Moving can ease anxiety, though viral shaking and somatic workouts are less proven

Key takeaways

• A 2023 review of 1,039 trials found that physical activity eased anxiety, depression and distress by a medium amount compared with usual care, with bigger gains from harder sessions³.
• In an Army-funded trial of veterans with PTSD, the shaking exercises known as TRE did no better on PTSD symptoms than the same routine without the shaking¹.
• Somatic Experiencing, a body-focused trauma therapy, showed large effects in one 63-person trial, but we found no trials of social-media “somatic workouts”²⁹¹⁰.
• In a review of 23 studies, moderate exercise didn’t harm sleep even 30 minutes before bed, but in 2025 wearable data, workouts ending within four hours of bedtime, especially hard ones, went with worse sleep¹²¹³.
• Exercise can be part of anxiety care but doesn’t replace it, and anyone in crisis can call or text 988.

Lie on your back, bend your knees and bring the soles of your feet together. Then let your knees fall open and wait. After a set of leg-tiring warm-up moves, your legs, pelvis and lower back are meant to start trembling¹.

That trembling is the core of tension and trauma releasing exercises, or TRE, a routine developed by David Berceli¹. Body-focused “somatic” routines have found big online audiences, too. One TikTok teacher, Liz Tenuto, who calls herself “The Workout Witch,” had 2.2 million followers in 2025².

Starting in 2015, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command paid for a test of TRE¹. Researchers in Phoenix randomly assigned veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the full routine, to the same stretches and holds without the trembling, or to a waiting list¹.

The trembling group and the no-trembling group improved by similar amounts, and the differences among the three groups weren’t statistically significant¹.

That doesn’t mean moving can’t calm you. It can, and the proof for ordinary exercise is far stronger than for any viral method. Below, we look at what works, what’s unproven, how to time movement around sleep, and a wind-down for tonight.

Exercise eases anxiety, and harder sessions do a bit more

In 2023, a team led by Ben Singh at the University of South Australia published an umbrella review, a review of other reviews, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine³. It drew on 97 reviews covering 1,039 trials and 128,119 people³.

Compared with usual care, physical activity eased anxiety and depression by a medium amount, and psychological distress by a bit more³. Walking, strength training, Pilates and yoga all helped³. Higher-intensity activity brought bigger gains, and programs of 12 weeks or less showed the strongest effects³. The authors add that people need to keep exercising to keep the benefits⁴.

Read the fine print, too. Of the 97 reviews, 77 were rated critically low in quality³, and the largest gains were ones participants reported themselves⁴. The university’s release said activity was 1.5 times more effective than counseling or leading medicines³. That was an indirect comparison: the authors set their results beside earlier reviews of those treatments, with no head-to-head trials, so treat “better than drugs” headlines with caution⁴.

Federal guidelines agree: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists lower anxiety and better sleep among the immediate benefits of physical activity⁵.

If you have an anxiety disorder, think of exercise as one strong tool in a kit that may also include therapy or medicine. Don’t stop a treatment that’s working.

If sitting still makes you more anxious, try moving

Lying still and “relaxing” doesn’t suit everyone. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) notes that relaxation techniques occasionally bring on more anxiety, intrusive thoughts or a fear of losing control⁶.

For a restless body, rhythm can be easier than stillness. A steady walk, a slow stretch or a gentle sway gives your attention something to follow. Mindful walking, covered in our sibling article, is one version of that idea.

NCCIH says yoga, tai chi and qigong can trigger the relaxation response: slower breathing, a slower heart rate and lower blood pressure⁶. Our articles on yoga and tai chi cover their trials.

This is a useful distinction. Gentle practices can bring on the relaxation response, which suits the moment⁶. But in the Singh review, harder sessions brought bigger mental health gains over weeks³. So think of two jobs: a brisk walk or bike ride most days to build resilience, and slow, easy movement when you need to settle down, especially at night.

Rocking calms babies, but one small study tried it on adults

Parents rock babies to sleep. In 2019, researchers at the University of Geneva tested the idea on grown-ups⁷.

