🌿 Healing Through Choice: What Is Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)?
A Look Inside the 20-Hour Foundational Training I Completed
When we think about healing from trauma, we often think of talk therapy — and for many, it’s a crucial part of the process. But trauma doesn’t just live in the mind. It lives in the body. It shapes how we breathe, move, freeze, collapse, or react. That’s why I pursued foundational training in Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) — to offer clients a path back into their bodies in a way that is safe, empowering, and rooted in consent.
🧘♀️ What Is TCTSY?
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga is a movement-based practice specifically designed for survivors of trauma, including complex and developmental trauma. Unlike traditional yoga, it is not about poses, flexibility, or “doing it right.” Instead, it focuses on:
Interoception – the ability to feel and notice what’s happening inside your body
Choice-making – being invited, not instructed, to move in ways that feel tolerable
Empowerment – reconnecting with agency, one movement at a time
It’s evidence-based, rooted in clinical research, and designed to support the nervous system gently and respectfully.
🌬️ Why Yoga for Trauma?
When trauma happens, especially early in life or repeatedly, the body often becomes a place of confusion, fear, or shutdown. TCTSY helps rebuild a relationship with the body using curiosity, compassion, and consent. It is not about catharsis or forcing anything — it’s about giving people options and letting them lead their own experience.
You don’t have to talk. You don’t even have to move. You’re invited to notice.
📚 What I Learned Through the Foundational Training
The 20-hour Foundational TCTSY Training gave me the tools to:
Offer somatic options that honor client agency
Use invitational language and pacing that supports safety
Understand the role of power, control, and choice in trauma recovery
Begin integrating body-based awareness into my work with care and nuance
I chose this training because many of my clients expressed wanting to reconnect with their bodies — but didn’t feel safe in movement spaces. TCTSY offers an alternative: a structure rooted in doing with, not doing to.
🪞 How This Shows Up in My Work
While I’m not currently offering full yoga sessions, I do integrate TCTSY principles into therapy through:
Grounding techniques that center body awareness
Movement invitations in sessions when appropriate
Curious check-ins like, “What do you notice in your body when that thought shows up?”
This approach is especially helpful for clients navigating trauma, anxiety, dissociation, or just feeling disconnected from themselves.
✨ You Deserve a Relationship With Your Body That Feels Like Yours
Whether you’ve been disconnected from your body for years, or you’re simply curious about a more embodied way of healing, this is a path that centers your pace, your choice, and your comfort.
Reach out here if you’re interested in trauma-informed care that honors both the mind and body.
