“If we’re feeling something, but then putting our attention out and leading people, then it’s not an entirely internal experience. That energy, that instruction has a place to go and we’re constantly informing, re-informing, educating each other about who we are. This is the thing that’s I think missing in our world is that we’re very isolated and we’re not accustomed to telling each other the truth from a bodily felt place.”
Emily: I'm really excited to welcome my guest, Kasia Urbaniak. She's here, she's the founder and CEO of The Academy, a school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence. And I'm just gonna give you a little brief info here so you know what you're getting into, but I promise you, this is going to be a really powerful interview that's really gonna shift the way that you think about men and women and how we relate in the world. I'm so excited to talk to her. So her perspective on power is really unique, and she's made a living as one of the world's most successful dominatrices while studying power dynamics with teachers all over the world. She practices Taoist alchemy, one of the oldest female-led monasteries. I have so many questions about that. And since founding the academy in 2013, she's taught hundreds of women practical tools to step into leadership positions in their relationships, families, workplaces, and wider communities. She speaks at conferences, and she's speaking to us today. Welcome to the show, Kasia. I'm so glad you're here.
Kasia Urbaniak: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Emily: Well it's interesting. We just met and I've been prepping and reading all of her stuff this week. I'm like, oh my God, this woman has got it. She's got her finger on the pulse of what's happening right now. When we first talked about having you as a guest, it was like, I was reading that you're a dominatrix and you've done all this work. And now it's like, okay, dominatrix, I haven't had someone on the show in a while who teaches that. And then I'm reading about everything else you're doing. I'm like, that's sort of a sidebar that prepared you for the leadership role that you're in today with everything going on in the world right now, with #metoo and with men and women walking around really, really confused about how we relate. So, first maybe you can give me some background here. A little bit of how you got to where you are today.
Kasia Urbaniak: You mean like, how the school got started?
Emily: Yeah, how the school got started. That would be a great start.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, initially I was working as a dominatrix, and I was also studying Taoist practices, a lot of which have to do with body reading, martial arts, healing. And I found myself being really influenced by those practices in how I approached clients. It made me very, very good at what I did. And so I was asked to train other dominatrices. And once I started training other women to do this very specific thing, I started seeing patterns in where they had difficulty in having actual power and influence over their clients. Rather than just performing, "You've been such a boy." Right.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: I also watched how, I was doing this quite young. So I watched how my non-dominatrix friends related to men. All of the assumptions, the superstitions, the losses of power. And this sort of progressed for a while, and then, five years ago, I met my business partner, Ruben Flores, who worked for Doctors Without Borders. We had the most fascinating six month conversation. He was coming from Africa in really high conflict areas, and what he was talking about was situations where you're at a border checkpoint and you have a piece of paper that says you have authority, but you also have five groups of people who don't speak the same language. 14 year olds on drugs with machine guns. And you have to build this field hospital. In the middle of all of this.
Kasia Urbaniak: So he started talking about the ways that people can communicate beyond language. This primal communication. How you establish authority and how you surrender it. When it's appropriate. And I could not believe that what he discovered on the fringes of death and war was so close to what I discovered on the fringes of human sexuality. So we started seeing that there are these structures as play. Primarily we refer to them as power dynamics. And these have not only such a huge impact on any conversation despite what's said, despite the language that's spoken, but also they play really differently with men and women. Because men and women are raised to play differently in this particular paradigm.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
Kasia Urbaniak: So it was like-
Emily: You're like, click. Like, this would be a great partnership. So you started this underground school in New York five years ago. Which was before #metoo, because now this is like, everyone, I feel like I want to go take your course. I want to think that a lot of people need some kind of version of this to learn how to relate. But when you started this five years ago, it was more like ... tell me about that. The first class.
Kasia Urbaniak: Oh, it was so romantic. We were like, "We have a secret society full of powerful women who we're teaching to be even more powerful." And it was very theatrical and erotic and private. We weren't really thinking about changing the world, we were thinking about getting these women who already had access to power to be able to use their ... let's say their more inherent feminine connection to the sematic, to the visceral, to the feeling. The things that women learn through the patriarchy that can be seen as negative. How to harmonize a group, how to be aware of group dynamics, what people call empathy. How do you get those actual assets at play in a way that doesn't make her a nice girl, a good girl. So it was really, really exciting. It was such an exciting time. We were ... all the subjects, ranging from romantic relationships, to how to convince the CEO or how to, you know, it was remarkable. And we were-
Emily: How to get your raise, or how to get your partner to take you on a date, or how-
Kasia Urbaniak: Right. Or do you get your CEO to get into aerospace. Or how do you get the politics of your environment to change. Big things, it was really exciting because I started seeing a huge impact out in the world through this small group of women. So we really felt like a secret society. And we got to play and do these outrageous things. And then a huge shift happened. So, this is gonna sound weird, but dog training had a huge influence on how I was working as a dominatrix. I started seeing how the structures of attention create hierarchy. And this predisposition women have to put attention inward when there's conflict. And the predisposition men have to put their attention out when there's conflict. So, the election happened. Basically what happened was, during the debates, our students ... debate number one, debate number two, debate number three.
Emily: You're talking about the debate between Trump and Hilary Clinton, right?
Kasia Urbaniak: Exactly, yeah.
Emily: Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: They were analyzing every single power move made. They were analyzing -- I was blown away how much they got of what we taught. They were like, okay, this is what's happening here, this is what's happening here. And there was this fervor growing, this frustration. Because they saw what was happening. They saw that she didn't stand a fucking chance. I understand the electoral college and the popular vote, but that should have been a landslide. And it wasn't. And they were watching, and explaining to me, you have to do something.
