It is my passionate belief that everyone deserves to learn to move their bodies as an act of self-care.
As Israel's first facilitator of Trauma Informed Strength Training I founded the Women Project as I believe that through this work, we can help these women reclaim movement as a pathway to healing trauma, regulate their nervous system and reconnect with their bodies. Creating a Trauma Informed Training Program is something I envisioned at the beginning of my own journey into health and fitness. Frustrated that there weren’t more people in the fitness space who were equipped to help clients living with trauma I decided to become the Trauma Informed personal trainer I wish had been available to me.
Before there are words,
there is the communication of the body.
Trauma comes back as a reaction,
not a memory.
Humankind is struggling, we are in the midst of an epidemic of deteriorating mental health and the effect of trauma is widespread and places a heavy burden on individuals, families and communities creating formidable challenges for public institutions and service systems.
Today clinicians understand much more about the broader implications of abuse, addiction, sexism, oppression, poverty, war and terror attacks. They know that both complex and acute trauma, chronic stress, anxiety and depression can lead to a myriad of symptoms and conditions that affect an individuals’ well-being, and ability to thrive. In order to maximise the impact of the hard work being done by the organisations active in this field we need a multi-layered, multi-agency approach in a Trauma Sensitive organisational and community context.
At The Women Project we aim to provide resources and programs that engage women with complex needs in a way that considers the whole person, and how movement or lack of movement can be impacted by past or present experiences rather than their fitness background alone. At The Women Project Center we strive to provide a space where feeling seen, heard, known and accepted as they are, becomes part of their wellness and healing experience.
Trauma is not an event,
trauma is the response
Trauma Informed Care is an approach in the human service field that assumes that an individual is more likely than not to have a history of trauma, recognizes the presence of trauma symptoms and pursues an approach to prevent re-traumatisation. In the world of fitness we are often trained in a way that focuses heavily on physical capacity and training experience.
Trauma Sensitive training takes into account mental and emotional health, harmful belief systems, sensory challenges, body awareness and a history of trauma. It’s about learning that while not being in your body was a coping strategy, returning to it is now actually going to help you heal. A Trauma Informed training program’s goal is to process, and progress through, traumatic events and their after effects augmenting other approaches.
The goal is to help women rebuild their body awareness, to teach them that they have choices for their bodies, to allow them to make the right choice for them and to encourage them to feel safe in their own bodies.
We would be failing these individuals if we did not see how movement or lack of movement can be impacted by past or present experiences.
The body is wise. It never lies.
Movement through a Trauma Informed Lens
The Women Project aims to use Trauma Informed Strength Training, Trauma Informed Yoga and Embodied Movement classes informed by Somatic Experiencing and evidence-based Trauma Research to enable participants in our programs to foster resilience, to encourage an increased sense of urgency and empowerment, to cultivate a healthy nervous system and to facilitate positive connections to self and others.
The Women Project Strength Training Program is based on 12 core principles and rooted in safety, choice and autonomy. The program, the first of its' kind in Israel was developed in collaboration with experts in the field both in Israel and abroad.
Our Services
The body informs the mind.
the body is the shore on the ocean of being.
