What is Trauma Informed Movement?
Trauma informed movement refers to any approach that addresses how trauma impacts the brain, nervous system, movement, and whole body. Unlike conventional exercise or movement instruction that assumes a universal bodily experience, trauma informed movement recognizes that if you’ve experienced certain types of trauma, then you might also have a different physical or emotional reaction to certain types of movement than another person who hasn’t experienced that trauma. The goal of trauma-informed movement is not to release trauma or cure it. Instead, a targeted practice is designed to help people rebuild their body awareness, teach them that they have choices for that body, and allow them to make a choice that is right for them.
At its foundation, trauma informed movement operates on the principle that trauma is not just held in memory; it is held in the body. This understanding shifts the focus from performance, alignment, or aesthetic form to interoceptive experience—the practice of sensing what is happening inside one’s own body in the present moment. Instructors trained in trauma informed approaches offer invitations rather than directives, emphasize optional participation, and create environments where practitioners can exercise agency over their own physical experience.
Origins & Lineage
The contemporary field of trauma informed movement emerged from the convergence of neuroscience research, somatic psychology, and body-based healing traditions beginning in the late 20th century. Peter Levine, Ph.D., developed Somatic Experiencing after studying trauma responses in wild animals — observing that animals naturally discharge excess survival energy after a threatening event, while humans often interrupt this process, leaving activation trapped in the nervous system. Levine published Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma in 1997.
Concurrently, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, emphasized that trauma lives in the nervous system and can manifest through physical symptoms such as tension, restlessness, and dissociation. Van der Kolk published The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma in 2014. His research at the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts helped establish the scientific foundation for body-based trauma interventions.
Polyvagal theory, first proposed in 1994 by Dr. Stephen Porges, suggests that sensory signals that are sent to the brain are interconnected with and sensitive to the autonomic nervous system. This framework provided crucial understanding of how the body’s threat-detection systems operate beneath conscious awareness, informing movement practitioners about nervous system states.
David Emerson, Founder and Director of Yoga Services for the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute in Brookline Massachusetts, coined the term trauma-sensitive yoga (TSY). David was responsible for curriculum development, supervision and oversight of the yoga intervention component of the first of its kind, NIH funded study, conducted by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk to assess the utility and feasibility of yoga for adults with treatment-resistant PTSD. The trauma-sensitive yoga model became one of the first evidence-based, research-validated trauma informed movement protocols.
How It’s Practiced
Trauma informed movement practices share core principles regardless of specific modality—whether yoga, dance, weight training, martial arts, or simple grounding exercises. Being trauma-informed is about prioritizing safety, choice, building trustworthiness, a collaboration between practitioner and client, focusing on resilience, and empowerment.
In practice, instructors use invitational language rather than commands. Instead of “place your foot here,” a trauma informed instructor might say “you might notice what it feels like if you place your foot here” or “if it feels okay, you could try…” Emphasis is always placed on the internal experience of the client him- or herself, not on achieving the proper form or pleasing the therapist. Unlike traditional, mat-based yoga, TSY can be practiced without one, in a therapist’s chair or on a couch.
Incorporating movement into mindfulness practice allows trauma survivors to access regulation through motion, rhythm, and proprioception (the sense of where the body is in space). When we move mindfully, we stimulate the vagus nerve, the core of our parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for rest and relaxation. This can help shift us from a hyperaroused or dissociated state into a more balanced and grounded presence.
Practitioners work with concepts like grounding, pendulation (the rhythmic movement between contraction and expansion), breath awareness, and interoceptive noticing. The pace is slower than conventional movement classes, with built-in pauses for internal observation.
Trauma Informed Movement Today
Today, trauma informed movement appears across diverse settings: yoga studios, fitness centers, clinical practices, veterans’ hospitals, rape crisis centers, and community organizations. In 2016, practitioner Jennifer Clapp began offering workshops and a three-part Movement for Trauma (MFT) certification program to educate personal trainers and coaches, as well as social workers and mental-health professionals, in trauma-informed movement. Training is offered online and in-person in 10 languages by licensed trainers around the world.
Many organizations and crisis centers offer guided, trauma-informed options as varied as running, dance, boxing, and more. Seattle’s Street Yoga brings trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness classes to young people with adverse childhood experiences. In Minnesota, Mind Body Solutions offers adaptive yoga and trauma-informed mindfulness training. Warrior Surf Foundation in South Carolina and the Jimmy Miller Foundation in California provide access to adaptive surf therapy and ocean therapy.
The approach has expanded beyond clinical settings into mainstream fitness culture, with organizations like ACE (American Council on Exercise) now offering continuing education credits in trauma informed movement practices.
Common Misconceptions
Trauma informed movement is not therapy, nor does it replace clinical treatment. The biggest thing to understand is that the goal of trauma informed movement isn’t to heal trauma. It’s just one piece in the much bigger puzzle of trauma informed care. The process can’t be rushed. But when employed alongside mental-health therapies, movement offers new hope for healing.
It is not exclusively about stillness, meditation, or relaxation. For survivors, being asked to sit still and focus on internal sensations, especially without appropriate preparation or regulation, can feel unsafe, overwhelming, or even re-traumatizing. Trauma informed movement may involve vigorous activity, shaking, rhythmic stepping, or other mobilization practices depending on what supports nervous system regulation for each individual.
Trauma informed does not mean assuming everyone has experienced trauma or treating all participants as fragile. Rather, it means structuring experiences so that anyone who has experienced trauma can participate safely—which, as research on adverse childhood experiences demonstrates, represents a substantial portion of any population.
Finally, having personal trauma history or good intentions does not automatically make someone trauma informed. Anyone who works directly with another person’s bodymind like yoga, Tai Chi, and meditation teachers, rehabilitation professionals, psychologists and social workers, and somatic professionals absolutely need to be trained in trauma-sensitive practices.
How to Begin
For practitioners seeking trauma informed movement, look for instructors who have completed recognized training programs such as Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), Somatic Experiencing, or other certified trauma informed movement modalities. Many trauma informed instructors clearly advertise their training credentials.
Online courses explore relevant research, theories and techniques related to yoga as a healing practice for trauma, designed for students, teachers, clinicians and survivors, providing an overview and understanding of trauma, how to use yoga as part of the healing process, and how to incorporate components of Trauma Sensitive Yoga into life, classes or clinical practice.
For movement professionals, foundational texts include Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in Therapy by David Emerson, an evidence-based program for traumatized clients that helps them to reconnect to their bodies in a safe, deliberate way and van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma offers accessible introduction to somatic trauma principles.
Begin with curiosity rather than expectation. Trauma informed movement asks practitioners to notice sensation without judgment, to exercise choice about participation, and to honor their own pace. If a particular practice, instructor, or environment doesn’t feel right, that information itself is valuable—an opportunity to practice discernment and self-advocacy.