Active since 2006
Ukraine, where the work was built.
- On the ground since
- 2006
- In the first veterans’ training
- 28
- Months of Equal to Equal training
- 8
- Cities
- Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv
How we got here
2006
Bodynamic begins training Ukrainian clinicians in body-based trauma methods, long before the war as the world now knows it.
2013–14
During Maidan and the war in the east, Ditte Marcher and Ukrainian colleagues turn to the people coming home from the front. The first training for veterans fills with 28 people.
Since then
Veterans who finished the training start teaching it to other veterans, on the Equal to Equal principle. Graduates run programmes at the Heart of the Warrior rehabilitation centre in Kharkiv.
2022
When the full-scale invasion begins, the network trained over fifteen years is already in place. It becomes the base of a fast, locally led response.
Today
The work is Ukrainian-led. Our part is to keep training, keep funding the practitioners on the front line, and keep showing up.
Four programmes, one method
Mobile crisis teams
Body-based stabilisation for displaced families and frontline communities, deployed within days of an incident.
Clinician training
Equal to Equal trainings for Ukrainian psychotherapists, psychiatrists and combat medics, building skills that stay after we leave.
Veteran programmes
Long-form recovery work with serving and former soldiers, alongside Veteran Hub and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Families and communities
Group sessions for the partners, parents and children who carry the second wave of trauma.
In the field
Two short films from the Raise.UA rehabilitation programme, an ecosystem for raising a resilient generation in Ukraine.
About Raise.UAWhat changed for the veterans
A preliminary study followed the first two groups of the veterans’ training through all four modules.
40%
at the second module
8%
by the fourth module
Impact of Event Scale, Overcoming Shock Trauma and PTSD training for Ukrainian veterans, groups 1.0 and 2.0. Over the same period the share with no clinical symptoms rose from 0% to 15%. Preliminary research report. Read the report
Further reading
Articles and resources on the Ukraine work, published by Bodynamic International.
Fund the work in Ukraine.
Your gift goes to the Ukrainian clinicians and veterans doing this work, and to training the next ones.