David Emerson and Bernadette Carelse at the TCTSY training in Berlin 17 to 20 April 2018.

This month I was in Berlin for the first time, attending the 40-hour training in Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) training with David Emerson.

TCTSY is an evidence based treatment exactly for complex trauma and complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.  It was developed by David Emerson himself, at the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, since 2003 and has become part of the therapies available at the Justice Resource Institute since 2006.

TCTSY is used with children, young people and adults throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Colombia, Mexico, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.  I am keen to develop how it is used in the UK, particularly for children and young people.  As a result, following my training in London in TCTSY , I decided to go all the way to Berlin, simply because David Emerson would be there delivering the training himself.

The 40-hour training in TCTSY was held in Berlin from 17 to 20 April 2018.  Berlin is an amazing city with a complex history and it some ways this is exactly what made it such a fitting context for the he training.  It was wonderful to be there with other yoga teachers and therapists learning about TCTSY.

I discovered more about how to integrate TCTSY into my yoga and mindfulness teaching I also gained insight into how this could fit into my work as an educational psychologist (EP).  My casework includes children and young people who have had adverse life experiences (ACEs) and are suffering from trauma as a result.

The training explained how TSTCY can be part of therapeutic work to enable to development of interoception, the ability to notice and be aware of internal body sensations which are often neurologically underdeveloped as a result of the process of surviving ACEs.  Furthermore the traumatic experiences can leave children and young people with limited self-efficacy and the TCTSY approach is empowering in itself and helps to address this.

It is my intention to develop my skills in this area as far as possible due to the research evidence for its efficacy.