Under The Skin with Russell Brand: Attention and Domination
In this school, we are teaching a kind of power that's unshakable.
I see it in what my students are creating.
I see it in how my students are leading.
A student of The Academy is the kind of leader who can get her people fully onboard – body, heart and mind.
Who models the kind of leadership where the person she's instructing is able to actually hear, feel, understand the instruction, and register whether they're capable of fulfilling the task, and whether it feels right with them.
That unshakeable power is only possible when a person masters the use of both dominant and submissive states of attention like their right hand and their left hand, to be able to hold authority and influence in a way that witnesses and includes everyone.
THAT is true power and influence.
I had a blast in this interview with the legendary Russell Brand.
Listen to the teaser on Apple Podcasts.
Listen to the full interview on the Luminary app here.
Under The Skin with Russell Brand: Attention & Domination
Read the transcript:
Russell: Kasia, hello, thank you for coming on Under The Skin. I'm very excited to talk to you.
Kasia: I’m so happy to be here.
Russell: Would you tell us what you do for our uninitiated audience?
Kasia: In a single sentence: I teach power to women.
Russell: How?
Kasia: I give them very practical tools. But in order to set up the frame for this conversation properly, the bigger picture needs to be introduced. Otherwise, it's easy to misunderstand what I do as getting women really riled up, which isn't what I do.
So, there's this thing some people like to refer to as Universal Consciousness, and the way we as human beings have access to a piece of this unfathomable Universal Consciousness is, for practical purposes, best called Attention.
So when people say “Kasia Urbaniak at The Academy specializes in power dynamics”, which are really attention dynamics, it's a more accurate frame for what we do in the school. But what the hell are attention dynamics? It’s easier to start by telling the story of what men and women are faced with, and how they're faced with problems and attention differently.
I began the school with my partner in crime, who is a man. A woman’s school co-founded by a man. How controversial! I was a successful dominatrix for many years and did so in order to further my studies in Taoism. Because my dream was to be a Taoist nun.
Russell: So you were being a dominatrix not for the explicit stated purposes of being a dominatrix, but as a sort of meta dominatrix? I don't know much about that – what little I do know is that while it's obviously erotic, it’s not always physical and sometimes there's no orgasm. So what goes on?
Kasia: I was initially a dominatrix for practical purposes, right? This is something a 19-year-old young woman could do in order to pay for her education, and in my case to pay not just for college, but to pay for the expenses of traveling to monasteries and studying Taoism. But in the dual paths of Taoist pursuit and being a dominatrix, they started cross-informing each other in a really powerful way. So I can't speak for the BDSM community about this taboo form of erotic experience. What happened to me was all my studies of attention started deeply informing what I did in the dungeon and how I did it.
It became very clear to me that the most powerful way to have a man surrender and feel held, for him to submit in a full-bodied, emotional, spiritual, psychological way, I had to put my attention on him in such a profound way that his body could shift into a state that was visible – the way that animals calm down when a trainer comes into the room. It became something far beyond what I expected. And it was because I was sometimes practicing 8-hours of meditation a day, and I was in these places where the incredible nuance of what a human being goes through – every single move, every single micro-expression of grief – could be called to attention in the room of the dungeon. The invisible could be made visible in this false play of: I am now your governess, I am now your tyrannical police officer; You are a baby. You are a criminal… All these things became fodder for a role play where they could move through different states of emotions.
Russell: So your experience, not assumption, is that people who willingly, deliberately, continually, intervene in that context, are trying to reach some kind of state of submission and surrender, and, and for you, that aligned with what you were learning through Taoism?
Kasia: 100%.
Russell: Bloody hell, that's interesting. What does that tell us then about power? What does it tell us about male power? Like I said, I think a lot of prejudice against the kind of people that are attracted to BDSM is about powerful men, powerful politicians, who want to be dominated somehow. What does that mean if underneath there is this desire to submit? What does that tell us about the poses of contemporary male power?
Kasia: Oh, it says a lot. It is my belief that what we call the dominant state of attention – the state of authority, the state of external power – is something that couples with this deep desire for surrender, submission: to be held in the attention of another person. What became interesting to me is that here were these men who wanted that state and couldn't get there early by themselves. Stepping out of the dungeon, I started seeing that men and women alike longed for this state of surrender.
They longed to be held in someone else's attention, to be witnessed there. They longed to be guided to a place where they felt safe enough to release, be vulnerable, and be held and led. Led to an experience. Also, it became apparent to me, especially when it came time for me to train other dominatrixes, baby doms, that this was the thing they struggled with the most. They could do the performance, they could put on the leather and the latex and go, “You've been a bad boy!” but the missing piece for a magical session was they weren’t trained or conditioned or encouraged or practiced in the art of putting their attention so fully on the man and giving instruction from that place of dominant attention. Put attention on the man who’s there, on his knees, asking, practically begging for that surrendered experience. The baby doms’ attention would be on the self.
So what does that feels like, what that look like? The difference is night and day, if you know where to look. The difference is night and day. Attention on Self – it's how a lot of people lead too; a lot of leaders who assume a dominant position aren’t actually exercising the dominant state of attention. A leader does not get his people or her people fully on board unless they put their attention fully on the people whom they're leading.
And there's this signature moment when the body shifts into submission – where somebody’s able to actually hear, feel, understand the instruction, and register whether they're capable of fulfilling the task, whether it feels right with them. And in that context, in that kind of power circuit, what that creates is people who are truly following – who are onboard with heart, body, and mind.
Rather than this tyrannical idea of power, a toxic mimicry, of the dictator who has to exert so much force to get people to comply and obey, but does not have access to the deepest, most beautiful resources in their hearts, in their bodies, in the entirety of themselves. And when we talk about a great leader, what we're really talking about is not the one who has the most toys. We’re talking about the great leader who’s able to get people onboard body, heart, and mind, because their attention and instruction is so fully out that they’re registering the entire existence of the people who are following.
This is all gender neutral, attention is fully gender neutral. We like to say in the school: A dominant state of attention is attention and instruction out; The surrendered state is attention in; Attention on attention itself is meditation, enlightenment. The three states of attention. But the interpersonal states are the two states. And the interesting part in terms of general generalities is how women and men approach attention differently.
Russell: Before we get into that, may I just ask a little more about the crossover between these eroticized games of authority. One unaddressed query is that even if the overt dynamic is one of the dominatrix being in a position of power, economically at least, one of those people is under the pay of the other. And this situation is being kind of sanctioned and commissioned by their sub, to use the vernacular. And I find that sort of thing interesting. I'm always interested in the fusion of eroticism and other aspects of our nature. I suppose there are no distinctions really, that everything’s bleeding into each other. But I'm more interested still in this idea of yours about leaders achieving real authority through attention. In this case, do you mean attention as synonymous with care?
Kasia: It can be care, but love has many faces. Sometimes the best way to care for someone is to be quite ruthless with the truth. To make them a little bit uncomfortable. In a school for women, it's a bit dangerous to say, “Use your empathy and be nice.” “Care about the other person.” Because that cascades into a whole set of behaviors that we call Good Girl Conditioning, where women will withhold the truth because they think it's a morally superior thing to do. Where they will accommodate, they'll watch themselves, they’ll police themselves. So the beautiful thing about this kind of power is that it is more effective. It is more effective. It also happens to be more generative, more loving. It doesn't always look that way. But it is.
Russell: Will you give us some examples of those?
Kasia: But you also you also you also asked an interesting question because what we have in the dungeon, as you pointed out, is economic power going one way, and then the setup, which is power and authority going another way. And this this template of how do you reach despite a positional difference, a status differential: the client, the man is twice the woman's age. Man versus woman. Here you have a setup where the women working are actually working against something. That is exactly the game that many women are playing in their lives when they're having to deal with a boss, a male boss, who has a certain way of being that doesn’t work for everyone in the office. Right? So how do you, in the moment, without the status, without the title, without the money, without all the toys, have a profound and powerful influence on someone?
Establish a position of authority in the present moment where someone can hear you, be influenced by what it is that you have to say, and have your message really, really land. The dungeon ends up being a wonderful training ground. What became very interesting is that the school didn’t begin until I met my business partner, who is a man, who spent a decade in war zones as a humanitarian. And his experience of power and power dynamics on the fringes of war and death – dodging bullets, vaccinating babies – and mine on the fringes of sexuality and spirituality, what we understood about power and influence overlapped. It was incredible where the crossover happened, because in the places where he was working, very often there was no common language. Oftentimes, they were tribes or groups of people that spoke dialect. How do you get a group of people to listen to: “Here I have a piece of paper that says I can build a field hospital here, you must listen to me,” when there's 14 year olds with AK47s who don't give a damn about a piece of paper. And suddenly, it became very, very apparent that there is something about not just presence, but how attention is used to establish authority or establish surrender so that connection and influence can occur. And that was the beginning of a conversation that yielded so many experiments in how women and men engage differently in this game. So you had a question?
Russell: That's right. My question is about the different examples of this power of attention. The application of attention from a leadership position through care, and the more narcissistic application of attention – obviously, there's plenty of examples of that. What's an example of the more benign, even positive, application of attention and leadership of that nature?
Kasia: Well, the funny thing about us humans is that when it works, we don't notice. And when it doesn't, we do. So it's where power dynamics collapse that it's easiest to identify what's not working. The boss that everybody is loyal to out of love, is just described as this person who is a great leader, a wonderful person to work for, a wonderful person to follow, a wonderful person to receive guidance from. There’s a sense of calm and order and everybody in the right place and everybody is doing the thing that they’re best at and contributing. This is where the generative synergy comes in.
And the examples of where that goes wrong, where that collapses, even in interpersonal dynamics, that's where all the questions in the school come from. That's where all the conversations come from: where doesn’t it work. The simplest example of a fluidly switching power dynamic that works flawlessly is the conversation that keeps you up until 4 in the morning. Because what's happening there on a micro level is: “Russell, I'm speaking and I'm watching you, and I'm seeing if the words land. And I'm seeing where you just lifted your chin and almost had had a question where you took a note…”
Russell: So do you think, Kasia, that the fact that there aren't any examples, or at least vivid examples, in public life – the benevolent boss everyone likes, a late night chat with someone that you love – is a demonstration that these principles aren't really being applied?
Kasia: I mean, I could. You know, Oprah in a meeting – everyone loves her, she pays attention to everyone. Everyone has feedback that's honored no matter where they are, whether they're close to her or away from her. Or a woman who asks her husband for something and focuses not on the complaint but the desire, which she wants to generate. And then when resistance comes up, and he says no or balks at it initially, she gets curious about his resistance and goes to find out what it is that her requests threaten, what it is that he wants to protect, what's important to him? And has a conversation about that, then she can get him on board for what it is that she wants from a place of generative synergy, not from a place of yes and no.
Russell: I see. It's not really applicable in the political sphere then. Not that your examples are exhaustive, obviously, but for a very successful media mogul or in interpersonal marital dynamics, it might be applicable, but there's no one in the field of politics or leadership that demonstrates these skills these days. Perhaps, do you think because the systems within which they operate are not conducive to that kind of dynamic? And in fact, that the individuals that operate within those fields are kind of irrelevant given that this systemic thinking is so endemic, so deeply ingrained, that you would need to be Christ to influence this way?
Kasia: I bet you'd be able to come up with some examples of someone who's doing it. But I do think that there is a very, very deeply ingrained way of communicating, especially in the political sphere. I mean, you ask a politician a question and they're trained to deflect. They’re trained to stay “on message”. It's very rare that that a person who's running for office, will look at the question-asker and be like, “what's your thing?” And it's very rare that a person running for office will allow the response to change an idea they have, because they're supposed to stay on message. The politician who is evolving with the people, who is responding to the information as it changes, to a world that's changing is quite rare, but it happens in moments. if we’re talking about situations on the micro level, yes, it happens at moments. But generally, I agree – it's not set up that way. It's not set up to work that way.
Russell: And with your point earlier about universal consciousness and us being expressions of this universal consciousness, do you think that these leadership techniques that you were discussing, somewhat specifically for women, can operate as a conduit for this more benign and nurturing power to come through us and into all of these systems meaningfully? Do you believe it's possible, Kasia?
Kasia: Not only do I believe it’s possible, I think it’s the only way: when people are trained in how to use their attention, and how to influence powerfully and listen powerfully. This world is made up of people having conversations and making agreements. Even our government, our laws, the existence of money…were all made from a series of conversations and agreements. And we’re living in an exciting time because women are now invited into those conversations, whereas for centuries they were not. And the idea of what's possible when people really look at each other and pull authority and influence in a way that includes everyone, we have a kind of power that's rather unshakable.
I mean, I see it in my school. I see it in what my students are capable of creating. To say it's “benign” betrays the fact that it is far more effective. It's pretty fucking badass. I imagine the first woman who went into her boss's office and said, “I'm gonna have a baby, and I would like you to pay me while I have this baby, and I would like you to continue paying me while I'm spending time with my child, and then when I return, I would like to return to my position and continue to be paid.” And how that request must have sounded: insane, outrageous, selfish, unreasonable, unrealistic, yet now we have the words “maternity leave”, and suddenly it's a new normal.
It's something that politicians can ride platforms on. It's something that was born of a desire, that was born of asking for something crazy that actually benefits everyone. Benefits the next generation. Benefits the whole society. And what I want to do is inspire women to have that courage and give them the techniques to be able to make an outrageous request that could benefit all of society. Everything happens on the interpersonal level. We like to think there are people who are working on the big laws, the big systems. But my belief is that enough individuals begin having conversations and interacting in this new way that puts attention and awareness of dynamics at the forefront, then the nature of everything has to change.
Russell: With reforms like the grant of maternity leave or other civil rights successes, obviously, it's comparatively successful, but one concern I have, Kasia, is that these successes are achieved within a paradigm that will always yield necessarily to that kind of pressure or those kind of ‘trends’, to use a bit of a glib word, but ultimately power doesn't really change the ability to control resources or control how people live life. I get concerned by that. I get concerned about the myth of progress, of social progress. Of course, the triumphs to the civil rights movement, the advance of feminism, these are great successes. My question, my concern, then, is that the barometer for the successes is still held by a system of dominance that may only be altering marginally to accommodate this progress.
Kasia: Yeah. So, here's where I want to segue a little bit into the difference between the conditioning of women and men. So this is a small example, but a few years ago there was an internet jobs website for tech jobs. And what the people running the website found was that women were asking for far less money for the same job. So they had this brilliant idea. They would start showing a graph that revealed the average requested salary per job with a thought that this would be giving women a real sense of what they could ask for. This is men and women together. This is the average. This is the extreme high end. This is the low end.
Do you know what happened? Women started asking for even less, men started asking for even more. Now I'm mentioning this shocking, shocking revelation to respond to your point about how you can change systems, but the power really belongs to the transformation of people, of individuals. So, one of the really fun and most exciting things in the creation of the school, was that Ruben and I, a man and a woman, could create this little laboratory where we could intensively investigate and forget everything we knew, right? We could take a very phenomenological approach, and get women in a room talking about what they want, talking about their situations, and seeing what they come up against – in terms of asking for a salary, in terms of asking a husband to pick up his socks – everything from the smallest to the biggest.
It was all these things we’ve been discussing. What happens, what happens? What do women actually come up against? Why is it that that graph on the website didn't inspire them to ask for more? Why is it that they actually saw what the average was and asked for even less? What is it? What is it? What occurs? So in this laboratory, there was also Ruben and I, a man and a woman, comparing our own experiences. And one of the things that we found very quickly was that every human is subjected to self-attack thoughts like: “Oh, I'm such an idiot.” “Oh, I don't deserve this.” “Oh, I did this wrong.” Right? But the nature and the ferocity of the content of that internal monologue is different for women. And one of the things that became very apparent was the extent of women’s self-attack. You know, it's only been quite recent that women have gone from being property to being able to own property.
And if we live in a culture, or have lived in a culture, where a woman who's wearing too short a skirt could be sexually violated and then blamed for it, then a mother's act of love would be to police the hell out of her daughter. “Watch yourself, watch yourself, watch yourself, watch yourself, watch yourself!” Or a father: “Watch yourself!” Don't do too much of this, don't get hurt and then blamed for it. This self policing powerfully informs a woman’s self attack. So if a woman gets into a situation where she is confronted with something difficult or dangerous, or something compromising, and she freezes and doesn't say anything instead of speaking up, afterwards, she tends to self-attack. Why didn’t I stand up for myself? Why didn’t I say something? And there's only so long that the venom can stay inwards. It stays in, stays in, stays in, and then given the smallest opportunity it explodes out.
Now, let’s examine this negative form of self awareness, self consciousness, self attack, self-policing in the context of men and women. As boys and girls grow up, we tend to train them to get a hit of social reward in two very different circumstances. A woman, a girl: when her attention is inward. A boy: when his attention is outward. And this has a powerful impact. So it goes like this: Look how lovely Mary is. Isn't her dress lovely? Isn’t she getting chubby? She gets noticed for her being. Whereas the tendency has been for a very long, long time that when Billy goes noticed when he does something. Look, Billy scored a goal! Look what Billy did. Billy got into a fight. Billy built a fortress. So men have a tendency to have their attention out in this authoritative position and women tend to get stuck in this inward place, where their attention is on themselves.
And this is so so, so so, so, so beautiful, because of the victories that just understanding this conditioning yields. When a woman panics, she goes inward and gets stuck there. And so one of the things we train women to do is to use their attention in both ways: inward and outward, inward and outward. Here’s an example: One of our students’ new boss comes up to her at work and asks: “What kind of lingerie do you like?” Alarm bells. Oh no, what's going on here? My student, instead of freezing, and going, “This is completely inappropriate,” was taught to put her attention out when she panics. And so she did a very simple thing: she looked at him and said, “Why do you ask?” And he said, “You know, I have a new girlfriend, andValentine’s Day is coming up and I have no idea where to shop for lingerie.”
And she goes, “Oh! Your request was totally inappropriate, I thought you about to hit on me. Don't ask questions like that at work again, but here are a few names of lingerie stores that I think your girlfriend might love.” Right? He could have been a predator, but not every man asking inappropriate questions is looking to destroy a woman. And just by being able to break the freeze in the moment and put her attention out, and not go completely into the panic response of “I’m being violated!” , she had the power, the skills, to move her attention in both directions and control the conversation.
This phenomenon of women freezing and not speaking is really really, really really rampant. Women hold back so many things, so many things. And then they're seen as mysterious and “difficult to understand”, and the men who love them and want to serve them or want to contribute are endlessly frustrated because nothing they do works. Men get dumber and dumber. And women get angrier and angrier.
Russell: That's a good technique. I think I could use that technique. I too sometimes freeze in situations where I feel threatened or challenged. I mean, I don't have many social interactions! No one does these days. But when I do have them, I often feel like my attention goes inwards and I feel sort of intimidated. I've got a question that I don't think is complicated, but it might be. Kasia, you said earlier that because of your training in Taoism, this is your general approach, your perspective – that we are an expression of universal consciousness. If this universal consciousness must underscore all reality, if there are cultural trends big enough and broad enough to identify and express men to go outward, women to go inward, at some level, then this must be an expression of a kind of some verifiable reality?
If not, how is it happening and how is it happening so universally? I wonder if there are, in your opinion, biochemical differences that lead to differences in behavior? Beyond culture. Or are you saying that all of these differences are the result of culture? I've often queried whether there was any significance in the reproductive dynamics of the two sexes. That one cellular contribution is an active thing with a tail. And the other is a passive thing inutero, or wherever it is. I'm not a gynecologist. I don't know much about that kind of stuff. Do you think these kind of biochemical realities would have correlatives in the material world that go beyond culture, or do you think that all things are the result of acculturation?
Kasia: One of the greatest difficulties in a commitment to this phenomenological approach – meaning sticking to what I see in the laboratory, sticking to what I see in the students – is being humble enough to only share what I see and what I saw. There are a lot of people who specialize in all kinds of theories as to why things happen. And the truth is, I have absolutely no idea. I have absolutely no idea what the inherent differences, if there are such a thing as inherent differences, are between men and women. What I do know is that women freeze in a very specific way. And what I do know is that when I teach students to use their attention in these particular ways, they get results that are earth shattering. Earth shattering.
They know how to make allies out of the men that they were afraid of. They know how to reach a very authoritative position. They know how to be the only woman in the room and make sure that she's not only heard but has everyone feeding on every single thing she says, as well as have opportunities to feel really safe surrendering, being vulnerable and open. And being able to be vulnerable and open when it is called for. And when something goes wrong, knowing how to switch to make the correction.
I am so profoundly interested only in what works: what works to have women feel free to self express and to make requests in a way that feels great – even if they're outrageous; to lead with their desire not their complaint; to be in a state of rage. But then to be in a state of rage and also be like: Hey, the pivot with rage is not to focus on the thing that I’m fighting against, but to focus on the thing I’m fighting for – that beautiful vision that presents itself when one alchemizes rage into passion. I’m interested in the places where women get stuck in terms of expressing the entire range of human emotion, which is so taboo. In our culture it’s taboo to have any kind of negative emotion, any kind of so-called “neediness” or “bossiness”, everything from sadness to despair to rage to ambivalence. How do you take those taboo emotions and alchemize them so that you can lead with the thing you want to create, not react to the thing you don’t like?
