in nature, that that broader sense of energetic connection that we may have.

Alex Greene 31:52

Yes, the short answer is definitely I I have this funny experience, which is that in my in my um early, I don't know, three, four, five, my third, sort of like the first five years of my therapeutic journey, um uh where I could, I was always I was so blown away by things, you know, um uh that I would that I had all these kinds of examples to work with. A funny thing that's happened to me now, you know, 15, 20 years into things, is I sometimes struggle to sort of uh find uh these kinds of examples because in some ways what you're talking about is like my daily experience in in many ways, at least when I'm in in practice with people, such that it like like it doesn't even like stand out to me so much anymore. But that that is that's not to say that it's that's the whole focus of my work, but my own approach is just to hold a very wide field in terms of uh what my own presence, what I'm curious and present towards as I is I work it through whatever modality. And um I trust that my clients that what's going to surface is first of all, it very it very much depends upon their their pre-existing worldview. If they have a if they have a say they've done a lot of shamanic work and they've exploded, well, naturally speaking, then then they're going then then things are going to start to emerge in that way. Uh and if they haven't, maybe not. And so I I personally try to not impose too much of a of a frame on people other than open-ended curiosity. And then I and then we work with what presents and we try to contextualize it and and piece it together. Um I uh whether it's through body work, TRE work, uh, I've seen many, many examples where people connect to early experience, early experiences that might be from their own um journey, they might be from their their childhood, it might be from birth experience. I've seen many times when people connect into seemingly the energy field of one of somebody in their family, maybe living through their parents, maybe they have resonance with an experience from their parents, uh, or or earlier than that in their family lineage, um, where there's a sense of some and some pattern moving through the family line that a person is contacting in a somatic way. And if they they may connect this to an energetic pattern that um that they recognize as being part of their lineage. And again, they may have different terminology. And sometimes I use, you know, the IFS model, the internal family systems model. One thing I like about it is I think Dick Schwartz has done, has created a pretty simple way of explaining um certain things, including his concept of uh legacy burdens is a term we use in IFS, referring to uh what uh what we may carry in our system that may have come into us through culture or through family lineage or other type of lineage. And so sometimes I lean into that phrasing of things because I find it to be uh a pretty easy way to talk about when something is real to a person, but there's a sense that it didn't begin with them in their life, this lifetime in their body, but it has some roots uh somewhere else. Um but what I try to do and what I try to cultivate with my clients is you know, we we don't get too excited about whether something, you know, where and the where and when something may have been um uh transpired. Our work is the same. It's what what does that need? What um again, if I'm using the IFS language, uh what can we bring presence or self-energy to that pattern? Is there a shift that's uh available to happen here and now in this person's uh embodiment? So so that's that's maybe my best description of um how that tends to come up in my work.

Keith Parker 36:06

You do a lot of uh training of practitioners, and I think it's quite interesting to hear your own kind of arc uh of describing how things have changed over time. And whereas something might have seemed extraordinary or unusual has become mundane and common, you know, 10, 15 years in. And I think that I can concur on that. Um, having had uh about the same amount of practice time as you, things that used to just be wow, and how crazy, and just so much excitement and curiosity in terms of not understanding really, but also acknowledging certain phenomena coming up in a therapeutic context, just becoming just the everyday standard thing that just happens in practice. So we do a lot of training with people as well and take people from foundations to something else. What do you think of this kind of arc of development for people, you know, developing as practitioners, especially when they're, you know, jumping into lots of different modalities and kind of integrating their own personalized map? Like, what's the advice or the wisdom that you try and impart towards people when they go on this journey of being like, I'm not really sure exactly what I'm getting into, right? But I'm open, I'm curious. And what what might this kind of like look like? How do I, how do I kind of keep moving forward, et cetera? I don't know. What are your reflections on that? Because it's a fascinating thing and there's a lot of parallels.

