Episode Show Notes
Our guest on this episode is Richmond Heath, a long time Physiotherapist and Pilates teacher based in outer-eastern Melbourne, and coordinator of TRE Australia.
[01:20] Richmond describes his career choices and his body started to let him down. After Aboriginal studies, suicide prevention, meditation and Bowen therapy work he began teaching Pilates.
[03:22] Richmond worked at an “exercise factory”. He later began to realise there was a lot more depth to Pilates.
[05:30] First impression of Pilates – a money-making machine! Then he became aware there was a refinement in Pilates. He felt torn between the Physio Pilates model and traditional Pilates model.
[08:41] Shift to valuing quality and freedom of movement over core stability and the profound changes in his autonomic nervous system.
[14:10] Richmond reveals some of the challenges he faces with Pilates, how he avoids some of what he finds hard, that involves pain and discomfort.
[15:36] Richmond was attracted in to the depth of information about anatomy and movement sequencing.
[16:04] Richmond explains the difficulties he experienced, his working environment where deepening understanding wasn’t encouraged.
[17:08] Nearing burnout before discovering Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). The trauma informed model was transformative – to examine the why behind bracing, tightness and collapse, and bring body-mind together.
[23:36] TRE experienced as a “great liberation” – getting out of the way and letting his body fix itself. He distinguishes between looking at trauma from an external, psychosocial perspective versus looking at it from the level of the body – why his body was freezing or collapsing.
[28:57] The effects of COVID restrictions on access to movement and social interactions.
[30:16] Been Coordinator of TRE in Australia for 10 years; connections between TRE and spontaneous movement techniques in other cultures.
[33:37] Returning to Pilates world, educating movement teachers to reintegrate tremoring responses, rather than dismissing them – from a top-down, conscious mind approach to a bottom up, body approach.
[34:47] Unimaginable changes since beginning movement journey – becoming softer, less rigidity of mind, relationships.
[38:17] Vision to integrate neurogenic movement into Pilates, giving teachers extra layers to teaching.
[40:51] Tremoring before Pilates to remove tension patterns; used afterwards when body is tired and able to go into deeper level tremoring; used during Pilates can give profound healing.
[42:10] The effect of Pilates can be so much more than just a movement experience, can have a profound effect on relationships because of a better state in their physical body.
[43:30] Richmond has a free online course for listeners interested in exploring TRE.
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Episode Transcript
Bruce Hildebrand: In the spirit of respect, The Pilates Diaries Podcast acknowledges the people and elders of the Bunurong people, members of the Kulin Nation, who have traditional connections and responsibilities for the land on which this podcast is produced.
Hi, I’m Bruce Hildebrand and this is the Pilates Diaries Podcast.
The mission of this podcast is to share the stories of the impact of Pilates We’re inviting Pilates enthusiasts to share with us the notes they’ve taken down in their Pilates journey as we seek out the answers to the intrigue Pilates has been able to ignite inside millions all over the world. Our hope is that The Pilates Diaries podcast goes some way to answering the question " What is it that makes Pilates so special?" Join me for privileged peek into this episodes Pilates Diary.
Our guest today is Richmond Heath, a long time Physiotherapist and Pilates teacher based in far outer-eastern Melbourne. Richmond, welcome to the show.
Richmond Heath: Thanks for having me on Bruce.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, we will take a look back to begin with- can you tell me about life before Pilates? What your pursuits were, where did you see yourself heading at the time? And in hindsight, what are you now see where some of the threads that might’ve led you to discover Pilates?
Richmond Heath: I did Physiotherapy after I finished school and I had a reasonable interest in the body and how it moves. But also actually then turned away from Physiotherapy because at the time was a little bit disheartened by the purely mechanical model that all was being introduced to. My interest in the body was also generated through sports, which I did a whole lot of- played cricket, reasonably high level, played football, did everything I could. And then I got to about 30 years old and my body started to just grind down- it was like my life and my body were grinding down to a halt. I started getting chronic calf pain, chronic shoulder pain. So I couldn’t swim anymore. I couldn’t even run or ride or couldn’t kick my feet while I was swimming. I had chronic low back pain. And I remember saying to one of my brothers, I can’t do all the things I used to do to keep myself happy. Which basically meant I couldn’t do all the exercise to keep what I now understood was high level stress and tension and anxiety at bay.
So did a whole lot of weird and wonderful things. I worked in Aboriginal culture and spirituality did an Aboriginal studies course. I worked in the then world first youth suicide prevention website Reach Out. Did a tour around Australia for two years, promoting that, I travelled overseas did a whole lot of wonderful things. And then I really came back to the body through doing Vipassana Meditation. During that time I started to experience a whole lot of spontaneous involuntary movement, which I had no understanding of but I went from having a chronic shoulder pain to being able to do a one arm shoulder stand and a pushup in a couple of days just in changing state.
After that, I came back to the body then more specifically through doing Bowen Therapy, and then after I’d been doing that for three or four years I started teaching Pilates, which is about 18-19 years ago now.
Bruce Hildebrand: What a fantastic journey that you’ve gone through and come back to.
Richmond Heath: Yeah. Look, it was a very roundabout journey and ironically, I came back to now my work is around teaching exercises and when I was teaching Pilates, it was coming back very much just to work with the body underneath all that psycho- emotional stuff.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, can you tell me the story of when you first arrived at Pilates- some of your earliest experiences.