And how do you move outward into the world in a way where you’re presenting that compelling vision rather than the complaint? I think people fail to understand quite how often the most powerful women in the powerful positions in the world – these women who do have great relationships – quite how often they get stuck. If they were in the room, if they witnessed class after class after class as I have, they would see how often it is that these women withhold information, go inward, get stuck, ruminate, self-attack. How even the most powerful woman can get stuck because a barista at a freaking coffee shop gets their name wrong, or gets their order wrong, or asks them if they’re single, and how they tank from sometimes the smallest thing!
Russell: Yeah. I’m not suggesting there’s not such a thing as sexism. I’m not mad, the data is in. But all of these things that you describe, I feel them too. I feel like it doesn't take much – a social occasion, or a negative interaction – for me to tank. I don’t know what that says about me as a man.
Kasia: I know what it says about you and I'm very aware of who I’m speaking with. You're a very unusual human being, and the way that you use your dominant state of attention is absolutely sublime. I’ve seen you on television shows where you just blow the entire framework of the conversation apart. Where you make everyone feel uncomfortable to reveal beautiful truths. And I’m also aware that you are more in touch with what we would call the feminine side, or the surrendered side, than almost anyone I can think of. It’s one of the reasons it is such a privilege to be speaking to you, because you are one of the few people that has the use of both hands: the dominant and the submissive. You know how to use both.
You’re profoundly committed to the surrendered state. You are profoundly committed to using the dominant state of attention to speak truth when it’s going to ruffle feathers. You’re not a Good Girl. You’re not a Good Boy. You're a profoundly balanced human being who sources himself in both the inner and outer worlds. And the reason behind why many men might not have access to what you have access to, is this idea that we’ve been sending men to war for millennia to die for us: This idea of “manning up”, which means shutting down the signals that you receive on the inside. This idea that to be a “real man” means to have no feelings and be able to go out and kill to protect us.
Even with women now in the military, this has not gone away. When you say someone's acting “like a girl”, you're talking about them accessing their inner experience. When you talk about someone “manning up”, you’re talking about somebody overriding their inner experience. You have done the work to deeply access your inner experience, your inner world. And you have the skills and the tools – first as a comedian, as an actor, and now being the person that you are in the world – to use your dominant state of attention, to ask questions, to question the questions, to go deeply into another person’s thought patterns, experiences, and blow them up when you need to. So you are the example of someone who has surpassed the gender patterning. I want what you have for women. For all women.
Russell: Well that was very very charming!
Kasia: It’s true, you know it. And you know you've done the work. And not every man, not every woman, has done the work to balance both sides.
Russell: Thank you for saying that to me. I feel like a lot of men are looking to be awakened, and thought the examples you gave are the opposite in your diagnosis of the construction of male identity. Men being positioned socially to identify in a particular way. To repress certain aspects of themselves, to express certain aspects of themselves, to display certain attributes to women or people that are different from them in other ways than sex. I feel that in a way – and this is weird because it’s almost asking of feminism, as it were, to use a very broad term, and the last thing you want to be asked in feminism is for men's feelings to be taken into consideration because of the history of that movement – but I feel that a lot of men are the victims of the exact same system of dominance anyway. And I'm sure there are examples of men, obviously I know that there are, because again the data is in, you can look at it, of men succeeding in ways that women cannot and haven’t economically, and through privilege and prestige. But what do we do, rather than just redress this? How do we create something that's different? How do you deal with men in a way that is compassionate? Do you think that is what’s required? Is that appropriate?
Kasia: Oh my goodness. When you first began to speak before you said the word ‘but’, I wanted to cry. One of the greatest, greatest tragedies right now – and this is a very very controversial for a feminist to say – is what's happening to men. All the ways that a man has been taught to win yield rotten fruit. We worship a sociopath and feel sorry for the empath. There are books on how to be powerful by learning from psychopaths, by not having feelings. And now, we suddenly have a huge switch. Men are supposed to have feelings but not be so sensitive that they’re wimpy. There’s an exact mirror – meaning the reflection in reverse of what's happening to men and what's happening to women – and it is tragic. It is tragic. What it means to be a man today is that one of the most difficult conversations that we can have.
Now, you know – again, another very controversial thing to say – is #metoo did something. The original intention was to have survivors of abuse say: I experienced it too, so we can see the numbers, then the vigilante execution of the “bad men” we could find. What’s incredibly difficult to talk about, what's incredibly difficult to wrap your brain around, is not just looking at the victim but looking at the perpetrator, and what creates a perpetrator. What's happening? And, looking at these men who are “winning” as men who are also losing something – something very fundamental. This toxic idea of what power is doesn't work. It doesn't work for anyone. And so people ask me to teach men. And I always say the same thing: First of all, it's not my job as a woman to teach men. However, I teach my students to teach their men.
There is no way that the woman's movement can work if it doesn't include men. We have to include everyone, we have to we have to go beyond the story of “this is the person who got hurt, who's getting screwed”. We have to look at the whole system, we have to look at the victim, the perpetrator, the woman, the man, and the system that creates both. And now, I am not equipped to handle all of the world's problems. But when I see the difference between how men and women engage with attention and address both ways, what happens is very powerful women who can lovingly get men on board. Powerful women who can get the things they care about. Right? The world is a ‘No’ to so many things that women care about: the protection of life, of the earth.
At least when it comes to the student body that comes to me, the things they care about, the world is a general ‘No’ to. So one of the first things we handle is, how do you become immune to the impact of the word ‘no’, stand with someone's resistance, get curious about it, and keep going? Not to violate consent, but to get behind that ‘no’. We work on how do we create real, real connection in a space where we do not agree? How do we go beyond the initial knee jerk resistance and create something beyond anything either of us had ever imagined before we entered the conversation? How do we use human synergy and use these differences in order to create something that works for everyone?
Russell: Have you thought about how the techniques that you have developed apply in child rearing? Where it's not such a matter of reconditioning somebody, but actually conditioning them? And I'd like to know specifically, and this is a very specific example: my daughter – she’s three, I’ve got two daughters – likes to go around dressed in this sort of Disney dress, right? She likes it. And she wears a cowboy hat and wellies and stuff like that, she's pretty cool. But one day we were out walking and like every single person we walked past said “That's pretty dress, that's pretty dress.” I could tell she didn't like it. I said to her, what do you think when people say to you? And she goes, “I don't like it.” And I go, “Hmm, what do you think we should say back to people that say that?” And I gave her some ideas. Like, you could say, “your dress is pretty too.” You could say that back to them, if you want. And we did toy with the idea of “Fuck off!” but later, when my wife heard that, she wasn’t down with it. So, what do you think about those kind of things, and what do you think it is that both myself and my daughter felt about that?
Kasia: I think your instincts are absolutely right on. Absolutely right on. First of all, just in terms of being very, very precise in the techniques that I teach, you used your dominant state of attention with your daughter. You looked at her. You saw where she was, you asked her some questions, right? And noticed that this would be the early conditioning of her freeze: she doesn't like it but she doesn't say anything. It's a compliment, but she doesn't like it, and she doesn't say anything. It doesn't matter what you tell her to say, it really doesn't. But if she gets to speak, how to put her attention outward – “you have a pretty dress too,” or “you have nice pants,” or “your pants are green,” – is exactly the thing to teach her that in that moment, so she's not powerless in terms of where the attention goes.
Because when someone feels the capacity to direct where the conversations going, where the attention is going, they no longer freeze. So you're teaching her the tool of self-expression on a basic, bodily level. Basic, bodily level. Because even in animal hierarchies the alpha has their attention out, while all of the other pups have their attention in. And knowing how to do both is how you create a balanced human being, one who is free to not only to express but to connect, but to command. Who can trust themselves to follow, because they know that if they don't like where they're going to be led anymore, they can flip the dynamic and start leading instead: “hey why don't we go this way?” And when the person leading has lost the thread, they can go, “hey what do you think? Where did I lose you?” and then they can lead again. So, that little example that you gave me of you and your daughter is actually brilliant and profound. That is like exemplary child rearing: teaching a girl to be powerful and to get to wear her pretty dress.
Russell: Yeah, it didn't feel right. I feel like, you know, those people weren't consciously doing anything wrong, I understand it was both males and females that were saying it, but what it felt like was we're living in a theme park where everyone's an automaton. Everyone's saying the exact same thing. I pointed out to her that that was interesting. And you wouldn't go with the hard line, “fuck off,” either, but certainly some kind of response would be good.
Kasia: You wouldn't even imagine the amount of liberation a woman feels when she's told to respond to a cat call, given that the cat call was done in, you know, relatively safe circumstances – not in a dark alley but in public. When someone goes, “nice tits,” or like, “nice legs,” or “why don't you smile baby?” or whatever innocuous comment, the feeling of getting cat called can be incredibly oppressive to women. Even when it seems like they're exaggerating, and the immense amount of power they feel when they can look back and go, “yeah nice shirt, there's coffee all over it,” or, “did your mom teach you to talk like that?” or, you know, “you have green shoes.” Even that's enough. Because they no longer feel imprisoned by this sense of “I'm getting attention and I have to take it as it is.” The metaphor of the sexual act abound, the way women are conditioned to approach their own desire and where they can have the kind of erotic experience that they want – this becomes a mirror of that. This sense of: You get attention, you have to take it away, that is, you can’t redirect it, refresh it, or come at it from a different angle. So this seemingly innocuous thing about catcalls can be an incredibly fun playground for experimenting with attention.
Russell: This idea of attention as power, as you just described how in the animal kingdom the alpha figure has their attention outwards and secondary figures have the attention inward…I'm very interested in this, and I'm interested in the origins of this aspect of what you teach and how it relates to Taoism specifically. Does it relate to Daoism? If not what does it relate to?
Kasia: It doesn't relate to Daoism specifically. I think the intense Daoist training just made me aware of attention as a real thing. It made me aware of the more subtle non-language based ways in which human beings interact. We did a lot of studies on what they call ‘women in a meeting syndrome’, you know, when a woman says something, and then someone else, a man, restates it and gets credit for it? You know I'm talking about?
Russell: Yeah, I think I've seen comedy sketches of that.
Kasia: Yeah, so that's a real problem, that's sexism, right? So this isn't a way for me to blame women. But this is a way for me to give women tools for how to handle that situation. So even in a board meeting people are still behaving on an animal level. Animal level. And if a woman who's saying something can put her attention out on the whole room and speak to the whole room in such a way that moves their bodies into a submissive state, she gets heard. But if she pulls back – and right now I'm not even legislating language: “Yes of course, there's…”, “I think that maybe…. that possibly…we should choose” etc. But even without that, if she's speaking in a surrendered state, nobody feels what she said. They heard the words but they didn't feel it. So a man then says it and restates it with that whole attention out until the bodies shift and all the animals in the room go “alpha said it, slam dunk. We heard it, we should do it. Or consider it or fight against it.” It doesn't disappear.
Russell: What do you think that is physically? What's the difference? What do you do to be in the latter state, rather than the former?
Kasia: Well, the problem to solve is a bit older. And actually, I believe it begins in how a woman's erotic desire is handled and how a man's erotic desire is handled. So, when you're a kid you can want a cookie. You don't get that cookie. You can cry. You can throw a tantrum. You don't get the cookie. But the first kind of desire that really means something about you is an erotic one. So a girl starts finding herself wanting someone, wanting someone's love and boys, when they start exhibiting signs of sexual interest, provided that their sexual interest is directed towards women not men (!) – that’s a different kind of desire. . When boys start exhibiting signs of sexual desire and girls start exhibiting signs of sexual desire, the difference between the two is quite remarkable.
With men, with boys, there tends to be like a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”, “look, look he's trying to like girls!” For girls, it's immediately a double message. Immediately. Immediately. Immediately a yes and a no at the same time. This is dangerous. She's dangerous, it's dangerous for her. Look, she's growing up. And every woman I've spoken to can relate to this feeling, of that moment, not only being dangerous and getting mixed signals, but fearing being a slut and a prude, sometimes both at the same time. And then it's like her tits are too small until they're too big. She's too quiet until she's too loud. There's no middle range. She cares too much about about her studies until she doesn't care enough about her studies. Later on in life, she cares too much about work and not enough about family, she cares too much about family and not enough about work.
And this concern of women of being afraid of being too much, “I'm too much. I'm too much for the world. I want too much. I'm too bossy, I'm too loud, I'm too emotional”. And of simultaneously also not being enough. “I'm not enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not skilled enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not skinny enough, I'm not rich enough”. That bind. There's no room in between the two at all to breathe. This is a generalization that does not apply to every single human being, but the tendency is that men worry more about not being enough but not about being too much. Whereas women are in this double bind. And that compression of being afraid of being needy and bossy, at the same time, creates a compressed bodily state, and an energetic state that affects all of a woman’s communications.
So a woman becomes capable of going to speak to a next door neighbor and being furious and polite. At the same time. Being scared of asking for too much, and being scared of not getting what she wants at the same time. “Hi, excuse me.” Eyes of evil. “I would really appreciate it if maybe… I’m hearing the noise next door…” And it doesn't feel good to get a request like that because it's filled with both niceness and rage. It's filled with too much and too little. One of the main trainings we do in school is to break apart this compression. So the students play act being extremely out there, being extremely bossy, “You will turn the music down” to needy, “I would love to get a good night's sleep. And you will be my greatest ally, if you just turned the music down.”
And what ends up happening after they do this ridiculous exercise of going extreme is they're capable of making a request that sounds like, “Hey, do you mind turning your music down?” Clean. Simple. Clean. Simple. So when you ask, how do you get women to be heard, or how is someone able to use their attention with facility, use their authority and their surrender with facility? It takes breaking this Good Girl conditioning, this double bind, this fear of “too much, too little” that starts very, very early on.
Russell: This is very interesting to me. Thank you. I was thinking then about a lot of the work I do around males is to do with fatherless men in a sense; I grew up in a single parent household, just with my mother. And I wonder how much of this same sort of conditioning is how many males are feeling, even though, of course, I can see there are different cultural messages more broadly, as we've discussed at length. Kasia, thank you very much for so passionately explaining to me a variety of behavioral traits and psychological conditions, and how we can alter ourselves – or can reengineer ourselves – using what we have. I really enjoyed meeting you and speaking with you. I hope we get to communicate again.
Kasia: Me too. Thank you.
Heather Dubrow's World: Strong Women and Good Girl Conditioning
“There’s this really sweet moment that happens when your attention is focused on another person, and you’re leading them through an experience where you can actually see them shift from a dominant to a submissive state. You basically see them open up and surrender. It can happen in a business meeting. It can happen in a negotiation. It’s happened with my landlord. It’s not erotic in its context, it has to do with putting your attention on someone until you melt them into receptivity.”
“We are right now at a very specific moment in time. It’s a huge opportunity, a huge calamity. We are living in a world that is more divided than ever. It’s scarier than ever. And what happens when there’s a crisis is people revert to their most known, even if ineffective, behaviors.”
Read the transcript:
Heather: My guest today is a very interesting, very cool, very sharp gal. She's the founder of The Academy, the school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence. She's a teacher, a businesswoman, a former dominatrix. I need to hear a lot about all of this. Please welcome Kasia Urbaniak.
Kasia: Thank you for having me.
Heather: Welcome. I love that your name on your zoom account is The Lovely Kasia.
Kasia: That was a dare I gave myself very, very, very early on in my journey.
Heather: Was to what?
Kasia: I was 18 years old and setting up an email account. And I was wondering if I could say in something as at the time formal feeling as an email that I am lovely. And I was ashamed, embarrassed. And I was 18. And it took me, I don't know, six months before I got used to sharing my email address back in the day.
Heather: And now you embrace it.
Kasia: Well, yeah, yeah, that now that seems like nothing.
Heather: Now I feel like I have to up my zoom name. Mine just says Heather Dubrow. That's so boring. Jesus. You know, what's funny about the email names, like when my kids first got their emails they were little. And one was like, you know, something lambi something or you know, they were like silly like little kid names. And then when they finally got to the age, that it was embarrassing, like they finally had to change them to a real email address. It was so funny.
So tell me about yourself. So first of all, I have to hear about how you got into the whole dominatrix business and what that actually means. But you went from dominatrix to helping people empower themselves. How is that transition?
Kasia: One of the reasons I first became a professional dominatrix was in order to make money so that I could further my spiritual education. I wanted to be a Taoist nun. So I was studying in with masters and convents and nunneries all around the world. So this split existence actually did a lot, the tension between the two, of working in a dungeon in New York City and being on mountaintops in Asia did a lot to create the extreme difference between them. Creating an interesting tension when looking at the human experience. So it really informed how I did my work as a dominatrix. What was initially something I was doing for money very quickly became a place where I could use all the new tools I was learning and the new gifts that I was developing in a context that was completely not meant for it. Looking and seeing the body reading skills, how even martial training in terms of being able to understand what's happening energetically to a person who's holding their body a certain way, when I'm bossing them around how they're responding to it moment by moment and knowing how to move a human being through different states of consciousness. Now, this is like the highbrow way of explaining how the extremes of metaphysics and the extremes of sexual fringe activity, develop the philosophical basis.
But the real thing is that as I was growing up, because I started when I was quite young, 20 years ago, I had this secret life where I was pretending to be the boss of men until I really felt like I was the boss of men. While my girlfriends were growing up beside me, with all these kinds of behaviors that became more and more ridiculous and outrageous to me as time went on. And they are very common behaviors, they are behaviors like endless time spent analyzing a text, a whole belief in a superstitious hierarchy of red flags when it comes, especially to men or in romantic contexts, or bosses, or fathers or brothers or friends. This self policing, the never checking in really to see what's going on with especially men, but I just started seeing a pattern that I didn't know was a pattern. And so I sort of became the mischief maker of all my friends, being like, “why don't you just find out?”
The beautiful thing that happened was, when I met my business partner, Ruben Flores.
Heather: A man.
Kasia: Yeah, who's a man. While I was like floating around the fringes of spirituality, and like dark sexual exploration, he was in a war zone because he worked for Doctors Without Borders. And the moment we met, I met the first person who completely understood the language of power dynamics that I had seen, and understood how women learn differently from men to women's disadvantage. And he understood it because one of the reasons he had left the field was he had a moment where he was surrounded by a bunch of men, in the context where we they were talking about maternal care and there wasn't a single woman present.
Heather: That hasn't changed anywhere nearby has it?
Kasia: No, and also also like there's two matters, because you can get women seats at the table. But how do you get them heard? And so in this incredible way, what we ended up forming was this laboratory, where we could actually see what happens to a woman given a certain interaction.
Heather: Before we keep diving in that direction, because I do I listened to your TEDx Talk and I just think it's completely fascinating, and I really love how you break it all down. But I kind of want to go back to the dominatrix thing for a second, not just because I’m looking at you and I'm thinking like, how does one get into this? And, you know, to me a dominatrix was whips and chains and deviant behavior, and things that weren't spoken of. And I think, you know, books and movies like 50 Shades of Grey, or if you watch Billions, and you see, you know, why people need to be dominated and why they like to be dominated and how a different is for different people. But it's kind of fascinating for you to have started that way given what your work is now.
Kasia: Yeah, absolutely.
Heather: So how does one become involved in that?
Kasia: I feel sort of lucky because I was in New York City growing up at a certain time where it's incredibly unfortunate, that essentially a teenager trying to pay for school, trying to pay for university, I'm trying to pay for Spiritual Education, really can't afford to do it. Really, really can't. And this was the way I could afford to do it. What was lucky about it is it suited me so well. I have always been and probably always will be a closet people pleaser. Putting me in a situation where I have to use my psychology, where I have to use my perception, where I have to use my language – because you can't have sex in a dungeon – it's an hour long session where you're not having sex,
Heather: Right? It's all about restraint.
Kasia: Yes, but you're creating a heightened atmosphere of erotic aliveliness, and it's actually harder in many ways to do that without being able to have sexual contact. So I was very fortunate because once I got there, I was just, “I'm just doing this for money. This is like one of the crazy things of life, I'm gonna be a wild person, I'm gonna, you know.” And what I found was that the intensity of attention and actual human intimacy that was possible with no physical contact really, with just language with just attention, with paying attention, with emotion, with moving people through states, the kind of domination I ended up really leaning towards was a lot of, you'd call it roleplay. But when you when I say roleplay you think of like me dressed up as a nurse.
Heather: Right, right, right.
Kasia: I would be your mother one moment, then I would be Wonder Woman, then I would be the spy that betrayed you. But all of that is inside of a context of watching and seeing what is actually happening to the person in the moment.
Heather: So what do you take away from that? What would be the best lessons you learned that you've taken into other relationships?
Kasia: Okay, first…
Heather: I should say to real relationships, because obviously those weren't relationships. That was work.