Alex Greene 37:30

You know, a lot of the teaching I do is is within is within the TRE modality. And so I I feel like I'm lucky in the sense that I get to take people on a on a certain phase of their journey as a therapeutic practitioner. So lots of people, for lots of people, they they're already a therapist or they're something. And so this is a new uh tool. Other people, this is the beginning of their therapeutic, you know, identity as doing therapeutic work. I with with my average um TRE student, you know, I'm I'm with them for a short, relatively short, but oftentimes transformational and in important time. You know, you I might be in relationship with them for say, on average, about a year or something like that. Um, very often the the engaging with TRE as a modality, and we really encourage people to do a lot of it for themselves. So very often they they are the the students are having a big unfolding at the personal level, a somatic opening, and they're starting to make connections into uh their nervous system, their own history. They're sometimes they're now developing, um, they're at that early phase of developing uh res uh energetic resonance. And so and so they're asking very good questions about uh intuition and and how do we parse things. And so I really enjoy being in those kinds of conversations. Um something about it being this this this sort of one year, uh, I sort of feel like my job with them isn't to necessarily take take them on the full journey that I've that I've been on. And what I what I hear, and I uh I credit the two of you for the work that you do, because I I have the the sense that you're you're take you're you're taking people um you're taking responsibility for perhaps a a bigger slice of the journey, which which is um interesting. But there have been a few people where not through the TRE channel, but I teach um I teach in sort of small batches, so to speak, very small, almost sort of um one on one or small group trainings. The term that I call it as I've hybridized it is Zen integration bodywork, where I took the structural integration training with the Zen influence that I have, as well as some other things. And so for a few people I have trained. Maybe about a half dozen people in that original method that I did. And there it's a longer-term relationship where I'm trying to shepherd people through a little bit of a fuller uh look at um energetic interactions, both in the body, not through the body, looking at it from themselves. I I can't say I'm very systematized with that, unfortunately. I'm a little bit, I tend to be experiential. You know, as I shared with you, kind of my own journey was sort of I've sort of found my own way. And and when I work with with my students on this, I I try to let them find their own way, but be a mentor to them, share experience, always recognizing that how they experience something doesn't have to be this. It's not as though uh I don't feel that I have some standard that they are trying to uh uh get to. Uh uh more I'm looking for sort of a deepening process that I've been on, and and I can at least sense and see how that's unfolding for for some of these students. So um yeah, but it's cool. I mean, to me, that is what makes teaching rich and fun, is to is to be on that journey with people with students.

Christabel Armsden 41:17

We have maybe two different perspectives often show up in in various modalities around connecting to a client's system, right? Uh energetically, we have this idea of never merge, stay separate, all right. Practitioner and client, keep your systems completely separate, don't go there. And then we have this other model of just merge, combine. I know you spoke a little bit earlier of this idea of becoming one, right? And I wonder if you could share a little bit about your experience with those two approaches and if there's an either-or, or if both can work, and for you, what your approach might be.

Alex Greene 41:52

I like that question a lot. I think that's important stuff to look at. I look at it as there's there's in a way, there's two directions we can we can bring our attention. There's probably there may be more than two directions, but there's at least two. One is the is the the direction towards uh the the person and their field, you know, their body, their energetic field. So that that that that's one dimension. Another dimension is in a in a way the opposite, coming coming towards uh the center of our own experience and our own, and in and the body can be a proxy for that. So um I personally am uh and again, this is the thing where we get all there's lots of conventional wisdom. It's like, okay, put up a golden bubble between you and the person, and and and I think there's a lot of value, maybe to to a model like that. What I resist is uh inflexibility, and I resist the idea that we have to be hyper-boundried or that we or that um if we are merging that that um so I'm a believer in both. I think we can be very, very skillful at at uh connecting into the person's field, which I I do by the way, I don't mean that intrusively, but by being being uh present where we can sense and we're a lot of the information that is within their field becomes available in our field. I think that I think that there's almost no limit to how much sensitivity we can cultivate of tuning in. I think if that's all we do and we disconnect from here, I think there's disadvantages. I think we subjectively feel a little bit ungrounded. I think sometimes it's not as uh it doesn't feel quite the same for the other person. I think we might actually suffer some uh nervous system and health problems if we're constantly leaving our home base to merge with somebody else's energetic field. I think there's downsides to that. But I'm I'm a strong believer that we can do that we can get the best of both worlds in the sense that we can also root very clearly in our own uh physical body, our own connection to breath, our own physical center. And that, and that if we if we have a strong root, actually that allows us to connect, we can be where we need to be in that exchange at any given time. I'm also a believer that that we want to have flexible, that we want to be able to join with somebody. And we also want the flexibility to step away and come back and let them have their experience, let them uh finish the session, integrate. Um, I don't need to be in there for for everything. Um so I this is rough language because I I don't try to articulate this with a lot of specificity, but this is this is this is my this is my my attempt to try to explain how I experience it.

