Vision

A world where deep wellbeing is normal.

Study after study — including the longest-term study on human happiness, conducted over 80 years at Harvard — shows that it is the quality of our relationships that most shapes our well-being and sense of purpose.

What we believe

A world of wellbeing is within reach.

We want to live in a world filled with people living from their own deep authenticity, inner authority, agency, radical ownership, and vivaciousness. We're moving toward it already by supporting people in unblocking the past hurts and conditioning stored in their nervous systems, through experiential, group-based learning. Four beliefs sit underneath everything we run.

01
The world gets better as people come home to themselves.
As people moving from their own authenticity, authority, agency, ownership, and aliveness, they develop a deeper sense of groundedness. They are able to engage with the challenges of the world and work on them from a place of presence, resource, and authenticity – without needing to win or prove anything.
02
That capacity is already in you, and some of it is blocked.
Our nervous systems learn from our past experiences, especially in childhood. These adaptations are wise but often outdated, kinking up our nervous systems and preventing us from engaging with the present moment. These adaptations are still running in the background of an adult life that no longer needs them.
03
Nervous systems don't change through insight alone.
They change through lived experience, in real relationships. This is why we work in person, in groups, over consecutive days.
04
This is an unfolding, not a fix.
We're not here to “fix” anything about you. We're here to give you the space and resources to explore what's interesting to you, and begin a path of unfolding into deeper self-authorship. The growth keeps going after the program ends, and it keeps opening ever more beautiful and joyful possibilities for the individual and for everyone they come home to.

Our theory of change

You can only meet others — and the world — to the depth you've already met yourself.

To engage with the realities of the world around us — both the suffering and the wholeness — we first have to meet the parts of ourselves that mirror those same dynamics. A leader who has not yet met their own belief that they are not enough will, to a certain extent, be unable to engage with the worth and enoughness of the people in their community. A friend who has not yet accepted their own wishes for their life will be unable to purely support their friend's vision for theirs, however much they want to.

Our nervous systems evolved to keep us safe, and learned to hold conditioning and trauma as predictions about where we might be unsafe again. Those predictions are often long out of date, and they can be updated. We update them the same way they were made: through lived experience, in relationship with others.

So one path to greater joy and aliveness, individually and societally, runs through meeting what's held in the nervous systems of individual people. We do that work in groups, because a group is a small society: it will reliably surface the exact dynamics you meet everywhere else, and it gives you somewhere real to practice something different.

How the work actually works

Two people in close, attentive conversation outdoors

Why this, why now

We are living in a time of paradox.

There is more material abundance available than at any point in human history. There is also, at the same time, a loneliness epidemic serious enough that public health officials have named it, and a widespread sense that something is missing that abundance does not supply.

This is also a genuinely uncertain moment about work, about what technology is about to change, about what the next decade asks of us. This work is what fosters the capacity to stay steady and healthy within that context of uncertainty.

We have not yet built the cultural norms or the psychological structures that would let everyone thrive in this age. It is easier than ever to climb Maslow's hierarchy. The harder question is what's waiting once you arrive: almost no emotional education, few healthy relational norms held in common, and scattered pockets of genuinely supportive community that are hard to find unless you already know where to look.

We are here to offer one experiment, and one set of answers, to the question of how humanity thrives psychologically, spiritually, and relationally.

The world we're working toward

A secure attachment to reality.

In the world we imagine, connection with other people is a boon to each of us living the life we actually want. There are pockets of people in touch with their own authentic version of self, living it out loud, rippling new norms outward into everything they touch.

We learn to live from love and abundance, rather than being driven by the avoidance of fear and scarcity. Each person is encouraged in their own unique expression, because that uniqueness is an essential part of the vibrancy of the whole.

From

Independence

Interdependence

Deep relationships and full self-ownership, at the same time.

From

Fear

Love

Lives organized around the joy and love for what we're moving toward, rather than around what we're avoiding or running from.

From

Scarcity

Abundance

Other people living their authentic lives out loud becomes a support to your own unfolding, rather than taking away from it.

How we hold all this

A playful and earnest offering

Sleepawake is prototyping the kind of society and norms that would be well-adapted to this age. Our programs are experimental laboratories where people learn new ways of relating to themselves and to each other. They are not places for indoctrination, and do not have a curriculum of beliefs or practices attendees must adopt.

We are interested in supporting the authentic, unique expression of every individual. That comes with no dogma and no prescribed next step to take in your life once the program ends. Your “no” is actually welcome here. Some people say “no” to every single activity for the first many days of our retreats, and we welcome that.

This is an offering of a norm, not the norm. We hold it as an experiment, and we are here to learn from it.

A reframe

Pain is not a sign that something has gone wrong.

We don't treat fear, grief, anger, or pain as experiences to be numbed, managed, or hurried along. Every emotion, sensation, resistance, and impulse has a beautiful intelligence at its root. These are each a wise adaptation, formed for good reason, still doing its best to look after you.

So a difficult feeling is giving a signal that something in you is asking for attention. That signal is a signal of the potential joy, aliveness, and opening that could become available when that thing is finally met.

A lot of the trouble in the world comes from parts of us going unmet. Turned toward, they can be metabolized safely instead of spilling out onto everyone else.

People who turn toward their own experience, when they have the resource and capacity to do so, tend to live from a deeper alignment and self-authorship. People who are more alive to their own joy and pain – and the joy and pain of the world around them – are better equipped to build a better world.

Our core commitments

How we are with one another has to reflect the world we're working toward.

We commit to service: We are bound to one another through the fabric of life, and so we selfishly work toward making deep well-being normal in this shared world. We work with intention, trust, and lightheartedness, bringing our creativity, inspiration, and compassion to live into our mission.
We commit to welcoming the beautiful intelligence of everything: We trust that every voice matters. We encourage team members, participants, and facilitators to speak what is true for them. We learn together that there is no part of anyone that is shameful or wrong; there is always a wise adaptation at the root of every impulse.
We commit to following excitement: There is so much energy for creation embedded in our excitement and joy. The bold, brilliant new idea comes from letting ourselves have fun together. We learn to be playful with our self-seriousness, so there is nothing we can't hold together.
We commit to our well-being: We can only be of service to others if we first attend to our own health and vitality. We commit to taking care of ourselves, so we can fully show up for each other and for this work.
We commit to speaking from compassionate honesty: Showing up to our relationships fully and honestly lets other people actually meet us. We commit to taking full responsibility for our experiences and for how we show up.
We commit to trusting the journey: This project is our heart's and mind's response to a collective call for attention on the state of our well-being. We ground ourselves in that larger picture while listening carefully for what is needed, and we welcome reflections of our blind spots so we can move from inspiration and love.
We commit to long-term trajectory over short-term change: Our inner landscapes can shift with a “pop” — a long-held belief or emotion moving in a single moment. The longer-term trajectory of nervous system growth may or may not look like those openings. So we track our alumni over years to see how their lives actually change. We aren't interested in facilitating flashy short-term fixes; we're interested in the long-term impact of our programs, and we study it.