Hosted by Kevin Young. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
What happens when we stop performing and start being? Cat guides us through her transformational journey from codependent conditioning to embodied authenticity. With wisdom drawn from 30+ years of yoga practice, plant medicine journeys, and navigating her own healing from Breast Cancer, Cat reveals why the answers we seek aren't outside ourselves, but waiting to be uncovered within.
Cat reflects on:
- How shedding her protective layers enabled her to access her true strength
- Her expanded her capacity to be present, hold space for others and become a conduit for transformation
- How humor helps her navigate life's challenges, as everything is funny... eventually
- The importance of receiving—from others and ourselves
Through humor, vulnerability, and profound insight, Cat shares many life lessons, including how learning to trust her innate healing capacity revealed the ease that comes from truly holding ourselves from the inside.
About Cat McCarthy,
Trauma-informed Somatic Coach
Cat integrates the practice of Yoga, the empathy skills of Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and trauma-Informed somatic movement therapy. Her approach to the relational container in which others safely explore the heart-mind-body terrain is deeply respectful. She supports Compassionate Inquiry's year-long and Circles programs, and co-leads its NVCI Focus group.
A dedicated yoga practitioner and international teacher/trainer, Cat holds certifications in Anusara Yoga, Kripalu Yoga, NYCNVC Facilitation, Compassionate Inquiry® and is registered with the Yoga Alliance and the American Yoga Council. Her extensive studies span the traditions of Rajanaka Philosophy, Neelakantha meditation, The Breathing Project's Embodied Anatomy, and Polyvagal Theory practices.
As an experiential learner and fellow traveler, Cat holds space as a plant medicine journey integrator at a psychedelic wellness center in NYC. She also leads Body-Mindfulness (meditation/breathwork/sound work) classes for the global Spinal Cord Injury population via the Back2Life Center at NYC's Mt. Sinai Hospital.
Cat's entertaining teaching style blends her vulnerable humor, dynamic clarity and attuned presence. When not traversing the globe teaching and training, this Emmy-nominated filmmaker directs/produces non-fiction projects. Her podcast, The Upside of Over, focuses on integrating NVC into our daily lives.
An avid singer who offers vocal and sound resonance courses for embodied self-expression and collective healing, Cat's aim is to support people in rewriting their self-narratives for evolution and growth. She's also developing programs for actors using therapeutic approaches to character development. But her biggest offering is sharing lessons learned in her "cancer discovery" and ongoing life journey.
Promotional Message
If you're not a therapist or healer, but you've heard our guests describe the personal transformations they experienced during their Compassionate Inquiry® journeys, and wonder what that would be like for you... Circles is a 10-week small group experience offered to anyone who wants to experience the power of Gabor Maté's approach to trauma healing. Use this link to find out if this program is for you.
Resources:
Websites:
Cat's Compassionate Inquiry Profile
Related Links:
Center for Nonviolent Communication
Compassionate Inquriy Year-Long Training
Books:
Quotes:
"I watched my mother die. Not of cancer, but of a type of resentment and grief about having to live, choosing to live a certain way when there weren't too many options for women." - Cat McCarthy
"These beliefs that I held to be true, that I'm not enough…there must be something wrong with me…my opinion doesn't matter…I'm alone in the world… All these interpretations that helped me get very far, are not true. They never were true. But they needed to be true then." - Cat McCarthy
"We all have the healing capacity. We all can tap into the quantum field. We all get these downloads. It's not about doing more. It's actually about letting more and more of these layers, this armor, these protections, all these things that we have created to get through life, letting them go one by one and trusting that there is going to be a strength and a resource inside that might need to be mirrored from outside, but it ultimately is an inside job." - Cat McCarthy
"We are not the healers. We are the context in which healing is inspired." - Ron Kurtz
"To be practicing together in communal spaces, building communities, sharing, caring, supporting. I think that's the Viva la revolution. Bring it on." - Kevin Young
"I am a work in progress, constantly becoming a more essential version of myself." - Cat McCarthy
"For Aquinas, beauty also included the notion of integrity...He understands that each thing is alive and on a journey to become fully itself. Integrity is achieved when there is a complete realization of whatever a thing is supposed to be...Integrity is the adequacy of a thing to itself." - John O'Donohue
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