Keith Parker 44:54

Thank you. It's a really interesting subject in general because you do find this uh rigidity in a lot of approaches where a modality gets associated with this is the way we do it, and and this is the only way to do it, right? And that rigidity is quite problematic when you are at least exposed to varying approaches and see that they just have different functions at different moments, as you've described. And it's really the practitioner's role to, I guess, familiarize themselves with the range of possibilities and find out what's the what's the sweet spot in that moment for that client and how that even shifts moment to moment, right? So um appreciate you uh responding in that in that open way. Uh it is a it's a fascinating subject that a lot of people are quite interested in and doesn't get articulated well. Um what's your what's your practice like now personally? Um you work on other people a whole lot and you have a big toolkit, but what do you apply like to yourself in the sense of like what do you like to do um when you have your sacred space?

Alex Greene 45:52

Well, my number one sacred space, this is gonna sound like a a joke, but it's it's sort of not, is um is when I'm in dad mode mode. Uh I have two young kids, a three, a three and a half year old and an infant uh six weeks old. And yeah, I I work hard, like I'm a I'm a I have a pretty active uh work life, but I that I have I have a lot of time with my kids. And um I I mean this I'm I'm I I don't do this because for selfish reasons, but I I I do feel that um when I'm in dad mode, this is this is um this calls upon the most of me. I have to be attuned, I have to be uh patient with a three and a half year old patience getting challenged. So I um literally go into the the pool, you know, the things that I do, the reading books, I literally think of that as an embodied practice for myself because um because of I try to, that's where I really try to give it my all uh in addition to my my therapeutic work. But um, but more specifically just around sort of kind of maintaining myself, definitely tremoring. I love to tremor. Um, I'm lucky I've about a year ago, I started a community with a colleague in Norway, uh, an online uh learning platform and um a lot of classes. And what we've really prioritized is bringing in lots of teachers uh to hold workshops and classes. And so uh what's been fun about that for me is me who's so often in teaching mode, I did, but because it's sort of my community, I try to go to almost all of these workshops and classes. So I've been I've been doing more tremoring and related practices, breath work and things like that on a much more consistent basis. So that's been feeling really good. Um, the other thing that's a big personal practice for me right now uh is the Feldenkrais method, which is one of my more recent sort of trainings. And because I'm teaching that uh on a weekly basis, I'm teaching um Feldenkrais-based classes online uh to prepare. I have to engage with that material myself. So one of my richest personal practices right now is just uh the time I have on my own in preparation for things like that. So uh yeah, so being a dad, tremoring and Feldenkrais work. And then I, you know, um I I think of my client work as I I get as much as I as I give. Um to me, um, I love my work because I think of it as embodied practice uh very much as well.

Christabel Armsden 48:31

It's a pleasure to sense uh into Alex the the joy, the clear joy you gain from fatherhood and the role in our congratulations, of course, on that second child, just six weeks old. This podcast is titled The Future of Wellness. We often ask uh guests to turn their attention to the future of their fields. There's been this explosion in recent years in somatic-based therapy in general, polyvagal theory in particular, right? Heavy emphasis on the nervous system. Where do you see somatic therapies heading in the next five to 10 years? Is there something that you feel is uh a quiet possible revolution upcoming? Is there new understandings we can bring to the field? What would be your hopes, aspirations, maybe even for this area of work that you're clearly so passionate about?