Richmond Heath: I came to it because I had been doing Bowen Therapy and it was really aware that all had a strong interest and focus on education and I didn’t want to be a therapist, I didn’t want to be saying client after client- it didn’t really do it for me. I came across a job position- there was a Pilates/Physio clinic nearby that was looking for Physios. I’d actually de-registered and then I had to re-register to do Physio. Knowing what I know now, this was really like a Pilates factory – I wouldn’t even call it a Pilates factory- it was just an exercise factory using Pilates equipment. It was a really intense model, it was all computerized and beautiful that way, but it was just people doing really basic exercises with very little interest or understanding their movement or their quality of movement- it was more like an exercise program. Now it had great benefits it was like going to the gym and it was a little bit more than just doing a gym weights program. But it just did not resonate with me at all. It was just rote repetitive movement cardiovascular and weight training using Pilates equipment, almost dis-honoring what Pilates can be and should be rather than just saying it’s Pilates because we’re using a Reformer rather than a weights bench of a stationary bicycle or something. I didn’t do that for too long- I was lucky enough to find a position, having gained a little bit of experience there I worked in a Physiotherapy Clinic in Eltham with a good friend Kate Stone who gave me an opportunity. So I started teaching Clinical Pilates in a Physiotherapy setting, which I did for four or five years.
But the real key thing Bruce, was coming to do sessions with you and I can’t remember how I came to do them with you but from the very beginning getting an insight of going, hang on, there’s a whole lot more to what this was all about than just, do this exercise or push this machine and the depths of quality, which instantly drew me in and left me a little bit perplexed that what the Pilates that especially Physiotherapists that do a weekend course, and then all of a sudden go, I’ve got a four year degree, so I know what Pilates is a real lack of depth and understanding in the potential for the exercise program.
Bruce Hildebrand: Thanks for your insight. What were some of your first impressions of Pilates, other people in the class and even the perceptions of other people in your life when you told them that you’d begun Pilates.
Richmond Heath: First of all, it was something that was pretty exciting hot topic- and everyone was starting to do it was pretty well-known. That was useful in that I was doing something that was already well accepted and it wasn’t outside the square, even Bowen therapy back then was unheard of and unusual. It was a ticket back into the mainstream for me having done a whole range of other things. My first impressions with the clinic that I was working at, I just thought, this is just a money making machine I wouldn’t say that’s got anything to do with Pilates. That was really just people who were running it. My next impression was teaching Pilates in the Physiotherapy setting and almost the disappointment at the very mechanical nature of Pilates is just learning to take these particular exercises without any real depth or understanding about how to do it or what we’re looking for- as I say in the Clinical Pilates model, you can do a course on the weekend, you can learn 30 exercises and say great I’ve got a Pilates qualification. From the very beginning for me I was instantly aware that there was so much more available and more depth to it than what you would initially learn. So I had this mix of being stuck between two worlds, where there’s almost a disappointing lack of understanding and potential in the Physio world and this is not to say that all Physio clinics are like that but it tends to be just doing rehab rather than really getting into movement. But then also doing ongoing stuff really understand this I’m much more depth and quality of movement and refinement. I found it quite difficult because in my Physio setting I didn’t have the time and space to educate people about what to do and how to do it. I just had to put them on a thing and get them to do it. And I found that always a bit of a conflict, not having the time to refine people and get them to embody what they’re doing or pay attention or deepen their connection to themselves rather than just going, yeah, do this and then leave it at that.
So I think overall I felt a bit of a split. I was caught between two worlds. Physio- Pilates model and the more traditional Pilates model, which just had so much depth available to it.
Bruce Hildebrand: And the main reason for the lack of time was just the number of people in the class – is that right?
Richmond Heath: Yeah, one of the ironies of the Clinical Pilates model is it was supposed to be adjusting the classes to the individual, which is the same as any decent Pilates teacher out there anyway, but I was consistently working in classes of five people for 45 minutes or an hour and having to provide specific individual exercises for five people at a time I was constantly on overdrive, constantly running from one person to the other and then they’d walk out the door and another five would come in. So for me it certainly had some value, but I was certainly disappointed because it was a service, but it was much more about generating the income then really serving people. I used to always love when people didn’t turn up for class and I might have a class for two or three people where I could go right now, I can really educate them and help them find something new and different and get more out of it. It was mainly just the model of the way it was set up it’s better than nothing and those people probably weren’t going to go and do a more in-depth Pilates class a lot of them were getting what they wanted, but I very much found that people who liked working with me with people who were interested in working a bit deeper and educating and understanding about what they were doing and finding better quality while those who didn’t want to do that, who just wanted to come in and push the equipment- they pretty soon went this guys not for me.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, can you share some of your early progress with Pilates? What was your experience when you first noticed that Pilates was starting to have an impact on your life?
Richmond Heath: One of the first things I remember Bruce was when I did a session very early on with you and I remember you started me with the frog series and you made a comment, which said for you, the biggest change in your body was when your feet started to get flexible. And I remember thinking oh okay maybe, but takes me to court, do my abs all that usual thing. That was probably biggest shift was starting to get a better understanding about really what I was working with and the idea of quality of movement and freedom of movement rather than stability, which again, in the very basic, and I haven’t been in that field for a long time but that Physio model is all about core stability at those times- it’s all about bracing and immobilizing the back, not creating movement in the lumbar spine, but stabilising the abdominals.
