Spotlight on the Niv Nirel Center: Healing Trauma with Structure, Insight, and Heart

The Niv Nirel Center was founded in memory of Niv Raviv and Nirel Zini, a young couple murdered in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. Niv was studying psychology and preparing to become a therapist. Those who knew her often said it felt as though she was born for it—someone who instinctively offered the kind of presence, insight, and care that therapy is built on. Nirel, a combat veteran wounded during Operation Protective Edge (Tzuk Eitan), lived with PTSD and fought to gain official recognition of his condition. That fight eventually led him to study law, determined to support others facing the same institutional silence. The center that now carries their names is built on the values they lived by: integrity, care, and an unwavering belief in the possibility of healing, even when the system fails. 

A Systemic Response to Deep Wounds 

The Niv Nirel Center offers professional trauma care for those who suffer from combat or general army service trauma, including members of Israel’s security forces and their families. But it is not only a clinic, it is a structural response to structural harm. 

Rather than treating trauma as a clinical issue alone, the center builds care around the reality that trauma touches every part of life: the body, the home, the community, and the bureaucratic systems survivors must navigate. This four-layered framework is not symbolic. It informs how care is designed and delivered. 

Each participant is paired with a case manager responsible for coordinating treatment, tracking progress, and staying present throughout the process. That continuity, rare in most public systems, anchors survivors as they engage in the difficult work of recovery. It also enables the flexibility needed to meet complex needs without sacrificing consistency or care. 

Importantly, the model is reciprocal. The center also safeguards the well-being of the professionals delivering care. Therapists and staff receive dedicated training and support to address secondary trauma, emotional fatigue, and burnout—conditions that are too often normalized and ignored in frontline mental health work. 

Treating the Whole Nervous System 

The center offers a flexible trauma treatment program tailored to each participant’s needs, ranging in length up to 24 weeks. While many participants attend twice weekly, others may come once a week or for a single intensive day of therapy. A second, more condensed format, known as the Day Treatment program, is currently in development. This version spans 9 weeks, with participants attending three full days each week for a combination of individual and group therapies. 

Treatment is personalized. Each participant, in collaboration with their intake team and dedicated case manager, receives an individually tailored plan that draws from a range of somatic and therapeutic modalities. This means that for someone who struggles to speak about their trauma, or to speak at all, treatment may begin not with talk, but with movement, acupuncture, or somatic experiencing. The body becomes the entry point, allowing what is held in tension to start releasing on its terms. 

Alongside psychotherapy, participants may receive Trauma-Informed Yoga, shiatsu, reflexology, neurofeedback, and touch-based work. Rest and regulation are central to the process. Sleep labs—mobile, non-intrusive, and precise—allow for real-time diagnostics and intervention, reflecting a growing recognition across the field that sleep is an essential site for trauma healing. 

The center is also participating in a pilot program using Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). This non-invasive technique stimulates targeted brain regions to support relief from PTSD and depression. In parallel, staff are engaged in research on MDMA- and ketamine-assisted therapy, as part of the center’s broader commitment to integrating clinical care with emerging, evidence-based approaches. 

When Trauma is Gendered 

One of the center’s core programs focuses on trauma as experienced by women, and not exclusively those who served in combat. 

This work is grounded in the understanding that trauma is not neutral. It can manifest differently in women’s bodies, relationships, and life trajectories. Too often, these distinctions go unrecognized or are treated as deviations from a male-centered norm. The center’s program responds directly to that gap. 

“The impact of combat trauma among women is a field in which research is severely lacking. In Israel, about 30% of combat forces are made up of female soldiers, yet their access to treatment and recognition of their therapeutic needs remains very limited. At the Niv Nirel Center, we are advancing the first study of its kind examining the characteristics of injury and the therapeutic needs of women affected by combat trauma. We aim to make this knowledge accessible and to disseminate it worldwide, so that gender-sensitive treatment programs for military trauma can be developed and provide appropriate care for the growing population of women.” - Dr. Kfir Feffer, Clinical Director. 

Already active and grounded in clinical practice, the program is accompanied by ongoing research designed to assess outcomes and improve tools for gender-responsive trauma care. It reflects a growing understanding within the field, and at the center, that effective treatment must begin with the specific realities of those it seeks to serve.

Expansion, Without Dilution 

Growth at the Niv Nirel Center is not an afterthought. New offerings are carefully developed in alignment with the center’s core philosophy: that healing happens through structure, presence, and full-body engagement. A new art and expression studio is underway, alongside a surf-based program designed to support emotional regulation, reconnection, and self-trust through movement and immersion in nature. These are not alternative therapies—they are central to a model that takes the nervous system seriously and understands that words are not always the most helpful measure of pain or progress. 

Group work has also expanded meaningfully: from a relationships group and a dedicated group for family members, to a new running-therapy group and a soon-to-launch group for partners. Each of these is designed to offer connection and processing in context, with others who carry similar questions, ruptures, and hopes. 

Each new element is introduced with the same attention to feedback, refinement, and accountability that defines the center’s entire approach. 

The Niv Nirel Center was born out of loss, but it is not defined by tragedy. Its work is quiet, steady, and urgent. It offers more than care—it provides a different logic—a trauma-informed way of thinking about systems, relationships, and recovery. 

And it holds a simple, radical premise at its core: that trauma doesn’t have to be the end of the story—if we build the right structures to meet it.