Finding the Intelligence in Our Emotions: SleepAwake Camp Offers a Breakthrough with Cat Tweedie (Episode #133)
Turns out, there are no bad emotions (anger, resentment, fear, etc). They can all be good, if we can remember to pause and then search the intelligence in them. In this episode, that is just one of the many pearls that today’s guest, Cat Tweedie, teaches us about. She is co-founder of SleepAwake Camp: a wonderful organization with a fresh take on coping with our world for young people, but her insights are fresh and useful, no matter your age.
Episode Highlights
About Our Guest:
Cat Tweedie is the best kind of “social entrepreneur”: She’s a fearless experimenter, a passionate supporter of collective wellness, a facilitator, and a fabulous, approachable communicator.
She and her cofounder have created a dynamic approach to developing life skills that are going untaught in our chaotic world and they’ve created a 30-day immersive camp called. Sleepawake Camp. It’s a life-changing experience for young adults, ages 18-27, and an opportunity to learn what we humans need to thrive, that isn’t taught in our educational system.
Think of it like a combination of a boot camp for the heart, mind, and body, and a modern right of passage, where young people learn no end to the positive responses to anxiety, depression and loneliness .
Over 70% of past participants rated it the most transformational experience of their lives and that group is very likely to have the energy and peace-of-mind to make the world a better place in responses large and small for the rest of their lives.
Cat’s own coping skills have been honed by a life of challenges and rigorous intention.
She was an All-American pole vaulter, earned her PhD at MIT in Materials Science and Engineering, and managed transformational change projects at McKinsey and Co. and Mobius Executive Leadership in organizations ranging from the Philadelphia Police Department to a Bengali village in India.
Her life of diverse experience has afforded her a remarkably expansive and approachable point of view that is a delight to learn from.
In this interview, she shared some really helpful, fresh perspectives on how we can stabilize our attention, navigate our emotions with grace, see through limiting beliefs, and find elements of unbridled creativity. We talk about relational intelligence (such as setting boundaries and working through conflict.)
All of these are parts of the process that Sleepawake Camp dives into. (If you are curious, it runs June 17 – July 16 in Colorado.)
Meanwhile, sit back and take a little journey with Cat and I that may include countless ah-ha moments for you!
Resources Mentioned:
Show Notes
(00:00- 06:00) OPENING
(06:01- 21:38)
- The “How’s” in Cat’s life
- The making of SleepAwake camp
- All the pieces suddenly make sense
- “Every bit of me is being used up”
- “What I think is the right thing until I hear from my body, this is it!”
- SleepAwake camp works on skills that are missing on the educational system
- Learn how to navigate those currents of energy… intelligence and beauty in all the impulses that arise
- Understanding our projections we each carry… we can begin to loosen the shame that people are often holding in their projected world.
- Late teens/early 20s is when teens are moving and decide which of these they want to continue… I hope to start offering adult camps in future.
- So many of the symptoms that are being medicated are what people are sensing like isolation or anxiety.
- They give back their phones voluntarily
(21:39- 24:25) BREAK
(24:26- 42:20)
- PODCAST: Why Kids Can’t Change Until Adults Do with AJ Crabill
- Looking at the beautiful intelligence
- Anger is just a signal that some boundaries have been crossed
- Anger release with women’s group
- Anger fully felt gives you clarity
- The beautiful intelligence in jealousy
- The world of a 3-year-old
- Social re-patterning
- Our essence never leaves and we just used our own energy to hold down the parts of ourselves that we didn’t get response for
- Intelligence of small beings
(42:21- 57:00)
- Real community and real connection
- The other thing that people get from social media is destruction
- Pushing away, it doesn’t bring us closer to ourselves
- The brain is a tool that supports us in thriving
- Brain challenge
- The belief and the projection and skipping the steps
- The different paths of learning
- Each person is a completely unique offering if all the parts of them are invited
- What we manifest in the world follows our thoughts
- PODCAST: Raising “Solutionaries” by Teaching Skills Instead of Facts with Zoe Weil and Steve Cochrane
- “You’ve done hard things before”
- Everything that comes up inside of us is lovable…
- Website: SleepAwake
(57:01- 57:57) CLOSING