So that was a real paradigm shift, which I totally loved. I always loved your saying- I think your instructor had said to you, you can either have tight feet or a tight seat- you can have both so if you’ve got tight feet you’re going to have poor stability around the hips and your glutes and vice versa.
Then in terms of when I started to notice it was having an effect- I’d have to say instantaneously. I sometimes laugh about it because I’d go and do a class. I would feel all these shifts and changes- I’d often have experiences of my autonomic nervous system ramping up and I’ll be flushed with heat and then I’d have freedom , but then many times I’d walk out the door and I’d feel so light and a bit shaky and a bit stirred up I just go and buy a couple of dim-sims or potato cakes or some junk food from the shop across the road because I almost felt like I had to because often felt too light and too different- it was really profound! So I knew it was having the impact straightaway, which is hard to integrate at times.
The other two things that I’ll never forget this day, I was in the Physio clinic where I was working one day and I saw myself in the long, full length mirrors- it must’ve been after a couple of months doing regular classes. And I remember looking and going, oh my God, I’ve got a neck again I literally got stopped and stunned- oh my God look how long my neck is! Where did that come from? My whole life I assumed I had this full neck that was short and stubby and fat, the same as my father’s always was. And then all of a sudden I was like "oh no, hang on, that’s actually just been chronic tension held. It was amazing, I literally remember looking and going hang on- that’s a different me – I never had a neck and now I’ve got a neck!
The other really key turning point that was probably after a year, I went back to my normal holiday place down on the Great Ocean Road. I remember walking barefoot up and down the river on the rocks and my feet didn’t hurt. In previous times I would have squealed with every single step without any understanding about flexibility in the feet and that sort of thing. I just remember walking along going "hang on this is not hurting my feet!" I always just thought, oh, that’s what everyone was feeling. And actually going "no this is what flexible feet – aren’t hurting at all. So that was a real turning point as well.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s so interesting to see your application in the real world. It’s fascinating. The other aphorism that I was taught early was the idea that flexibility or mobility creates stability in many ways: Balanced Mobility Creates Stability. That’s what you’re talking about in terms of rigidity in contrast to balanced mobility.
Richmond Heath: One of my friends and mentors Andrew Cram, he used to always talk to me about dynamic stability which is something completely different about stability through movement. This is where I think in the Physio world- 20 years ago Hodges did some research on the transverse abdominis and it all became about TA and activating your TA and bracing- research, which has long since been superseded. There was this real model of core stability- it’s a dangerous word because so many people just brace rather than understanding it’s about quality of movement. I remember four or five years ago doing a Body-mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge, we’re in this workshop, there’s about a hundred people, and we’ve partnered up in four point kneeling saying something like, get the person on the ground to release their shoulder girdle. So I was there and this person’s trying to guide me to release my shoulder girdle, I didn’t know what they were talking about it and it literally took me 10 or 15 minutes- they were trying to guide me they we saying look do this and do that. In four point kneeling I could not move my shoulder blades because I’d had so many years of stabilizing and holding. I remember the frustration in that experience, but then also the big "aha" moment when at some point I started to go "Oh, hang on, you can move that, that actually moves rather than stabilizing." I could roll my shoulders if my hands were free, but under load- I remember shaking my head and thinking, I can’t believe I’ve been told and trained all this stuff around stability. What I want to raise here is I see that the Physio world is trying to take over Pilates a little bit and with a little bit of information can be dangerous- there’s often a lack of depth. That bit of research about transverse abdominus- now everyone’s doing core stability basically creating rigidity. And there’s a real lack of depth and understanding in the work. So often we see this where the hierarchy in the medical model of the day is to say we’ve got all this knowledge, but they actually haven’t done the embodied practice. They haven’t actually explored it in their own body- they’ve just taken a bit of information and imparting it very theoretically and intellectually often very limited understanding about what’s available in really what’s a traditional technique. Joseph evolved so much experience rather than just based on a little piece of scientific information.
Bruce Hildebrand: Amazing to have insight into that. Richmond, were there parts of the experience at this stage that you didn’t like, or you didn’t want to accept about parts of Pilates that you found perhaps challenging in your pursuit of wanting to improve?
Richmond Heath: I can sum that up in a simple word- Pain! Basically I had spent, and I still probably spend a big part of my life, like most people avoiding pain and discomfort. It was a double-edged sword. I didn’t enjoy it, but I then started to enjoy it over time where I started to go, gee, when I worked through these positions or exercises or fatiguing or cramps, I would often get a lot of- the results afterwards and new-found freedom. I think that habitual pattern for me was that sense of avoiding things that were uncomfortable, I hadn’t started a yoga practice or I’d done a little bit of yoga and then even today I’m not doing regular Pilates- I think there is that element of just avoiding the hard work and the sometimes touching into the discomfort and the tension in the body rather than only wanting to work very subtly.