Kasia: Yeah, although some of them became deeper than friendships, and not romantic relationships, but deeper than friendships like soul connections,
Heather: Because there's so much trust involved.
Kasia: So much trust involved. And also, I stopped seeing such a huge distinction between people who are into BDSM, and people who are not. I started noticing that almost all men and women want to be dominated, or if given the chance would love to be the boss for a second. Like very few women would say no to an experience where they could fully surrender and be dominated properly.
So instant takeaways. I went very quickly from being a dominatrix, to training dominatrixes. And one of the things I noticed is that there was a huge difference between performing power and having power. So if they walked in, and they were like, I'm Mistress Apocalypse, you have been a really bad boy. Does not work.
Heather: No.
Kasia: If their attention is on themselves, you have this image of a dominant as somebody who's narcissistic, but it actually doesn't work. It actually works when they lean in and look at the person and go, your chin looks stubborn today. Are you exceptionally rebellious, or just a little rebellious this evening? Right? So the difference between performing power and having power has everything to do with having your attention on the person you're trying to influence. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that there's this really sweet moment that happens when your attention is focused on another person, and you're leading them through an experience where you can actually see them shift from a dominant to a submissive state. You basically see them open up and surrender. It can happen in a business meeting. It can happen in a negotiation. It's happened with my fucking landlord. It's not erotic in its context, it has to do with putting your attention on someone until you melt them into receptivity.
And one of the things that we also noticed with Ruben, the first time that woman in a meeting syndrome, we started testing it. And we started noticing that women have a tendency to hold their attention inwards and when they speak, even if you correct all the up speak and you check all the verbal modifiers, that if their attention is holding the room, even the men, their bodies, shift into a submissive state, and when they shifted into a submissive state, that's when it sinks in. And what very often happens is that a woman's attention doesn't go there, because she's been taught that that's dangerous, she's conditioned in a different way, doesn't go there. And so there's this itch in the room, the ball is almost across the goal line. So a guy will come along and basically restate what she says, and slam it. But if you look at it with the sound off, what he's doing is actually shifting everyone into that state. So they're like, “Oh, I heard it now. I heard it now. My body can now trust the alpha in the room.”
And so a lot of the training that we do at The Academy just has to do with sometimes simple tricks and sometimes outrageous experiments to get a woman unbound in this state where she can shamelessly, unequivocably own a room with her attention. And then shift states if she wants to, to receive the tenderness or receive the softness or receive the adoration or kindness that she wishes.
Heather: So at the Academy, you're just training women.
Kasia: Yep.
Heather: I love this. What are the ages? Obviously, having listened to you, from birth, we need to change how we're training girls and women and how we speak to them. But what age women do you see coming through your doors and and what are they like?
Kasia: It's changing a lot now. Typically, it would be like between 24 and 78. But we're starting to get younger women now. And they're a different breed. We're even talking about separating the classes out to give them slightly different training. Women 18 to 24 are operating from a different angle. In the earlier days of the school, the women who were coming were the ones who had succeeded in almost every area of their lives and still were like, “Wait, what the hell? Why am I independent, or with a partner who’s weaker than me, doing all the work, kicking ass, doing everything from self development to caring for everyone, and I'm exhausted and angry and frustrated, and I don't feel turned on.” In the beginning, it was the ones who had done everything right and were like, “Is this what women's freedom looks like? Because it doesn't feel that way. This isn't the legendary life I signed up for. This isn't why I've been working this hard.” These days, it's a lot easier to start talking about, especially post #MeToo, to talk about things like Good Girl Conditioning.
Heather: That is true. It's funny, because I always have felt that I'm a very strong person. But again, when I was listening to you speak, and you were talking about #MeToo movement, I started thinking about my experiences in Hollywood when I was younger and as an actress, I was very submissive at times where I could have gotten into really bad situations and thankfully, didn't. So I want to give people some of your tips and, and tricks about all this. I'd love to start talking about flipping the power dynamic. What does that mean?
Kasia: So there's a couple of things to consider before we even get into that. Which is, I want to say one thing about strong women and Good Girl Conditioning. What we're calling Good Girl Conditioning is a set of behaviors that is almost invisible to us. And it's time to make them more visible. To notice that we're engaging in one of these good girl conditioned behaviors.
Heather: Give me an example.
Kasia: I can give you lots of examples. The first thing is automatic consent. Saying yes to something before you've had a chance to think about it. Another thing is making something really convenient for somebody else, while it's me inconveniencing yourself. Another thing is a holding on to the belief that if you don't do something, something bad will happen without testing it. Or if you do something, something bad will happen without testing it. Another thing is soft expectations, things that people expect you to do that you never verbally agreed to but if you stopped doing you don't know if they would cause a mess or not. Another thing, Invisible Labor, which people are talking a lot about, but they're talking about physical labor that women do without talking about the emotional labor or the mental labor. The figuring out what something means on behalf of other people so that they don't screw up. Another thing is not expressing needs and desires, not actually saying the full thing of what we want.
Heather: Right. Because to your point, we're conditioned not to do that from a very young age.
Kasia: A very young age. As a matter of fact, I say this a lot, but it's true. If you think about a lot of the ways in which we're still taught to behave, the low maintenance thing, like, “I'm fine,” right? It sounds modern, but really, it might as well come from a marriage manual from 1888.
Heather: Yeah, I've never even thought about that before because it's true. Everyone considers low maintenance a prize. I have news for you. It's only men that consider low maintenance women a prize because then they don't have to do anything that we need.
Kasia: Exactly, because up until five minutes ago, I mean, in 1974 a woman couldn't get a credit card in Connecticut without her husband's consent. This is just like five minutes ago. Up until five minutes ago, the best a woman's ambition could be expressed is for her to marry well. So what are the qualities that get you married well? “I'm fine. No trouble. I don't have big needs and wants. I don't ruffle feathers. I'm on time. I reply on a timely basis.”
Heather: Good girl!
Kasia: Exactly. “I make do with what we have. I can make the most of it. I can turn the cherries into pie into jam then after that into syrup and after that, we'll paint the walls red with it.”
Heather: Oh my God, I'm exhausted from that.
Kasia: Yeah, but we gotta stop doing that. And it's like the independent smart women right now who can't see the link between this imaginary marriage manual from 1888 and how we're behaving now. And so breaking those things. And when you asked about flipping power dynamics, freezing is one of those things. So what we're taught – this is a beautiful gift from our ancestors that we just need to thank our ancestors for and stop. Which is a woman who was safer when she was well policed, right? If she had a skirt on that was too short and something happened to her, she would be she would be blamed for it. So a loving mother would be like, “Your skirts too short.” Right? Police, police, police, police. Police the woman to keep her safe. Police the woman to keep her safe. And what we inherited was this incredible self policing capacity. Women police themselves way more than men. I'm not saying that men don't have insecurities or don't don't check themselves, but women self awareness to the vigilant extreme, that self policing, that inward attention ends up becoming destructive.
Heather: Yeah.
Kasia: Incredibly disruptive. The most brilliant prison ever built is one that no longer needs walls, nor prison guards, we do it to ourselves.
Heather: It’s true. And that's why I think women pick ourselves apart so much from our hair to our skin to our body shapes and our outfits. And you know, I was out to dinner the other night with another couple and this gal, she's beautiful and successful and she was dressed great, and she was she kept talking about her outfit, sort of apologizing for it. It was the weirdest thing.
Kasia: That's completely understandable and totally insane.
Heather: I recognized it. But what was crazy, what was really insane about it is that I noticed it, I recognized it. I appreciated that it was insane. But I also on some level totally understood it.
Kasia: Yes, yes. And this is the age we live in. This is the age we live in, where we see more and more of the normal as bizarre and absurd. And this is a prime opportunity to actually shift the way human beings see and live on this planet. And it's a little bit difficult in an interview to talk about these good girl behaviors and have them actually fully felt in the body because that's where they live. Because when you say yes really quickly, or when you respond to crisis, or when you find yourself performing invisible labor, it happens faster than the word or the thought. It’s in the body.
Heather: I think as you get older, it gets easier and better to be less reactive in those moments, but man, I wish I had these lessons in my 20s and 30s.
Kasia: So you talked about the freeze. And the reason I brought up self attack to begin with – actually, it's really shocking – but self attack is actually easy to surrender. It's easy to give it up. It's easy. It actually is. There's a few steps towards giving it up, but the reason that I brought it up in the first place was, in terms of flipping power dynamics, one of the most important moments to know how to flip a power dynamic is when you’ve frozen. Because this self policing creates kind of like a general more inward state. So when a woman's attention is generally inward, like in a self assessment kind of way, and she's only looking out, putting her attention out to look for cues for how she should behave, right? It's still a very inward focused attention. When somebody else comes along and puts her on the hot seat, puts her on the spot, asks her every appropriate question, an uncomfortable question, or makes a comment, that extra load of attention doubles. Right? So she her attention was already kind of inward. Now all of a sudden someone else's excessive pressure, attention going on her, doubles it. And her instinct in that moment is to go even deeper into herself. That's the default habit. And that's a habit to break. Why? Because this is happens every time. Picture room. This has happened more times than I care to count. 600 women. I tell them about the freeze. I tell them about how women freeze and their default state of attentions inward and when they get pressured, they even more inward, and I tell them, “Hey, so I'm going to go around the room and I'm going to start asking all of you really inappropriate questions. You only have one job, don't answer my question. Instead said put your attention on me, flip the power dynamic, ask me a question. Ask me a question like, “What gives you the right to ask me that question?” I even get even give them suggestions. I go up to the first woman, and I go, “Do you like sex?” And she goes, “Depends with who!” And the whole room laughs, right? And she goes, “Oh, yeah, I wasn't supposed to answer like that.” The next one. I tried to go even more inappropriate. She answers the question, catches. It takes five or six women before they break the habit of automatically giving away information that they don't want to give. Right? That's the default state.
Heather: I am totally guilty of doing this.
Kasia: Try it with a man. Try asking him; he will immediately flip the power dynamic.
Heather: Okay, so give me the right answer. So if I said, “Do you like having sex?”
Kasia: “Are you taking a poll? Are you interested in other people's sex lives? Are you researching so that your sex life is better? Do you know how you sound when you ask a question like that of a woman?” But you actually sounded pretty nice. Pretty sweet. So I wouldn't say something really offensive. If you had said it in a different way. I might be like, “Who the hell do you think you are? Do you know what you sound like? Do you talk to your mother that way?” Right. Anything about you will flip the power dynamic ecause now I'm leading right? You said it in kind of a nice way. So like, “Do you want to have a conversation about sex? Do you want to have a conversation about your sex life? Are you are you trying to ask me questions or for advice about your sex life?
Heather: Are you try to make me uncomfortable, what's going on? And one of the examples that I've heard you give before, which I really liked was, if someone asked you to go up to their hotel room, and your example was, “Well, hey, what could we possibly discuss up there that we can't discuss right here?”
Kasia: Yeah, there's also a thing that we called the school, it's a tool called location, that's kind of in the middle. Sometimes you don't know if somebody is trying to be a predator or just clumsy, you know. And so many men are really innocent, just sloppy, like they don't harm but they actually end up really traumatizing women and a lot of that can get cleared up with a location question. The hotel room question was not a location question. Like, location question, “It seems like you are really – fill in the blank. – Is that true? It seems like you are really angry. It seems like you want to get me into bed.” Maybe that's a little bit more dangerous. But the point is, if you ask them to verify or deny, if you pose something, even if they lie, even if they say, “oh, no, no, no, I didn't intend that at all.”
Heather: It diffuses it?
Kasia: Yes, it does. And it gives you something to work off of. Because so much of these hazy border crossings and boundary violations happen in a slew of ambiguous conversations. I mean, this is old news now, but after the Harvey Weinstein scripts were released, we advised them ad nauseum. The way that a series of separate sentences together imply something.
Heather: Right.
Kasia: “You could use a friend like me. You don't want to be mean to your friend, do you? I could do great things for you.” Those are very ambiguous. In a less extreme situation, you could say something like, “It seems like you want to sleep with me, is that true? It seems like you're saying that if I sleep with you, you'll give me a job. Is that true?”
Heather: I'm not sure he would have cared if I'm totally honest.
Kasia: Yeah, but it doesn't matter when you get it on tape.
Heather: Yeah, well, that's for sure. What so but let me ask you this. So I love how you respond to these. I think it's great. But what do you do if you're a person who isn't as direct? You're a very, obviously a very direct, very confident person. I feel like I'm very much the same. And when you give these examples, I think to myself, I could say that. I'm good. I could do that and not offend them and not come off as like super bitch or anything like that. But how do you train women who are just gentler?
Kasia: You know, everyone's going to have a style. So the examples I gave were not only in extreme situations, they were also in my style. But when you flip a power dynamic, and you do it with a question, one of the skills we talk about is calibration. You're calibrating to the situation, but you're also calibrating to your own style. So you know, it can be just as effective to flip a power dynamic with a question that sounds like this. “Hm. What makes you ask that? What makes you curious about that? What do you need to know? What would the answer to that question give you? Is there something that you're needing right now that you're being indirect about?” I mean, any of these questions, you know, they don't have to be, “What gives you the right to ask me that,” right? Any of these will stop. The point is to stop that frozen moment where you have no words. And all of a sudden, your silence reads as consent and things are happening out of your control. And it looks like you're agreeing with them, when you're really not, and every cell in your body is screaming, “Stop this.” Whether it's the raise being given to someone else, whether it's the company starting to manufacture or invest in some heinous segment of society, or whether it's related to the erotic or the sexual, or whether it's related to child care. It's that moment. All the negotiation training, all of the skills in the world, aren't really going to make a difference if when you need the most you find yourself frozen. Which is why we talk about this particular thing of breaking the freeze with a question. Really simply.
Heather: Yeah, it's interesting. It's a lot about trusting your gut. I was listening to something the other day about, you know, how at about age 13-14, is when we start listening to other people and not ourselves. We start listening to what our girlfriends think, or what our mom thinks is our best color, or what kind of makeup looks good. And I started listening to this, and I was going, “Yeah, that's about the age because that's about the age, you're kind of like trying to figure yourself out, you're going from your tweener. You're not a little kid anymore. But you're not a full teenager or young adult yet. And you get very influenced by other people.” Yeah. So I was thinking when do we lose listening to our gut? Because when you're little, you know, “I want ice cream. I want chocolate.” You know exactly what you want. “I want to go in the pool,” or, “What kind of rain boots you like?” “I like that pair of boots.” Right? We know what we like. We trust ourselves, we trust our guts. And I think at some point, we lose that trust. And we start to look to others for all of that information, which is why when you when you talked about that pause with the freeze, that waiting, and how sometimes it's not even saying the right or wrong thing, it's not saying anything at all.
Kasia: I couldn't agree with you more. I would go even further and to say that we don't lose that trust of our gut, of our instinct, of our intuition. It's taken from us.
Heather: Okay, who's taking it?
Kasia: Everybody who's educating us – and any parents out there, I am not pointing the finger at you, because you went through the same thing. The entire system of the incredible cognitive dissonance of what we tell a three year old versus what we tell a 10 year old, how we raise how we introduce humans, baby humans, child humans, into our society, the entire set of conditioning is to turn them into humans that lose connection with the inner voice. And I'll give you really concrete examples so it doesn't sound like I'm posing a hysterical conspiracy theory about the downfall of humanity. Really simple, simple, simple example looks really, really innocent and is completely common. Right? A child misbehaves. A child does something that disrupts the order of the group. So it has to be dealt with in some kind of way. So that child is set aside is pulled aside and is told, “Say sorry. You must be sorry.” It's entirely possible that that kid at that moment does not feel sorrow, right. Sorry means sorrow. That kid might have some unresolved anger, something might have happened. That kid could have a whole world of things going on that are not sorrow. But the kid knows that unless the kid says, “I feel sorrow, I feel sorrow,” lying about their feelings, they won’t be able to rejoin the group, which is the greatest punishment for a human being. Since the dawn of human history, the way that you punish the human is you banished him from the tribe.
Heather: Isolate them.
Kasia: So the first thing we do is we tell kids to lie about their feelings. “You should feel this way. You should say this.” It's one of 10,000 examples. And then there's the ones that are different for men. They're different for girls, different for boys. We're not really encouraged to trust our gut, follow the instinct, follow the cycle of our flowing attention, the rhythms. No.
Heather: So then the question becomes like, how do you break the cycle? Like I know, for myself, I was taught basically, that I needed my mother for many things and that I couldn't do it on my own. Which was not healthy or good. And I don't feel that way anymore. I got out of that. I broke the cycle. I mean, I have other issues, we could go on for hours. But that's not one of them. But I did have an aha moment when I was like, I mean, honestly, I was like, 35, it took me quite some time. But with my kids, I remember when my oldest two, they're twins, when they were very young, like five years old or something, my daughter just could not make a decision. She’d be like, even ice cream, like, “Mom, what flavor do you think?” I'm like, “I don't know.” I was just trying to teach her listen to her gut, to make her own decisions, to be independent, to come up with what she wants, and all of that. So that's my one little way of doing it. But what do you think in a more global way? How do we raise our children and especially our young girls, to listen to their gut and not have this taken from them?
Kasia: All right, so frankly, I'm working on adult women getting to a place where they know what they want. Because there's a big difference between feeling a spark of a flame of a calling, a passionate desire, some inspiring vision from within, then declaring a goal to meet.
Heather: Right.
Kasia: And I'm finding, consistently, that just like your daughter, but in more closeted ways, adult women are oftentimes not leading the lives they want to live because they're setting goals based on “in order to’s”. Right? “If I get to that place, then I'm going to feel like the person I was meant to be.” Instead of starting right here and now. The trick is with all the masculine, stoic, sociopathic production system and economic system, everything's about cutting off from feeling. So a goal is something you can come up with in 10 seconds, but a need, a desire, and a want? Like what color bedspread, what flavor ice cream, what career, what lover, what country – all these decisions could actually be made in a whole bodied way. But it takes longer for the signal of the body to go from something that's nagging, something that's longing, into a feeling, into language, into something spoken, into something asked for, into something that can be like a crystalline vision. This is something we work on a lot of The Academy because this idea that we're supposed to know what we want all the time, like men, like even men, it's not human to do that. Like there an internal growth process that, yeah, it gets faster when you trust it more, but sometimes there's a desire or something that gestating for a while – it’s like the birth process.
Heather: Well, I will say with men, I think because we're taught so differently, that men aren't is conflicted because it's just part of what they do. They pick something, they don't really question it – most of them. I'm being very general. It’s a generalization, but you're taught, you figure got the job by this age, you go do it and off you go. And that's it. I think with women, it's just a constant struggle and the balance and you're meant to do this, you're meant to do that you're meant to get married, just like you were saying before, and you're meant to have children, you're meant to now in these days and times also have a meaningful career. And do it all perfectly and balanced. I mean, it's insane. Okay, so I understand that the people that you're seeing, you're backtracking a bit and trying to almost retrain them, so that they can really learn how to exist in a way and find their joy, basically. So how do we do this? I mean, if you could take all them and start them over again, and like reparent them, like my buddy, Tara Schuster talks about in her book, how would you do that within these boundaries?
Kasia: How would I reparent them?
Heather: Meaning, what skills would you give them from a young age? So they're not coming to at age 28? When I talk to you, you seem so powerful, and I sit here and I go, “Did she learn this? Is this nature nurture? Or did you just come out this way? Is this just you?”
Kasia: Oh, my goodness, I am my own school’s worst student. I need to keep teaching so I don't forget. I used to be afraid to ask a waiter for a glass of water. The reason I was lucky to stumble into being a dominatrix is I had to pretend to be powerful. And because I was such a people pleaser, I want it to be really convincing. I learned this because I sucked at it.
Heather: Okay.
Kasia: And I have the technique for how to ask someone for something down to a science because in order to get those words out of my mouth, I had to be like a scientist and be like, “how does one go about asking for something when you feel like you can't deserve it and you're afraid of hearing no?” Okay! We do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. That's what made me such a phenomenal teacher. Because what was natural to some people was so foreign to me that I had to construct a system to be able to do it.
Heather: So let me rephrase that. What do you wish you had learned when you were younger so that you could have been that person from an earlier age?
Kasia: I think I was born that person. I think that the most destructive parts of my conditioning were the things that were done and said, not the absence of encouragement.
Heather: Mm hmm.
Kasia: There were just things I didn't question that people made me question. I was born in 78. So when I was like, eight years old, it was okay for my grandma to be like, “You have to clean up your room or no one will marry you.” I don’t know that grandmas say that anymore. Maybe some of them do.
Heather: I don't know. Interesting things sometimes.
Kasia: When I had a crush on a girl in in high school, one of my parents was like, you’ll grow out of it. But here's the thing. We are right now in a very, very, very specific moment in time. It's, it's a huge opportunity, a huge calamity. We are living in a world that is more divided than ever. It's scarier than ever. And what happens when there's a crisis is people revert to their most known, even if ineffective, behaviors.
