How Somatic Yoga Supports Trauma Recovery – Exclusive Interview with Alicia Taraji

Alicia Taraji specializes in trauma recovery through embodied practices, recognizing that trauma lives in the body and must be addressed holistically. She integrates Yoga Sensible al Trauma, Trauma-Informed NeuroMeditation (NMI-2), breathwork to energize, balance, and relax, self-care education, and art therapy to support healing and resilience. Alicia is dedicated to understanding how traumatic experiences impact physical, emotional, and social processes, and to helping each person access their innate capacity to heal through the body. She has worked with women and non-binary people who have survived violence, offering individual sessions, group classes, and programs for women deprived of their liberty. She is, above all, a yoga teacher.

Alicia Taraji, Trauma Recovery Facilitator

Who is Alicia Taraji?

Alicia specializes in trauma recovery through embodied practices, understanding that trauma lives in the body and requires holistic, somatic approaches to heal. She integrates Somatic Experiencing, Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), NeuroMeditation (NMI-2), breathwork to energize, balance, and relax, self-care education, and art therapy to support individuals in reclaiming safety, connection, and resilience.

Deeply committed to honoring the roots of yoga while making it accessible to all, Alicia is a yogini and holds certifications as a yoga teacher, RYT-500, E-RYT-200, and YACEP. She trained in Yoga and Meditation with Shambhavananda Yoga and is a certified breathing instructor.

Alicia is part of the Trauma Center–Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) program at the Center for Trauma & Embodiment at JRI, bringing this evidence-based approach to her work with survivors of complex trauma. She also holds certifications in Traumatic Stress Studies and Art Therapy Facilitation from the Trauma Research Foundation, grounding her practice in research-backed, creative, and client-centered modalities.

Alicia is a Somatic Experiencing practitioner with Somatic Experiencing International. She is dedicated to continuously studying how traumatic experiences affect physical, emotional, and social processes, and how people can access their innate capacity to heal through the body's natural healing mechanisms.

She has experience working with women and non-binary people who have survived violence, women deprived of their liberty, offering individual sessions, group classes, and online programs.

What inspired you to create Chiti Yoga and focus on trauma-sensitive practices?

After several years in the art world, a personal crisis asked me to rethink how I wanted to live and what I wanted to stand for. I returned to the practices that have anchored me for eighteen years, meditation, breathwork, and yoga. When I was invited to teach breathwork and witnessed how people softened, steadied, and felt seen, my purpose became clear, share the tools that helped me find my way back and gave me inner peace. From a practitioner, I became a yogini.

In 2021, I became aware of my trauma symptoms. Finally, a period of my life was over, and even though I felt immense relief, I became aware of how much emotional violence I had endured. It wasn’t a bad experience, it was the result of the trauma I have had in my life. I asked myself, What do I need to heal so I will never be here again? And so, it began my healing journey and my studies in trauma. I am a trauma survivor, and I know the courage needed to recover.

My work inspires me to be the person I needed when I was hurt and felt alone, not knowing what kind of help I needed. I aim to support each person in their recovery process, continually studying how traumatic experiences affect individuals' physical, emotional, and social well-being, as well as the instruments and capacities each human being has to heal. In my work, I have found my own path of healing, and everything that I facilitate is a core part of my own process. 

What makes Chiti Yoga a unique approach to trauma and nervous system healing?

Chiti Yoga is a trauma-sensitive, nervous-system-first approach rooted in the yogic tradition. I integrate Yoga principles with a trauma-sensitive approach, resulting in Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, NeuroMeditation (which helps individuals find the right meditation style for their brain and supports neuroplasticity), self-care education, and breathwork. These methods offer invitation-based, choice-driven practices that meet people where they are, giving the power back to the practitioner.

As I specialized in trauma and look for my own path to healing, I try different things, and I fell in love with somatic experience. Trauma lives in the body, if we could talk our way out of it, I wouldn’t have lived with it for so long. Somatic Experiencing is a body-based methodology that helps release accumulated stress, shock, and trauma in the nervous system. When we get stuck in fight, flight, or freeze patterns, it allows us to regain balance, restore inner safety, and develop resilience. 

Trauma is not the event itsto lielf, it’s the imprint that remains. It manifests as chronic shifts in physiology and worldview, characterized by hypervigilance, numbness, startle responses, shutdown, or difficulty sensing one’s own needs and limits. The body is a dashboard, it tells you what’s safe or dangerous, what hurts and what soothes, what you need and what you can leave.

