Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
A different way of experiencing your body
Yoga has traditionally been a practice of connecting movement, breath, and awareness. But for someone who has experienced trauma, being asked to move, breathe, close their eyes, be touched, or simply “feel their body” can sometimes feel very different.
Trauma can affect the way we experience our bodies, our choices, our surroundings, and our sense of safety.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga creates space for a different kind of experience—one centered not on performing a pose correctly, but on developing a relationship with your own body and your own choices.
What Is TCTSY?
My trauma-sensitive yoga training is rooted in Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), a specific, research-informed methodology developed through more than two decades of work in trauma, yoga, embodiment, and neuroscience.
TCTSY was originally developed through the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is now part of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE) at Justice Resource Institute. The model was developed by Dave Emerson and Jenn Turner in collaboration with clinicians, researchers, yoga teachers, and trauma survivors.
TCTSY uses elements of Hatha-style yoga, but the intention is very different from a traditional yoga class. The emphasis isn’t on how a posture looks from the outside. It is on what you experience from the inside.
Choice Comes First
One of the things that drew me most strongly to TCTSY is its emphasis on choice and agency.
Instead of being told exactly how your body should move, you are offered invitations and possibilities.
You might be invited to explore a movement, notice a sensation, change your position, or choose not to participate.
There is no physical adjustment forcing your body into a particular shape. There is no expectation that you need to perform a pose “correctly.” Your body belongs to you. Your choices belong to you, and your experience is yours to define.
TCTSY describes this approach through several core principles, including interoception, choice-making, noncoercion, invitational language, and power-sharing between facilitator and participant.
From the Outside to the Inside
Traditional yoga can sometimes place attention on alignment, flexibility, strength, balance, or what a posture looks like.
TCTSY shifts the question.
Instead of:
“Am I doing this correctly?”
we might explore:
“What do I notice?”
Maybe you notice your feet against the floor. Maybe you notice your breath. Maybe you notice tension, warmth, movement, resistance, or nothing at all. Maybe you choose to move. Maybe you choose to stop. There is no requirement to override what your body is telling you.
This practice of noticing and making choices can help cultivate interoception—our ability to sense and recognize what is happening within our bodies—and create opportunities to reconnect mind and body.
Why the Research Matters to Me
I didn’t choose this training casually. Before taking my TCTSY training in 2020, I had already begun exploring the relationship between trauma, the body, and healing. I was reading books on trauma and yoga, including work by David Emerson, whose writing had already crossed my path through my yoga studies, as well as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.
I wanted to understand more about what happens when trauma is experienced not only through our thoughts and emotions, but through the body as well.
That curiosity eventually led me to Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY). As I learned more about the methodology, the people who developed it, and the research behind it, I became interested in how yoga could create opportunities for choice, awareness, and reconnection without asking someone to push past what their body was telling them.
What I found was a growing body of research examining TCTSY as an approach for people who have experienced trauma. One particularly important study was a randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open in 2023. The study included 131 women veterans with PTSD related to military sexual trauma and compared TCTSY with Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). Both groups experienced significant improvement in PTSD symptoms, and the researchers found TCTSY to be equivalent to CPT on the primary PTSD outcomes in their analyses. Treatment completion was also higher in the TCTSY group.
That doesn’t mean yoga is a replacement for therapy, nor does it mean one approach will work for everyone. It means there is meaningful research examining what can happen when trauma recovery includes the body- not only the mind- and that matters.
My TCTSY training became one part of a much larger journey in understanding trauma, movement, choice, and the ways we can begin to reconnect with ourselves.
Why I Chose This Path
My training was more than learning how to teach a different style of yoga.
I spent extensive time studying trauma, embodiment, neuroscience, the nervous system, interoception, relationships, choice, and the ways trauma can affect our experience of ourselves.
But perhaps just as importantly, I spent years applying what I was learning to myself; I watched, I practiced, I questioned, I noticed, and I learned what it meant to approach my own body with more curiosity and less judgment. That personal experience changed the way I understand teaching.
I don’t believe a facilitator should be the person who tells you what your body is supposed to feel, what your healing should look like, or what you need to do to get there. My role is to create a space where you have room to explore.
What a Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Session Can Look Like
A session may include simple yoga-based movements, breath awareness, grounding, and opportunities to notice sensations within the body. You don’t need to be flexible. You don’t need previous yoga experience. You don’t need to know how to meditate. And you don’t need to talk about your trauma.
There are no hands-on adjustments. You are never required to close your eyes, move in a particular way, or push through discomfort simply because a teacher told you to. You are invited to make choices based on your own experience.
Sometimes that choice may be movement. Sometimes it may be stillness. Sometimes it may be stepping away from a movement altogether. The practice begins with the understanding that you are the expert on your own body.
Trauma-Sensitive Doesn’t Mean Trauma Has to Be the Focus
You don’t have to identify with a particular diagnosis to benefit from a more choice-centered approach to yoga. Some people come because they are navigating trauma or chronic stress. Others simply want a quieter, more compassionate relationship with their body.
You can come exactly as you are. There is no expectation that you share your story, no expectation that you explain yourself, and no expectation that you perform healing for anyone else.
This Is Not About Fixing You
Trauma-sensitive yoga isn’t about forcing the body to become something different. It isn’t about achieving the perfect pose, pushing through, or having someone else take control of your healing.
It is an opportunity to practice listening. To notice. To choose. To reconnect.
Little by little, movement can become less about what the body is supposed to do and more about discovering what your body is communicating.
A Practice Rooted in Choice
My hope is that each session gives you a little more room to hear yourself.
Not because I have all the answers, but because you already carry something incredibly valuable: your own experience.
My role is to meet you there, offer possibilities, and create space for you to decide what feels right for you.
Learn More or Begin a Session
If you’re curious about trauma-sensitive yoga but aren’t sure whether it’s right for you, you’re welcome to reach out and ask questions.
There is no pressure to commit. Sometimes the first step is simply becoming curious about a different way of moving through the world.
Research & Further Reading
For those who would like to explore the methodology and research more deeply:
Center for Trauma and Embodiment — TCTSY Research Library
More than 50 peer-reviewed publications, dissertations, and academic studies related to TCTSY.
Zaccari et al., 2023 — JAMA Network Open
Randomized clinical trial comparing TCTSY and Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD related to military sexual trauma in women veterans.
Center for Trauma and Embodiment — About TCTSY
History, methodology, principles, and development of the TCTSY model.
Center for Trauma and Embodiment — Certification
Information about the 300-hour TCTSY certification, curriculum, research, and facilitator training.
Explore the TCTSY Research Library