Sometimes just working harder and not making it all about awareness and subtle movements, Sometimes going I’ve got to I get a bit of grunt and move and activate work hard and work through fatigue. I think that’s probably the main thing or both didn’t enjoy it, and I’d benefited greatly from it. So I always enjoyed that the people who are doing Pilates were always very passionate about it, and they just seem very enthused and engaged and vital about not just movement, but life and wellbeing.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, can you reflect on the time when you knew you were starting to get hooked on Pilates some hidden gems that you’re beginning to find in your own participation in Pilates that you couldn’t ignore, that had crept under your skin, and were perhaps in itch that you couldn’t avoid scratching?
Richmond Heath: Not overly specifically apart from say doing the first few sessions and all of a sudden going, hang on there’s all this depth of information and practical anatomy and movement sequencing- so that was really the thing that instantaneously, I was very aware that I was interested in a lot of the education side of it and the understandings- that was absolutely critical for me. It was opening a doorway to going, hang on- everyone had told me Pilates was some exercises and there was so much more available to it- so that was really what got me hooked.
Bruce Hildebrand: Can you tell us about the challenges you had at this stage in your Pilates progress? Were there some factors that had you fall more deeply in love with it, or was this some elements that you found were rubbing up the wrong way?
Richmond Heath: I think working in an environment where deepening understanding and process wasn’t really the key focus that was the main limitation from me. I was attending a class once a week where I was in that environment where ongoing learning and deepen understanding in my own body rather than just theoretically, you know, about the exercises. If I had have been working in environment where that ongoing learning and development was front and centre I probably would have gone further into it than I did.
Bruce Hildebrand: It’s often at this stage that we’ve been in the game long enough to be getting a good feel for what Pilates entails and getting a picture of actually being on the playing ground in the game. Were you beginning to sense a little that the time was coming where you’d have to turn a bit more inwardly to face up to a range of factors that would shape your involvement with Pilates and how you moved forward with it. I presume with where you are now, you decided to move forward in some shape or form. Can you tell us more about what that turning point was for you?
Richmond Heath: I can’t remember whether I practiced for four or five years at the Physio clinic and as I say, I was getting burnt out- it was horrendous. I would go home, I’d try to go to bed at night, I would be thinking about exercises. I literally sometimes used to wake up and I was still thinking about exercises for people and that wasn’t because of Pilates, that was just the environment I was working in. So I did reach a point where I was going "I can’t keep doing this". I also found that just for me personally, the repetitive nature of doing the same thing over and over again- this is more to do with my personality and needing different stimulation- I did get to the point after four or five years starting to get like I’ve reached my level- I’ve reached my level of knowledge and interest. And like you’re saying it was either I’m going to dive further into that and go further into expertise. But it just wasn’t my calling.
At that time, this must be about 12 years ago, I was introduced to TRE or the Tension and Trauma Release or Tremor Releasing Exercises while I was still teaching Pilates. I found that really caught my attention in a whole different way also because it was around a whole different trauma model. And then it just happened to divine timing and serendipitously line up that just as I had said to my boss, look, I can’t keep doing this, I either need to reduce down significantly or stop teaching I also landed in a place to bring David Berceli the TRE founder out to Australia and was introduced to this phenomenon of spontaneous, involuntary or neurogenic movement. So what happened is after I’d given my notice at the Physio clinic- two months notice or something what really started to fascinate me then was watching what was happening when people’s bodies were starting to shake and tremble during Pilates. I remember having one particular client doing a push through on the Trap Table and all of a sudden he started to have a tremor and I was like " I am really interested now!" There was this whole extra layer of interest that caught my attention. So I ended up heading down the TRE path rather than continuing on in a formal Pilates teaching although- we’ll come back around to this I’m sure- at the end of the day, I still teach people exercises, and the only difference is when they start to shake and tremble I don’t tell them that it’s a sign of weakness, fatigue, or lack of control- I tell them it’s the doorway to something deeper. So we worked with a very specific part of exercise and movement and the spontaneous involuntary movement,
Bruce Hildebrand: Fascinating discovery at this point in time for you?
Richmond Heath: Yeah, it was life-changing. My first experience of spontaneous movement was at the Vipassana meditation course which was seven or eight years before that. What happened for me, and this was the real turning point was when I started to investigate TRE was around a trauma informed model of the body, which I never had. And a key book that I read was The Body Bears the Burden by Dr. Robert C Scaer. Basically in it he talked about how trauma, the ways our bodies respond to trauma gets habituated and generates defensive tension responses in the body and so all of a sudden- and again, this was relative to my own life and my own body and what had happened- I started to get an understanding of this insidious effects of stress, or tension, ultimately what we call trauma, immobility or bracing or collapse in the body. So that was the real turning point- all of a sudden I had something that was starting to cross over into the more- not so much the psycho- emotional, but understanding. Okay, so I’ve got a tight shoulder. Yep. Why have I got a tight shoulder?
When I was at uni, you know it was because that muscles tight, but why is that muscle tight? And why if I have a general anesthetic does that muscle tension completely disappear? And why when I go into a certain phase of sleep each night- all that tension disappears. So there was something for me that was underlying and that was what really got my attention. We’re not just a biomechanical machine. That was the big turning point for me – starting to delve into trauma and by trauma I don’t just mean life and death "Capital T" trauma, which is absolutely real but from a physiological point, when we look at immobility or bracing in the body or collapse, we start to recognize if I’ve got tight glutes, that’s effectively a trauma response, there’s a bracing there. So it opened up a whole new door way of understanding the body that started to really bring the body and the mind together for me, the way trauma’s kind of the bridge between our mental health and physical health models and between our mind and our movement. So that was the path that I kind of went on about 10 or 12 years ago.