The volunteers were 18 healthy young adults at the Geneva University Hospitals sleep center. After a first night to get used to the lab, each slept once on a bed that swayed gently all night and once on the same bed switched off⁷. Swaying brought sleep on sooner, stretched out deep sleep and cut down on tiny wake-ups⁷. A memory test told the same story: people recalled more of an evening word list after the moving night⁷.

A companion study at the University of Lausanne found rocked mice fell asleep sooner and slept longer, though their sleep quality didn’t improve⁷. Rocking did nothing for mice whose inner-ear balance sensors were disabled, pointing to the vestibular system, the body’s motion sense, as the pathway⁷.

That’s one night in 18 people, an early clue rather than a treatment. Still, a rocking chair, porch swing or glider in the evening costs little to try. That’s our suggestion, not a tested program.

The shaking trial: what TRE did and didn’t show

The Army-funded trial ran from 2015 to 2018 through the Carl T. Hayden Medical Research Foundation in Phoenix, with veterans who were getting psychiatric care at the VA¹. Ninety-two veterans finished it, three in four of them men, with an average age near 50¹.

The two exercise groups met twice a week for four weeks, in hour-long sessions¹. The TRE routine opened with yoga-like leg stretches and lower-leg strength work with the back against a wall, all meant to tire the legs¹.

Next, participants lay down and let the trembling run for 15 to 30 minutes, or as long as felt comfortable¹. Straightening both legs on the floor ended it whenever they wished¹. The comparison group did the same first half, then skipped the trembling¹.

On a standard PTSD scale, the full-TRE group’s average score fell from about 33 to 30, the no-trembling group’s from about 31 to 27, and the waiting list’s barely moved¹. The main hypothesis, that trembling would beat the other arms, wasn’t supported¹.

TRE beat the waiting list on a memory test, and the report counts an insomnia benefit that was only a statistical trend¹. It describes no correction for testing many outcomes¹. The results come from the team’s final report to the Army, not a peer-reviewed journal article. Berceli was the only person checking that sessions followed the method, and the yearly reports logged 28 adverse events without describing them¹.

A 2023 scoping review from the University of Pretoria found 18 studies of TRE, many with weak designs, and called the results preliminary⁸.

“Somatic” just means “of the body.” A workout isn’t a therapy

Mayo Clinic Press defines somatic exercise as movement that shifts your attention from thoughts to body sensations⁹. That includes interoception, the sense of signals from inside you such as heartbeat or hunger, and proprioception, the sense of where your body is in space⁹.

The word covers two very different things.

Somatic experiencing is a body-focused trauma therapy developed by therapist Peter Levine⁹. In a trial published in 2017 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, 63 people with PTSD were randomly assigned to 15 weekly sessions or a waiting list¹⁰. The therapy group’s PTSD and depression scores improved by large amounts, and the gains held when people were checked again 15 weeks later¹⁰. One trial against a waiting list is promising, not settled.

Somatic workouts online are usually slow, mindful movements done on your own. Tenuto describes micro-movements so small that one 90-minute class she recalls covered just three or four². She says the practice helps move the nervous system out of fight-or-flight or shutdown and builds new neural pathways². The CNBC profile quoted no independent expert or study backing those claims², and Mayo Clinic Press calls the evidence for somatic approaches limited⁹.

The core idea, that calm can start in the body and not only in the mind, is old and appealing, and it fits how many natural-health readers think about healing. The trouble is the specific promises, such as releasing stored trauma, that haven’t been tested. Slow body-awareness movement is a low-risk way to unwind. Healing trauma is a job for trained help.

Gentle in the evening, hard earlier in the day

Sleep advice has long warned against evening exercise¹¹. In 2018, Jan Stutz and Christina Spengler at ETH Zurich pooled 23 studies of healthy adults to check¹¹¹².

After an evening workout, people spent 21.2% of the night in deep sleep, versus 19.9% without one, a small but statistically significant gain¹². None of the studies linked moderate exercise to worse sleep, including sessions that finished half an hour before lights out¹². Only hard exercise raised a flag, and only in one study. When a vigorous session ended within an hour of bedtime, sleep came more slowly, and heart rates stayed over 20 beats a minute above resting¹².