Heather: Interesting. Say that again.
Kasia: So in times of crisis, right, when there's a huge unknown, what people try to do, is they go backwards and cling to what they know even if they know it doesn't work, right. So for some people that's going to be fear, conspiracy, violence, anger, divisiveness. And my biggest concern right now is that in the face of crisis, the most loving, enlightened, educated, intelligent, brilliant, hard working women will also revert to what is known, but it won't look bad. It won't look like violence. It won't look like fear. What it's going to look like is what we consider to be the super normal example of female goodness. Meaning women are carrying the pandemic on their own backs. They're not complaining about the pain. They're avoiding more and more difficult conversations more and more often in order to save their strength. They're making things convenient and comfortable for others. Yes they’re angry, but they're not angry like they were a few years ago. They're not talking about injustice like they were a few years ago. They're consenting to things that are not in their pleasure to do. They're all about maintaining harmony. It's all of this is completely understandable but because even among my most diehard students, they're coming back to the school, the ones that were with me seven years ago, they’re coming back to school being like, “I need a refresher because this chaos is turning me into a Stepford wife. I am like the eight armed goddess of achieving everything at once I am the center of stability and everything, and I'm about to lose my shit, because I don't remember the last time I had an orgasm or a long bubble bath, or actually spoke about my own needs and desires.” And what is normal starts to disintegrate, because it is disintegrating everything.
Heather: And by the way, I completely agree that and I see it not only in myself, by the way, but I see it in a lot of my friends as well.
Kasia: And it's not something to call out, because we're all doing it.
Heather: We're all doing it. We’re homeschool teachers and chefs and chauffeurs and party planners and all of it.
Kasia: And making the best of it.
Heather: Smiling.
Kasia: Yeah. So when everything that's normal disintegrates, there's actually a huge opportunity. Because what is the new normal is something we get to decide. And if all of us revert back to the oldest behavior out of just not knowing what the new thing should be, what the new thing could be, without a vision, we're not creating the new normal consciously. The new normal could be worse than the old normal, the new normal could be better, right? Actually the disintegration of a lot of our support systems could inspire a way of being where we're all supporting each other in a much more community-minded way. And we could be using the isolating internet in a way that actually connects us so that we are functionally functioning like communities in a more strong, bonded way. That's just one example. But we get to decide. But if one woman is isolated, and fearing the unknown, and trying to handle everything all at once, that's the last thing on her mind.
Heather: Mm hmm.
Kasia: So you're living together and all of the sudden division starts to appear.
Heather: So okay, I totally agree with that. And I think, just for me personally, I went Stepford wife pretty quickly at the beginning of the lockdown. Because I'm had just lost my staff, and it was me and the four kids, Terry, and all that stuff. And then I kind of found my power again and pivoted pretty well. And I'm lucky because I have this community, this cool podcast community, to meet such interesting people and learn and express and hear about different opinions and views. And even if my audience doesn't take away doesn't agree with every single thing or takes away one pearl, they've gotten something out of it, which is so cool. What do you suggest women do at this point? And in these crazy times? What can they do to get out of that? Where can they go?
Kasia: Well, the first thing is that a lot of this is invisible. So seeing comes first.
Heather: Recognizing where you're at.
Kasia: Also also just like these things feel like rules. So we might as well call them rules. So hidden rules, right?
Heather: Okay.
Kasia: So first is seeing the rules. Second is breaking the rules. And the third is creating new agreements. Now, I would love just to say ever to every single listener that's a woman come to my school, or check out my website, there's tons of free materials there. Because we really want women to have agency in their lives, especially right now. We're doing some free events. But aside from that, just here in this moment now, see it, what to be aware of, if you do a log in a single day, for example, just of your labor, right just give your labor, your mental, emotional, physical labor, really meticulous be scientific. One day, every 15 minutes, you know, logging emotional labor, mental labor. “Who am I thinking about? On whose behalf of my doing this?” Right? Just seeing all of the time. When I had a group of students do this, the first group, the average was 80% of their work was for somebody else. And we're talking about unpaid work. Women with jobs, how is 80% even possible? So turns out, they're thinking about other people at work. They're juggling things. Seeing that all of a sudden explains why there's no room for a passion project or a phenomenal sex life or that novel. That alone. Once you see that, it becomes a lot easier to be like, “Oh, I love that I'm doing this. I love to serve. I don't love that I'm doing this. I'm just enabling somebody else's stupidity. I actually can't stand that I'm doing this. I don't even like doing this. I never want to do this again.” Right? But the decision to start taking things off your plate, or delegating them to others, comes after you really see what you're doing. The totality of it. That's one thing.
Another log one could do is the soft expectations log. What do you think people expect of you? And test it. You can do a soft test of it. A soft test would be take something relatively harmless like doing the dishes and just stop and see what happens.
Heather: By the way, the mothers around the world are all laughing right now. I love that, that's great.
Kasia: There are a lot of there are a lot of things, but the awareness comes first. And the more we tap into our bodies, the easier it is to hear the yes and no of what works. “This feels great. This does not feel great. This feels fantastic.” And this does not make us selfish people because it is a pleasure to give to those who receive well and amplify the gifts given. It feels terrible to give to people who waste what's given. It feels wonderful to receive exactly what it is that one needs and knows how to amplify very well. It feels terrible to receive something that's not quite right, or isn't something we can use well. So you know, exchanges in relationships can really strengthen relationships. And a lot of times when we become clear on our invisible labor and start delegating things for others, we have a chance to create some really powerful roles for people in our lives. That makes them actually feel better about themselves.
Heather: Yeah, and I think that is how you strengthen the relationships.
Kasia: Yeah.
Heather: That's all really amazing. Kasia, I think you're incredible. I think the work you're doing is so interesting. I tell you what I listened to your TEDx talk and listening to you today, I was very inspired. And I really loved learning from you. And you're so young and so wise. And I encourage everyone to go check out your website. Go check out The Academy. Tell everyone how to find your website, where to find you, where to find the Academy, the whole thing.
Kasia: Oh, I have a book coming out I forgot about.
Heather: So exciting! Tell us about the book.
Kasia: The book is called Unbound – A Woman’s Guide to Power. It's possible to preorder it now on Amazon already. It was supposed to come out in a month, but the pub date was moved to Woman's Day. We also have some special offers for anybody who buys the book. The website is weteachpower.com. There's tons and tons of resources. We made a huge effort this year to get as many of these techniques, ideas and curriculums out there. For the for the women who can't afford to take a class, who are down to self study, down to go as far as they can. And lots of video, lots of lots of podcasts. I'm really, really, really, really excited about this book, because this book is like a training manual for battle. It was written before COVID, but it's turning out to be so timely. And the delays that happened because of COVID are putting it in like the perfect moment in time. It's going to fall into women's laps at the perfect moment in time. We've already adjusted to the chaos, but we have to now fight in chaos. And when I use the word fight, and when I use the words love they don't necessarily mean what how they sound. Love is what's needed. And sometimes what's needed is a verbal slap, right? To know what's appropriate, what's required of a moment is actually the best expression of love. And fighting is the same thing. Fighting doesn't mean fighting against someone or something. Fighting means fighting for someone or something. And one of the greatest mistakes we make in relationships – when a couple switches from fighting against each other to fighting for something and explaining their own argument in the context of what they're fighting for – it becomes a passionate, synergetic moment. And it's the same thing with political movements and it's the same thing with all human beings. So fight and love, the essences of the manual for battle known as Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power.
Heather: That is so cool. I'm so happy for you. I'm gonna pick up a copy too. You guys, Kasia Urbaniak. Thank you so much for being here. Everyone, go check out her website, get the book, preorder it now. Thank you guys so much for being here. Totally appreciate your support. And if you have a second go to iTunes and leave us a five star review. Tell us what you love about Heather Dubrow’s World. Have a great weekend and I will see you next week.
Superhumans At Work by Mindvalley: How To Break Free From Good Girl Jail
Read the transcript:
“For so long, the most ambitious woman, the woman who had the biggest dreams, the only way she had fulfilling those dreams was to marry well. What qualities make you marriageable in the past? To be low maintenance. “I’m fine. I’m not mad. I don’t need anything. No, thanks. I got it.” Right? To be low maintenance, that makes a good choice for a wife. A wife who’s resourceful, who’s accommodating, who doesn’t complain, who is harmonious, who does a lot of extra work, picks up the slack, makes do with what she has, she doesn’t ask for too much, her needs and her desires are not outrageous at all. That conditioning of not wanting to be a bother and picking up all the extra work. You know, the most badass powerful executive CEOs I have come to the Academy still feel themselves under the spell of the Good Girl Autoresponder.”
Jason: Hi everybody welcome back to Superhumans at Work. This is your host, Jason Mark Campbell. I'm so excited about this session we're going to have today where we're going to be able to step into a lot of words that could come as taboo used in the workplace. We're going to talk about power, we're going to talk about gender, our roles, how our society is evolving. How is it that men and women are working in the same place? And how are those dynamics evolving? Is it normal that there's a bit of chaos? Is it chaotic? I really want to get into these discussions because in the modern world where we're all working together, we all seem to be playing different roles and I want to see what are the discussions that happen when we start challenging these roles and what potential is unleashed when we really acknowledge our full selves in every role that we can possibly play.
Kasia Urbaniak is going to be here and sharing these insights and she's an incredible woman, the CEO of The Academy, a school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence, how to embrace this. She's spoken at numerous corporations, I'm talking about the Museum of Modern Art, the Wharton School of Business, the Yale School of Management, and she's already the subject of so much media attention, she's had interviews in The Guardian, New York Times Forbes, BBC capital, amongst others. And here's one of the fascinating aspects that I love is her background has been as a dominatrix, we're going to talk more about her background, why it's so important to know what has happened here has been applied in business, and you're going to be able to apply this in your career as well. Kasia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming.
Kasia: Thank you so much for having me.
Jason: Now first off I want to say congratulations. I know you've recently launched your book, Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power, and power itself is a word that seems to come with a lot of baggage. It seems like it's almost taboo. And so I wanted to open up with this question: why does that idea of power seem to unrest a lot of us? It seems like it's an uncontrollable energy. And what have you witnessed about this word and why it's so powerful to embrace?
Kasia: Well the first thing is that I like that the word power ruffles some feathers. Before a student takes a class, sometimes they write an email saying, “Why is power and not empowerment?” And there's this implication around the word empowerment. First of all, women are more likely to feel comfortable with something like “women's empowerment”, men are more likely to go for a book called Power. So it seems like this softer subset, right? There's also this implication that empowerment is inwards so you can actually be alone in a room and do your affirmations and feel great and become powerful in isolation. When power, in and of itself, is relational, like money, right, power is entirely about powerful relationships. It's a communication function. One of the fun things about working with, especially behavioral economics people, is redefining power with them in conversation about how it's not who has the most toys, but who has the most powerful relationships.
Jason: So it's very crazy as you mentioned this. I just had a vision of so many websites and some of the friends I follow that all do these Empowerment Workshops for Women, so you're so right. And then I was thinking, what are some of the things that attracted me, as far as literature or workshops, and the first thing that came to mind is when I was in my early 20s, I read a book like The 48 Laws of Power, and I don't see that literature being picked up as much as women.
And so, what gets left out, like what happens when women do not – and we're going to speak specifically to that since we've already differentiated that there's a natural attraction for men to go and seek that power – what is the problem where we see that women are not as much embracing it, and what happens when they do?
Kasia: Oh well, what happens when they do is their lives get revolutionized. As women claim their power, they're also redefining power. Again, one of the pitfalls of a word like empowerment is that implies that you can do it by yourself. Say, for example, in a woman's group – that's super super super necessary – but that sisters can pump themselves up, but then they go interface with men who have very different conditioning or circumstances in business. And all of the sudden it's like the magic's gone.
When you focus on power and powerful communication and building powerful relationships, the evidence of your power is not your feeling. Power is not a feeling. It's an effect. It's what happens in the impact of the thing. And I think men are trained and conditioned to have more of their attention, for better and for worse, on outward attention states, meaning performance, the results, winning the game, you know, getting the date, whatever it is, for the performance, the provider. Whereas women tend to still be conditioned towards their beingness not their doingness, even though women are doing more than ever and sometimes double triple what men do. So calling attention to that agency, and that doingness and balancing out when we have our dominant outward states of influence fully out, and also our state, fully in where we're deeply connected with the truth of ourselves is super important for both men and women. The challenge and the road and the journey is totally different, because of our very different conditioning.
Jason: Which I want to go right into that conditioning. So women naturally have not been embracing it as much as men, yet we see that there are so many gaps in the workplace when it comes to senior positions, the glass ceiling, and women are just in the process of getting into the workforce and we're seeing that the cards seem to be stacked against them. And so, what is that conditioning and what can we do to break through a mental barrier as a woman and how do we get started doing that?
Kasia: It's a mental, emotional and physical body-based barrier, but before addressing the conditioning, I have to say that there are also other circumstances that make the senior corporate game, a less appealing when for a woman. Between sexual harassment, and having other values and family, there are other legitimate things that go on besides conditioning. But here's something that was really really interesting, I'll get into the conditioning in just one second. In the course of teaching, at some point I added a Power with Money class to the curriculum. And one of the things that inspired me and a lot of the courses are around being able to ask for what you want, ask for what you need, in a powerful and effective way shamelessly and like 100% of what you need in the workplace especially getting, you know the support that you need to do your best job. There was this tech website, and this was a story, a few years back, that noticed that women were applying for jobs and asking right away for lower salaries than men. So these like really really well meaning architects of this tech jobs website were like, “We're gonna solve the problem. We're gonna start putting up a graph for each position, and showing the exact average what's on the excessive side what's on the lesser side, a beautiful graph for each position. So, each person, man or woman, can look at it and get a sense of what the actual average is.” You know what happened? Men started asking for more. Women started asking for even less. And to me, this was such a huge, huge sign, such a huge red flag. Telling them what the averages were did not change their behavior. As a matter of fact, what it did, it made it even worse.
But let's talk about what I call Good Girl Conditioning. If you really think about it, women going from being property to being able to own property is actually relatively recent when it comes to human history. It actually happened kind of an eyeblink ago. In 1974, a woman couldn't even get a credit card in Connecticut without her husband's signature. We're not talking about, you know, millennia here, we're talking about a few minutes ago in the eyeblink of human history. All of a sudden, women can own property. Women can go to work. Women can have careers. It's foolish to think that the conditioning that comes to us from our ancestors, that's in the air, that's ubiquitous everywhere, would change immediately.
The Good Girl Conditioning Qualities. Let me put it this way, for so long, the most ambitious woman, the woman who had the biggest dreams, the only way she had fulfilling those dreams was to marry well. What qualities make you marriageable in the past? To be low maintenance. “I’m fine. I'm not mad. I don't need anything. No, thanks. I got it.” Right? To be low maintenance, that makes a good choice for a wife. A wife who's resourceful, who’s accommodating, who doesn't complain, who is harmonious, who does a lot of extra work, picks up the slack, makes do with what she has, she doesn't ask for too much, her needs and her desires are not outrageous at all. That conditioning of not wanting to be a bother and picking up all the extra work. You know, the most badass, powerful, executive CEOs I have come to the Academy still feel themselves under the spell of the Good Girl Autoresponder, if they're not paying attention. They'll say yes to something they don’t want to say yes to, they’ll make something extremely convenient for somebody else while bending over backwards going out of their way. When I have them log their invisible labor, work they don't get compensated for, reciprocated or paid for, sometimes it’s up to 80% of their daily hours. Mental labor, emotional labor, physical labor. The independent woman, her victory is super bittersweet. So many women who are kicking ass are actually doing three people and not asking for help because it makes them feel bossy or needy, not getting what they need, definitely not asking or receiving 100% of what they would need. They're not asking for the salaries, they’re not asking for the team they need in order to do their best work. And you know, there's a tendency that when a woman applies for a position, she applies for position she's already capable of doing, where a man looks into the position he wants to live into, right?
So there's the secondary thing where, and I believe this is out of love, the daughters are always very well policed, looked after. If a woman wore too short a shirt and something happened, she would be to blame. So you had to watch your daughters. Watch your daughters. And once that atmosphere develops, any woman listening to this can probably relate to the constant self-policing that now needs no police officer, needs no parent, grandparent, needs nobody else to point it out. She's asking yourself, “Am I too much? Am I not enough? Am I too loud? Am I too quiet? Am I too feminine? Am I too masculine? Do I care too much about my career? Not enough about my family? Was this appropriate? Was that?” That attention turned inwards, but not in a generative positive way, that attention turned inwards. The cleverest prison in the world is the prison without any walls. It's the prison you can’t see. So breaking that conditioning is so much fun. It's so much fun, because it creates results so quickly. And it's one of those things that first is the horror of discovering something that was invisible to you that suddenly is visible. And then is the pleasure of overcoming it, and understanding that that barrier is antiquated, no longer serves, girls don't change the world. You know, it just becomes such a joy. There are some really simple techniques in each of these good girl autoresponder examples where I said earlier, are not just a mental barrier or emotional but physical too. It’s such a fast habit to respond to crisis to say, “Yes,” or to say, “No, I'm fine.” It's such a fast habit to when asked uncomfortable, inappropriate questions to give the answer right away instead of questioning the questioner.
“In Power Dynamics, the dominant one is the one who has their attention out and powerfully on the other person. The one who follows has their attention inward.”
Which brings me to this really important subject of how power dynamics work. So, when a woman freezes, this is a really good way to articulate power dynamics. Let's say we have a boy and a girl growing up – this is changing, but it's been in our culture for so long that it's still worth mentioning. So we have Billy and we have Mary. And we reward Billy, and we reward Mary at entirely different moments. We reward Billy when his attention is out. He scored a goal, he built a fortress, he got into a fight, he messed something up, he won a trophy, his attention’s out. He is rewarded when his attention is out. Mary, however, “Look how lovely Mary is. Isn't that a lovely dress? Look at her lovely manners. Is Mary getting chubby?” Her attention’s on her. So, what happens very often, is in power dynamics, the leader, the dominant one, the one of authority – and this was definitely influenced by discoveries as a dominatrix – is the one who has their attention out and powerfully on the other person. And the one who is following has their attention inward. And you can see this really easily in the beautiful dance in some of the most profound conversations that people have. You know, the conversation that keeps you up until eight in the morning. You can't stop talking. What's happening is when you're speaking you're paying attention to the person who's listening, and you're seeing what lands, and you're seeing what doesn't land, and you're rearticulating the things that don't land in order to make them stick. And then all of a sudden, something sparks in the other person, that energy rises and all of a sudden they're telling you their story, and their attention’s on you and they're tracking you, and it switches and there's this play of dominant and submissive states attention that go back and forth. Billy and Mary have been trained that in a moment of crisis their attention immediately shoot to very different places. Now this tendency is so strong that I tested it and I've tested it and I've tested it. Scare a man, his attention goes you. Scare a woman, her attention goes me. This was super relevant, and it still is, why women freeze in situations, for example, like where they have to justify explain themselves when they ask that uncomfortable question or a sexual harassing uncomfortable remark is made. You know my superpower CEO woman might be unstoppable in the office, but on the elevator ride home when her neighbor asks her if she's single she freezes. She answers. She doesn't want to answer. She gets into a conversation she doesn't want to get into. And this may seem petty and small, but actually our life is made up of these interactions that inform us about the kind of people we are. So this habit, this dominant habit, when a woman's attention is on her and her attention is on herself, she will get into a biologically frozen state. The way to flip that power dynamic is so simple. If she turns her attention out and asks the person who asked her a question a question, she's already flipped the script. “Why do you ask?” is sometimes enough. “Are you taking a poll?” if it's totally inappropriate. “What on earth are you doing asking a question like that?” Right? Putting the attention back on them.
“When you focus on power: powerful communication and building powerful relationships, the evidence is not your feelings, it’s an effect.”
And this is also really wonderful in so many ways because sometimes we mishear things or we don't understand where people are coming from. We make the assumption that some inappropriate comment is really full of ill intent, especially in the workplace, now everybody has to be so careful. I had this student who was telling a story about when her boss asked her where she bought her lingerie. Totally inappropriate question for the workplace, right? But this boss of hers she really liked and was a really nice, kind of sometimes awkward guy. Having taken my class. She asked him, “Do you realize that can be a really inappropriate question for the workplace? Do you realize how that might make one of your female employees feel?” And he completely stuttered and broke down and said, “Look, I have been out of the dating game for 20 years and it's Valentine's Day coming up and there's this woman I really like, and I'm sorry I just wanted to know where I can get her a nice gift.” Totally inappropriate but that got cleaned up like this, and it didn't escalate into some weird tension where later she's wondering if she can go on that conference, and wondering if going to the bar where everybody socializing is safe because he's there, is he going to make another comment, is she going to end up in his hotel room, you know all those things disappear. They get clarified.