Bruce Hildebrand: Fantastic to hear those discoveries and journey. What was the experience for you at this time of realizing these new connections? Was it a sense of relief or calm, peace or ease, even excitement or overwhelm of what was still to come?
Richmond Heath: There was a whole range of things. One of the memories was when I brought David Berceli the TRE founder out to Australia for the first time I must have been 35 or something. My whole life I’d always had no idea what I was meant to do with my life when I grew up. I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing, I had no idea- I’d done so many different themes. Teaching Pilates for four or five years was the longest thing I’d ever done in a row and I’d hit my limit there and I’m like right I need something new and I’ll never forget. I think we’d been in Perth or Brisbane or Sydney or somewhere and I was flying back to Melbourne to spend some time with my family during the week while David Berceli was flying on to the next venue. And I walked through the gate at Melbourne Tullamarine airport and there was a huge IBM sign up- an advertising sign. And it said, have you had your career defining moment yet? question mark. And for the rest of my life, I would have looked at that and just collapsed and gone I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I’m never going to work it out. And I’ll never forget that feeling of walking through seeing that it was almost like my body puffed up. Yes, I have, this is what I’m meant to be doing. So that was a really significant time.
And probably the other element to it, Bruce was that once I started to explore this tremor mechanism and literally all what happened was a friend gave me a DVD, I did some tiny exercises, I had a tiny little bit of postural fatigue in my adductors- nothing you wouldn’t see a hundred times a day in a Pilates studio. And then the next morning I woke up and I’d slept like I hadn’t slept in 40 years. And I was like " What the hell just happened?" I remember I used to have chronic pain in my calves and so I’d often sit in the mornings if I was eating breakfast I would sit with my heels off the ground- you see it a lot- teenage boys, autism and all sorts of stuff. I remember sitting and looking down at my heels and my feet were flat on the ground and my heels felt like they were about a foot through the floor. And in that moment I was like what has just happened to me? I literally woke up with a different body. This is not to discount Pilates in any way, but I was aware of going I’ve been doing Pilates for a long time, and this has done something completely different. Again, it’s not to say don’t do Pilates, it’s like combining them is a no brainer- it’s like turbo charging what we’re doing. But that got my attention! Looking back now, I see that it was the first of what I like to call my great liberations I had discovered or had this experience that my body had done something and it wasn’t up to me- it wasn’t up to my ego or my mind to create it. So I know even in Pilates. and again, this is partly to do with my personality- a lot of it will be about me consciously directing the movement or me consciously relaxing. Same as we do in yoga. And as a Physiotherapist the model was that it was up to me and my intellect and my knowledge and my skill to fix your body. So by correlation, also that was up to me to fix my body. So whatever was wrong with my body that was my fault. I’d spent years doing everything I possibly could to try and be happier and healthier and fitter and freer, and I’d made huge inroads, but also I still had limitations. So what really shifted for me was I had this experience of going "Hang on, all I did was get out of the way". I took my mind out of the way, I let my body start to shake and tremble and my body was able to unwind me in a completely different way and to a depth that I couldn’t do consciously.
And that was a huge relief to me because for the first time I felt like I had access to a process that could release tension, where I could go "I’m feeling tense"- what can I do apart from- my whole life I had gone right, well I’ll go and run, I’ll swim, I’ll play sport- and I couldn’t do that anymore. The process that would unwind that, and this relief of going "it’s not all up to me that my body has it’s own innate organic wisdom. And when I tapped into that, there was a whole new layer of freedom. Again, not to say "Oh well- just do TRE or tremoring because I love to say in my workshops: if all you do is sit on a couch and tremor every day and you had sixteen hamburgers and you watch reality TV all day- you’re going to have a shit life- it’s not like a panacea to everything. But for most of us, we have an excessive level of ego and control issues. So it just opened up this doorway to a whole other organic wisdom in the body and connected me with the body’s deep desire to organize itself most efficiently and effectively as possible.
Bruce Hildebrand: You are so articulate with your description and your journey through this time- it’s obviously very deep work for you.
Richmond Heath: Yeah, it’s been a vocation calling and it’s really given me life model of ongoing growth and development. Again, that was the model around trauma- not that the shaking and tremoring is only a trauma response because most people don’t know that we all shake and tremble in utero for nine months. It’s one of the key ways that our central and peripheral nervous systems communicate and integrate with each other and also how the body organizes and develops its body schema and controls and organises balance and movement.