A 2025 study added real-world data. Researchers at Monash University in Australia analyzed about 4 million nights from 14,689 physically active people who wore a WHOOP fitness strap¹³¹⁴. Exercise that ended within four hours of bedtime, especially hard exercise, went with later and shorter sleep, poorer sleep quality and a higher heart rate overnight¹³. Workouts that ended at least four hours before sleep showed no link to sleep changes, however hard they were¹⁴.

Two cautions apply. Researchers from WHOOP, which makes the strap, analyzed the data alongside the Monash team, and the study tracked habits rather than assigning workouts, so it can’t prove cause¹³. It also didn’t report a separate result for gentle exercise; its lead author suggested brief, low-intensity activity if you must move close to bedtime¹³.

Put together, the two lines of evidence point the same way: easy movement late is reasonable, and hard workouts belong earlier. Our upcoming sleep articles cover bedtime routines in depth.

Match the movement to the stress

This is our own guide, built from the studies above. Moderate effort means you can talk but not sing¹². Very easy means you could sing.

If you feel…	Try	How much	Why	Adapt or skip if
Wired after work, hours before bed	Brisk walk, bike ride or jog	20 to 30 minutes; can talk but not sing	Regular moderate-to-vigorous activity has the strongest anxiety evidence3	It’s within 4 hours of bed and your sleep suffers13
Restless near bedtime	The 10-minute wind-down below	About 10 minutes; could sing	Moderate exercise didn’t hurt sleep, even close to bed12	Any move causes pain
Too keyed up to sit and meditate	Mindful walking or slow rhythmic movement	10 to 20 minutes	Still relaxation can raise anxiety in some people6	You’re near traffic; stay eyes-up
Tight neck, jaw or shoulders at a desk	Shoulder rolls, tense-and-release, a short stretch	2 to 5 minutes, a few times a day	Our suggestion; not tested as a program	Pain spreads or you feel numbness
Worried most days for weeks	A regular exercise plan plus a clinician visit	Most days, for 6 to 12 weeks or longer4	Trials show medium effects3	Never as a replacement for treatment
Troubled by trauma memories	A trained trauma therapist, with gentle movement alongside	As your therapist advises	Somatic Experiencing had promising results in one trial10	Shaking or any practice brings on panic or flashbacks6

A 10-minute wind-down routine

This routine is our own design, not a tested program. Keep every step very easy: you should be able to sing. Do it on a carpet or mat, or seated.

1. Minutes 0 to 2: Loose walk. Walk slowly around the room or in place. Let your arms swing and your jaw hang loose.
2. Minutes 2 to 4: sway. Stand with feet hip-width apart. Shift your weight slowly from foot to foot, like a gentle rocking, about one shift per breath. Hold a counter if your balance is shaky.
3. Minutes 4 to 5: Roll and release. Roll your shoulders back five times. Then make fists and lift your shoulders toward your ears for five seconds, and let everything drop. Repeat twice.
4. Minutes 5 to 7: Easy stretches. Reach both arms overhead, then let them float down. Turn your head slowly to each side. Fold forward from the hips with soft knees and let your arms hang. Skip the fold and the knee hug below if a clinician has told you to avoid bending forward.
5. Minutes 7 to 9: Floor rock. Lie on your back and hug your knees toward your chest. Rock slowly side to side, letting your lower back rub the floor.
6. Minutes 9 to 10: rest. Set your feet on the floor, knees bent. Rest one hand on your belly and let each out-breath run a little longer than the in-breath.

Seated version: Sit in a sturdy chair without wheels. March your feet in place, sway side to side from the hips, do the shoulder rolls and fist squeezes, then rest with your hands on your belly.

