Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE)

First meeting of the Massachusetts Trauma Healing coalition steering committee was today! left to right: Alyssa Fuller, Alithea Casimir, LICSW, Jakira Rogers(on screen), Rayha McPhearson, David A. Emerson. Not pictured, Tara Sagor, LMHC and Martine Geary-Souza, MPH https://lnkd.in/eQpbpxJr We're looking forward to making trauma care more available and accessible across Massachusetts. If you or your organization is interested in joining us, please message Dave Emerson

Witnessing is at the heart of what we do. We aren't teaching or counseling, but we are witnessing healing. Witnessing pain. Witnessing trauma and not turning away- but being with it.

Fifty years ago the medical consensus on chronic pain was straightforward. Pain lives in the tissue. Find the tissue, fix the tissue, fix the pain. So when imaging technology revealed disc bulges in the spines of people with back pain, it felt like confirmation. The bulge is the problem. Remove the bulge, relieve the pain. And for a long time that logic drove an enormous amount of surgery, injection, and intervention. Then researchers started noticing something uncomfortable. People without any back pain at all also had disc bulges. Lots of them. And surgery outcomes were highly variable. And those facet joint injections that brought so many people relief turned out to perform no better than placebo in controlled trials. Which meant the entire framework was wrong. Prof. Lorimer Moseley AO — one of the world's leading pain scientists — delivered his keynote at our 7th Annual Conference on Trauma and Embodiment last month. He has spent his career doing the uncomfortable work of moving pain out of the body part that hurts and into its rightful place as a human experience. The implications for trauma-informed care are significant. His full keynote is available now as part of the conference on-demand recording. Link in comments.

For a lot of people — especially those who carry the weight of trauma, chronic stress, or histories of harm — walking into a gym can feel unsafe, overwhelming, or simply not for them. The culture of traditional fitness has often reinforced that feeling rather than challenged it. Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting exists to change that. TIWL is for the personal trainer who senses that something beyond programming is affecting their client's progress. It's for the clinician who knows their client needs something embodied but isn't sure what to recommend. And it's for anyone who has ever felt that the gym — the actual act of lifting, of building strength, of taking up space — could be part of their healing, if only the environment felt safe enough to try. At CFTE, we approach weight lifting the same way we approach all of our work — with the understanding that the body holds our history, that healing requires agency and choice, and that strength means something different for everyone. When lifting is practiced through a trauma-informed lens, it becomes a tool for rebuilding trust in the body, not just training it. Learn more at @traumainformedweightlifting

A little over a year ago, the Massachusetts Trauma Healing coalition had its first meeting. We discussed our shared commitment to making elements of trauma care/healing available to the public with as few barriers to entry as possible. Today, we took our first tangible step in that direction. Our pilot project at the Boston Nature Center went public. Visitors to the Center will encounter this sign and be invited to engage in some body awareness and choice-making practices that are grounded in research but don't require any trauma disclosure, cost, or need to go anywhere different than where you are right then. We consider an offering like this to be a "first rung" on a trauma-care ladder - not a full or final answer to the complexity of trauma healing but a legitimate place to get a real foothold. If you're in the Boston area, please stop by BNC!

Join us on May 8 if you're in the Boston area!

How we understand trauma matters. For many years, trauma has often been described primarily through the language of diagnosis and pathology. At CFTE, we approach trauma from a different perspective. Trauma is not a character flaw or personal failure. It is a response to overwhelming conditions. This understanding shifts the focus away from “what is wrong with someone” and toward what someone has experienced. Our educational programs are grounded in this non-pathologizing view of trauma while remaining informed by ongoing research in neuroscience, attachment theory, and trauma studies. Understanding trauma in this way opens space for more compassionate, effective approaches to healing.

New research is out — and it matters. For decades, the conversation around Complex PTSD has focused primarily on psychological symptoms — the flashbacks, the hypervigilance, the emotional dysregulation. But the body has always been part of the story. A new study published in the International Journal of Integrative Psychotherapy, co-authored by Dave Emerson and Lindsay M. Bennett, examined physiological symptom presentation in 187 individuals with C-PTSD. What they found was clear: physical symptoms — elevated stress response, chronic pain, disconnection from the body, and disregard for one's own physical self — showed up just as frequently as the psychological criteria we already use for diagnosis. This is not a peripheral finding. It is an argument for why body-based care isn't supplemental to trauma treatment. It is central to it. It's also exactly why CFTE exists. The full study is available in the International Journal of Integrative Psychotherapy, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2026. Check out our full research library at healwithcfte.org/research

What TIME offers is something most food and body programs never touch — an understanding of why these challenges exist in the first place. Looking in the mirror and not liking what you see. Feeling guilty after a meal. Telling yourself you need to burn it off. Avoiding photos. Standing in a dressing room and feeling like your body is the problem. If any of that sounds familiar — this program was built for you. 👉TIME Foundations is now enrolling 🗓️ April 24th & May 8th TIME (@TraumaInformed_MindfulEating) isn't another diet. It isn't a meal plan, a set of rules, or a list of foods you should or shouldn't eat. There are no prescriptions here, no absolutes, no expectations about how or what you eat. Because more often than not, the struggle isn't really about the food. It's about embodiment. It's about how safe it feels to be in your body, to trust it, to listen to it. And it's about the thoughts and feelings that take up so much mental space that there's barely room left to actually be present in your own life. This program gives you the tools to work with those thoughts and feelings — not to eliminate them overnight, but to move toward neutrality. To find that food and your body start taking up a little less space in your mind. That you can sit at a dinner table, try on clothes, look at a photo of yourself, and just... be there. Without the spiral. You are not a problem to be fixed. And this is not a program that will treat you like one.

Where does healing from trauma happen? For many people, the answer has traditionally been inside clinical settings. Clinical care is important. It has helped many people access meaningful support. At CFTE, we are also interested in what healing can look like outside those settings. Many people encounter trauma in their lives, but not everyone seeks or has access to clinical treatment. Programs developed through CFTE explore ways trauma-informed practices can exist in community spaces — including movement settings, educational environments, and everyday relational contexts. Expanding these possibilities allows more people to encounter supportive experiences without needing to cross a clinical barrier first. Healing doesn’t only belong in therapy rooms. It can also happen in the places where people live, move, learn, and connect.