Jason: Now, you just went through an amazing overview, and I remember seeing – by the way if anybody has not seen the TEDx that Kasia does which goes over these concepts which I think is phenomenal and is one of the reasons I definitely wanted her on the show to share these concepts with you, definitely go check it out. And the one thing I just noticed is you've explained the whole situation of conditioning, what's happening. And at first when you're explaining I was like wow, is this the reality of things? Is there nothing that we can do to change this or accelerate the transformation? And then I noticed how you shifted and said something I was not expecting. You said, “the process of liberating yourself from that invisible prison is absolutely fun.” And now you've actually switched into giving us some prescriptions on what to do, and asking a question when the question has been asked to you is such a powerful reversal of those roles. I was going to ask, it doesn't seem like it would naturally come for most people, like right now we're sitting, or if somebody's listening they're in that car and they're like, “okay, wow that makes sense.” But when that moment arises, there's definitely like that emotional jolt that kind of triggers the lizard brain. And so my question to you would be, as I'm aware that asking the question when the appropriate question comes is one of the best ways to kind of shift the dynamics, what can I do to train myself to be more ready for those moments because I will always default to my natural at those times? Does that make sense?
Kasia: Yeah, well that's why we train. I mean, there's a lot of things we do at The Academy that any listener can do. Here's a really good one. People who are afraid of hearing, “No”. That's a general human experience of not wanting rejection; abandonment being one of the worst punishments. You know, primal, tribal. You get banished, you get rejected, it's worse than death. Death before dishonor, it's what gets people in the military. Again, there is a difference between how women and men respond to no, so I know more about how to train women to respond to no more than I know about men. But one of the things that happens, I think for both, however, very very very acutely for women, is because their attention is on themselves when they're asking, when they hear the no they take the hit as though it's a no to their existence and not to their request.
“‘No’ is a gateway to incredible power and incredible intimacy. Sometimes it’s better to get a NO to your first request than a YES. What you get to do, is to find out what the other person actually cares about.”
So once again, the prescription is actually the same, which is when you're making a request where you might get a no, keep your attention on the other person. You hear the no, you don't break the kind of connection of attention, because the person saying no oftentimes will experience that break in attention and feel like they've done so much damage just by speaking their truth in that moment. And that guilt will very quickly turn to anger. One of the things that we do is when we train a woman to hear no, we actually do, “No, no, request, no,” over and over and over and over again. She hears no, she keeps her attention on the other person then asks another question. Gets curious. Not, “Why not,” because that's trying to crush the resistance because anytime somebody resists something they have an internal reason for it. No is a gateway to incredible power and incredible intimacy. Sometimes it's better to get a no to your first request than a yes. Because what you get to do is you get to find out what the other person actually cares about. Most people don't say no in order to be asses. Most people don't like to say no, and if they're in a position where they're saying no it’s because something got triggered that they need to protect and if they value it enough to say no. And if the person on the other side can stay curious and connect with that thing that they value, the no either disappears or the entire nature of the conversation changes to a far more generative and powerful one. Because now you know something about the other person. Now you're connected with something tender that the no was designed to protect. And if you can get to that place to genuine curiosity when you hear no, it stops being about you. It even stops being about the request and it starts being about what's there on the other side that I can connect you to create an incredibly powerful relationship and generate a new possibility that would not be there if the person said yes.
If we had more time I'd go into a crazy dungeon story about the discovery of how boring it is when somebody always says yes, but resistance is a gift and it's something that we have two fixed ways of dealing with. Somebody meets resistance, internal in terms of like keeping a promise, or being disciplined, or externally meets resistance and another person in the form of no. We have this incredibly ineffective way of dealing with no. It’s is called crush or run. Imagine a little tribe, right, and another tribe is coming across the hill and the men go to crush that tribe, and the women run for the hills. Crush or run. Resistance is such a hotspot of incredible information and a matrix of power that stepping into and navigating through that no to get to what the other person really cares about creates a synergy where oftentimes the new proposition is so much more powerful and the vision is so much more profound than if the initial request was like, “Yeah sure. Let’s do that. Fine.” So my students hunt for no. They're hungry for no. When they hear no, they go, “Game on. We're going to get to something good.”
Jason: It's so incredible because the ways that you've approached this is not instinctual. I've never heard it be explained this way and it's so true because in essence, it's almost like we're in a polite culture and so we're always defaulting to the Yes, and I'm someone who's a very big passionate person about sales. I'm actually working on my own book about selling with love, and this is it. When the no comes it's an opportunity to discover and the way you've laid it out is so magical. And so, as we get more comfortable with that we've talked a lot about a lot of the issues of conditioning around women. I want to also throw one insight for men who are listening to the show right now. Because as we're seeing the dynamics the women, we're seeing some transformation. People like you are teaching the right methodologies for women to come into the workplace to embrace their power. So now, my question would be, what are some of the responsibilities that we can take as men, so that we can make this a more powerful workplace by embracing the differences we have, as well as making sure that we have certain behaviors that we keep in check possibly to ensure that we have the most output, and the best time, as we're going towards working in the workplace making an impact including both genders in the most powerful way?
Kasia: I’m about to say something very controversial.
Jason: There we go. That's why we do this.
Kasia: I'm only speaking for myself, because this is a very controversial thing to say. I was assigned the task of teaching men how to behave themselves regarding sexual harassment in corporations. And I found that what they are trying to do absolutely does not work. Jason I'm going to give you 20 behaviors that you are not to engage in. Remember them all, learn them and make sure you don't do them. If I tell a female student don't do up speak. Don't finish your sentences like the question. Remember to dress not to like this and not to like this. And remember to do this. If we're litigating those small behaviors that's not how human beings learn. Human beings learn socially. So this is the controversial thing. When you teach a woman, when she feels frozen or attacked, or undermined by a man, when you teach a woman to flip the power dynamic get connected to the other person. Ask questions, get information, get curious, develop a powerful ally. Find out if that person really is an enemy, or if they just didn't know. Then what you have is a woman who's growing in her power – side effect, she's teaching, socially, in the moment with social reward in the moment, the best behavior for any man or for any other person to take. I think we have a crisis when it comes to men right now, and I wish there was a teacher who was teaching this kind of thing but in reverse for men. Because what we're really forgetting is that, just like women have been conditioned to be the perfect wife for millennia, men have been conditioned to violently divorce themselves from their emotions in order to be able to go out to war and die for us. The sacrifice of that deep connection to emotion and the taboo of a man being sensitive or deeply connected and how that's not powerful, not strong, and how it shows up is absolutely horrendous. We live in a culture where empaths actually envy sociopaths, and any book out there on empathy is how to deal with the burden of feeling other people's feelings, and any book on psychopaths and sociopaths is like, “what you can learn from them without being one.” And this stuff about stoicism, stuffing down your feelings, and just keep pushing, and let's keep producing. We don't need any more of that in the world and it's not going to create powerful, beautiful, generative, life-giving things. It's just part of part of our suicide mission and death drive.
Okay, simple answer. Men can ask questions. They don't expect to get the answers because the truth is that, you know, especially in heteronormative, heterosexual relationships, women are getting angrier and angrier and more withholding and men are getting more and more uninformed, kind of dumb. How to make a woman happy, how to treat a woman right in the workplace, how to treat a woman right at home. How to do that, no information. Women are freezing, not communicating, getting shut down, getting angry, and men are like, “Where do we go from here?” So I could say, you know, ask them some questions. If all of their needs are being met or if there's something else. You'll probably get a, “No, I'm fine.” Unless it's an Academy student or a woman who's worked. You know done that work on not empowerment, but on power and power dynamics. It's such a crisis in the world right now: the ability to be able to actually see another person. Ask them where they’re at and where they’re coming from instead of making assumptions that what has just happened is a full-on assault. Cancel them. Fire them. Murder them. Right? But actually check in. Even if the person’s misbehaving. Actually, especially if the person’s misbehaving and you’re physically safe. Right, that's a caveat, if you’re physically safe. Find out what's behind there. It's gonna be a lot easier for women to Break the Freeze and start locating where men are at than the other way around. Because women shut down so fast because because of our conditioning. When that happens, but maybe just to be aware that this is happening.
“When a woman feels undermined by a man, you teach a woman to flip the power dynamics. Get connected to the other person. Ask questions. Get information. Get curious. Find out if that person is really an enemy or they just didn’t know.”
Jason: I so appreciate your worldview on how you approach this because it really feels like what you're doing is acknowledging the human as a whole, with our good and bad and not withholding anything back. You really teach the methods of us going through a path of growth and a path of becoming more of ourselves more fully. And I love the fact that you've actually pointed out how we're trying to give prescriptions of micro behaviors when we have to build the bridges between everybody, and I think that's a powerful thing. And nobody being perfect in the process. And I think with a lot more people that go out and teach the methods that you teach and a lot of people becoming more aware of ways to show up in the workplace, both as men and as women, it's a beautiful dynamic and I'm seeing all the progress that we're seeing today. Maybe this would be the best way to close, I’d love to ask, in the more recent years, or even specifically 2020 where we're seeing a lot of this work being done more remotely, are you seeing a very positive and accelerating change in the dynamics and for, especially women, showing up in the workplace, and are you excited about the years to come?
Kasia: Oh, I wish I had a more positive answer for you. I guess the positive, optimistic view is it's getting worse, and so the problems are more acute, and so, the problems to solve are more visible. Because right now, I feel like women are pretty much carrying the pandemic on their backs. Losing jobs and doing everything, the good girl behavior is at an all time high. It's my hope that this becomes part of a much bigger conversation in general in these kind of apocalyptic times where the problems are harder to ignore overall on every level. And that we use that as an opportunity to get aware, enlightened, and connected, not disconnected and hateful.
Jason: It feels like the whole world is going through this kind of Kensho moment which is like we're going to be more aware of the pain which gives us the opportunity to identify possible solutions in a quicker way. Hopefully a lot of people can take the initiative. Everybody if you haven't picked up the book yet, definitely grab Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power. This is Kasia’s book, it's amazing, particularly for the women listening here, you'll want to go ahead and grab this piece of literature and inform yourself. Make sure you have a look at her TEDx talk as well. And definitely look into The Academy. This is the school for the women that teach you the foundations of power and influence and during these times especially as she's just mentioned, things are not necessarily better, boundaries are probably being crossed more than ever as we work from home working even more hours. These are going to be the types of things that gives you the power to say No, to acknowledge and know when it comes at you, to bring back the question whenever you're put into an awkward situation with another question so that you can really speak your truth, and not just be indoctrinating or repeating the conditioning of the good girl behavior. We’re trying to break the mold. We want to bring these ideas forward and we can all take a small responsibility to be able to do our best in the workplace. And for men, ask better questions. Also do your best out there but we don't need to have a prescription list, look at ways that you can connect and bond with your colleagues, and you can ask better questions so that we can show up as a better person as well. Kasia, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing these amazing insights. I had a ton of fun, listening and I hope all the listeners had as much fun as I did. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Next Pivot Point Podcast: A Woman’s Guide to Power
“The most insidious kind of prison bars are the ones you don’t see. The most insidious kinds of prison bars are the ones that are now reinforced by you without your own knowledge. So women don’t need to be policed because a lot of that policing is now self-policing.”
“We don’t want to manual that gives you 101 things not to do. It’s much more powerful to do five things one at a time that automatically break those things. So explore asking, practice hearing no, log your invisible labor, make choices about what you’re going to do, learn the steps of having difficult conversations about the sacrifices you’re not going to make anymore. In a powerful, and here’s a key word – playful – way. ”
Listen on Libsyn, Listen Notes and Apple Podcasts
A Woman's Guide to Power with Kasia Urbaniak
Read the transcript:
Julie: Welcome to the Next Pivot Point Podcast. This season I'm focused on sharing stories and ideas from experts on diversity and inclusion. In this episode I will share some insights and ideas from Kasia Urbaniak, which I knew I was not going to say her name right I'm going to get it right in her bio here in a minute. Together, we will leave you with some actionable tips to think about and discuss with your organization. We share this information because inclusive leadership is a journey and requires bravery and courage and you don't have to do it alone. At Next Pivot Point I believe we are stronger together we are one. So the expert this week, Kasia Urbaniak, I said it correctly. Kasia Urbaniak. We're gonna link to all of our information in the show notes as we always do. But before she jumps on here, and forgives me for mispronouncing her name, I want to tell you a bit about why I'm so excited to have Kasia here with us today. So she is the founder and CEO of The Academy, a school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence. I love that P word, Power. Conscious perspective on power is unique. She's been decades working as one of the world's most successful dominatrixes while studying power dynamics with teachers all over the world. During that time she practiced Taoist alchemy in one of the oldest female led monasteries in China and obtained dozens of certifications in different disciplines including Medical Qigong and systemic constellations. Whoo hoo, what an interesting, interesting background you're bringing with us, Kasia. Welcome to the show.
Kasia: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
Julie: Yay. Okay, so let's dig in. So much ground to cover. I love this whole conversation, we're gonna have about women and power. This conversation we don't talk about a lot – like you said, “women's empowerment,” we like to say – about power, and how power can be with not always power and or between genders. I can't wait to get to that. Before that, tell us more about your background, what a varied set of experiences you had, and how has that led to your journey of managing the academy?
Kasia: Well, it began with a very simple problem I needed to solve, which is I didn't have money for school. And we live in the kind of world where pursuing something taboo, like working as a dominatrix, for a 19 year old is actually unfortunately, sometimes the most practical way to be able to get an education. It began as something that I did for money. But as I was studying to be a Taoist nun, and was learning a lot about the energetics of the body, body language, the professional dungeon where I worked became a laboratory for understanding power dynamics between men and women in a way that was very precise, body based, visceral. I didn't want to be faking it for money, I wanted to understand what it was that I was doing and the effect that it was having. So all of the other studies that I was engaged in, ended up being tested in that space. So what does it mean to be in this play acting scenario, where I have the time limit, an hour, usually in which I'm supposed to be powerful and have power over someone. But because it's a consensual agreed upon environment, and I'm being paid, how do I make it real? How do I create this real experience, and in that, in that journey, I started, especially being someone who's not a natural dominant, I started seeing all the places in which I was doing things that did not work. I was doing things that dropped the other person disconnected from the other person, this person who's surrendering to my authority. And I'm not leaning into the authority in very, very, very subtle but ways that have a profound influence. So you know that this was sort of in the background for me because this was a secret. This was a secret job. I had only a few people knew and I had it for a very long time. So it was kind of in the background of everything else I was doing. And the women that I was growing up with, you know, from being a teenager to 20s to 30s, I saw these things that I had to overcome in that workspace informed by studying all these incredible arts of body language, reading bodies, energetics, spiritual development. I saw them coming up against problems in their actual lives. Everything from the crazy texting of someone, a boss or a lover, interpreting, interpreting, interpreting, analyzing what their intentions are without making a direct ask, and all of the ways in which even bodily like not taking up space, worrying about things that create static in communication. And so again, this was something that was sort of in the background, I considered it to in a way to be my my secret laboratory. But it grew in more and more importance and significance as I got older. Then there was a really pivotal moment where I considered my real job to be other things and I met my current business partner, a man, who'd been working in war zones for a decade. And the first conversation we had lasted six months. We got into this conversation about power dynamics, because in working in Africa, and Warzones, with people who didn't speak the same language, how do you establish authority to get your hospital bills – he worked for Doctors Without Borders. How do you how do you establish enough authority with human beings who don't recognize this piece of paper? And none of whom speak the same language where there's guns being pointed at you? How do you how do you do all of that? And it became, you know, my experiences in the fringes of spirituality and sexuality, his experiences on the fringes of war and death, in a conversation about power became incredibly connected and related, “oh, wow, these unspoken things that happen.” So we started experimenting. And we brought couples and women just invited people we knew, to talk about their problems, watch how they communicate, look at their bodies, look at how they're responding and affecting to each other in these hidden invisible ways. And this was really a passionate experiment; we didn't have any intention of starting school until those same people started talking to other people. And the overwhelming majority, being women, demanded a workshop. And we were in no way equipped to start a school, nor did we think that we were going in that direction. But the first we opened up for a free Q&A at the house, like in an apartment. And we had a waiting list that made us do five of them. And then we announced the class of winning.
Julie: That’s such a good problem to have.
Kasia: Yeah, and it was sort of like it was sort of the world being like, hey, there's a need here. And you're uniquely shaped to address it in this particular way. Are you are you are you going on this ride or not?
Julie: So the energy, right? You may not have thought that was the path forward, but the energy it produced. I would say, if people are asking the same question like three different times, like there's probably something there, and your case was fivefold. Such an interesting story about power in your own personal, real life learning experience in that environment.
So you have a book coming out about power. So tell our listeners about Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power.
Kasia: So Unbound is part training manual for battle, loving battle, and part Manifesto. It has concrete exercises, and guides the reader through a journey of breaking Good Girl Conditioning. So in retrospect, to those women who asked for a workshop, we didn't have words for it at the time, but it became very clear that they were sick and tired of being good girls. And I don't mean being good women, good human beings. But this conditioning that inspires the set of behavior that doesn't actually have a good result for anyone involved. People aren't called out, women are under-resourced, under-loved, under-nurtured they're doing everything alone, working 10 people's jobs, not getting acknowledged for it, you name it. Sick and tired. And this this idea is now more popular in our culture than it was seven years ago, that good girls got to go. And I see these like moments of euphoria, “I've had it, I'm not going to get good girl anymore. I'm going to be truthful, loving, fierce. I'm going to be one with my desires. I'm done.” The issue is that that euphoria lasts for two hours to two weeks before this, you know, these micro habits, this insidious conditioning starts creeping into actually takes behavioral, action, exercises, awareness of things that aren't talked about in our culture. How we accidentally compromise ourselves in our position. We were all operating from a place of you know, this was way before Me Too. So, you know, women's power in the world was less of an open conversation. And so the premise was, we're not going to wait for the world to be diversely inclusive, and we're not going to wait for sexism to be over, we're going to give women tools now to deal with the world as it is. So that they can have not just share of the pie, but be creating it and be acknowledged for the world they want to live in. The world they want to create. Small personal world, big world at large. And it's the reason now the reason I get up in the morning, every day and go, “this is gonna be a good day, no matter how hard or crazy it is, or how, you know, who knows what's gonna happen, but at least I know why I'm here.”
Julie: How do you help you understand your sources of power? It gives you, like you said, women's empowerment, because I even use that #cringing, and social meeting about women's empowerment. But we don't talk about women having power, how do you teach people to cultivate their power?
Kasia: Because being a, at least in my estimation, being a powerful woman having personal sovereignty, making choices based on what feels right, what sources, self and other, being powerful is actually the natural state. So it has a lot to do with removing the things that get in the way. And the most insidious kind of prison bars are the ones you don't see. The most insidious kinds of prison bars are the ones that are now reinforced by you without your own knowledge. So women don't need to be policed because a lot of that policing is now self policing, internalized. You can even create an internal mental chatter. So you know, there are things to call attention to that are pretty concrete.
Julie: Yeah.
Kasia: Right. In the academy, we have our students log, very meticulously, the invisible labor, they do mental, emotional, physical, and then go do I like doing this? What benefits? Am I doing other people's work for them without being acknowledged? Do I want to be acknowledged, do I want to be paid? Am I happy with this invisible labor as a gift to the universe? And I can pour my heart into it and know that I'm doing it? Is it something that would actually be beneficial for someone else to pick up and do? With awareness comes everything.
Another thing is the unnecessary sacrifices, the, “we don't really need this”, when really it could be something that sources. Or, “this is frivolous or selfish.” Actually, maybe, this elaborate morning time bath ritual is exactly the thing that's going to make me a kick ass leader all day.
Another and the probably one of the biggest things has to do with asking. Women really tend to at least from my experience, not ask for what they need, what they want, what would make them operate better. Sometimes the most outrageous ask is one that generates not only a huge shift in relationships, a huge shift in environment, but asking more of the people around you makes changes their role makes them feel like they are more exalted more power, like they can contribute more meaningful, more useful. And this idea that by not asking, we're actually doing someone a favor, turns out to be experientially, in my experience, absolutely untrue. We don't ask enough of our partners. We don't ask enough of our workplaces. We don't ask enough. And the issue with the asking thing is that oftentimes the extent to which we are afraid to ask afraid to hear no, afraid to be bossy or needy, the extent to which we inhibit speaking our desires, our vision, in the form of a request, a command and an invitation. The percentage of those that are that are stifled in us by us unconsciously is overwhelmingly huge and underestimated. We don't even know the things we're not asking for. Sometimes you ask for for a lot more and the dinner date, the work project, actually reaches its peak vision it's been more inspiring for everyone to work on more inspiring for everyone to participate in. And so it has so much to do with not just pointing out the habits, the qualities of Good Girl Conditioning, being accommodating, being moderate in appetite, both sexual and and foodwise, being low maintenance, which isn't there's no woman on the planet that's low maintenance. There's no human that's low maintenance. “Oh, no, I'm fine. I'm good. I don't need that.” Being incredibly resourceful making do with what you have, responding in a timely fashion, meeting other people's meeting unspoken obligations, all that stuff that would make a woman 100 years ago a wonderful candidate for marriage. She's no trouble, she creates a lot of harmony, does a lot of work behind the scenes. She's a great woman behind the scenes. All that stuff actually ends up resulting in really concrete behavior patterns.