Emily: Give an example, because I feel like what you're saying is that, Hilary didn't, we all know that she's really strong, and smart, in probably many ways. I mean, people hate Hilary Clinton. We don't often talk about politics in this show, because people get, you guys get so mad! So just, don't take this as a Democrat or Republican thing right now, when you're listening. Let's take it as a woman who probably was told to kind of wipe away all of your strength as a woman, and bring in some, but don't be too feminine, right? A million things, and she kind of showed up as, kind of blank. Or kind of erased a lot of the edges. Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: Right. That's one way of putting it.
Emily: And Al Gore did this too, when he ran for president against George Bush. Okay, so I used to work in politics for this. So I just remember, they were like, what happened to Gore? He was this person, but he showed up -- I always feel like he had too much coaching or something, he was just like, I can't be. And they're like, what happened to your personality? Why didn't you show this Al Gore when you were running? And you lost. So, it's kind of like this, she probably had too many people saying don't be Hilary.
Kasia Urbaniak: So in the language of the school I can explain what happened.
Emily: Yeah, tell me, yes. Please. That's what I want you to do.
Kasia Urbaniak: So, again, to all the listeners. I get how controversial this is, because if you love her, if you hate her, you're going to hate me for saying anything. But-
Emily: Take away politics and listen to what we're saying.
Kasia Urbaniak: Look at body. Just look at the body.
Emily: Thank you.
Kasia Urbaniak: This is just about the body. This actually happens to women quite early. Your first longing, your first desire. That's personal to you, right, as you're growing up. Is erotic. If you're a kid and you want a cookie, and you don't get it, you cry your eyes out. When you find somebody attractive and you want them to love you back, and you're not getting it, right. That desire. Is so much more personal. It means so much more about you. It's a high stakes desire, and the tendency in women and men. Boys and girls growing up. Is that once somebody notices that a girl is sexually interested, her entire world gets slammed into two. She's either a slut or a prude, and oftentimes she's both.
Kasia Urbaniak: And the way that this ends up manifesting further along, is, her breasts are too small until they're too big. She's too quiet until she's too loud. She's too studious until she's not studious enough. And it continues until she's too concerned with career and not with family, too concerned with family, not career. And the space in between those two things is almost ... I mean, it's like walking a fucking tightrope your entire life. Whereas, when a boy expresses it, it's just like, oh look. Isn't he cute. Look, he's going after it! He's going after it!
Emily: Right. He's being tough, he's strong.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah. It's unidirectional. It's not that split. So there's this idea that all humanity is equal, and that's a really beautiful spiritual principle. But at play, in interaction, what happens usually is there's a top and a bottom. There's a dom, and a sub. And they switch. In the best instances, in a ripe, beautiful conversation, I'm on top when I'm speaking. I'm watching to see if the words land in your body. I'm paying attention to you. You're the sub, so I'm putting my attention on you. Something gets triggered in you, inspired, and you start to speak, now you're the top. And you're watching me to see if I'm getting it. I'm, in my own experience, seeing if it triggers something. So that is the idea fluid switching dynamic. So women have a tendency to be afraid of both looking like they're on top and on the bottom.
Emily: So true.
Kasia Urbaniak: So the language translates into bossy and bitchy if they're on top, because they're on top but they're not comfortable with it. And that transmits.
Emily: And we make ourselves smaller.
Kasia Urbaniak: Or angry, right.
Emily: Yeah.
Kasia Urbaniak: With too much effort. And on the bottom one, it's time for us to receive and surrender. We don't want to feel needy and desperate so that there's discomfort there. So there's a tendency for women to limit that range and be in this smush, in this compression. Not too much this, not too much that. So. So often in those debates, what you saw is Hilary not being too much, not being too little. Not being too dom, not being too sub. Not being too much of a mother, not being too much of a daughter, not being too much a slut -- not being too much of anything. Now here's the problem. As animals, we listen to a signal. So if you turn down the volume on Obama and watch him, and you turn down the volume on Trump, and watch him. And you turn down the volume on Hilary, and watch her. And you imagine you're an alien, you have no idea about politics. You get a signal from Obama. You get a signal from Trump. And you get nothing from Hilary. So no matter what she says-
Emily: Because she's just kind of standing there-
Kasia Urbaniak: No matter, her body could not transmit a signal, so no matter what she says, feels like a lie to a body.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: No necessarily to a mind, but to a body. There's no signal to back it up. So the students went into an uproar, and we had to do our first big public event the day after the election. We had to start teaching. So our first class was how to have a political conversation using power dynamics. Because this was the fall, and people were like, I'm not going to Thanksgiving dinner.
Emily: Exactly. I can't talk to my family, right.
Kasia Urbaniak: So we started doing that, and that was the first moment where our website was not password protected.
Emily: Okay, because you're like, people need me right now, they need the help. And your password, let me just tell people if you're listening and you're like wait, I gotta check out, I gotta see what Emily's talking about. It is Kasia, K-A-S-I-A Urbaniak, that's U-R-B-A-N-I-A-K.
Kasia Urbaniak: It's easier to go to WeTeachPower.com.
Emily: WeTeachPower.com is so much easier. Okay, great.
Kasia Urbaniak: It'll redirect to that site, so.
Emily: We teach power. We can all spell that. Okay. I've done a lot of research and reading about you. So, the dog training. So explain that a little bit more, about how it was the book about how to teach your dog-
Kasia Urbaniak: The Dog Whisperer?
Emily: Yeah. But it's more like, we want the dogs. Like they can kind of read your ... they want an alpha male, or they want an alpha personality, any dog. Like whenever I had a dog for a little, my friends were like, oh, he needs a man. I was probably just too passive with the dog. It's not even about masculine and feminine, it's more about the energy. Right?
