Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE)
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.
CFTE is an educational organization that prepares mental health professionals, movement practitioners, community leaders, and care providers to bring embodied principles of trauma care into their work. Our programs are grounded in decades of original research — and in a deep belief that trauma is not a personal failure. It is a response to overwhelming conditions. And healing from it should be as accessible as those conditions are inevitable.
The co-founders of CFTE, David Emerson and Jenn Turner, worked inside larger institutions since 2004-building one of the first yoga-based interventions for complex trauma, publishing original research, training practictioners bringing this work to communities around the world. In 2018, they built something new with CFTE (formally fiscally sponsored and became an independent nonprofit in 2025). Alongside our TCTSY (Trauma Sensitive Yoga), we have TIWL (Trauma Informed Weight Lifting), TIME (Trauma Informed Mindful Eating), and soon TIPT (Trauma Informed Physical Therapy). We also have our podcast called, "On Trauma and Power," as well as starting the Massachusetts Trauma Healing Coalition. We offer people options and choice in their healing.
Programs
TCTSY (Trauma Sensitive Yoga)
TCTSY is the world's first and only yoga-based intervention for complex trauma and PTSD that has been found to be as effective as talk therapy through twenty years of original research.
TIWL (Trauma Informed Weight Lifting)
Strength training and trauma recovery should be in the same conversation. Research backed. Community Driven.
Volunteering + Events
At the Broad Institute, Cambridge MA
On October 21, the Center for Trauma and Embodiment gathers donors, practitioners, and community members at the Broad Institute for a morning built around what CFTE is actually doing in the world — from trauma-sensitive yoga in correctional facilities to community-led healing programs in conflict zones. The reach is global: trained facilitators in more than 50 countries, territories, and First Nations, more than 100 peer-reviewed publications.
This annual event is CFTE's chance to tell that story directly — not through a conference, not through someone else's platform, but in a room we've filled with people who want to understand and support what we're building.
Join us on October 21, 2026, 8:30–10:30 am at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA. Breakfast provided.