What the evidence says, rated

Claim	What studies found	Evidence level
Regular exercise eases anxiety symptoms	Consistent medium effects across 1,039 trials, though 77 of 97 reviews were rated critically low in quality3	Strong evidence
Activity brings quick relief from anxiety	The federal Physical Activity Guidelines list it among immediate benefits5	Strong evidence
Rocking helps adults sleep	One night in 18 young adults7	Promising but early
Somatic Experiencing therapy eases PTSD	One 63-person trial against a waiting list10	Promising but early
TRE relieves PTSD or stress	18 mostly weak studies; in the one controlled trial, the shaking added nothing over stretching alone18	Not enough evidence
Social-media somatic workouts rewire trauma or the nervous system	No trials cited for these claims29	Not enough evidence
Moderate evening exercise ruins sleep	No harm across 23 lab studies, even 30 minutes before bed1112	Evidence says no, or unsafe (the claim failed testing; no safety issue)
Hard exercise late in the evening can disturb sleep	One small lab study plus large observational wearable data, co-analyzed by the device maker1213	Promising but early

Questions readers ask

The bottom line

Moving is one of the best-supported ways to ease anxiety and stress, and you don’t need a special method to get the benefit. Regular brisk activity does the heavy lifting over weeks, while slow, rhythmic movement can help you settle in the moment and at night.

The newer labels deserve a gentler verdict: interesting, mostly harmless, and unproven. In the only controlled test, the shaking in TRE added nothing over stretching, and we found no trials of online somatic workouts. Save hard workouts for earlier in the day, keep anxiety care in place, and reach out for help if stress becomes a crisis.

Related reading

• Mindful walking eased stress in small trials, and the walking itself deserves some credit
• What meditation groups can do, and what they can stir up
• Float tanks eased anxiety in short studies, so ask how the water is cleaned
• Stress can reach your immune cells, but positive thinking still can’t cure cancer
• Sleep, food and easy days beat most recovery gadgets

Sources

1. Kent M (principal investigator). “Neurogenic Tremors Training (TRE) for Stress and PTSD: A Controlled Clinical Trial.” Final report, award W81XWH-15-1-0054, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command; Carl T. Hayden Medical Research Foundation, July 2018 (Defense Technical Information Center). apps.dtic.mil
2. Onque R. Profile of Liz Tenuto, “The Workout Witch.” CNBC Make It, June 25, 2025 (via NBC New York). nbcnewyork.com
3. University of South Australia. “Exercise More Effective Than Medicines to Manage Mental Health” (on Singh B, et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2023). News release via Neuroscience News, February 26, 2023. neurosciencenews.com
4. Singh B, Maher C, Brinsley J. “Exercise is even more effective than counselling or medication for depression. But how much do you need?” The Conversation, 2023 (republished by HealthEd). healthed.com.au
5. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. “Top 10 Things to Know About the Second Edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.” HHS, updated November 19, 2025. odphp.health.gov
6. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. “Relaxation Techniques: What You Need To Know.” NCCIH, updated June 2021. nccih.nih.gov
7. University of Geneva. News release on Perrault AA, et al., and Kompotis K, et al., Current Biology, 2019. UNIGE, January 24, 2019. unige.ch
8. Roos LAJ. “Trauma releasing exercises as a treatment technique: a scoping review.” Master of Occupational Therapy dissertation, University of Pretoria, 2023. repository.up.ac.za
9. Mayo Clinic Press. “The benefits of somatic exercises.” Mayo Clinic, accessed October 2026. mcpress.mayoclinic.org
10. Brom D, Stokar Y, Lawi C, et al. “Somatic Experiencing for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Outcome Study.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2017;30(3):304-312 (Hebrew University of Jerusalem record). cris.huji.ac.il
11. Stutz J, et al. “Effects of Evening Exercise on Sleep in Healthy Participants: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Sports Medicine, 2019;49(2):269-287 (PubMed record). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
12. ETH Zurich. News release on Stutz J, et al., Sports Medicine, 2019. Republished by Futurity, December 13, 2018. futurity.org
13. Monash University. “Exercise before bed is linked with disrupted sleep: study.” Monash Medicine news, April 16, 2025. monash.edu
14. Leota J, Presby DM, Le F, et al. “Dose-response relationship between evening exercise and sleep.” Nature Communications, 2025;16 (DOAJ record). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
15. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Adults: Adding Activity Recommendations.” CDC, updated December 4, 2025. cdc.gov