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah. What I got from it in the context that I was looking from was that ... so the dog's always looking to see who's on top. And when there's nobody on top, the dog thinks that he's on top. And the dog isn't equipped to be on top, because in an apartment, doesn't know how to hunt food and fight for his pack right, so he's a little nuts and neurotic. So the dog needs to know somebody's on top. How does the dog recognize that? And what was incredible was, it was just a glimpse of an idea, but where I took it changed my relations with human beings and definitely my work. It was very clear that, from a stable place, the alpha needed to put full attention on the animal. In a way that the animal could full feel and surrender into it and relax.
Kasia Urbaniak: And go, oh. The pack leader has got me. I'm safe. The attention is on me. I will follow now. And even in the earliest days of training dominatrices, when they were going into the room with their clients, one thing that was missing is no matter what they were doing or saying or whips they were pulling out. Their attention was on themselves and their performance. They were missing the weight of attention that the client needed, especially an alpha male spending his day being boss. The incredible weight of attention he needed in order to shift his brain chemistry into a submissive state where he could relax and receive, was enormous. And women were afraid to invade the space of a man, even when they were paid for it, and directed to.
Emily: How do you deal with that, and how do you show up as authentic, rather than just reading words or whatever. You have to really be there and listen and being in that power place, which, that's tough. So you're teaching women how to be dominatrices, now teaching women how to be in their bodies and be powerful. Has basically been your journey.
Kasia Urbaniak: And teaching them to switch, because a lot of very powerful women have trouble surrendering. And it's impossible to contribute.
Emily: I'm gonna raise my hand.
Kasia Urbaniak: It's not only impossible to contribute to a woman who can't surrender, it's impossible to know what she needs without her explicitly saying so. So if somebody's in a surrendered state, you look at them, you can kind of feel what they want, what they need. Whether it's a hug, or whether it's a complement, or whether it's a smack. You can feel it. But when a person's in a very dominate state, they're impenetrable. Their attention's going out, so it's like swimming upstream to even feel them.
Emily: So, this is so interesting, because what you're teaching now is all about these power dynamics that have become really confused lately. So, especially with what's happening in the world with #metoo, I mean. There's so many places I want to go right now. So I wanted to start out with your workshop, which is clearly a fairly new one. But you have a Cornering Harvey workshop, which is about Harvey Weinstein. Can you talk about that workshop?
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah. So it started as Cornering Harvey because we were using the script that was recorded of him, and teaching women how, all the different ways-
Emily: Like, literally the script.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: Come into the hotel room-
Kasia Urbaniak: We had a guy in a bathrobe, and a potted plant next to him. It was really hilarious.
Emily: Oh my God, amazing! Get the whole set. Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: So, in a sexual harassment scenario, what's oftentimes happening, is the sexual harasser is putting a woman on the spot. Right. He's being dominate, putting all of his attention on her. And there's this thing that happens, and I'm sure many female listeners, maybe even some male listeners can relate to this. Where when you're put on the spot in a really aggressive way, and you already have a tendency to turn your attention inward, you freeze. And in that freeze, a woman loses access to language. It's her amygdala gets hijacked. Her brain chemistry changes.
Kasia Urbaniak: It's, you know, her amygdala gets high jacked. Her brain chemistry changes. Access to language and agency becomes incredibly difficult, so she's much more likely to comply or her silence reads as consent. And this is a huge problem because in that state when she's in the freeze she's much less likely to leave the room. She might not even think to leave the room.
Emily: Right, 'cause like the fight or flight, it's so basic, right? [crosstalk 00:19:25] We can't ... We lose language.
Kasia Urbaniak: It's so, so basic.
Emily: It just makes so much sense, 'cause that's what makes us different than animals. Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: So when all of the Me Too stuff started coming out and the Harvey stories and all the other stories. The thing I wanted most was to give as many women possible the simplest tool to break the freeze. Since then it's turned into a verbal self defense course that's online, but the basic principle is that when she's frozen her attention is stuck inward. She's having ten thousand thoughts. She's saying, "I'm gonna say something now. I'm gonna say something now." The moment keeps passing. She's running around inside her own head, wanting to say something, wanting to say something, but she's frozen.
Kasia Urbaniak: So the way to break the freeze. First, put your attention out and follow it with language. Asking a question.
Emily: Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: So, if they practice. If they practice very specific questions, even in a language-frozen state, putting attention out and asking that prepared question is enough to flip the power dynamic. Why a question? Because the person hearing the question automatically turns their attention inward.
Emily: Mm-hmm. (affirmative)
Kasia Urbaniak: Which means there's less pressure on her. So not only has she broken the freeze, she's slipped the power dynamic, and now the person who's heard the question - whether it's like, "Do you realize that a statement like that might make a woman really uncomfortable." Simple, simple. Not even that confrontational.
Emily: Right, right. You literally just flip it. Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: Even for a second, if the person goes inward, it's enough to give her access to more language, agency, and from that moment she's ten times more likely to be able to just stand up and leave the room.
Emily: Right. God, powerful.
Kasia Urbaniak: So it was super, super, super exciting to experiment with that over and over and over again and have these workshops and show women who consider themselves to be the shyest field mouses actually not only deliver the first question, but then a second one and a third one and a fourth one that's even harsher.
Kasia Urbaniak: "Do you like making women feel small?" "Is this what you need in order to get it up?" "Do you like ..."
Emily: Wow. Wow.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah. And just watching them, watching them just their ...
Emily: Get off on it, really. And the thing is ... What I love about this, 'cause I think about this too in reading. And, obviously, to be honest, but when I was reading all of your stuff and I had been going through it. It's like, I see myself like I am a powerful woman with a business and I'm all these things. But I do, I freeze with language, ironically, 'cause I have a show, but I also feel like in scenarios that are tricky, even if it's a work thing, or negotiating, or with a friend I freeze a lot. And I hadn't ever thought about it that it was this fight or flight, 'cause I get anxious and then I get in my head and then I'm over.