Julie: I love that.
Kasia: How many women will want something, be offered it, and automatically say no, before they even have time to think about it?
Julie: “I'm okay.” From a young age. Yes, yes. Take care of others. These messages we teach girls are so many adjectives that are flawed that we use to describe girls, not boys. I want to go back to a word you shared earlier Kasia. The word insidious. And part of this is so serendipitous, because I just led a racial conversation with a group of white people. And they were talking about systems and inequality, redlining, all sorts of stuff that affects the And someone used the word insidious. Why is it so insidious? And my question to them is, “what does insidious mean to you?” Because I hadn't thought about that word in this context. And when you said it, I was like, “You gotta be kidding me. I just heard that word twice in one day, there's got to be something going on.” Well, instantly, when you talked about how it's hard to see, I thought of the feminist work that I read early in my Women's Studies curriculum back at Ohio State. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, right. So when you're in the cage, you can't really see, you take a step back to see that you're in a cage. But a lot of times we're seeing through these bars. So the insidious bars affecting women, you know, I know you and I both focus a lot on gender. And why is it hard to see these things? Like what are the things that are hard to see? And why is it hard to see them?
Kasia: There are stages in waking up. There are stages, this applies to race, it applies to gender, it applies to economic injustice, it even applies to our own emotions. You can identify three stages. For example, think about anger for a second. I've become an expert in spotting repressed and hidden anger in a woman who's smiling shiny eyed and insists that anger is not really her thing. She's more sad sometimes or frustrated, and you know, has shiny eyes and goes, “No, it's all good. It's great.” The stages or the stage, you don't know it exists. It's like a limb that's fallen asleep. And that stage is the one where the hidden unspoken thing, culturally or personally, is having an effect but nobody knows it's having an effect. We don't have words for it yet. Getting words for it is really, really, really important. You get words for something like anger, or a particular kind of injustice, the second stage enters. The painful pins and needles phase of your life waking up, it's when rage is at its worst. And we normally stop there. “We go, Oh, I'm angry. It's destructive and reckless.” And when this emerging awareness begins to arise, whether it's related to gender, race, or personal emotion, to stop at that phase, where it's like, “this is destructive, chaotic, messy, this is going to destroy all my relationships, I want to shut that back down.” It's like the Pandora's Box story. People forget that Pandora's box, the reason it's a problem is that right before hope comes out, the door gets shut. The third phase of an emerging awareness is one where the pins and needles have gone. You understand not just what you were fighting against with your anger, what the problem is, but you see the vision you're fighting for, not the thing you're fighting against. In that third stage, you can walk. You're not going to fall over if you walk on your numb leg because now it's awake, there's full circulation. And we very often in this culture get so freaked out by discomfort, the pins and needles, people shut down. Black Lives Matter talking about race – shutting down, shut that down. It hurts. “I'm not a bad person because I'm white.” All these things like this chaotic middle phase is so critical, important to be able to being able to make it through to the third phase is critical. So there are still so many things when it comes to gender. We've made so much progress over the years as women, right? And yet, we are still at a point where there are so many things that are still in that first phase. They're hidden. They're hidden. And so bringing those into awareness creates a temporary chaos. And this was witnessed in some of the more, I would say disruptive, aspects of the Me Too movement. But it's natural and now it's like let's get to the third phase with some of these issues.
Some of these things, when it comes to women, are insidious in the sense that you may not notice how many times you apologize or I walk into a room like you're apologizing or bracket what you're saying, or allow someone to make an assumption and not correct it or ask you an uncomfortable question and answer even though you don't have to, they have no right to ask. And you don't want to but find yourself explaining yourself, justifying yourself now, because there are 10,000 little behaviors of Good Girl Conditioning, to try to modify every single one of them ends up creating a really self conscious, destructive, vigilant self awareness. We don't want that. We don't want to manual that gives you 101 things not to do. It's much more powerful to do five things one at a time that automatically break those things. So explore asking, practice hearing no, log your invisible labor, make choices about what you're going to do, learn the steps of having difficult conversations about the sacrifices you're not going to make anymore. In a powerful, and here's a key word – playful – way.
Julie: Have fun. This doesn't have to be so serious.
Kasia: Oh, being a “Bad Girl” is tremendous fun.
Julie: Oh, yeah. Sign me up. Now this is interesting, Kasia, because you really have to be strategic. I don't know how many times I do women's workshops. And they're like, “Just give me the things to do. Just tell me the top 10 list.” I’m like, “I can tell you do not use qualifiers in your language.” Yeah, say no more. I just made a list earlier today, grudgingly. But I love how you're you're peeling back the onion and making more strategic choices, right? And thinking about those invisible factors and your invisible labor and your sources of power. And asking for it. And this chaos that happens temporarily is part of the journey. We didn't get here overnight. We're not going to undo this overnight. It's going to take time. And you got to think bigger, and bolder than just little baby steps. So I love all these tips.
I'm curious, what do you think men have in this conversation about women? I talk a lot about men as allies. I'm curious,how can men help with this Good Girl Conditioning and truly share power with women?
Kasia: You know, the truth is, and this is maybe a controversial controversial opinion. But, the people who are in a position to give power up, as though it's a limited resource, right, which is a lie to begin with. But let's just look at the psychological construct. The issue is they can't fully know what our experience is. And it's very easy to say, “Well, they should share power. They should know better.” The issue is most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time they don't. Human beings do what works. Good Girl Conditioning exists because it worked for a really long time, for millennia. It's just not working now. That's why we need to update it. So the person who's suffering, or the group that's suffering, it's a controversial thing to say that it's kind of on you to inform others. Not because, “Oh, great. We have more work to do now.” But because we're the ones carrying the information about what's not working for us.
Now, people ask me all the time, “When are you going to teach men?” And oftentimes those are people who haven't been at the academy for long enough or at all, because the truth is, I train women to train men on these tools, right? When a woman gets into the habit of asking for her highest vision, even in the smallest scenario, her highest vision of dinner, her highest vision of what a meeting could be. Big things – her highest vision of where to live, how to live, how much money to make, how she wants to be treated. Small things, big things, how she wants the family to run, all of those things. When she gets into the habit of asking for the most the highest vision, there's going to be knee jerk reactions, there's going to be some pushback. Navigating those is not only where the training happens, it’s where the intimacy and collaboration happens when somebody is resisting you initially. If you can get with the fact that people don't say no, or resist things, generally just to be jerks, they do it because they're trying to protect something. And helping them become aware of what it is they're trying to protect and even validating it – even if it's something like vanity, they're afraid of being humiliated, they want to maintain the status quo because it makes them feel safe – if you can if you can sit with their no or their resistance long enough to find out what it is that they're trying to protect, the second conversation after resistance or after no, is 1000 times better than the first conversation where you make an outrageous ask. It's where all of the inventiveness, the collaboration, the genius, the stronger relationship, again, whether it's professional, romantic or familial. That's where those things are born. It's after the fire. It's after that second stage.
Julie: The chaos.
Kasia: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And being afraid, because Good Girl Conditioning tells us not to be messy, not to be emotional, not to be reckless, not to be too much. Don't be too much. The thing is too much is oftentimes not enough. Right?
Julie: Right.
Kasia: You go all the way through and something totally new and the landscape changes. It doesn't become about what I want versus what you want. It becomes what's the thing that is even better than what both of us want.
Julie: It gets bigger together. And that's talking about ally ship with men. And you're right. I mean, the onus is on women, we're the ones being affected by it, to educate men. And it's exhausting. I know.
Kasia: Another way of looking at this that actually is more empowering – ha, empowering – motivating, inspiring. Is that okay, this is a blanket statement, right? It's just a generalization. But in general, especially in heteronormative, heterosexual relationships. What happens is over time, women get angrier and angrier and men get dumber and dumber. And the men that I come across around the school and in my life, what I see over and over and over again, is they want to get it right.
Julie: Yeah, they want to be a good guy.
Kasia: They want to be they want to be better than a good guy. They want to be the knight in shining armor.
Julie: Also not helpful.
Kasia: No, yes, it is. Yes, it is. No, I have no problem with men who want to do everything wonderfully exaltedly well. The issue is that men will habitually shut down when they're in no win situations. And Good Girl Conditioning is the recipe for that. “Don't give them a job big enough. Awesome enough. Don't ask enough.” After a while. They're like, “I can't win. I'm damned if I do. I'm damned if I don't. I'm supposed to guess. I can't read minds. I don't understand. My my masculine conditioning has made me into a monster now?”
Julie: Toxic masculinity.
Kasia: Yes! And the thing is that it's difficult to really accept that as people do what works and behavior that was exalted is now becoming seen as toxic. The behavioral adjustment that needs to happen on the side of men. There is some more information, support, and guidance they need and so many are dying for it.
Julie: They don’t want to be in this man box either. The Good Guy Conditioning and the Good Girl Conditioning isn't good for either gender. It would be so much better outside of these boxes.
Kasia: I would be talking about Good Girl Conditioning and Big Man Conditioning. If I were a hermaphrodite. I don't know enough about the men's experience from the inside. At the the academy we make sure that everything that we teach is based on something that you can experience in the body. Like it's a real felt experience on a conceptual theory. Oh, look what happens here and this moment to the body. So I don't have a man's body. I don't know what it's like to walk through the world, especially as a heterosexual white man.
Julie: It would be an interesting exercise for a day, wouldn't it?
Kasia: It would be amazing.
Julie: It would be amazing. Maybe just for a day.
Kasia: We to do an exercise like that in the school. But I don't know if I'm allowed to swear on this podcast.
Julie: Totally fine.
Kasia: Yeah, we do a game that's called if I had a dick.
Julie: Nice. Yeah. What would that be like? I think we can just imagine how that activity plays out. This has been so fun, gosh, to be with you. Obviously, we can talk for hours and we got to do a part two after the book comes out this fall, to talk about all the great things we're continuing to see and speak about. But for now, so long. Let our listeners know, how can they follow you? How can they engage with your work further?
Kasia: I encourage everyone to check out weteachpower.com. On there, we have so many different tools and resources that a woman can use without ever taking a class. Also information about classes and the book and events that we're having are on there as well. And that's really the best place to go for everything. And then when Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power comes out November 17, I encourage every woman to get herself a copy and take that little manual out into the world and get your desires met, create the world you want, because we need powerful women in this world now.
Julie: Yeah, we do. I love I love using the word power more with women. That's my personal takeaway from this episode and less of the empowerment piece.
Kasia: Right, it just implies that you can get empowered by yourself.
Julie: Exactly. I had it all along. Awesome, Kasia, well thanks for being with us today it's been such a treat to have you.
Kasia: Thank you so much.
Unbinding from the Good Girl Narrative
“If you try really hard to name a stereotypically Good
Girl that’s changed the world, you can’t. Even Mother Teresa was a rule breaker. Good Girl conditioning is expertly designed to maintain the status quo. And we live in a world right now that desperately needs a change of the status quo.”
“Our morality code is ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The poles should not be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but what’s alive and what’s dead. Rules that no longer make sense, that don’t function, that’s dead. What’s alive? What feels alive? The life force has a distinctly erotic quality. When you’re aware of your own aliveness, it’s a whole body affair that definitely includes your sexuality.”
Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You can also listen on Deezer, Google Podcats, Breaker, RadioRepublic, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and Castbox.
The Heidi Hauer Podcast
Read the transcript:
Heidi: It's a great pleasure for me to welcome Kasia Urbaniak to my podcast today, Kasia is the founder and CEO of the Academy, a school that teaches women the foundation of power and influence and power is unique. She spent decades working as one of the world's most successful donations as well studying power dynamics, with teachers, all over the world. During that time to practice Taoist alchemy in one of the oldest female administrates in China, and obtained dozens of certifications in different disciplines including medical Qigong and systemic constellations.
Heidi: You teach women how to break free from the good girl coding. So what are the limitations of being good? So what's bad about being good?
Kasia: Well, first let me say there is absolutely nothing, nothing bad about being good. However, after observing thousands of women coming to my classrooms, after my experience on planet Earth, it's very very clear to me that a lot of the good being a good girl is so automatic and unseen invisible to us that it becomes choiceless. We don't have awareness, you don't have choice and when you don't have choice. You know what that feels like. It's a prison. I would prefer that if we are to be good intentional about it, or our heart into it fully. Yeah, and see that this is what we're doing, we're, we're pouring our energy and attention in order to flower something for something good to blossom. So, one of the shocks that a typical student at the academy receives when they first arrive, is a catalogue of their own incredibly extensive, good girl behavior that they were only peripherally aware of the extent of it. Right. So, when we talk about control condition. We're talking about the problematic kind that we do without being aware. So the good girl conditioning has us be modest. So we don't we don't celebrate our achievements we don't speak of them, terrible for a job right point where sometimes we don't need to accommodate. You are always responding in a timely fashion. Oftentimes performing loads of invisible labor. Oftentimes, walking into a room dressed as an apology not just apologizing constantly for things that don't deserve apology. And these things slip out so quickly and to color. Our actions profoundly so one of the invisible. Right. We call it invisible labor, but there's a term out there, emotional labor, people talk about how much emotional labor women do. But what's most significant about it is it's not just emotional it's physical and it's mental work. And it's largely invisible so when we have the students do rigorous catalog, just spending one day. How much time do they spend, thinking about how to prevent someone to me from making the mistake they typically make. How much time did they spend trying to figure someone else out, namely for their behalf. How much time did I spend, you know, arranging child care, responding to the need of a friend who maybe doesn't even need didn't ask for help, maybe doesn't even need help. How much did I do to make everything good without even being aware of it and I'm telling you when they after the end of this inventory so some women come up with a percentage as high as 80% of their day.
Heidi: Incredible.
Kasia: Responding constantly you know with their nervous systems active work, what do I do here am I doing this right. Can I help here is that not fully conscious, and then it becomes quite easy to understand why someone are so exhausted overworked frustrated. Feel unseen feel invisible unacknowledged and don't have time for their passion projects don't have time for the things that light them up, don't have time for. Alan, and this is just one tiny aspect of it, because it comes out to me in communication. So, again, nothing wrong with being good. Nothing wrong with even being good girl. The, the other part to it, is that if you try really hard to name a good girl that's changed the world. You can't. Even Mother Teresa was a rule breaker. You can't because a good girl that girl conditioning is designed to maintain the status quo. And she maintains the status quo at home, at work, she maintains the status quo. And we live in a world right now that needs a change of the status quo. One of the first games we play is what would you do if you were a bad girl. And as silly a game as that may sound what starts to open up is the breaking of unspoken or implied rules or real rules that actually no longer apply have no benefit.
Heidi: And it's probably social conditioning, I guess. I mean there is of course the family as the original unit where you learn all those rules but I guess it's a broader thing that also. Yeah, going on for many many centuries and thousands of years, but probably there is maybe something of that is even built in, I mean I thought the other day that we, our strength, our superpowers have to transform and lift up, emotions, but I think the thing is if we're not aware of that and we don't do it intentionally as he said at the beginning, we are everyone's emotional dustbin basically instead of really saying this is a skill and I'm applying it to and with whom I choose to share.
Kasia: The idea of women being equal and free is actually very very new in terms of human history. And for millennia, the best we could ever hope for was to marry well. And that's how she could channel all her ambitions all her hopes for the future. And so the qualities of a good girl happen to be the ones that make a woman marriageable. Low maintenance, resourceful, can make do with what she has doesn't want anything for herself. Smile. A beat right, whatever, full range of emotions. Doesn't want money doesn't want sex, just wants what's best for everyone else. And the idea that in this brief time where we're talking, relative to history that we could just suddenly snap out of it, not see that, but that's sort of the direction we've been going in, is unrealistic. So it takes a conscious awareness about these qualities are in order to be able to choose. I want, I'll keep this. I don't need to do this anymore. This is not me feel right this this is I can still do and I can do it with my full heart and soul. And the other thing you know is I don't know nature versus nurture and the scientific differences between men and women past you know basic genitalia. And the thing is the theories, they change quite often, the more we bring in, so I can only go by the patterns I see in the repeat patterns I see in women I come in contact with and one of the greatest discoveries was that so many of these things are not individual psychological issues that you can work through in therapy that you can work through on your own, to be recognized as more universal universal so the first thing I say it's not you, it's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you, we're just we're changing the programming and we are getting our hands on the code, and we are we are playing with it consciously, exploring.
Heidi: I guess all of the listeners have experienced the final stage, free, and I'm currently training at the neurosciences Academy where it's fascinating to see how much scientific proof there is according my connection is actually true and it is something that we've known for many many thousands of years. But we now have a scientific backing. And in your programs like for example the online course themselves and social that you can buy online, you speak, how to learn to first of all to recognize is neuromuscular lockdown that we experienced when we are in the state of the freeze. And then secondly also how to get out of that. Is there a simple trick to share with the listeners
Kasia: Yeah yeah well the first thing definitely has to do with recognizing what it is and recognizing how it feels for you. Because if you really start becoming aware of the moments you freeze, meaning that moment, not when you choose not to speak. But the moment where you're pressing yourself to speak where you want to say something where you feel a burning desire to say something. To scream to shout to enter your suggestion or to say no or whatever the context is, and suddenly thousand thoughts in your head. No words coming out. So, non scientific description of the observation of me, and so many women, what happened. Right.
Heidi: Yeah.we've all been there. I mean, everyone knows the
Kasia: The wilder part if you start looking at it, to start realizing, if you are like most women that it actually happens often to most women, many times a day. It's not just the high stakes situation. It's not just the, oh my goodness I'm going to lose my job or, you know, a waiter asking for a phone number it's, it can be the smallest thing someone in an elevator saying you make a great mother when you have no kids. It can be anything. To have that this based experience of not knowing when you can trust yourself to speak. And when you can trust yourself to speak can actually function as a form of gaslighting like not knowing when the ground is going to come out from under your feet. Being able to know that you can trust yourself to speak. That alone is a powerful tool. So what tends to happen is the deepest conceptual idea framework of the school has to do with attention. Being the building block of a power dynamic. Someone will put attention on a woman. A woman will put attention on herself. She's, she's now doubling down with attention. And the longer this last every single second she's driven deeper and deeper into herself. This has to do with how our inner conditioning or default state has to go inward, or defaults, they have to go inward. This exacerbates the freebies set in place, his or her butt oftentimes hits, because men are trained to use the opposite form of attention very dominant outward, or inward, feel the need to explain or justify ourselves but can't even make the words were frozen, and the simple but not easy trick is to learn to flip the power dynamic by changing where the attention is more simply by putting attention on the person in front of you. By asking a question. The question about the question or a question about person's right to ask a question, but why question. Because the moment you put your attention, out of someone and ask them a question. They are also forced even for a split split second, to go in order to answer. And in doing so, the balance of attention shifts now heard on the person, and his or her the other person's attentions on themselves. This split moment, even if it's just a moment is enough for a woman to recover her agency or access to language and in some cases some dangerous situations, asking a dumb question like, Where did you get your tie is enough. Obviously the answer doesn't matter, it's enough for her to stand up and run out of the room. That flip of attention, she recovers her access to her body her mind and her decision making faculties.
Heidi: Fascinating. Brilliant. So let's drill deep and go deep into influence and power dynamics for a moment, how would you define power?
Kasia: In the school we define power as a person who has powerful relationships. And a powerful relationship is defined that what you do is well received, wanted and well used. And what you receive is what you wanted. What you can use well and make more of we want synergetic relationships. Right. So when a woman is the center of her community. When she, you know, either organically or through training at the academy starts building powerful relationships this way and is the hub of this network of powerful relationships. The collaborations, the support she can get is unparalleled, whether it's literally the fulfillment of her wishes dreams and desires and having this incredible support system to protect her and to work with her, or whether she is acting in the, in the other energy the dominant energy and she's leading others. If power ends up being the thing that not only gets her what she wants and gets her impact and her voice into the world and gets her tender needs met. It also is essentially collaborative, because the people who are on board on board Heart, Body and Mind, they're not there because they're forced. Right. Yeah, we have that kind of toxic power. It shouldn't even be called power because a tyrannical power is very wasteful energy.
Heidi: Yeah.
Kasia: Every dictator that takes over a nation needs an incredible amount of force through the military through all kinds of little bush doesn't really been the Heart, Body and Mind of people. And eventually, there's a rebellion and we all know how that goes that stories itself. So that's on the macro level but micro level it's the same damn thing.
Heidi: An influence is also linked to negotiation, people who are good at negotiating. They love the game and they love all the stuff actually the conversation when there is no in the room, and I've. It was really a lightbulb moment for me because I think, as most women you think no it's a no and stop sign and that's the end of it, but having this massive or amazing. Okay. And no, this means we have got to change the scope or the content of the conversation but you want to continue, that's fascinating for me. Do you personally deal with a no? How do you navigate through a world where you have to find your way through it and sometimes that probably means taking not take no for an answer?
