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
CFTE is excited to invite you to join us on October 21 as we celebrate a significant milestone: after more than twenty years of fiscal sponsorship, we have just completed our first year as an independent nonprofit. We welcome you to the Broad Institute as we reflect on our impactful work in Massachusetts and around the world.
We want to share our year-one impact report in person. You will hear firsthand from practitioners and community leaders actively engaged in our transformative mission to redefine healing beyond the clinical setting. Leila Johnson will accept our CFTE Impact Award on behalf of our Community Leader Program Team, which is facilitating TCTSY (our Trauma Sensitive Yoga model) in active conflict zones; Dave Emerson and Alithea Casimir will outline their efforts and progress in establishing the Massachusetts Trauma Healing Coalition. In addition, there will be short filmed stories from scholarship recipients and our research partners.
This annual event is CFTE's chance to tell our 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. Thank you for being in the room with us. If you can't join us live, we will be livestreaming it as well and answering questions wherever you can join!
Join us on October 21, 2026, 8:30–10:30 am at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA. Large breakfast provided. Livestream available