Emily: But just to be able to say, even if it's not a Harvey Weinstein [crosstalk 00:22:00] it's someone saying ... If I'm hiring a new lawyer and he's like, "So, we're gonna take ten percent. Is that okay?" I might be thinking, just to give you a business scenario. [crosstalk 00:22:07]
Kasia Urbaniak: This is a perfect example.
Emily: And I'm thinking, "Oh my god. They want that to work with me. What if I don't ... " And I'm just thinking okay. I'll just say yeah. Even if it's a money thing. I get ... With money, I get shut down. But I'm hearing now all these times that I've done it and there's been a lot of problems because of that, because I don't want to confront. I'm from the midwes - Wherever the ... I'm a woman. I'll just say it's from my upbringing. But also just I feel like my default is just being really nice, I want everyone to like me, I don't want anyone to be ...
Emily: Even on the show. I'm like, I'm not talking pot. I want to help people. Better sex ed is my mission. I want people to be able to ask for what they want in bed, to communicate it, to be in their bodies. I want a lot of things. But, I don't want to ... I also want people to like me. So, or I want ... And so I shut down and I might not say the right things, but to now have this tool - and I have haven't taken one of your courses and I want to hear more about the questions - it's so powerful to think ... Even if it's a reporter. I get interviewed all the time. Ask me a question rather just rambling sometimes as I do. Even asking a clarifying question in the moment when you're not feeling safe and you're feeling like you know. It's just a huge freedom. It's a huge freedom and it gives you that space that you might need and it takes back your power.
Kasia Urbaniak: The reasons why people freeze, you know the default that women have to keep their attention in, what you described, "I wanna be the good girl. ... "
Emily: I wanna be liked.
Kasia Urbaniak: But, that's just what happens when your attention's inward. If you put your attention out and completely saturate the other person with your attention you're not thinking about whether you're good or bad. You're thinking about where they are and how to move them either forward, backward, or out of your fucking way.
Emily: Right, exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: It just becomes natural.
Emily: Right. Give me some more of the tools. I thought it would be fun too to do a role play.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, the verbal self defense stuff that's the [crosstalk 00:23:38]
Emily: Yeah, I love you. Verbal self defense ... What a great ... And then you've a course that you teach on this online.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which also has to do with the string of ambiguous sentences that somebody can sometimes give you to put pressure on you and how to deal with those.
Emily: Like what? Give me example.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, oftentimes compromising situations aren't created with one statement like, "If you fuck me, I'll give you a role in a movie." Right.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: It sounds a little bit more like, "I got lots of friends in this town. And, you know, I could be very helpful to you if we're friends and come to my hotel room and be my ... " Like a lot of ambiguity, right.
Emily: Yeah.
Kasia Urbaniak: So the tool that we use for that is called location and it's a really simple sentence. It's just a clarifying sentence.
Emily: Okay.
Kasia Urbaniak: That goes: "It seems that fill in the blank, is that true?" "It seems that you want to get me into bed, is that true?"
Emily: Right, right, right.
Kasia Urbaniak: "It seems that you're promising me a very successful career if I sleep with you, is that true?" "It seems that you're very used to getting your way, is that true?" Whatever it is, it has the same function of putting attention out but before ... It's easier to hit back
Emily: So if I say that to someone, but let's say I'm younger. I'm feeling that and I'm ... It's scary. 'Cause what if he goes, "Fuck you, I can't believe that you'd say that." And then it's anger. Like, I can see the next step.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah, yeah.
Emily: And then what? What's the next step?
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, I mean, that's why we have an entire training course about it.
Emily: Okay, [crosstalk 00:24:50] you can't ... But I couldn't take your course.
Kasia Urbaniak: But, also, this is just one tiny tool and this is like ...
Emily: Right, I know.
Kasia Urbaniak: We've never put forward one tiny piece of one basically tool out of a whole course forward.
Emily: True.
Kasia Urbaniak: And the reason for that was because I felt this emergency happening, you know?
Emily: It is an emergency, so ... 'Cause here's the thing, 'cause let me just answer my own question here. If a guy says that to me, "Well, I can't believe you're saying that," or he gets angry. Clearly that's what he wants and do I want to sleep with someone to get a role in a movie.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, you'd do another statement, you know.
Emily: Yeah, you just keep going with the questions
Kasia Urbaniak: It seems like you're really angry now, is that true? It seemed like it really angered you to think that you weren't gonna get your way, is that true? And then it could be a penetrating question like in round one which is, "Do you realize how uncomfortable you make women when you act this way? Is that something you want? Is that the impact you wanna have?"
Emily: Right, was that your intention? Is this what you want?
Kasia Urbaniak: And really the only goal of all these in verbal self defense is just to buy enough time to get out of the fucking room.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: Right.
Emily: God, that's so helpful.
Kasia Urbaniak: Like, it's not a conflict resolution ... It's not the complete thing, you know. In our courses, we teach women to ask anyone for anything ...
Emily: Anything?
Kasia Urbaniak: Anything.
Emily: Literally, like a raise. Change my tire. Could you move? Can I have your parking spot?
Kasia Urbaniak: Buy me a castle. Ask anyone for anything anytime and have it feel good. And then, teaching them how to play with resistance and no. That's the arc of the curriculum. That's the meaty part. If a woman can freely express herself from a place of desire, whether it's financial, professional, if she can, from the deepest part of her, feel completely unafraid to express what it is that's moving her soul and speak it cleanly, clearly, with total body congruence, feeling great about it. And the hundred percent of it, not ninety five percent of it, not diminishing it, not thinking, "This is what I want, this is what I think I can get. What's the spot in between that's gonna be my ask?" No, the whole fucking thing.
Emily: Right. Don't even think about the middle part. Just ask for it.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: People want that clarity.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yes, they do.
Emily: People want to know what you want.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yes, they do.
Emily: Yeah, I mean they really ... I can only see this ... Propelling women to so many more places of authentic power. Internally and externally. Where it matches up.