My focus is on making embodied healing practical and inclusive, whether in one-to-one sessions, groups, or community settings, so that participants can cultivate regulation, resilience, and agency in their daily lives. Chiti’s practices are an invitation to reconnect with your body, regain vitality, and rewrite your story from a place of compassion and possibility. It employs a therapeutic approach that posits the body has the innate capacity to self-regulate and heal.

Who is your ideal client, and what typical challenges are they facing when they find you?

People who want practical, body-based tools to manage stress, deepen self-care, and find a meditation style that truly fits them, individuals who wish to recover from trauma. Many have lived through complex or developmental trauma, intergenerational or vicarious trauma, or long-term stressors, including experiences like abuse, neglect, medical trauma, accidents, natural disasters, discrimination, displacement, or loss. 

When they find me, they’re often dealing with nervous-system dysregulation (anxiety spikes, hypervigilance, startle response) or shutdown (numbness, freeze, dissociation). Familiar companions include sleep difficulties, chronic tension or pain, digestive issues, fatigue, low mood, shame/inner-critic loops, boundary challenges, and feeling overwhelmed or alone. Because many of these patterns are normalized, they may not yet identify them as trauma-related. 

Their core needs are simple and profound, a safe, choice-based space with clear boundaries and inviting language, nervous-system-first practices they can use daily (such as micro-moves, grounding, and breath), and a practitioner who truly “gets it”, trauma-sensitive, nonjudgmental, inclusive, and skilled at pacing.

What makes your online courses in self-care, meditation, and breathwork uniquely effective?

They’re built “nervous-system first” and “choice first.” Every lesson is designed with safety, agency, and real-life usability in mind, so people can actually practice and feel the difference. Trauma-sensitive by design, invitational cueing, clear boundaries, opt-outs, and pacing/titration grounded in trauma-sensitive principles and Somatic Experiencing-informed methods.

• Micro-protocols that fit busy lives: 5-10 minute practices and a gentle 30-day progression, allowing skills to become habits, accompanied by workbooks to deepen the experience. 

• Personalization without overwhelm: “Pick-your-path” options (seated, standing, eyes open/closed, with/without movement) and “good/better/best” time ranges. 

• Evidence-informed & plain-language: brief, digestible science on why a tool works (interoception, vagal tone, attentional training) so learners trust the process. 

• Integration with therapy & daily life: tools that complement clinical work and translate to everyday moments, before sleep, after hard conversations, pre-meeting resets. 

• Bilingual & accessible (EN/ES): captions, transcripts, audio-only files for low-bandwidth, printable worksheets, and trigger-aware content notes. 

• Progress you can feel and see: simple regulation maps, weekly reflection prompts, and “micro-wins” tracking to notice more calm, choice, and capacity over time. 

• No dogma, high respect: keeping the space inclusive, secular-friendly, and culturally sensitive.

Bottom line: practical, safe, and doable. Individuals leave with a toolkit they’ll actually use on both hard and ordinary days.

How do your live group sessions differ from standard yoga classes in helping people heal?

I have two live sessions. One is a one-on-one session on Somatic Experiencing, and the other is a group session on Trauma Sensitive Yoga.

Somatic Experiencing is a body-based therapeutic approach that helps release accumulated stress, shock, and trauma in the nervous system. Through these sessions, we create a safe space where the body guides the recovery process, allowing the unspoken and unremembered to heal as well. The sessions are an invitation to reconnect with your body, regain your vitality, and rewrite your story from a place of compassion and possibility.

Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is an empirically validated clinical intervention for complex trauma or for chronic, treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The emphasis is not on outward appearance (doing it "right") nor on approval from an external authority. Instead, the focus is on the participant's internal experience. With this approach, the power resides with the participant, not the facilitator. Focusing on bodily sensation to inform decision-making allows the participant to restore their mind-body connection and cultivate a sense of agency that is often compromised as a result of trauma.

Can you share a breakthrough moment where a client shifted their relationship with their body and mind?

A client came to me after a year marked by severe depression and a psychotic episode, alongside a long history of agoraphobia. For years, crossing open spaces had felt impossible without a cane or the assistance of another person. In our trauma-sensitive, nervous-system-first work, we slowed everything down, noticing sensations, naming emotions, and building choice. By session eight, something shifted. She realized she could walk across an open plaza, steady, unassisted, and safe. She didn’t need her cane by her side, she felt freedom. 

What made it a breakthrough wasn’t just “walking again”, it was how her body and mind re-linked. She began to identify where emotions landed in her body, describe them, and work with them, instead of being overwhelmed by them. That integration altered how she interacted at home and at work, as well as how she perceived herself. In her words, it became “a before and after”, a felt sense of safety, choice, and happiness returning. 