But what the trauma model did was it gave me an understanding about why was my body tense, why was it tight and understanding habitual defensive patterns? I like to talk about that rather than trauma so we don’t think it’s just about being abused or the car accident. One of the things when I started doing this work is I was always like I don’t have a trauma story that I can tell- I hadn’t been abused and yet I was stressed and tense and rigid again, because that was looking at trauma from a very psycho-emotional or external " life and death" definition. And even today, post-traumatic stress disorder is still defined by seeing or witnessing or seeing someone else have a life threatening event. It’s been traditionally defined externally- whereas when we start to look at trauma from the level of the body, how the body’s responding and also Polyvagal Theory- three states of the autonomic nervous system developed by Stephen Porges, then we can start to differentiate stress into the body- activating, generating movement and classic "fight-flight" response. But the trauma response to the physiology of the body is going into immobility or shutting down. So what that did was it gave me a model to start to experience my body in areas of tension- so freezing response, or areas of collapse, so the fold or the flop response- basically trauma immobility, survival state, and it also gave me an understanding about how I was being triggered in response to my daily life experiences and how habitually my body was held in tension.
It was a profound theory and an understanding that came along with it and totally I’ve dived right into all the trauma research. I’d learned everything I could for 10 years. And in the trauma model, what tends to happen is the body’s only now starting to come into it. But in the body-based model like Pilates and Physio- the trauma is still seen as something that psychologists deal with- you know, it’s about the big traumas rather than understanding the physiology of trauma in the body.
Thankfully, most people doing Pilates people listening to this podcast who’ve got a level of interest, would know the psycho-emotional benefits of Pilates. When I was doing regular classes and teaching Pilates it was one of the most stable times in my life. Physically I felt well and I was strong, but psycho-emotionally within myself and that’s such a significant impact- and I think a huge area of future development for Pilates- it’s got a huge role to play all body based stuff has got a huge role to play in people’s current health and wellbeing beyond just doing exercise and beyond just being fit- but having an understanding about how our body responds to stress responds to trauma, and most importantly grows and evolves through it so we actually mature both physiologically in our body’s ability to organize movement and respond. But also psycho- emotionally, mentally, spiritually or socially- however else you want to say it as well, so it helps to grow our resolution of these trauma responses and the integration of them really helps to grow us as mature, healthy, happier humans on the planet.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think it’s particularly relevant at the moment what we’re dealing with the restrictions and so forth to do with COVID and the widespread impact of that across many layers of us as humans and what our expectations are and what our disappointments are. The classic scenario of exercise being one of the first things to close and one of the last things to open and then massive cries across the industry to do with what impact is that really having on us physically and societaly. I think there is a pretty widespread impact that we’re obviously yet to see across the community.
Richmond Heath: Yeah, I agree having a massive impact and that’s even taking out any social engagement element of it of being in a class and moving together and resonating together and learning- so yeah, I think it is a huge area. And I also for myself, am someone who benefits from having a group environment when it’s time to do exercise and, push through and into things that I’d normally spend my life avoiding. So I think we all see that’s a huge impact that the industry’s been so limited and hopefully people are doing a little bit of stuff online, but hopefully it will return get moving, literally get moving again soon.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, can you share with us, what’s been the path for you since this time you mentioned David Berceli’s been out to Australia a couple of times. Can you expand on where things are headed with TRE and how you see that more and more with the overlay with Pilates.
Richmond Heath: When I started doing TRE one of the things I consciously chose to do was I deliberately stopped doing Pilates because I wanted to see what the impact of doing this regular TRE or tremoring practice had on my body. Might have been two full years I didn’t do any Pilates exercise- I didn’t do any other forms of exercise I literally just used the tremoring so I could experience that. At different times I have done some workshops for the APMA and I do have Pilates instructors, who’ve come and done training. Last 10 years I’ve basically been the coordinator of TRE in Australia running trainings and teaching people how to use it.
This is my life’s calling and my life’s work is to help share this impulse on the planet. Because even though I talk about TRE and tremoring, which is a Western neurophysiological scientific model of it- shaking and tremoring reflexes we’re talking about have been described as the oldest medicine on the planet, because traditional cultures all around the world have used very similar processes. The Kalahari bushmen if you’ve ever seen the film The Gods Must Be Crazy- part of their cultural identity they call themselves "The Keepers of the Shake". They have a completely different interpretation they don’t see is as about a trauma release process, they see it as the connection to what they say Nhóm, I can’t pronounce it, but " Spirit". They use it not just for health and well-being or stress release and recovery, but community health and spiritual wellbeing as well.
In Eastern practices they had "Seiki Jutsu", which roughly translates as "Life Force Yoga" practiced by the ancient Samurais. When you think about Samurai and movement, you think about superhuman capacity and being you lethal warriors is one moment and chilled out Zen Masters the next. They had a secret practice which was called Seiki Jutsu which is a spontaneous movement practice where they would meditate to the point where they would stop the inhibition of movements and then the body would start to naturally sway and swing around and contemporary flow on from that is Katsugen Undo which is called regenerated movement. So there’s lots of different techniques around the world.
For me, even though TRE is the vehicle and it fits in our Western, scientific culture my life’s calling is about supporting this impulse of the body organically generating more freedom. And it’s quite beautiful to watch because over the last 10 or 12 years, I might have taught 3000 people or more around Australia and New Zealand including from trauma recovery after Black Saturday or the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, but also just to regular people. It’s fascinating to watch bodies shake and tremor all on their own because we’ll see that as we allow that process naturally more of the body starts to get involved over time and more of the body starts to let go and so there’s some organic, innate wisdom in the body. The same process is happening- I see that in Australia, I see it on a global scale where literally the impulse, whether it’s through TRE or any other sort of spontaneous movement practice, it’s literally just spreading from community to community.