Kasia Urbaniak: I also have this feeling ... And maybe it's the exposure I've had to men. Maybe it's the men I've known. But, I have this really deep love for the men that I've known, because I feel like what they want, more than anything else, is a chance to win. Heterosexual men want a chance to win with women.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: And when a woman asks for less than what she wants and he goes through the trouble of delivering it and he can't feel her light up. She goes, "Thank you so much. This is so nice," but he knows somewhere deep down inside he hasn't hit the fucking spot.
Emily: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Literally and figuratively. Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah, yeah. He feels it. And it diminishes his not only sense of self, but his desire to try again. I feel like men are very oftentimes in no win situations.
Emily: They are. Well, so that's what I love about this, too, because with everything with Me Too happening I think it's obviously ... This isn't just a blip on the radar. This truly is a movement. Like, I liken this to Rosa Parks and the bus. I feel like what's happening now is such a change that when I keep getting questions or speaking about it or writing about it or even talking about it on my show I don't think ... Well, what do we do now. I'm like, well it's really not just talking. It's sort of this full body somatic, like an experience of what's happening in the moment with our body and our breath and body language ... It's everything. Body language and words.
Emily: And I'm like, we need to teach men. We don't need to keep men down. And women. 'Cause men are not the culprits here at all. My heart is even wider for men, open for men, because I feel like everyone's just walking around really confused right now. And how do we teach men and women together. And I feel like that's the work that you're doing. That it's sort of like ... It's been horrible what's happened, but now that the lights opened. The light has shown on this and everybody's like, "Now what, now what, now what." And they're craving to know what to do. There isn't ... And I've been kind of sitting here for a few months, my team knows it, when this first happened I was like, "I can't even do shows. I can't sit here and talk about how to get the oral sex you want, or how to get the orgasms, or how to ask for what you want. When there's a crisis going on and I feel like I've been doing this for so long. How can I go help change the world in this way. Like I don't even know."
Emily: I was like, that's all I really need to talk about. And the result, I haven't been talking about it as much, because I feel like anything I say would be ... It helps, but it's smaller, because it's just, I don't know, there has to be a behavioral change. And there has to be people's willingness. And I think right now that there's just a lot of fear and confusion and that every day the stories are coming out that another man's wrong that's keeping men quiet or I think many men.
Emily: I think the men who are asking aren't necessarily the men that we're reading about. Most men, I think, want to please women and they're in a good ... They like women. And they're probably doing things right, but what I'm saying is it's just how do you go to a place where ... In using a language that no one's ever used or thought about before, when it's ... Our base level is masculine energy, feminine energy. How do you unpack all of that? And reading your stuff and seeing your courses I think it's such a great step. It's such a great approach with Me Too.
Kasia Urbaniak: Thanks. They say there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, right.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: And ideas are great, but ... There's no substitute for a fully felt visceral experience. And one of the reasons that the work that I do is designed the way that it is - and also I think why a lot of corporations are now trying to have me do their sexual harassment training - is because the best ... Human beings are social learners, especially when it comes to social skills, we're social learners. If I give you a list of things that you are to do and not to do that will make you more powerful, right: don't use up speak, don't say um, mind your posture. If I give you a list, you will forget ninety percent of that list within two hours, right.
Emily: Yeah.
Kasia Urbaniak: And that's how we're trying to train people. Don't do this. This is bad. This is good. However, if you train women to speak in the moment they feel something, you have an instantaneous, well-calibrated biofeedback learning loop. A lot of guys don't know the impact they're having on women. They're socially awkward and devastating them or they're monsters or not monsters, but they don't know. And hearing about it in some vague terms twenty years later does not educate them. But if they feel it, they do something and they get instant feedback in the moment. Do you realize that that kind of statement may make a woman feel uncomfortable?
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: They learn then. They're like, "Oh, this is what that felt like." Even if they get defensive.
Emily: If it's okay, because they might. No one's ever called them out on it, but this is the work that women can do in the moment. And men. Speak up.
Kasia Urbaniak: And doing so, they're training themselves to be fully self-expressed and training men to see impact. And this goes beyond gender because the same power dynamics happen in any status differential. Whether it's financial or racial. It happens all the time. So, when you have people educated in training each other, then sometimes ideas are enough for people to create their own fully-felt, visceral experiences. What I want is for women and people to learn how to speak and see each other in a way where they're constantly training each other, therefore creating culture and recreating culture, with every human conversation and interaction. And that way we become an organically organized society that uses empathy as an incredible skill not ...
Kasia Urbaniak: You know that empath complaint. "I feel too much, I'm overwhelmed."
Emily: I know. It makes me think we have to all feel more.
Kasia Urbaniak: If we use power dynamics. If we're feeling something, but then putting our attention out and leading people, then it's not an entirely internal experience. That energy, that instruction has a place to go and we're constantly informing, re-informing, educating each other about who we are. This is the thing that's I think missing in our world is that we're very isolated and we're not accustomed to telling each other the truth [crosstalk 00:32:42] from a bodily felt place.
Emily: The truth in the moment. Exactly. Right. So, it's also ... 'Cause here's the thing, so let's say the workplace. Okay, so back up, the thing I've been thinking is it was the patriarchy that built the system we're in now, right. So even in the ... When you're saying these things in the workplace, I've always heard, "Leave emotions out of it. It's a business. Don't bring your emotions in." But, we talk about everything here. I know that I've only had to work for myself, because I feel like I don't know how I could work in other areas. But for a lot of people they think, "How could you do that in a workplace?" Or, "Our family, we don't discuss emotions." But it's kind of like we've sort of ripped apart this whole very base way of communicating of being empathic and sharing feelings and real time feedback to people.