Kasia: I couldn't agree with you more and I'm so glad you bring this up because right now we live in a world where the world structure itself is a no is a no, to what most women want to what most people actually deeply want, especially when women tend to fear no more than men. There are reasons for this. There is we do a “no vaccine”, in this school. It's a series of it is to get in well. Now, first things first, we live in an age where we're talking about consent. So it's also very very important to understand that No means no. Right. No means no. But when, when we train ourselves to not just get excited about no but to hunt the No. To find no, for it for a very very very good reason. Our entire being body and approach to what real deep connected creation, whether it's in a professional relationship or a romantic one or familial one, a new kind of game begins. Some of my older students when they hear no they like to brag that they say, the moment they hear no and they go Game on. They don’t crush the other person's No, yeah, we are not. We are not consent violators. People often people rarely say no to be jerks. People rarely, some do right but it's actually more that someone says no because they're trying to hurt your feelings. Oftentimes what's happening is they're saying no, because there's something even more important in them that they're trying to protect, preserve that feels threatened by, by this new situation. So, if you can hear no and understand that that is a gateway to either intimacy, or a secret passion, or a desire that's there. When you can connect with that desire with that. With that, even if it's another person's vanity or their belief that the company rules are very important their need for some of them, or something much more tender something much more burning. If you can get behind the no, and show that you actually are interested in knowing that thing that is being threatened by the no, the no tends to dissolve or change nature. And even if the no stands, you're actually now having a much more either real deep connected intimate conversation or in the context of business in the context of professional life, you're having a conversation, based on vision or based on what, how can we now get creative and have it so that we can create something even better, that honors the thing that you believe in, and that fulfills the thing that I want to create. And that space that third space that third off, are all like so often, so much better than getting yes to your initial request, especially if it's a wobbly Yes, a false Yes. You get to a no, you get to work and that's where the magic happens. So, no is a wonderful, wonderful wonderful thing to begin looking at and exploring. In terms of advice, one stepping stone to being able to to work in that context, is that there's another phenomenon that happens when that when people, but especially women hear no. Their attention is out on the other person while they're making a request or making a suggestion or asking for something. And, one must understand that the animal of someone else's body when they're receiving that kind of attention, they feel it. The moment they say no. The attention retract point quite violently snaps back into the body of the person saying no, is that they just got dropped. And when they get dropped, they already feel judged for having said no. Therefore, reassert their more defensive position. Now, so if you hear a no and you can keep your attention on the other person, even for a few extra seconds. And of course, the question to ask depends on the context but ask as a soft curious question. Like, how did it make you feel that I asked you that in an intimate was, you know, find out what's so important to the other person, they feel help, they feel safe and believe me, even the most bullying barking dogs feel safe, and it's that attention that that curiosity that holding someone else in there, that allows them to settle down and start revealing.
Heidi: I love that. What are the phases that we can play together, I mean that's to really understand this is a no to a certain path but what's behind it.
Kasia: It also tends to sound like something that will end up being a compromise, like, I want this, you want that. Let's do halfway let's democratize dissatisfaction. Let's all be a little unhappier together so we can play along. Hell no. Yeah, now get what you want or something better, and do it with them. You get them on board that's influence that's power. You don’t crash hidden tender sides of them in order to get what you want because what you have is not an ally you have a yes to one request, not a loyalty.
Heidi: Fantastic. Yeah and I guess the requirement for that is to be open minded and curious and, and also comfortable yourself that that can be an option that you probably haven't figured out your head yet, and that there is something else. So that. Yeah, sounds far more exciting. The founder of Sophie order in the west that beginning of the last entry The following is that “I can see as clear as daylight hours coming, when women will manatee higher evolution.” I have to admit at times it really feels like a new female leadership is matching the concept of women which previous of mine, Jana Riga, and she, She calls the new women are the evolved women, authentic fearless, courageous woman who exercises compassion and kindness, a woman who is in power, because she has met a staff in the shadows. She's a communicator, that chooses what to focus on very much what he touched on before she doesn't necessarily, but she's not leading radical upset. She's always working for the greater good. Is there a part of the statement that resonates with you, and why or what is your vision for a woman in power, or in whole women or new woman, women in leadership.
Kasia: So much of it resonates with that I would like to focus on the parts I disagree with.
Heidi: Good. Go ahead.
Kasia: With the principle of them more how this is a description of a woman in a particular state. What's missing for me in this is what gets her there. What's the core of this, this is a description of a series of behaviors and advocates, but in a woman in that state what is she fueled by what is she driven by what makes it possible for her to occupy the space. But I've observed in working with women that if they allow themselves to be incredibly selfish. If they allow themselves to dig deep into what they really deeply truly want and organize their entire personal universe, extending as far out as possible. In accordance with that deeply felt desire and all those things you just mentioned, happen. Now, I understand selfishness is terrible quality but I think in language, whoever problem, selfish and selfless our words. And when, when a student allows themselves to be selfish enough, and they get filled up selfish in a way that feels good, they naturally their cup runs over. On the opposite, when a woman is really striving for the greater good, in the sense of being selfless, selfless, selfless, what you have is the archetype of the starving, angry, activist, that’s fighting against injustice was reading the internal spiritual scarcity they feel inside everyone on activists we love our actions, tell her this put yourself first, even though the world's on fire because you are a part of the world. So, what I don't want is this description to start sounding like the new Good girl formula. Right? all the qualities you mentioned are qualities that are naturally coming up in women who feel that passion and go out into the world, taking care of themselves and others as they go. And you know, right now, even just seeing, you know, maybe it's a coincidence but just seeing how the nations that are led by women how they're handling the pandemic. It's like, smooth, no major problems, and, and the mentioning of the shadow in that description is also really important to be able to love your hatred love your sadness love your depression love your disappointment of your fear yet the injustice and know how to turn those emotions from their reckless destructive form into passionate purpose and into of into all of those things. It's a skill that we, as a society, sorely lack.
Heidi: Yeah. So let's talk about sex, I think, female empowerment often covers self confidence in the affairs. We've now learned self care at home. And all those sort of things, but I would, I would think it's also important to extend that a little bit further, and in my view of entity reclaiming your own power, really extend us into the bedroom, and saying yes to live in all its dimensions for me means of saying yes to your own sexual desires how you claim and create and experience your sex life. Do you find or people, women, are blocking themselves? What are the reasons for that?
Kasia: Oh well. Absolutely yes but to to say that we are blocking ourselves this incriminating right. I don't think a lot of this is fun. I believe that when we follow what's alive, that our morality code right now is good and bad that the polls should be not good and bad but what's alive and what's dead rules that no longer makes sense that don't don't function that's that. What's alive, what feels alive. And the lifeforce has a distinctly erotic quality. When you're aware of your own aliveness sexuality. We've done this very funny thing where there's a woman. For sexuality. So a woman and her sexuality because those two things have been separated. Could you describe a man who's using his sexual power at work. Oh, he's standing up straight and erect like a penis and there's a tie pointing to his crotch. Maybe that's what more sexy power looks like. What I'm trying to say is that when been separated and not integrated, then the sexuality becomes a separate topic, instead of melody and eroticism of everyday life of every decision, and that that eroticism for a woman. Maybe for everyone but that eroticism for a woman has the power to alchemize her negative emotions, positive one has the power to give her a broader voice but we're afraid that if we use our sex, right, that comes from the language construct that is still separate from us. Cheating we're doing something wrong when there really is no way to separate our sexuality from ourselves. We are erotic human creatures. So that's number one. Number one is taking back this disconnect. Number two is breaking the Sleeping Beauty myth, right, that you know, there's still pervasive that you can be in a coma. And then, renew reach socially sanctioned heterosexual men can come and wake you up out of your coma, with a kiss, which implies our sexuality comes from outside. But it doesn't, it's, it exists within you, it comes from inside. So, it's not a primary recommendation is just personal just in you and you're like wow, I am an erotic being the experience of levels of running. That can be incredibly healing and empowering the rest of it, the rest of the journey as communicating about sex with others, communicating your desires, can be able to read instructions fearlessly while handling your lover, beginning a new kind of experimentation to play entering, creating playful spaces where spam, take place, and nobody gets it wrong. Nobody's a failure because this performance based model of sex is not working for anyone. ‘Did I do good?’ When you say yes to life, you say yes, we know how to say no right or we're learning to say yes. A lot of women will say no very quickly to something that they might actually want because they're afraid subconsciously or consciously that once they get there they'll be powerless to change course if the interaction doesn't go according to the way their body is speaking, and our bodies speak to us I mean, they, they are wonderful. They will change in a heartbeat from this to that, from touching me softer to harder to like this to like that. So, the journey of a woman reclaiming her voice. Her ability to be powerful and influence and also her ability to surrender and receive, and to be able to switch from one to the other, to be able to give instruction in the state where she's ready to receive being worshiped or whatever it is that her heart desires, no matter how inappropriate or outrageous or selfish or greedy it may seem there, they're intricately related. When a woman finds herself. Really masterful in creating a playful erotic experiences for herself that are exactly to her liking that end exactly when they when she wants them to end that that begin that create no debt no expectation no idea or create ironclad commitment whatever she wants.
Kasia: You know they'll do things like, oh, I'll go out on a date with you. And I'm very sexually attracted to you and I have no clue as to whether we have sex tonight or not. But if we do end up feeling like sleeping together. Afterwards, I expect you to stay in the bed with me for at least two hours. And after you go, I expect you to call me in the morning, if you can agree to that, then there's hope for us having played tonight, and even having said this. Let's see how it goes right so setting up a container where they're gonna go in there and feel safe immediate, they know they're gonna go in there and have exactly what they need to have the experience they want. And that's powerful, it's very important because it ends up translating to other aspects, and vice versa.
Heidi: The creative life force is the same with our sexual actual energy.
Kasia: And maybe one of the most critical. Even if you choose to be celibate right like your sexuality, your sexual integration and your sexual self action and your erotic lifeforce is its radiance vitality long life, positive feelings positive chemicals, you know, all of that stuff.
Heidi: Moving on from this fascinating topic to another fascinating topic which is one of my favorite books is Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch, and there it's mentioned that the human race is still in infant stage and I think that's really true, but we're still realigning to be in our bodies we're learning to eat what is good for us we're learning not to kill each other. We're so much more capable and our bodies are so precious our minds of the powerful and I'm always in all by how amazing it is to be a human being, and how wonderful it is yeah how we can connect to the power beyond ourselves and creating a life that is fulfilling that is on purpose is the most exciting journey of all, I find. You do have a very exciting journey yourself truly remarkable extremely unique. Was there a decisive moment in your life where you felt that calling or where you knew now it's time to teach and step out into the world and follow your calling? And where do you find the courage to do that?
Kasia: Oh, this this answer is a little bit complicated because I prayed for purpose from the time I was 12 years old, desperately. And maybe it was because both of my parents are quite successful jazz musicians and they, they, they were like music was a religion to them, and everything. Be like music, and to find the thing you love and follow it and ignore everything else and break all the rules and improvise and not have a plan and and, which was great. But I wanted a calling so bad. I wanted to have a purpose so badly. And it led me to do all these things that felt like they weren't it. They were good. All right. And I remember having so many moments of despair. Praying saying, Give me your reason to be here. And it was so funny because I never wanted to be a teacher.
Heidi: Irony of life.
Kasia: I met my business partner who was my boyfriend at the time, and he started conducting experiments because he had a lot of experience in war zones and he had experience on the fringes of sexuality and fringes of spirituality. We realized that you understood a lot about power and power dynamics that didn't have to do with language at all. In all of those rounds in a warzone nobody speaks the same language. I mean at least. So, we started conducting experiments on our friends, women that we knew more and more people came in any workshop, we didn't really want to do it. We did one. There was a waiting list. So we did some more waiting lists for eight months, we're like, oh, maybe we'll try this on. And then I had this realization is there's a pattern to self development workshops and how teachers do things right there's like the weekend for them, but 8am to 5pm feel deal, right? Friday night, Saturday, Sunday many American workshop leaders structure their, their work. What if anything I don't want? What if I start my classes that knew what if I were ballgowns evening were in strange costumes? What if in my first class I have a bunch of men dress up as priests, and we confess our sexual secrets to them? What if one day, we have a man who is works for the police department who was a police officer who wants some punishment so we can all slap him so we have slap a cop? Right. I mean, now what the school does not look that way anymore but we had candelabras, we had music, and it was so much more an artistic performance or mental theater. And inside that space we started seeing all these patterns we started seeing what will make a woman go for what she wants. Let's have her bag let's have her screen let's have her beat up a mannequin. Let's have a wrestle let's have her, you know, let's see what would not not 20 years of therapy, but this one asked let's see what we can do to get her to feel fully equipped. And we would use anything try anything and it sort of dawned on me later. Oh wow. I don't know what other people are calling this, you know, teachers, school, maybe we should name the damn thing. Maybe we should figure out how this works as a business. But, oh, I guess I'm a teacher, I guess I have a school.
Heidi: But I love that you started it from a completely different angle. It was curiosity.
Kasia: I was obnoxious. I said, my website was password protected. I will not use newsletters. I do not i'm not going to do anything until I feel like doing it. I was obnoxious, it's so essential now I see is that I would feel insecure after my classes I would feel very shaken by all the experience. So I'd have five to 10. Students who had been in the school longer or friends, surrounded me for an hour after each session just giving me compliments, while someone stroked my hair. So, the self care program that included others for me to teach with. I mean, by conventional standards. Totally obnoxious. And so, so there isn't a single component of all of those things that actually took something to be like, I'm gonna be obnoxious. I don't make my own food. I'm driven to the class like everything has to be prepared for me. I am told I am amazing, even when I’m not.
Heidi: I love that. It feels like you did what was meant, or what felt right for you in that moment and not letting yourself be labeled in a certain way that you didn't feel was right, or doing things that are the conventional way of doing it you, and by doing that that you found so much wisdon. It’s a beautiful thing that you're not teaching come from the time of being very experimental about things.
Kasia: It also points to something came to my mind infancy. I feel like humanity's It was really funny place where I remember the years, decade ago, so it was horrible tsunami in Sri Lanka, or somewhere. And I just remember, even this typical and tsunamis and natural disasters, but I remember being really struck by how all the animals need to leave. And I started feeling like humanity is in this really funny place where we've been dancing what loss. And so it sounds very abstract, but I had two moments where I felt like I knew what I wanted to do. One was when I read the science fiction book Dune. There was a secret society of intergalactic. I want to help me recover the arts, being an animal connected to earth that word intuition, and the, what is the ingredients in getting closer to that place where you can be led and trust your intuition, even when it's impractical and illogical or obnoxious and outrageous, one of the essential elements has to do the proving of everything that arises within you. You cannot be selective. If it's in you, it's, you've got to decide is a human being. Fundamentally bad and therefore needs socialization. In order to not cause habit. Are we all fundamentally good, and when something bad seeming comes up in us. It just needs tending to in the right way. Are we fundamentally good in a world that loves us, or are we fundamentally bad in a world in nature that's against us. And if you really take a look at most spiritual traditions, most, you know, the whole basis of philosophy. It kind of implies that our bodies are bad people, and that we have to work really hard to overcome the sin of being here that we are wrong. And then we need to do a lot of work to make up for it definitely can't be our true selves, ever, because that's dangerous. See, that way appears to you, you suppress anger in human beings right it's not nice to be angry. Does violence in the world and no, it gets more hidden in social interactions, but then gets outsourced via the very nice huge way. Same with sexuality repressed sexuality pornography and unhealthy destructive forms of sexuality. So, it appears that this idea that we're fundamentally wrong, and that we need to fix and change everything before we are safe for the world, because we will break the world, does not work does not work is also one of the reasons that we spend so much time in the academy talking about self attack and how to be playful about the moments where we find ourselves attacking ourselves and how to choose self celebration instead. Even if you make a mistake, you're like, nobody is gonna make that mistake that way, I didn't love my side.
Heidi: How do you feel healthy and happy I mean, I guess one of main secrets is what you just read in terms of really loving yourself or honoring everything that comes up, but do you have traits or is there a morning routine that you do every day or sort of a special diet that you follow?
Kasia: I have a suspicion that perhaps, making a guess, that you like me, are a hybrid of being an intuitive eater, and an information seeker. So that I will never let a new theory about what's good for me, dominate my understanding of myself, but I'll try things and see how they feel. And I think that when it comes to being an intuitive eater, an intuitive liver, an intuitive and intuitive speaker, everything in the world that currently exists a pattern formula, a recipe. A program is just a suggestion for you to body check with your internal compass. So you play with it for a moment. See how it feels. Essentially, it would be really really great human beings can move from the stage of infancy to a stage of I mean we really don't know how to do the basic things most of us don't know how to eat, walk, have sex, have conversations. And here we're talking about flying to Mars when we really really haven't really gotten a handle on conversation, who mutually exclusive reality. How do you bridge the gap to paradox, a paradox. That's a sign of spiritual maturity to be able to do them. Most can't do either this or that, causing conflict, right. So, I would say, also, the body, the body is very very very important to the body also tells you very quickly. What makes you feel expensive, and what makes you feel like interacting, sometimes as soon as the answer. Somehow, sometimes not getting sleep for a few nights because you're partying, or excited or having a ball is going to be better for your for your physical health. With joy, you know, will do more for you than being incredibly, incredibly strict and make sure not to get any allergens that your blood tested for it, get different ways of sleeping, I mean I'm obsessed with my aura ring right now which tracks my, I could go on and on and on, because I think self care is clean you mentioned earlier, I wanted to laugh self care, bubble baths, and pedicures, the face mats, you know, it's, it is actually important because you're telling your body yeah body's getting a message you matter. Right. Let’s not stop there. And I think, I think one of the things about my experience as a dominatrix is a willingness to put people to work serving me and understanding that some of them will enjoy it very very well.
Heidi: That's a very important skill to have. And the vision that we've made up for ourselves. We have to have it all we want to have it all and ideally we do it all by ourselves. I mean, it's such an unrealistic expectation.
Kasia: It’s the john wayne myth, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The self made man. We have these terms the self made man is a lie, self made man does not exist. He has a wife. He has the boy’s club, he has tons of invisible support and gets to go up at the end of the day we believe in the myth of the on tour the filmmaker, does all by him back it's not true. It takes not dozens but hundreds if not thousands, of support structures. People effort energy attention encouragement, analysis, boy. And here we are women. You know, our chance to be independent and victorious, and again in order to do it all in order to have it all we're doing it all.
Kasia: Experienced female administration in China has that influence your relationship to food or the way you nourish yourself so everything that we've been talking about now. How much of that is influenced by your by your spiritual experience?
Heidi: Well, there were two big blessings that I got from that education. One is that some of the deeper meditations, teach you how to become aware of your organs and organ function. So you can tap into your body and check up on your own heart check up on your liver check up on your intestines and to be able to extend your awareness to such a subtle level where you can feel and sense what's going on inside the huge gift because it becomes much more easy to trust a bizarre craving of walnuts all of sudden. It’s like, oh that makes sense. The other thing doesn't have anything to do with eating anymore or living at all. It has to do with the school which is the ability to pay attention on a micro level to what another human being is doing or it's happening to them, whether it's in medical, you know, Chinese medical analysis, or in martial arts being able to anticipate when they're going to like throw a punch made it so that my level of attention, and what I was picking up from the students in front of me so much information I wouldn't have seen if I didn't have that training which made it much easier to recognize certain patterns energetic and behavioral that were holding women back that were in common. And I'm so so so grateful to the years I spent studying that even though I did not become a nun, fours days from being ordained, did not become a nun, and ended up having an entirely different application. And, one of which is understanding, being able to like, feel, and trust what it is that I needed in that moment.
Heidi: You mentioned before that you desparately wanted a calling and it seems that you are very much on purpose, on mission now with the work that you do. What’s next, or what’s the next big wish that you have? Or is everyday special and everyday is a gift?
Kasia: I never expected this. The thing that lights me up, the most is when I'm in a classroom, and I see a woman shed 20 years of superstitious belief and go for what she wants. And there is nothing, no rush, no elation, that could possibly compare to that feeling of, oh this prison door is unlocked, I can just open it and walk out. And so, you know now is a very exciting time in my career that I didn't even expect to be a career where I have a book coming out in August and then the students are starting to form their own groups, there's starting to form these little pods all over the globe. So there's this global network of this army of love, that's starting to spread. And it's so exciting to see how they take these practices and make them their own and move and stay connected to this big web and it's one of my most you know, exciting visions, fantasies for the futures. This is this continues to spread. And that we all as, as women, rise up this way.
Heidi: It’s called Unbound, A Woman's Guide to Power. Is there something you can already share with us?
Kasia: This book is the heart of the Academy curriculum. We have the crazy, radical idea that instead of just putting out a book. Anyone who orders the book before August 10th, can have a free seat in a class on breaking good girl conditioning.
Heidi: Wow!
