CFTE is redefining healing
Not as a slogan. As a commitment we make every single day: to move principles of trauma-care beyond the clinical setting and into the world where people actually live.
WHY WE EXIST
How do you create an organization that genuinely practices what it teaches?
We didn't set out to build an organization. We set out to do something different.
For years, the people who founded CFTE worked inside larger institutions — developing one of the first yoga-based interventions for complex trauma, building research published in major clinical journals, and training practitioners who brought this work into communities around the world.
And then, like many people in this field, we came face to face with a hard truth: institutions can say one thing and do another. They can speak the language of healing while replicating, internally, the very dynamics of harm they claim to address — coercion, silencing, the abuse of power. We watched it happen up close.
We had a choice. We could stay, and quietly absorb it the way so many people do. Or we could leave, and try to build something that actually walks the walk.
We left. And in doing so, we inherited a question that still shapes everything we build: how do you create an organization that genuinely practices what it teaches?
We don't claim to have it perfectly figured out. We're transparent about that. But the commitment — to shared power, to honest accountability, to an ongoing process of learning and unlearning — is not incidental to our work. It is our work.
The Center for Trauma and Embodiment was formally established in 2018, and became an independent 501(c)(3) in 2026. What it was built on goes back much further, and what it is growing into is still being written.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Trauma is not a personal failure.
It is a response to overwhelming conditions — interpersonal, relational, systemic.
Power dynamics matter — always.
Not just in the lives of the people we serve, but inside our own walls.
Education is ongoing.
Not a one-time event, but a lifelong relationship with evolving knowledge.
The body is not separate from the mind.
It's where trauma lives. It's also where healing begins.
Healing happens in more places than we’ve been told.
Therapy offices matter. But so does the weight room, the yoga mat, the community center, the workplace, the improv stage.
WHAT WE'VE BUILT
The Research and the Reach
CFTE's work is grounded in over two decades of original clinical research — some of the most rigorous ever conducted in the field of body-based trauma care.
Our flagship program, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), has been featured in more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and academic journals since 2009. In 2023, a landmark randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open demonstrated that TCTSY produced faster symptom improvement, higher retention rates, and comparable long-term outcomes to Cognitive Processing Therapy — one of the most widely used evidence-based treatments for PTSD.
That research matters. It matters to practitioners who need to advocate for this work within clinical systems. It matters to the survivors who deserve to know that what they're participating in has been rigorously studied. And it matters to us — because it represents thousands of hours of collaboration, honesty, and commitment to doing this right.
CFTE's body-based trauma interventions have been found to be as effective as — and in some cases more effective than — traditional talk therapy across over a dozen peer-reviewed studies published in major scientific journals.
Our work has been validated across communities you might not expect: veterans living with treatment-resistant PTSD. Survivors of military sexual trauma. Youth in residential programs. People inside correctional facilities. Marines returning from combat. Indigenous communities. Gender non-conforming youth. Refugees. The range matters, because trauma doesn't discriminate. Neither does healing.
Today, more than 40,000 people around the world engage with CFTE's care models each year. Our global community of trainers, facilitators, and participants spans more than 50 countries, territories, and First Nations and represents all genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
What we've built includes:
- TCTSY — Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, the world's first and only yoga-based intervention for complex trauma found to be as effective as talk therapy
- TIWL — Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting, establishing the evidence base for weight lifting as a healing modality
- TIIP / ReScripted — Trauma-Informed Improv & Play, bringing embodied healing through improvisational theatre
- TIME — Trauma-Informed Mindful Eating, exploring the intersection of trauma, nourishment, and embodiment
- The Embodied Workplace — bringing trauma-informed principles into organizational culture and leadership
- The CFTE Annual Conference — a global gathering of practitioners, researchers, and community leaders
- On Trauma & Power — a podcast exploring the intersections of trauma, healing, and power through honest, embodied conversation
WHO WE'RE FOR
If you're a practitioner who has always sensed that something was missing from the clinical models you were trained in — you're in the right place.
If you're a researcher who wants to push the evidence base for embodied care further — we'd like to work with you.
If you're a survivor who is curious about what healing outside a therapy office might look like — everything we build starts with you in mind.
If you're a leader who wants to understand what it looks like to bring trauma-informed principles into the culture of an organization — we're developing that too.
And if you're someone who simply believes, as we do, that healing shouldn't be a privilege available only to those with access to a clinical system — then you already understand why this work matters.
CFTE is not a single program, a single method, or a single answer. It is an ongoing commitment to expanding what's possible — for practitioners, for communities, and for the field of trauma care itself.
We're glad you're here.
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