Emily: Or even parents. Where we think we can never speak up and we hold on and it becomes resentment and it builds up. So how do you even change the way ... That's where I get overwhelmed, but it's in the moment, is what you're saying, of practicing and learning just basic skills so in the moment when things are uncomfortable to speak up, to not wait anymore, and not to sit with something that's uncomfortable.
Emily: But, do you still believe that there are rules around that. Like, well, you shouldn't do it at church.
Kasia Urbaniak: But look, look, twenty years ago, you know the author of Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow? Daniel Kahneman I think is his name.
Emily: Familiar.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, twenty years ago, he introduced the idea that emotions play an impact in negotiations. And everybody went, "No way! Emotions have nothing to do with it." And, "No, they don't." And it took twenty years and people are like, "Oh, yeah. Emotions." Now it's the entire somatic experience. The entire ... It's not ... If words communicate information, then how you are being about it tells the other how to interpret it.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: So I can ask you for something three different ways and it can be the same exact words. "Can I have some ice cream?" Right.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: "Can I have some ice cream?" "Go get me some ice cream." Right. I can even use the same exact sentence, but how ... We have such an over reliance on the words spoken and the intellectual information that we forget that we're constantly informing each other on a sub language level how the other is supposed to feel about it. And that is, I think, beyond body language.
Emily: How do women safely then use their sexuality? Do you think that some of this stuff is gonna be obsolete? Like aren't there ways to be sexual ... Then how do we use this in sexuality, let's say, or even in the bedroom if you're just a couple who wants to have healthier sex and healthier communication around sex. 'Cause what I find from women a lot and ... Including myself. I was one of these girls that was very passive. I didn't have a lot of sex education and I was very much like, when I started having sex in my late teens up to early twenties I was like the man's gonna show up and he's gonna know what to because I don't know my body, I don't know what feels good. It was very deferential and that if I did speak up, I was probably afraid of being a slut and I wanted to be the good girl and not have too many partners.
Emily: And then you cut to like even people who are in committed relationships. How do you still have that dynamic of getting people to open up and to feel comfortable for what they want sexually and in a relationship using what we know. Using this language. Using somatics.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, I think there are two parts to this and the first part is more hidden and insidious. The first part I had to begin addressing more sexuality in my classes, even though my classes are not about sexuality or BDSM. This first part was so important to address because I found that without it women could not find quote unquote their voices or stand in their power.
Emily: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kasia Urbaniak: So, I like to tell the story of Sleeping Beauty. Not the original, the one we grew up with.
Emily: Right, exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: And it paints this picture of a woman who's in a coma, basically, who has no desire, has no feeling, is not even conscious, and it isn't until the right, white, heterosexual, wealthy, well-statused, chosen prince comes along and kisses the life into her and kisses the sex into her. And so, unconsciously, a lot of time there's this pattern of belief that a woman's sexuality comes from the outside. It's awakened from the outside. And it's not true. [crosstalk 00:37:50] We give life.
Emily: Exactly. It's, "Someday my prince will come, and so will I."
Kasia Urbaniak: We give life. We have more orgasmic potential than men do. We are voracious and alive. And alive, and having a woman begin to see herself as her own pleasure center ...
Emily: And she's generating the energy too. She's bringing the energy.
Kasia Urbaniak: She is the reason sex happens.
Emily: Everything. Women, we are the reason that sex happens. We bring it to the table. I want women to understand this, stand in the power of it.
Kasia Urbaniak: Then it starts becoming a lot easier to see how men are actually responding to women. We're talking in the heterosexual paradigm right now, right?
Emily: Mm-hmm. (affirmative)
Kasia Urbaniak: But in the animal kingdom, it's almost all, across the board, the same. A woman experiences her own, a female animal experiences her own erotic energy, then the men come. Then the males of the species come. They're responding. This really turns the patriarchal lie on its head that we're responding to men. They are responding to us.
Emily: Exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: Constantly. They are constant. Having that perceptual shift does so much for my students in terms of understanding how to, quote unquote, "use their sexuality." The fucked up part is that nobody ever accuses a man of using sexuality.
Emily: No.
Kasia Urbaniak: What does a man look like when he's being sexy? He's standing up straight like a cock with a tie on.
Emily: Exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: Right?
Emily: Exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: And nobody goes like, "Oh my God, he's being so sexual."
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: Right?
Emily: No he's just-
Kasia Urbaniak: A woman with integrated sexuality is turned on. She's turned on by success. She's turned on by flowers. She's turned on.
Emily: She's just turned on.
Kasia Urbaniak: And we're not supposed to think that way, but as our own erotic pleasure centers, the center of the universe, to which others respond to, that shift is really, really important and powerful.
Kasia Urbaniak: The second part has to do with asking and has to do with knowing how to ask from a dominant place and a submissive place, wherever it's appropriate. Telling people what you want in sex can be incredibly hot or an incredible buzz kill. Learning how to ask in a congruent, full-body felt way is a really powerful tool in the bedroom.
Emily: 'Cause you're in your body. We talk a lot about just breathing before sex and in the moment when we're in our heads, 'cause that's one of the big complaints with people. I've done this too in the past. I try not to do this anymore. We're in our heads, and we're thinking, "Is this going to be accepted? Do I want this? Did I leave the oven," you know. "Did I leave the door open? What's gonna happen?" We're truly not into our bodies. We're not breathing into it from a place of even knowing what we want.
Kasia Urbaniak: If a student told me that, I'd say, "In that moment, stop, get a note pad, write ten requests on a piece of paper, and hand it to your lover." Just get the intellect.
Emily: Just get it out. Just ask for it. So asking for it would even be, if it feels shaky at first, just ask. Don't overthink it. There's a lot of overthinking, over analyzing.
Kasia Urbaniak: Right. But you can't tell somebody to not overthink something, because the first thing they're gonna do is-
Emily: Overthink why you said that.
Kasia Urbaniak: ... overthink it and then punish themselves for thinking.
