The body
remembers.
So does the work.
Thirty years of teaching classical Pilates has made one thing undeniable: the body holds far more than muscle and bone. Understanding trauma — how it lives in the nervous system, how it shapes movement, how it must be approached — is not optional for anyone who works with bodies seriously.
Currently in active study
Enrolled · In Progress
Trauma Research Foundation
Certificate Program in Traumatic Stress Studies
Founded by Bessel van der Kolk, MD
Enrolled · In Progress
The Embody Lab
Polyvagal Trauma Therapy Certificate Program
Somatic & nervous system approaches
Why this matters
Trauma lives
in the body.
Not just the mind.
Most movement practitioners are never taught this. The conventional training model treats the body as a mechanical system — muscles, joints, range of motion, strength. Correct the form, improve the function. Done.
But the body is not a machine. It is a nervous system that has lived a life. And for a significant number of the people who walk into a movement studio, that life includes trauma — injury, illness, loss, abuse, violence, chronic stress, or the kind of accumulated experience that doesn’t have a single name but lives in the body nonetheless.
“The body keeps the score. When we work with bodies, we are always working with history — whether we know it or not.”
Working without trauma awareness means working blind. It means not understanding why a client freezes. Why certain positions produce anxiety. Why touch that should feel helpful feels threatening. Why progress stalls at a particular point regardless of technical correction.
Trauma-informed practice doesn’t mean turning a movement session into therapy. It means understanding the nervous system well enough to work with it rather than against it — to create conditions where the body feels safe enough to actually change.
After 30 years, and after working with Boston Marathon bombing survivors, post-surgical bodies, athletes recovering from catastrophic injury, and clients managing chronic conditions — this training is not an add-on. It is the natural deepening of everything the work has always been.
The science
What trauma does
to the body in motion.
Dysregulates the nervous system
Trauma keeps the nervous system in states of hyperarousal or hypoarousal — fight/flight or freeze/shutdown. Movement that doesn’t account for this can retrigger or reinforce these states rather than resolve them.
Alters the relationship to the body
Many trauma survivors dissociate from the body — it becomes a place of danger rather than safety. Touch, proximity, certain positions, or particular cues can feel threatening in ways that have nothing to do with the current moment.
Creates protective holding patterns
The body develops chronic tension, postural patterns, and movement restrictions as protective responses to past experience. Correcting these without understanding their origin can be ineffective at best, retraumatizing at worst.
Affects proprioception and interoception
Trauma disrupts the body’s ability to sense itself accurately — both in space (proprioception) and from within (interoception). This affects balance, coordination, and the capacity to feel what’s happening internally during movement.
Limits the window of tolerance
The “window of tolerance” is the zone in which the nervous system can engage, learn, and change. Trauma narrows this window. Effective practice works within it — building capacity gradually, never forcing through it.
Can be released through the body
The same body that holds trauma can also release it. Somatic and movement-based approaches are among the most evidence-supported pathways for trauma resolution — when delivered by someone who understands what they’re working with.
The training
Where this knowledge
comes from.
Trauma Research Foundation
Certificate Program in
Traumatic Stress Studies
Currently enrolled
The Trauma Research Foundation was founded by Bessel van der Kolk, MD — author of The Body Keeps the Score and one of the world’s foremost researchers in traumatic stress. The Certificate Program in Traumatic Stress Studies is among the most rigorous and clinically grounded trauma education programs available to non-clinical practitioners.
The curriculum covers the neuroscience of trauma, the physiology of the stress response, the impact of developmental and complex trauma, and evidence-based approaches to working with traumatized individuals — including somatic and movement-based modalities. This is not a wellness certification. It is the training that clinicians and serious practitioners seek out when they want to understand trauma at its foundations.
The Embody Lab
Polyvagal Trauma Therapy
Certificate Program
Currently enrolled
Polyvagal Theory — developed by Dr. Stephen Porges — is the leading neuroscientific framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system responds to safety and threat, and how those responses shape every aspect of human experience, including movement, connection, and the capacity for change.
The Embody Lab’s Polyvagal Trauma Therapy Certificate Program translates this science into practical, somatic approaches for working with the nervous system directly. It provides the tools to recognize nervous system states, to work within and expand the window of tolerance, and to use the body as the primary site of healing — not as a secondary consideration after the mind has done its work.
For a movement practitioner, this training answers the question that conventional certification never addresses: what is actually happening in the nervous system of the person in front of you, and how do you work with that?
Before the certifications
— Julie Erickson, on her pro bono work with Boston Marathon bombing survivors Celeste Corcoran, Sydney Corcoran, and Jeff Bauman — featured in the 2016 HBO Documentary Marathon: The Patriot’s Day Bombing
bodies at every level
for rehabilitation work
certificate programs
Who benefits
This understanding
informs every session.
Survivors of trauma of any kind
Accident, illness, violence, abuse, loss — anyone whose body carries the weight of difficult experience. Trauma-informed movement creates the conditions for genuine healing rather than inadvertently reinforcing protective patterns.
Post-surgical and rehabilitation clients
Serious injury and surgery are traumatic events. The body’s response to them is not purely mechanical. Understanding the nervous system’s role in recovery changes what effective rehabilitation looks like.
Clients with chronic pain or tension
Chronic pain is almost always partly a nervous system phenomenon. Working with the body’s protective responses — rather than forcing through them — produces results that purely mechanical approaches cannot.
High-stress and high-performance clients
Elite athletes, executives, and anyone operating under sustained pressure carry nervous system dysregulation that affects their movement, their recovery, and their capacity to adapt. Trauma-informed practice addresses this at the root.
Anyone who has felt misunderstood in movement
If you’ve been told to “just relax,” had your physical responses dismissed as psychological, or felt unsafe in a movement context — this training means that experience will not be repeated here.
Clients combining movement and healing work
For clients working with both classical Pilates and intuitive healing or energetic work, trauma-informed training creates a genuinely integrated approach — the physical and the energetic informed by the same deep understanding of the nervous system.
In the room
What trauma-informed
practice actually looks like.
Safety is the foundation, not an assumption
The nervous system cannot learn, change, or heal in a state of threat. Creating genuine safety — not just saying “you’re safe” — is the prerequisite for everything else. This means attending to the environment, the pace, the cuing, the touch, and the relationship.
Choice and agency at every step
Trauma removes choice. Trauma-informed practice restores it — offering options, asking permission, checking in, and never assuming that what worked last session will work today. The client’s response to their body is the authority, not the protocol.
Reading the nervous system, not just the body
A client who suddenly goes quiet, loses coordination, or seems to check out is not distracted or lazy. They may be moving into a dissociative or hyperarousal state. Knowing the difference — and responding appropriately — is what this training provides.
Working within the window of tolerance
Effective work happens in the zone where the nervous system is engaged but not overwhelmed. Titrating the challenge — going slowly enough to build genuine capacity, never forcing — is both the most humane and the most effective approach.
Not therapy — but not ignorant of what therapy addresses
This training does not make a movement practitioner a therapist, and it is not practiced as such. What it provides is the awareness and the skills to work alongside the therapeutic process — to be a safe and informed body practitioner for people who are also doing deeper healing work.