So that’s my real purpose and passion on the planet. One of my real driving areas is actually trying to then bridge this gap between trauma being a psychological or something a psychiatrists and pharmaceuticals companies and psychologists, and actually integrating and blending trauma back into the body-focus world. I have a real passion and interest for educating people around how trauma is relevant- not just to the life and death trauma, but to every single person who walks through your door. How the physiology of trauma shows up in every single tension pattern, every single movement that people do- their capacity to move, their capacity to let go- in the Physiotherapy world and the Pilates world as well. I’m on the cusp of starting to head back into the Pilates world more specifically. And as I like to say, it seems like something different, but every single is teacher out there- see people shake and tremor every day just like I did as a Physio- and we’ve all just been told it’s a sign of weakness, fatigue, lack of control- it’s time to stop the exercise.
So all we do is then reintegrate this tremoring response- which becomes a true bottom up approach. Most of what we do in Pilates, yoga mindfulness is top-down- it’s really about our conscious mind creating the movement, creating the relaxation, and we get those bottom up responses whereas with this we’re actually getting true bottom up movement where the body, starting to create movement all itself. It’s a really exciting area because when you combine these two it’s literally like turbo-charging the results, not just on a physical level but also improving sleep and more importantly, for me on people on that mental health, emotional or spiritual level where people are getting more connected to themselves their body- so it’s not just about going oh my back doesn’t hurt. So what I’ve got deeper breaths. So what’s actually about getting more authentic in their body and comfortable in their skin so they can live more of the lives that they’re meant to be living and being more connected with their own personal passion and purpose
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond. What are some of the changes in both your body and your mind, and even in your spirit as Joseph Pilates liked to put it- as you just mentioned- that are now second nature to you in the way that you live your life, do Pilates, be a dad, be a husband, be a presenter, all the rest of it that you couldn’t had imagined were possible even before you started Pilates or started TRE and even sometimes during the times when you were struggling with some of the things you mentioned earlier.
Richmond Heath: It’s a great question. People who can answer that the best are people who’ve known me for a long period of time and see the changes in me. The easiest way to sum it up is I’ve become softer- softer physically in my body, softer mentally in my mind and rigidity, softer in my relationships. That’s the easiest way to sum it up. In that process, this was probably the key thing for me, I’m really aware that my body or my organism is looking for a state of ongoing growth and development and maturity in- I like to talk about physiological maturity. You know, I spent my whole life behaving like a good person doing what I was meant to do, but internally having all these reactions that were contained and leading to rigidity and eventual chronic tension, and now there’s a real clear sense that I’m maturing- that’s what really excites me. As much as I look back, the difference that’s happened through the tremoring regularly over 10 years, I look forward and think in another 10 years I may actually be like quite a nice, happy, healthy, mature parent or grandparent with more wisdom.
That’s been the biggest physiological shift for me. What do I do need to be doing though is to get back into a lot more physical exercise and Pilates because , I haven’t been doing enough of that conscious movement and that physical exercise. That’s been an area that I’ve neglected. Then on an intellectual level probably the biggest things- one was that sense of, it’s not all up to me through learning that my body can move me in ways that I can’t do consciously. I’ve really learned to surrender my ego more- that’s an ongoing journey.
Then with the trauma model and understanding that when I get triggered by life now, instead of automatically getting stuck and blaming and looking outside, knowing that is not just a new age, philosophical position of "Oh, it’s all good and it’s good for my healing"- but actually being able to go into my body and know that those responses are showing unresolved patterns or patterns that just haven’t been matured yet.
So there’s a deep sense for me that whatever happens, whether it’s good or bad- sure, we all want it good, but there’s going to be healing and growth. And that all the things I get brought in my life, as much as I hate lots of them, are coming to me for opportunities for growth and resolution and reorganizing and reordering myself. Once you drop into this place and with tremoring I love to say to people don’t measure I what did it do in the one session, but which way is this process heading you? Because if people go "Yeah, it’s moving me more towards freedom and authenticity- it doesn’t always mean you’re going to be more calm- you might be more authentically scared or more authentically angry, and your body might be more authentically tight and agitated, but then when you get through those, there’s a sense of moving forward, with more maturity or wisdom or softness or growth or acceptance, or love and caring.
Doesn’t mean I don’t get overwhelmed and collapsed and eat too much and throw tantrums and do all those things but I do them a lot less than I used to. There’s a part of me that can’t deny that this is going on inside my own physiology, in my own body, and there’s something for me to engage with, explore and move through.
Bruce Hildebrand: Richmond, where do you now sit with your Pilates? What does the future hold for you with Pilates and TRE in your life- I’m going to include those two together? And what plans have you got in store for your involvement
Richmond Heath: What I’d really like to be doing is to be integrating tremors or neurogenic movement into Pilates. I’ve done a few things with the APMA and other Pilates groups over time, but I would like to start off bringing some more specific training around that. It’ll probably be more around trauma informed Pilates for want of a better word. So it’s not about learning a different technique. It’s about bringing this extra layer to what people already know.
