Page 519 - Total War on PTSD

After my session I was given movement exploration exercises to do on my
own, Trager® Mentastics® (mental gymnastics), to help me meet my world differently; to explore movement possibilities outside my default, habituated way of moving about my environments such as work and home. It was through these homework movement exercises that The Trager Approach got its traction within me.
I began receiving sessions monthly to ensure that the pain did not return. In other words, so I did not fall back in to old movement patterns that set up the painful conditions. Also, I had become a committed student of the Mentastics which are like Tai Chi or gentle yoga-type movements that leverage principles of autogenic training, a widely recognized method of biofeedback used to lower blood pressure as it elicits physiological change through silently repeated phrases. Mentastics also encourages memory of the session, of how it felt when I received the work, re-living the therapy in my mind. Every movement after a session is an opportunity to reprogram how one moves in their body and in relation to their world.
Mentastics requires mindfulness and, indeed, this was changing my relationship to the world around me. I even found that the underlying principles of The Trager Approach worked in dialogues, meetings, negotiations and in my relationships. They impacted all aspects of my life.
To note, The Trager Approach movement re-education process can be likened to piano lessons, where the student studies with a teacher and then practices in between each lesson so the next lesson can build upon the previous one. I discovered that each session was a lesson for my nervous system which then was reinforced by living differently through my body afterward. It was more than a treatment for my physical body as it worked on my mind as well which, in turn, affected my body’s function.
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