16/02/2026
Text by Sasha Bezrodnova
After graduating from university, I worked on designing corporate team-building programs and training team-building facilitators. After leaving the corporate training world, social psychology continued to unfold for me through working with my own teams, community development, and through social technologies such as Dragon Dreaming.
Making a team truly thrive is not about exercises — and not even about “correct” agreements, although those do matter. It is deep inner work for each individual, because in shared activity we inevitably meet our projections and shadow aspects. If individuals are not willing to engage in their own development, a team has far fewer chances to truly flourish.
For me, a team is a long-term relationship — one that holds a shared purpose and common values, while also respecting the personal values of each member. It is mutual support with a long-term orientation, rather than being driven by momentary moods or quick benefits. It is patience and acceptance without suppression, the ability to acknowledge feelings, and the capacity to step into another person’s perspective in order to see oneself more clearly.
In the teams I am part of today, embodiment plays an essential role — the ability to be in non-verbal contact. This allows us to focus not only on efficiency and clarity of intention, but also on the quality of contact itself and on togetherness as a value in its own right.
In the corporate world this is not always needed — but for us, without it, the work is simply not interesting. Our work is oriented toward transforming the world through our own example of how it is possible to be — and how it is possible to be together.
Our Thai festival team brings together teachers of Contact Improvisation, psychology, somatics, and freediving, all oriented toward sustainability, ecology, and health. Each of us has our own independent projects, and at the same time, for the past 15 years, we have been coming together every year to develop this festival. We do not grow quantitatively, because our core value is to create a high-quality meeting in a warm, intimate circle where everyone has time to truly meet, connect, and build relationships.
I’d like to introduce the team:
Yana Sutina
Maria Grudskaya
Anastasia Saevich
Kirill Popov
Sasha Bezrodnova
The festival is just one month away, and all places have long been filled. However, there is still an opportunity to join the post-festival workshop “Loving Eyes” (March 22–24) — an authentic movement practice in nature:
https://ci-thai.com/postfestival-workshop/
After that, I will be facilitating workshops on Koh Phangan with Somatic Relating and Ocean Dance teams. More information here:
https://linktr.ee/sashadeeepjourney
Or feel free to write to Mary directly:
https://t.me/OceanDanceAdminMary
https://wa.me/79068017287
