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.

50,000 people annually
Participate in our programs: 100K in scholarships last year for our certified training programs, 100+ published peer-reviewed research.
$1.1m
After 20 years of fiscal sponsorship, our first year as a nonprofit.
$232B
The cost of PTSD in the U.S. each year

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.