I’m deeply grateful for her courage. Moments like that remind me that when we honor the body’s pace, invite choice, and track small “micro-wins,” profound change can arrive, sometimes all at once, sometimes quietly, but always from within.

What key tools or practices do you offer that someone can start using right away?

A 10-minute starter routine

• 4:8 Breathing

• Ground & Orient

• Micro-Moves (slow, pain-free)

• Pick-Your-Path Meditation 

• 3-Minute Art Self-Care

Everything is invitational: adapt posture, duration, eyes open/closed, or skip any step. The goal isn’t performance, it’s a little more safety, regulation, and choice today.

• Exhale-Longer Breath (4:8): 2 minutes 

  
  

Inhale softly to a count of 4. Exhale to a count of 8 (or simply “a bit longer than the inhale”). Repeat 10-12 cycles. 

Why: Longer exhale cues relaxation.

• Ground & Orient “3×3”: 1-2 minutes 

  
  

Name three things you see, three sounds you hear, and three body sensations (contact points, temperature, muscle tone). 

Why: Re-anchors attention in the present moment, great for managing spikes or overwhelm.

• Micro-Moves for Regulation: 2-3 minutes 

Slow shoulder rolls, gentle neck turns within a pain-free range, ankle/foot presses, or seated weight shifts. Pause between moves to notice effects. 

Why: Tiny, titrated movements release bracing and support interoception.

• Pick-Your-Path Meditation: 3 minutes 

  
  

Choose one:

Focused: rest your gaze on a neutral point, when the mind wanders, return.

Restful/Presence: eyes open or closed, observe your breath, nothing to fix. 

Why: Choice and pacing make practice safer and more sustainable.

• 3-Minute Art Self-Care

Resting is not the same as distraction. Proper rest reduces physical and mental stress, enhances creativity, and improves your ability to learn and retain information. You can relax by listening to soothing sounds, taking a bath, practicing yoga, engaging in breathing exercises, meditating, or spending time in nature.

How do you ensure your work is inclusive, anti-oppressive, and culturally sensitive?

Working with trauma is inherently anti-oppressive work, we center safety, dignity, and agency so people can reclaim choice in their bodies and lives, while honoring the culture that gifted us these practices.

My work is grounded in ahimsa, non-violence and the commitment not to harm, and actively aligned with efforts to dismantle systems of oppression that perpetuate trauma. As a yogini trained in traditional lineages, I honor yoga’s roots, while also making the practice accessible to everyone through universal design and trauma-sensitive pedagogy.

In practice, this looks like: 

• Power-sharing & consent: invitational language, clear opt-outs, no hands-on assists without affirmative consent, and collaborative goal-setting. 

• Access & safety: bilingual (EN/ES) materials, captions/transcripts, low-bandwidth audio, sensory/trauma-aware content notes, and options for seated/standing/eyes open or closed. 

• Equity in delivery: partnerships with community orgs, bringing services to system-impacted communities. 

• Cultural humility: ongoing study, supervision/consultation, and feedback loops so participants can safely name harm and have it addressed. 

• Scope & referrals: clear boundaries of practice, coordination with clinicians when higher-level care is needed.

What does the journey look like from first contact to meaningful transformation with Chiti Yoga?

From the very first hello, we prioritize safety, consent, and a good fit. Some people already know what they want and choose a course, others prefer a one-on-one advisory, where we explore their needs and expectations together. I explain Chiti’s trauma-sensitive, nervous-system-first approach and scope, and we co-create a simple plan that fits their life. Progress is tracked gently, not by perfection, but by what matters to you, using your stated goals, and weekly “micro-wins.” 

Healing is personal, there’s no single timeline, they can start with one practice or combine several, depending on their capacity. People can holistically regulate their nervous system with clinical intervention for trauma. The aim is to make practical changes that can bring more safety, choice, and steadiness in everyday life.

If someone is just beginning their recovery or self-care journey, what would you say to encourage them to reach out?

Knowing where to begin your recovery can be complicated, especially if you've experienced intense or traumatic events, because what seems helpful might not feel that way at the moment. If you're unsure where to start, feel free to request a free personal consultation to identify the best path for you.

Online courses and live sessions aim to regulate the nervous system, and everyone's healing process is unique. During the consultation, we'll discuss your needs and how I can support you in addressing them.

A trauma-sensitive space understands the impact of trauma. It knows how to detect the signs of trauma, how to navigate responses to stress, and has plans in place to help prevent trauma triggers.

Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info!

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