Livia Adia Budrys, LCSW, C-IAYT, SEP

Somatic Trauma and Yoga Therapy Educator

Livia Budrys, LCSW, C-IAYT, SEP, also professionally known as Livia Adia Budrys, is a licensed clinical social worker, Certified Yoga Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, clinical consultant, and professional educator. Her work integrates psychotherapy, somatic awareness, neurobiology, contemplative practice, yoga therapy, attachment theory, and trauma-informed care. She is the founder of Yoga Informed, an educational model designed to help mental health professionals incorporate selected yoga-based principles and practices into psychotherapy with clinical purpose, appropriate consent, and respect for professional scope.

Livia’s teaching focuses on how trauma can influence cognition, emotion, physiology, movement, boundaries, identity, relationships, and the ability to remain present during stress. She helps clinicians recognize patterns of activation, shutdown, dissociation, avoidance, and relational disconnection without assuming that every physical sensation contains a hidden trauma memory. Her approach encourages therapists to consider embodied responses alongside client history, culture, medical factors, behavior, meaning, and the therapeutic relationship.

Her professional work extends beyond individual treatment. Livia has developed clinical programs, trained behavioral health teams, contributed to trauma-informed organizational initiatives, and held leadership roles within intensive treatment settings. Her education is relevant to social workers, counselors, psychologists, yoga therapists, addiction professionals, eating-disorder clinicians, clinical supervisors, and organizations seeking a more embodied and ethically grounded approach to trauma care.

Professional Background

Livia earned a master’s degree in social service administration from the University of Chicago. Her professional credentials include Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Yoga Therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Her current professional biography also identifies her as an assistant trainer with the Somatic Training Institute, supporting Somatic Experiencing education internationally.

She completed a two-year residency at the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy and pursued extensive advanced and therapeutic yoga education. In 2007, she developed and facilitated a trauma-informed 200-hour yoga teacher training, and in 2012 she launched the Yoga Informed training model. Her professional development has also included mindfulness and contemplative practice, ecopsychology, anti-oppressive psychodynamic psychotherapy, and clinical training connected with DBT, DBT Prolonged Exposure, ACT, and Exposure and Response Prevention.

Through Yoga Informed, Livia teaches an integrative framework that brings yoga philosophy and practice into conversation with Western psychotherapy, neurobiology, somatic models, behavioral treatment, and psychodynamic theory. The training does not position a psychotherapy session as a conventional yoga class. Instead, clinicians learn to evaluate whether practices involving breathing, grounding, sensory awareness, mindful movement, values, posture, or contemplative reflection are appropriate for a particular client and treatment goal.

Her professional history includes clinical leadership roles at Timberline Knolls, Insight Behavioral Health Centers, and Eating Recovery Center. In these settings, she contributed to programs serving people experiencing trauma, eating disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, addiction, and co-occurring clinical concerns. She has also consulted with behavioral health organizations on trauma-informed programming, staff education, treatment protocols, and the integration of somatic approaches into higher-acuity care.

Livia’s work recognizes that trauma-informed care must extend beyond the language clinicians use in sessions. Organizational policies, leadership behavior, staff support, physical environments, referral procedures, supervision, and responses to client acuity all affect whether a treatment system feels predictable, collaborative, and safe. Her consultation and training therefore address both direct clinical interventions and the wider systems in which care occurs.

Areas of Expertise

Somatic Trauma Therapy. Livia helps clinicians observe how distress may appear through breath-holding, muscular tension, restlessness, collapse, numbness, changes in voice, reduced eye contact, rapid movement, or difficulty sensing physical needs. These responses are explored collaboratively rather than interpreted as proof of a particular trauma history. Clinical Events’ guide to somatic therapy techniques provides complementary discussion of orienting, grounding, interoception, resourcing, titration, pendulation, movement, and co-regulation.

Somatic Experiencing. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Livia draws on a body-oriented framework for understanding trauma physiology, chronic stress, activation, and protective responses. Somatic Experiencing International describes its professional program as an experiential training that combines theory, demonstration, guided practice, case material, personal sessions, and consultation. Livia’s application of the model emphasizes careful pacing, present-moment awareness, client agency, and the development of greater flexibility around activation.

Yoga-Informed Psychotherapy. Livia’s Yoga-Informed model integrates selected yoga concepts with clinical assessment and psychotherapy. Possible interventions may include breath awareness, grounding, mindful movement, sensory orientation, reflection on values, compassionate observation, and carefully adapted contemplative practice. These methods should remain optional, culturally responsive, physically appropriate, and connected to the client’s treatment goals. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health’s overview of yoga identifies potential benefits for stress and aspects of mental well-being while also emphasizing research limitations and appropriate safety considerations.

Developmental Trauma and Attachment. Livia’s work examines how early relational experiences may shape emotional regulation, expectations of safety, boundary formation, trust, proximity, withdrawal, dependency, and responses to conflict. She encourages clinicians to understand attachment-related behaviors as adaptations that may once have protected connection or reduced danger. Treatment can then help clients develop greater awareness, flexibility, relational choice, and capacity for repair without shaming the original protective response.

Nervous-System Regulation and Relational Safety. Her training helps clinicians recognize patterns associated with heightened activation and states of withdrawal or shutdown. Regulation is not treated as an instruction to remain calm at all times. Instead, the therapeutic goal is greater capacity to notice internal experience, remain connected to the present, recover from activation, and respond with more choice. Clinical Events’ guide to Polyvagal Theory in trauma therapy offers a related framework while cautioning clinicians against using nervous-system language as a complete explanation for complex behavior.

Mindfulness and Contemplative Practice. Livia’s professional development includes sustained engagement with mindfulness and contemplative traditions. Her clinical application emphasizes adapting these practices to trauma history and client readiness. Closing the eyes, focusing on the breath, remaining silent, or scanning the body may be grounding for one client and destabilizing for another. Clinical Events’ resource on integrating mindfulness into trauma therapy provides additional guidance on pacing and trauma-sensitive modification.

Eating Disorders, Addiction, and Co-Occurring Conditions. Livia’s previous leadership experience in intensive behavioral health settings informs her understanding of cases in which trauma intersects with eating-disorder symptoms, substance use, mood concerns, anxiety, dissociation, and medical risk. Her approach supports integrated assessment and collaboration rather than assuming that one somatic or contemplative intervention can replace specialized multidisciplinary care.

Clinical Ethics and Level-of-Care Decisions. Embodied and relational treatment must remain connected to ethical judgment. Clinicians need to recognize when outpatient care no longer provides sufficient structure, medical oversight, safety planning, or multidisciplinary support. Livia’s education addresses consultation, documentation, professional competence, countertransference, treatment limitations, and compassionate referral conversations. Clinical Events’ guide to ethical practice in therapy offers related discussion of boundaries, competence, transparency, and professional responsibility.

Organizational Consultation and Trauma-Informed Leadership. Livia supports behavioral health organizations seeking to translate trauma-informed principles into everyday operations. Her work considers clinical programming, leadership, staff support, supervision, policies, client choice, cultural awareness, referral systems, and responses to high-acuity situations. This broader perspective helps organizations move beyond symbolic trauma language toward practices that more consistently support client welfare and workforce sustainability.