Emily: For overthinking our entire lives, right.
Kasia Urbaniak: There's different ways of bypassing it depending on what level of communication you're at. Sometimes it's something as simple as setting up oral sex in such a way where the giver and the receiver are holding hands, and when the receiver likes it more, he or she squeezes harder.
Emily: It doesn't have to be all words.
Kasia Urbaniak: No, but it needs to be communication. It needs to be explicitly stated.
Emily: Right, so true.
Kasia Urbaniak: The container is sacred, you know?
Emily: You have to sort of bring sexuality into your classes more so. You have to.
Kasia Urbaniak: The curriculum is the curriculum, but the content or the substance of it is what women want. If they want better sex, that class is about better sex.
Emily: Exactly.
Kasia Urbaniak: If they want world domination, then that's the subject of the class.
Emily: And I'm gonna say that a lot of it does start with sexuality, that when a woman is feeling, if she's in her body, not just showing up, but having ticked off all this. She's a great mom or she's a great wife or she's an Olympic skier. None of that really matters in the sense of if she's still not ... but she's going home and having bad sex, or she's a runner and thinks, like I feel it all starts with-
Kasia Urbaniak: Bad sex is a disaster.
Emily: Sex is disaster for so many. They're like, "Well, I'm too busy to even think about my own sex. So I feel like once women anchor into that, the power, and what we're talking about which might seem so esoteric, saying, "We're the center of the universe, and we bring energy." But we do. I've talked a lot about energy dynamics.
Kasia Urbaniak: Wait, can I give you a really simple example?
Emily: Yes.
Kasia Urbaniak: This is really simple. When I went to study with the Taoist nuns, they're celibate. But their sexuality, all of their reproductive system energetically is integrated. They're constantly doing practices to alchemize sexual energy and to include it. These women are terrifying in how powerful they are, because when you look at one of these well-practiced Taoist nuns, you get the sensation that her body is the tip of the iceberg, and the other 95% of her is deep in the earth, and she's unshakeable and unmovable.
Kasia Urbaniak: There's this great story about the head abbot, the female abbot, when the communists came to demolish the monastery, all she did is she stood on the mountaintop and looked at them. They all ran away.
Emily: I can imagine that. And these are the women that taught you, so you studied with these, you studied Taoism.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah. This is an example of a woman whose sexuality is integrated, and yet she's celibate. And she is the epitome of-
Emily: No masturbation either, huh? Maybe? It's healthy for women to orgasm.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yes, it is, but now you're talking about a whole set of esoteric practices that have that function, but don't necessarily look like what we think they would look like. If you open certain gates through breath and movement and, you know.
Emily: I know. Try, orgasm is not just one going over the ledge and having an orgasm, I get it. It's the full body. I think it's a great place for women to start, too, by realizing that when you're just in your body without the goal of anything of what it looks like, but just you're in your power and your sexuality, then everything else sort of can come, will fall into place.
Kasia Urbaniak: That's also the thing is that men have a tendency to breathe lower than women in our culture, because every women who's cut off from the waist down or suppressed sexually, her voice is higher, her center of gravity is higher. She's literally easier to knock over. She broadcasts as an animal that's compromised, a weaker animal, not because she's smaller, but because only half of her ... she's easier to tackle. A man has a tendency to be ... I'm not saying men don't experience sexual shame, but a man has a tendency to have his cock and his balls better integrated into his body, breathe lower, have a lower center of gravity, and be harder to knock over, and therefore transmits more powerfully. Excluding that from say, how does a woman negotiate or raise more powerfully, is pointless. It has to be in there somewhere.
Emily: Do you talk about breath work in your courses? Do you teach it? 'Cause I know that there was a quote, "I don't care if you love yourself, I don't even fucking care about that, but here's what I ask for." Do you start with the words and the rest comes?
Kasia Urbaniak: Nope.
Emily: So how does it-
Kasia Urbaniak: I only teach with attention. When you put your attention in fully, you naturally relax and start breathing lower. When you put your attention out, you enter a flow state, and the other person's the only person that exists. The only other thing that exists is the instructions you're giving them to move them, and to see the impact of your movements on them. When the attention is complete, the attention out is complete, the flow state relaxes your body, has you do all of the right power poses without any instruction, all of the breathing, all of the facial expressions, it all comes together, because naturally in a hierarchy as an animal if you had your attention out and you'd be the alpha, you'd be behaving that way anyway.
Kasia Urbaniak: And, conversely, you put all of your attention in, you begin to glow in a different way. You're the person to be contributed to, the person to be led, the person to be cared for. You attract attention as you put attention on yourself. Also, your body does that matching thing where you're softer, your breath is softer, and you don't have to receive instructions on how to be more vulnerable, or quote unquote, "feminine," because it all happens with attention.
Emily: Why do you believe that so many woman walk around disconnected? That's a huge theme on the show that we are so disconnected from our bodies, from our breath. We don't think about it. I hear from women every single day, whether it's people on the street, friends, emails to the show, "I don't want sex. I've low desire." All these things, and I have to encourage them to masturbate, encourage them to get into practices where they're, "I haven't even thought about it." I know it hasn't always been this way, but we've asked to step into male roles. What do you think it is now?
Kasia Urbaniak: I think it's the same thing it's always been really. First question I ask in a lot of my classes, even if there's 200 people present, is I ask everyone to close their eyes and raise your hand if you've had unwanted sex, which transmits to the body like rape or like trauma. All the hands go up. Then I ask who's been raped, who's been abused. It's just like we've been fucked with so hard so many ways, and without the tools that I'm trying to bring into the world so that happens less, that there's a lot to overcome. This is also why I teach these tools, because in the moment it doesn't matter if you have trauma, if you can put your attention out and give a few simple instructions or if you can put your attention in, it's just such a good cultural bypass.
Emily: Right, it's a practice.
