Coaches Rising 281 - Elena Tochilina, Vytautas Buciunas & Dana Carmen: Lessons From a Warzone
Mar 27, 2026
Elena Tochilina, coach blending somatic and leadership work; Vytautas Buciunas, leadership consultant and resilience trainer; Dana Karman, trauma-informed embodied facilitator. They discuss life in wartime Ukraine, survival realities and simple gratitude. They explore community creativity, practical spirituality, somatic and polyvagal practices, and how inner work becomes collective action and leadership under crisis.
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Gratitude For Everyday Miracles
- War reframes basic amenities as precious, shifting Ukrainian values toward gratitude for electricity, water, and intact homes.
- Vytautas and Elena describe spring and sunlight as a profound renewal after a survival winter of targeted infrastructure attacks.
DJ Raves And Charging Corridors
- Ukrainians held DJ raves in freezing Kiev to decompress and maintain community during power outages.
- Elena recounted people dancing outdoors and creating heated tent hubs and charging corridors to share electricity and food.
Practical Spirituality Meets Decentralized Meshwork
- Ukrainians stopped waiting for authorities and built decentralized meshworks of mutual aid to meet survival needs.
- Practical spirituality emerged: action-oriented practices that combine care, decisiveness, and sometimes armed defense.