Alex Greene 49:14

That's a great question. I I I love observing the field. I love going on Instagram and seeing the explosion of you know things that were nobody knew what I was talking about 15 years ago with somatic work or this or that. I I there's a part of me that really appreciates the the the major moment the field of somatics seems to be having. I don't think I have a super good read on sort of like, okay, what's the trend? What's going to happen? I mean, I mean, one one interesting thing I I I like following um AI progress. Um, it's like an interest of mine. I I find it, I I expect that in our lifetime we're gonna there's gonna be a lot of changes um because of that. And I expect that the question of what it is to be human when there's a lot of non-human intelligence as part as built into our world, I think people are gonna become increasingly uh interested in the human experience. I think I think that's a that's maybe one prediction that I have. And I and so I think anything in terms of uh breath work and um somatic work, uh energetic work of this, I think as we see more AI, I think there will be a deep hunger for people to understand what what seems to be uniquely human outside of our sort of cognitive capacities, which are being duplicated by by uh AI. That's one area. Um I what I hope to see, I don't know if this is what will happen or not. Uh something that I that I don't I I I sometimes experience the somatic world as being a bit siloed, meaning that there's the people who are really into yoga, and there's the people who are really into the polyvagal theory, and there's people who are really into uh uh uh energy work, um, and that and that very often there may not be all that much blending. What I what I sense you guys doing through this podcast is trying to be an integrative uh force in terms of bridging conversations and things like that. That's a big interest interest of mine as well. And uh another example is trauma work. I mean, uh, I'm of the opinion that the trauma field, Peter Levine's work as and others, has done a major service in that trauma language, trauma-informed work. And and and um, but I'm also a believer that if you're only thinking about trauma, I think we're sometimes missing. To me, what has been so interesting about trauma is yes, resolving trauma, but also uh the what that opens up into understanding who we are as humans and meaning and how we connect with others. And so uh what I always hope is people can kind of can not just stop at the trauma message and how it relates to them, but can they use that as a as a place to now go beyond into more growth-oriented uh questions and inquiries? What's what is what is our what's my potential? What's the potential of ourselves as uh in society? What's the potential of family systems when when we study this work deeply? So um that's what I hope happens is um maybe sort of a broadening and deepening, and maybe that will align with people seeking new meaning in the in the AI era. I'm not sure.

Keith Parker 52:36

The future is is really interesting. The future is very uh exciting um for this kind of holistic model, you know, for people to see themselves and maybe in a different way and to think of their well-being, their health, and their purpose in a different way in the in the not so distant future. It's been a real pleasure to speak with you. Uh a lot of parallels as just, you know, long-term, long-time practitioners, integrating lots of modalities, uh being of service through facilitation work and um and just uh really enjoying that space. So thank you so much for your time and sharing with us. Um, would you like to share, you know, what um how people might find you um and what you're currently offering?

Alex Greene 53:13

Yeah, I think the easiest way to connect with me these days is through that project I'd mentioned that we launched a year ago um with my colleague Steve in in Norway. It's a company called Neurogenic Integration. Um, that's the website, neurogenic hyphen integration.com. And that is a that's where we that's where I do a lot of my online teaching. Uh, and so there's sort of community there. A lot of it is tremoring focused, although the purpose of that uh uh that platform was to was to look at the connections between tremoring and other disciplines like breath work, Feldenkrais work, body work, energetic work, and and uh what we're what we're trying to do with that project is look at uh cross-fertilization of where where tremoring relates, intersects with other uh modalities and approaches. So uh anyway, go into that website, you'll find my email address and classes that we do and stuff like that. So that's the best way.

Christabel Armsden 54:14

Thank you so much, Alex. We'll of course make sure to include that in the show notes. It's uh exciting to hear more of what you're offering in the world and to echo Keith's sentiments. It's been uh a very joyous conversation, a lot of cross currency and uh appreciation for the work that you're doing. And uh thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Alex Greene 54:30

Likewise, I really appreciate it. Thank you both.

Christabel Armsden 54:38

Thanks for being a part of the future of wellness. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review. It helps us reach more people and to make great episodes like this one. Learn more about field dynamics and why we think the future of wellness matters. Check us out at energyfielddyamics.com. See you next time.