Hosted by Matthew Green Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Dasha Gaian had just embarked on Thomas Hübl's two-year Timeless Wisdom Training in the principles of collective trauma healing.
Born and raised in Ukraine, and living in the United States, Dasha recognised that the surge of anxiety she was experiencing as she witnessed the devastation being visited on her homeland was shared by millions of fellow Ukrainians and people watching in horror from around the world.
In this episode, Dasha shows how collective healing work can not only help individuals to relate to global crises from a more grounded place within themselves, but also inspire us to take practical action to support those most affected.
Now co-facilitating the Pocket Project's Ukrainian Practice Group with Daria Yemets, Dasha describes how the work she has done to integrate layers of collective and ancestral trauma has helped her recover a sense of agency and release patterns of victimhood and suppressed rage set in train by the injustices of the Soviet past.
Part of the team at the newly formed Global Restoration Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting a trauma-informed approach to diplomacy, peacebuilding, and policymaking, Dasha outlines a vision for how collective healing work could play a crucial role in helping to resolve seemingly intractable crises.
Dasha also speaks about her collaboration with David Young (a guest on Episode Two of What Is Collective Healing?) to address social polarisation via the Art of Collective Integration
This episode is essential listening for anyone who wishes to understand the relevance of collective healing work for active conflicts – and gain a deeper perspective on how the past and present collide on the world stage.
Further Resources:
Pocket Project First Ukraine Practice Group
About Dasha Gaian:
Dasha Gaian is a trauma-informed coach, facilitator, and collective trauma practitioner with a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural background. She is a member of the Global Restoration Institiute team contributing to initiatives that embed trauma-informed and somatic approaches into peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and policymaking.
Drawing on neuroscience, somatic awareness, and systems thinking, Dasha facilitates individual and group processes in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. She supports clients and communities in regulating symptoms of personal, transgenerational, and collective trauma while fostering resilience, emotional intelligence, and embodied leadership.
She is also a co-creator of the Art of Collective Integration, a trauma-informed practice and framework used for transforming fragmentation in human systems into coherence, resilience, and wholeness.
Born in Ukraine and having lived in multiple cultures, Dasha brings a lived understanding of resilience and interconnectedness to her work, supporting both individual transformation and collective restoration.