So when your clients do start to tremble or they do start to fatigue, what do we do? How do we use that? How does that combine and integrate? One of the things I was reflecting upon before coming on, was in my experience- and again, I don’t think this is necessarily true of Joseph Pilates, but in what I see around there is a lot of focus on control- which is wonderful and when we live in a world or a body that’s our of control it’s often the first step- but one of the limitations is that if we’re always focused on control we live from that sense of an "I" and an individual sense of "ego" and our "self"- and this is where I see the real magic of combining the tremoring processes, because that’s a completely different experience where we surrender that and let go, and we go, hang on there’s something other than that "I" that I think that I am, which is moving me and freeing me up in ways that I can’t do.
So by combining those two together, there’s more relationship and harmony between our mind and our body, between ourselves and our environment, between ourselves and others. So I see this huge scope. My dream would be that in 50 years or a hundred years long after I’m gone that every Pilates instructor, every yoga instructor, every Physiotherapist, and every teacher at school would have a really clear understanding of what shaking and tremoring is. So they don’t think it’s a sign of weakness or a sign of shock or a sign of fatigue, they’re actually going "hang on, this is something that can help us heal and grow and evolve and mature.
So the next step is trying to get together some specific training for Pilates instructors, because I love working with people who already understand the body and already understand exercises and teaching exercises and movement. All I really need to do is bring in the components of this model of understanding trauma and also the framing of how do you work with a tremoring body? Once the body starts to move on it’s own how do you facilitate that so it creates more freedom than it can do just on it’s own. Exciting times ahead and certainly branching back into the Pilates combining it much more significantly.
Bruce Hildebrand: I think that’s something very exciting to look forward to for the Pilates community. I distinctly remember when you would come along to class and had evoked the tremor response from various exercises in the workout that you would use the time following the class to find a quiet corner in the studio and let the integrations take effect.
Richmond Heath: There’s so many ways to use tremoring- the three simple ones is first of all is if people do tremoring before Pilates, then you can use the Pilates to reinforce new movement patterns. So as tension patterns fall away and muscles start to activate again then you can follow it with Pilates and reinforce and explore what movement feels like in a different body. As you mentioned, the one that people most commonly use is: you do your work-out, you’re pre fatigued and then at the end, same with yoga rather than lying in Shavassana- I like to call it "Shake-assana" you’re actually then going into another layer of depth or if you’ve done Pilates and you’re already pre-fatigued your body will tend to shake and tremor and move and release more deeply.
Then the bit that really excites me is then also shaking and tremoring and deliberately using the movements during Pilates. So at times controlling movements, but other times continuing a movement through range and allowing that shake and tremor to come in. There is phenomenal opportunities there because we’re working then with sub-cortical or subconscious movement patterns that we can’t consciously access. So when we come up from both ends there’s profound healing and growth and learning available to us.
Bruce Hildebrand: So exciting Richmond perhaps you can share with us what you wish you knew at the start of the journey that would make the biggest difference to someone who might be considering starting Pilates or facing some of the struggles you did with your Pilates progress.
Richmond Heath: I think the impact that it’s going to have by working this way with Pilates the impact it’s going to have on their lives in general- you know, not just about getting rid of pain but impact it’s going to have on feeling strong and centered and grounded in yourself. So you can be a better partner, a better work colleague, a better friend, all those things. That’s probably the element that I wasn’t aware of at the time. It’s just so profound- it’s a missing element that people find out about afterwards. We tend to come to Pilates because we’ve got pain or we’ve got weakness, or we’ve got an injury, most people. I’d love to think that movement of all forms, Pilates, yoga, gym exercise, that there was much greater awareness of the positive benefit it would have on my life and my relationships by being in a better state in my physical body.
Bruce Hildebrand: So well put and so rich the way you share that. Richmond, thanks so much for your time on the call today. It’s been fabulous talking to you as always. What’s the best way for listeners to get in touch and reach out to you?
Richmond Heath: The easiest way is go to the TRE Australia website, www.TREaustralia.com and the other thing I really want to share with the listeners is last year I created a free online course- the first online TRE course in the world! It was specifically set up around helping people cope with COVID stress and anxiety, but once you start doing the tremoring, it’s irrelevant why you’re there. There’s the free online course it’s three sessions. It’s at www.TREcourse.com. I’ve had about 3000 people enroll over the last 12 months- I’d love to see that number go up to 30,000 then 300,000 continue. That’s a free resource- if you’re listening to this and thinking "Hey, I’m interested in exploring this" then you can go to that course. And you’ve got the basic theory and guided sessions. In fact, you’ll see Bruce doing a tremor in the first guided session on the video there.
So that’s a free resource for you to go and learn that technique and if you find it useful, then I would ask of you to please share that with as many people and as often as you can You can share that with your clients, you can share that with your family and friends. It has a screening process so you making sure that it’s safe and acceptable and suitable for people. And if not, there’s links to where they can learn it with the provider. So get me through TREaustralia.com, but please if this has inspired something or you hear something here that’s of relevance, please check out the free course at www.TREcourse.com and share that as widely as you can because the world needs more ways to deal with stress and trauma and to grow and evolve through it as well.
Bruce Hildebrand: Thanks for your time Richmond. It’s been wonderful talking to you as always.
Richmond Heath: Thanks, Brucey. A pleasure
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