Kasia Urbaniak: Eventually, we'll all have the traumas we want healed, healed, but until then, I don't want to wait until everybody feels psychologically whole and past their trauma before they start-
Emily: We can't wait.
Kasia Urbaniak: No.
Emily: That's why you call it a process, too. That's why it's a practice. Like everything, you get to a place and you're done. You're done with therapy or yoga or meditation. For me, it's a lifelong practice.
Kasia Urbaniak: The things that I teach are not a lifelong practice. This is the thing. This is the differentiation. You go to therapy for a reason. You come to the Academy so that you don't have to wait 10 years before you can kick ass at a negotiation or have your lover give you the sex you want. The world can't wait for that.
Emily: Right, and it starts in the Academy. Where people, someone can sign up for the Academy, your courses, you're probably totally sold out right now, but they could take it in person or online.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: If they can't take your course though, there's a lot on your website.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah, and also, we're planning to have some summer games, Bad Girl Olympics, so anybody who wants to can sign up for free to be part of this grand mission. Every week, getting missions to do.
Emily: Everywhere in the world they can ... love it.
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: So they can go to your website, which is?
Kasia Urbaniak: Weteachpower.com.
Emily: Weteachpower.com and sign up and check out more about what Kasia has to say. Thank you for being here.
Emily: Kasia, will you stay and answer some emails for me?
Kasia Urbaniak: Sure.
Emily: Okay, I love to answer your questions. It's why I exist on the planet. If you want one after the show, you can text askemily, all one word, to 797979, fill out the form, or go to my website, sexwithemily.com. Click on the Ask Emily tab. Always include your name, your age, where you live, and how you listen to this show.
Emily: Okay, this is from Bethany, 24, Indiana, "Emily, I'm married to the most amazing man on the face of the planet. Growing up, my parents were ultra religious and conservative. They didn't have the sex talk with us about premarital sex as if it was the worst thing you could ever do, and just had a really unhealthy view on sex by surrounding it with guilt. Well, my husband and I, of course, had sex before we were married, but as soon as we got married, my parents talked about how important it was and that we should be doing it all the time. My brain doesn't flip that easy. I grew up feeling that sex was terrible, that I should feel guilty about having sexual thoughts, and sometimes even feel guilty after having sex with my husband. I adore my husband, and we have a great sex life. Any advice how to leave that out of the bedroom and just enjoy my sexuality? Thanks for the help."
Emily: I love this question, and I love that you're here, Kasia, because I think that a lot of us suffer from guilt, trauma, a lot of it around religion or what our parents told us, the messaging from early childhood. How in the moment do we wire our brains to kind of show up? How can Bethany show up and be present without hearing these messages in her brain with her husband and have healthy sex? Her parents, we're always hearing the voices.
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, her and her husband can play a really fun game together. They could do a very sexy written exercise, where they both write down everything they're ashamed of about sex. They use the form, I am ashamed that I licked your balls. I am ashamed that I want sex sometimes when I don't think you want it. I am ashamed that we're disappointing God. Then they read it to each other one sentence at a time, and the response from the other person is, "Oh, that's hot," whether they feel it or not.
Emily: Right.
Kasia Urbaniak: Just to get the idea that shame is hot.
Emily: I love that, I love that. I'm always saying, "Write down a fuck-a-list of what you want to try," and that's a great reverse to kind of untangle all these things-
Kasia Urbaniak: Well, this is the thing.
Emily: ... and that you rewire it, like "Oh, that's hot."
Kasia Urbaniak: Shame is so sexy. It's the way to liberate to shame. The way to liberate shame is to connect it to the erotic. I don't know, 80% of the hottest things I've found in the dungeon as a dominatrix were things that the client was ashamed of, and going, "Oh, you like that, you like that perverted thing, don't you? That's so hot." In that space of approval, so much energy and erotic power was liberated that suddenly it became hotter and hotter, and they would want other things.
Emily: For you or for them?
Kasia Urbaniak: The whole room.
Emily: The whole room was, right, you can't separate it, 'cause you were really engaged. I can see it. That is a very powerful exercise. I love that idea.
Kasia Urbaniak: It also creates a lot of intimacy between them.
Emily: It does.
Kasia Urbaniak: Intimacy is hot.
Emily: Intimacy, I think that people are very confused sometimes by what intimacy means, and that words can be intimacy, touch can be intimacy. They're worried that, it's not just about the sex. Couples will email and they're like, "Well, we just don't even have sex anymore." When you're vulnerable and really open and you say the things that you think you could never ever say to anybody-
Kasia Urbaniak: Yeah.
Emily: ... and you take away the power that they hold over you, which is so many things, you just realize that you are released. When someone stands there and you realize they're not going to leave you and they love you even more for it, it is some of the hottest sex, and it has connections. Even with friends, I know my friends that I've had for years and that's why we are best friends, but it kept getting deeper when I say things to them, like "This is what I'm thinking."
Emily: My best friend was here this weekend. We've been friends for 30 years, and she was visiting me and I realized there were some things that I was afraid to say to her, not afraid, but in the moment I was like, "Okay, usually I'd be afraid that you're going to get angry 'cause you do that anger thing, but I am not afraid. I know you're not going anywhere. We've been friends for 30 years. I'm going to tell you this." It was like I didn't think we could even get closer, but it is a girlfriend. She was like, "Oh my god, first of all, you're never that direct." I'm like, "I'm not afraid of your fear and your anger," and we talked about it all weekend, 'cause she broke through her bullshit anger that she has about things. It was amazing, especially when you feel safe. Now I'm not going to do it every day with someone I just met, but when you're in a relationship or with somebody and you say it, and you realize they're not going to leave you, it's everything.
Kasia Urbaniak: It's freedom.
Emily: It is freedom. It's great advice. Thank you, Kasia. This has been a great show. I appreciate it.