Kasia: So that they automatically don’t just have the book, they have me, they have the community, they have the opportunity to form their own group. They can, if they buy two or three books, right, have three seats in the class. They can start a group with their friends, and be in the class, get guided through it, ask me questions, see how this stuff works, see how it works in community, see how other women go through this process. Hear their victories, hear where they get stuck, because the community aspect is the most important, and I didn't know how to go about this community aspect around a book which is just words written on a page. So, if you’re listening right now, and you’re interested in a free seat in a class, a Bad Girl Intensive, pre-ordering the book will get you a seat in what would otherwise be a quite expensive class. We're planning online but live online so it's not an online that you buy and do yourself. It’s looking at eachother and me on Zoom and going through the material together.
Heidi: If you have one message you could share with all the women in the world, what would you say to them?
Kasia: I would aske them to consider the following phrase: You have no say in what you want. You don’t invent a desire, you don’t invent a need. You don't invent something you want. Something you want, what you want, desire arises within you. You have no say in what you want. You do have a saying whether you acknowledge it, whether you tap into it, what you do with it. You have total agency there, you can suppress it ignore it, pretend you don't even know about it, where you don't even know what's kicking inside of you. But that’s usually your desire wanting to get your attention, and you have no say in it. So, that is absolute permission to accept it fully. You didn't make it like you didn't make your arm.
Heidi: Beautiful. Oh my God. That’s absolutely wonderful. Well, I'll certainly reflect on that. I love it because it's so non-judgemental. And it's so loving and accepting and nurturing and honoring of simply what is.
Kasia: That's right.
Heidi: Well, thank you so much. I guess we could talk for many more hours,
Kasia: I’m really, really, really happy to be on this show with you because I see you as one of the women who are really doing it. During the thing that we need. Becoming an example to follow and asking the right questions of yourself, not just of me. Not all the right interview questions, of the world. Like does it really have to be this way? What does it really mean to be good? What does it mean to be a woman? What would the world look like if it was led by women? Important questions. You know the expression, ‘lose your mind and come to your senses’? I've been thinking about this a lot, because it seems like humanity, collectively, iskind of going insane. And it is my hope that we're doing so in order to, once we cannot believe any information anymore, right, that we come to our senses. And it is it is the role of the embodied woman to know the way how one comes to one's senses. And I believe that that's the work we're doing here. Thank you so much, Heidi.
Heidi: Thank you.
See It To Be It: Stopping The “Good Girl” Conditioning
“You are telling somebody who they are in your life by what you ask of them.”
“This is the incredibly bittersweet victory of the independent woman because she goes after what she wants, but she does it all by herself.”
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts
See It To Be It: Stopping The “Good Girl” Conditioning
Read the Transcript:
Melinda: Hi everyone, its Melinda Garvey with the CFPB at podcast. This week we have another great interview with an incredible role model. Stay tuned.
Melinda: Hello everyone, welcome to the see it to be a podcast. I'm your host Melinda Garvey, and as always we bring you incredible relatable role models every single week on our podcast and this week is no different. We have a wonderful woman doing really really incredible things in the women's empowerment space and everyone knows those are my favorite. Her name is Kasia Urbaniak, and she is the founder of The Academy, and it's all about women's empowerment, as I mentioned, so we're going to hear from her today so welcome. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Kasia: Thank you for having me.
Melinda: Absolutely. The first thing I'd like to do is just go way back. What was your big dream when you were growing up, what do you think you were going to be and how did you get on your path.
Kasia: Well, my parents are jazz musicians, and they came from Poland, at a time when it was very very difficult to get out of Poland, and they made a huge success, around the world. They were very unrealistic. And one of the things that they gave me is that sense of being unrealistic. So, the answer is I was very very very obsessed with the dune books, when I was quite young, and the dune books have a Secret Society of Women called the Bene Gesserit and the women who lead Bene Gesserit, called Reverend mothers, so what I wanted to do is found the real life. Secret Society been a desert on this earth, and be a Reverend Mother.
Melinda: All right, well, how'd that work out for you you built your own version of that right. That's right, yeah well so tell us your story and how are you finally made it to building your own secret society as it were.
Kasia: My not so secret secret.
Melinda: Not so secret anymore, right.
Kasia: So, in my unrealistic pursuit of something I read in a fictional book, I wanted to find the training that was available in the world that was closest to what I was seeing as these fiction superpowers so I went on a path to studying with some of the greatest spiritual masters and the ones that I was most drawn to were the Taoist ones because they seem to be able to do absolutely magical and remarkable things and in order to be able to pay for this. I worked as a dominatrix, and the incredible thing that happened, that was very unexpected. Was that what I was learning in the monasteries and convents, I ended up applying in the dungeon, and it was not intentional. It was that I was learning to read the body I was learning to diagnose organs I was learning to pick up the subtlest cues before somebody threw a punch for example in the martial training. So when I was working as a dominatrix and I had these submissives, I would start using the skills that I had been learning, and without even being conscious of it. This was all about knowing how to have power in a body based total energetic spiritual psychological way with another human being, to be able to influence them to be able to move them. And I ended up becoming obsessed with mastering this unique form of domination, that I was doing that was much more psychological and emotional than what I saw happening around me and it really influenced how I saw human beings and how I saw relations between men and women, whether they're professional or romantic.
Kasia: Then I met my business partner who worked for Doctors Without Borders and was in high conflict zones for a decade dodging bullets and vaccinating babies and as you know, our stories histories my story when we met we just couldn't stop talking and then we hit this point where we realized that there were so many moments where he had to institute like border checkpoints and situations where nobody speaks the same language but there are 14 year olds where they give 40 sevens and he has to get permission to build a field hospital there, he can't communicate, how does one communicate authority and power, and I started talking about my experiences in the dungeon using the Taoist practices that I've learned how do you communicate authority power status, how do you influence somebody when language isn't enough when there's a lot at stake, and through our conversations, it became really really apparent that these patterns, we saw we started exploring and experimenting with just the women that we knew around us inviting them to our living room and starting say hey try this try this try this what's, you know, getting couples in there and starting to talk about these invisible behavior and thought patterns that were really determining whether a woman would be able to actually land the message of what she wants and achieve what she wants to achieve. And that started becoming the basis of the curriculum of the school and then for, you know, a good six seven years, it was the women who came, who started asking for workshops, and so we sort of reluctantly in the beginning, started teaching, and the school itself became a laboratory to test and experiment what works, what doesn't work, what holds a woman back that's not talked about that's not external right and that's not just outside sexism, whereas the conditioning of a woman. These millennia, think about 2 million years or more millennia, where basically the highest achievement, a woman could make the only place where she could channel her ambition is to marry well, and the set of behaviors that are required the set of conditioning that's required in order to become a great candidate to be a good wife, and it's essentially all good girl conditioning is being accommodating not asking for too much being low maintenance being resourceful be responding to others in a timely fashion being responsive rather than proactive, all of these things, you know not asking all of these things that, you know, end up showing up in today's world.
Kasia: I was just talking about this incredible thing that happened a few years back when the tech jobs website. The creators of it started realizing how different the request of salary was in the same position between men and women. So they decided to publish a graph displaying what the average, ask was for a particular position, and they thought that once that information got out there women would start asking for more the opposite happened, women started asking for even less and men started asking for even more. And when I saw that I was like Yep, I'm on the right path. This is the right thing because if we don't handle the conditioning that we're carrying you talk about the patriarchy. It's not just men. It's how we all teach each other tell mothers teach their daughters, out of love right no ill intentions, you know how to watch yourself.
Kasia: So the school was born as this beautiful laboratory of sometimes incredibly outrageous ridiculous insane experiments and overtime was, you know, honed into a fine tuned curriculum.
Melinda: And when women come to the Academy, you know, and just sort of, you know, focusing particularly on the workplace, you what are some of the biggest challenges they are facing and, what are they hoping to overcome?
Kasia: Very often, they come in with one question, and their one question ends up not being the full story. So what I see them coming up against. They're not asking for the resources they need in order to get the project's done when they do the request doesn't come out right they don't get what they need. They feel disrespected diminished harassed, talked over, it's all the stuff we hear about, you know, he's beating a man taking the credit for the idea, but instead of stopping there that's sort of the beginning point. So I talked about good girl conditioning, the good girl has a big sister, an offshoot. They're the women who are like, I am not a good girl. I will go after what I want. I will go after what I want no matter what it takes, I'm going to have it all. And this is the incredibly bittersweet victory of the independent woman because she goes after what she wants, but she does it all by herself. And she's exhausted and she's pissed off may not be saying it but she's exhausted. She has her shit together but she's exhausted and she's pissed off, she's working on herself, and she's working on it she's working way harder than anybody else, you know, in order to have it all she's doing it all. An independent unit that can run the entire planet all by herself frayed at the edges, none of her tender desires needs met, everybody around her is trained to know that she has their stuff together, so they never think to inquire if she needs anything. She's not worship she's not handled securely. There's no balance to it and she does it all she can be counted on for everything, you know, in case of emergency. Ask Sarah, you know, or whoever the independent woman may be. And so when we start talking about you know how to have a bold conversation that's captivating and compelling, with your boss about a raise or promotion or getting credit, that's incredibly important. We have skills, we have tools and we build skills for that, but also making sure that she's well sourced, making sure that she has everything she needs on every level, so that she can come out shining strong full and radiant. That involves her Mastering the Art of asking everyone in her life for what she needs and women are generally terrified of asking, especially the more tender ones. So there's this myth. I'm calling it a straight up myth, the myth that men go it alone. The John Wayne pull yourself up by your own bootstraps lie. It's a lie. It's a lie.
Melinda: How would they have the old boys network if that was the truth?
Kasia: Yeah, don't forget all the invisible labor that wives do. It's the old boys network it's men get a ton of support in those particular positions and women, we have to create them for ourselves.
Melinda: Well, and do you think okay so let's let's talk about that woman. I will say that I hear about it less now, but you know we all have heard about the queen bee syndrome you know the woman who is not really willing to help others come along and that was you know sort of a buzz for a long time about was holding women back and not coming together and do you think that some of it comes from the fact that they didn't have any help getting where they went and you talk about them being, you know angry and frustrated and what do you think that comes from.
Kasia: I think you're exactly right. I think that there is a degree of I mean you know this is a case by case basis thing every woman is different. Every 5-10 years, you know, microgeneration you see how women made it what they had to put up with what they had to do the things they had to sacrifice the impossible decisions they had to make, there's an incredible amount of aloneness there. And that does not lead a woman who had to fight so hard to get where she is, who's already under sourced and exhausted who's still fighting that kind of internal starvation does not breed generosity, not to other women and not to other men just does not breed generosity.
Kasia: When someone is full, when someone is full of everything that they need and spilling over without radiance generosity is a natural effect it's almost like releasing some of the extra energy, or that some of the extra goodness because you can't contain it all to yourself
Melinda: Right well I think that, of course, you know, now I do think things are changing and I think women are starting to see, there's certainly research out now that proves that when women band together when they support each other that they get farther a lot faster. Of course I've known this for a long time and I'm always talking to women about finding their tribe about building that community of other women to help them and supporting each other and the mindset of abundance that has to go with that because you can't say well, gosh, if I help her, she might get it and I won't. You know I do think that hopefully that mentality is changing, you know, as we see more and more women coming together.
Kasia: Things are changing quite quickly.
Melinda: Yes, indeed. Let's talk about you know what kind of conditioning, did you feel like you had to break to get into the position you talked about studying and what you had to do but, where were you and what kinds of things did you have to work on personally to be able to overcome what was holding you back?
Kasia: I like to joke with my students that joke not a joke that I teach what I need to keep hearing, and if I could believe that there was a time in my life where I had trouble, feeling good about asking a waiter in a restaurant for water like locating my desires asking for what I need, asking for what I want in a way that feels good to me and the other person just seemed like an impossible struggle. So I was definitely on a isolated path trying to create myself by myself in any way I knew how, and it took me a long time to realize the gift I give when I allow someone to serve me, men and women.
Melinda: That's an interesting way of putting it. You know I think just changing that perspective, you know the gift that you're giving you let someone else serve you asking for help, you know, we often talk about that you don't realize when you ask somebody for help how good it makes them feel to be able to give back and to help you.
Kasia: Oh it's beyond help and it's beyond how they get a chance to be generous. Anytime you ask someone invite them command them invite them involve them include them ask, ask for something you're giving them a role. Now, a lot of times what happens I see in marriages between men and women. What happens is, with a woman gets strong, and she does not ask enough of her husband, and when she doesn't ask enough of her husband she's giving him the role of a worm or a leech or a parasite or a couch potato. She does not ask enough of him. You are telling somebody who they are in your life by what you ask of them.
Kasia: I had this great experience with a substitute teacher who would skinny weak looking guy who would come into a class, students on, you know, substitute teacher day would eat them alive, and he had a really smart strategy, you would identify the “bad kid” in the room first thing he could give them the most important job, you would tell him you are the most important person to make him take attendance, and go to the principal's office, and there would be peace in the kingdom for the entire session, it works every single time because you're telling them who you think they are and what they're capable of.
Kasia: So some of my students do something outrageous example, one of my students decided that she wanted to live in a castle, she happened to have a very wealthy, uncle who she was estranged with, who she could ask. Instead she asked her, painter boyfriend who had no money and no ability to buy her a damn castle. She prepared with the academy tools and the school and propose this compelling vision. Initially, she was complaining that every time she went over to his place he wouldn't even like take the dirty clothes off the bed, the behavior change that happened because she presented and asked that was so big so impossible for him to fulfill, explain how she saw this being possible changed his idea of himself in relation to her. So of course you can't buy her a castle, her uncle can she could have worked on that relationship and got herself a castle instead she got herself a love affair of a lifetime. Now, two years later, they're growing together, his career is growing, her career is growing, and it's based on a vision of a possibility that seems so out of reach and obnoxious to ask for. That obnoxious outrageous requests, move them into a whole new place.
Melinda: Fascinating. Well, tell everybody where they can find out more about the academy and if they want to check out what you're doing.
Kasia: Our website is weteachpower.com, is the easiest place to find us. I have a book coming out, August, 11, and a TED talk that should be released soon so that'll be around.
Melinda: Awesome. Yes, and I'm sure they can follow you on social media and social channels, etc.
Kasia: Yeah
Melinda: as we're closing out, you know, we do a little speed round, so people get to know a little bit more about you personally. So what's your morning routine look like.
Kasia: I don't have one. One of the wonderful things about the tools of the school and what we do is we really really really try to get women, no matter how financially compromised or burdened they are with responsibilities to never do what they don't want to do, do what they love do what they're best at, and ask and create a community around them that is also doing the same thing, the things that they love the things that they're best at. My morning routine changes. Right now I'm in Hawaii and I wake up between four and five. And that's been for the last week, but no routine is my routine because one of the practices is to feel your inner barometer and follow your intuition and follow what's right for you. What needs need to be met inside and outside, and that means that no two days are alike.
Melinda: What are you currently reading or listening to?
Kasia: I have an Amazon book buying habit that has me buying maybe 40 books at a time, but I never read them, I read a few pages, and skim through them to see what's interesting, I argue with some of them, and some of them may make me angry. And then I put them aside and buy 40 more.
Melinda: Maybe you need to go to Kindle unlimited.
Kasia: I have that but I have also really liked like having a library and I never allow myself to succumb to the obligation to be a reader, read a lot and finish books, they take what I need.
Melinda: Last question, what's one thing you can't live without?
Kasia: Pen and paper. I would lose my mind if I couldn't write things down. The handwritten part.
Melinda: Is very therapeutic for you.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah. Well whatever noticing whatever feeling, you know I set aside, two to three hours a day just to have feelings. Sometimes things come up that need to be noted.
Melinda: In two to three hours I would hope so. Right. That's great. Well thank you so much really appreciate your time and your sharing, and I'm sure everybody will be interested in checking out the academy and everything that you have to teach. Yeah, good luck on your upcoming book, we will be watching to see what you do next.
Kasia: Thank you.
Wait...WTF is a good girl double bind and how do I break free?
“You have no say in what you want. The desire isn’t created. You don’t make it up. It’s blameless, shameless, innocent, childlike, and authentically you. What you want is not negotiable. It doesn’t mean that everybody has to comply, it just means that you have to accept it. ”
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts
Wait…WTF Podcast with Julia Wells
Read the transcript:
Julia: Hi guys, all welcome to a super juicy, episode of the podcast I have a guest here that you guys are going to fall in love with be obsessed with maybe be triggered. On this episode you heard a little about her. Her name is Kasia Urbaniak and she makes you remember this in one of her courses. We've been practicing your name so did I nail it?
Kasia: Nailed it!
Julia: We are going to dive into all things good girl conditioning and maybe even a little bad girl and talk about what that looks like. This is conscious work I mean along with so many other things she has a book coming out about it that you guys will obviously be buying at the end of this month. So we'll make sure you have all the links. but will you tell us a little bit about like how you even started to get into the good girl world and doing this work?
Kasia: Well when the school started, it really was based on a commitment to a phenomenological approach. Okay, big word. Simply. What I mean by that is approaching the school, the classroom as a pure laboratory, forgetting everything we know, forgetting everything people say, forgetting everything doing our absolute best to only, only work with what is there, what shows up. So a woman comes to class. She declares that you know she wants something. She really really really really wants. Usually she first declares what she doesn't want. So she's like letting the bitching and complaining happen because it's fruitful and useful and great, you know, rage despair disappointment. Okay, if you want all these things to get stopped Where do you want to have start get to this wonderful place where the room is starting to fill, fill, fill, fill with the things that are wanted. And then we go about discussing how do we create these things in our lives. Because anything really worth creating anything it's an illusion that things are created alone. It really really is, it’s a terrible parable and a myth, the self made man does not exist. He has a wife and the boys club John Wayne myth you literally cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. It's the world's worst yoga pose expression comes from Baron Munchausen where he tried to pull himself out of a swamp by his own pigtail it's not real, it's not real and that Miss really really screws with us. So something wanted beautiful vision, many, many, many visions, what's the next step, inviting others including others, asking. So just watching what happened when. Very often, this was an ask of a man. Women ask each other for things differently than when we have to cross the gender divide. So, this woman would be like ready she'd be she'd feel like good about it, she'd have all these visions excited superpowers, and she'd sit in a room in front of the class in a chair in front of a volunteer guy. It's not the person just role playing, and all of the sudden this badass that we knew in the classroom. Then contortions into strange words strange mitigations apologies language. This compression. And it's so painful to watch. So the investigation began. What is this? And as we investigated it was this thing of appearing to be too much and too little. At the same time, not wanting to be bossy, not wanting to be me, this double bind that many have pointed out, this double bottom that sort of is the is a major feature of the current woman's girl's upbringing, like your kids are too small until they're too big or too aggressive You're too passive you're oftentimes a slut or a prude or both at the same time, it's a no win situation.
Julia: Yep.
Kasia: And, you know, when it comes to because of my previous experience as a dominatrix it became really easy for me to just tag these two different states of being too much into battle as dominant and submissive I tried, from my experience of that was not to call them human young I tried to lead it it was like, you know, reading a menu to a bunch of secrets was like life. So we started talking about, like, a few exaggerated being super dominant. And like bossy, and demanding, and then you really really exaggerated being like, inside your own experience submissive fueling everything in the context of this really some magic would happen. We started investigating what that magic was breaking of that compression that too much too little bind. And all of a sudden came flooding out in the breaking of the conditioning and awareness of the condition. And in that in that awareness suddenly it started to make so much sense. For millennia. A woman ambitious woman woman wanted something of her life wanted something wanted to experience things. Her best chance and this is still true in parts of the world. Her best chance of getting anywhere, anywhere near that her ambition her dreams is to marry well. But what makes a good wife, what makes a good candidate for a wife, someone who's not a burden, but an asset, low maintenance, no human being as low maintenance. We're all high maintenance is resourceful makes do with what she has is modest does not tout her accomplishments, definitely does not have any of her own sexual desire, that's just something that's you know Sleeping Beauty I'm in a coma.
Julia: Until you kiss me and then I wake up perfectly for you.
Kasia: Sexual desire comes from the outside and only sanctioned by the right Prince, right. So, a lot of the good girl qualities are also really phenomenal harmonizing CFO. Being nurturing de escalating conflict, be even being resourceful making do with what you have. these are phenomenal qualities. Yeah. Good luck conditioning is not a problem. The problem is that it's conditioned and invisible to us in 10,000 ways.
Kasia: So, when when a woman apologizes too much and notices that she attacks her software. When a woman doesn't speak up, but instead phrases. She beat herself up for it. When a woman asks for only half of what she actually needs to get a job done. And then makes do with what she has she kicks herself for, not realizing that this landscape of general conditioning is so damn universal that it's possible to create exercises in a school that help everybody who shows up, you know, that universality kind of proves that it's not your personal psychological problem, he handled in journals and in therapy sessions therapy is great but that's not what we're doing here. What we're doing here is the fastest, good girl jailbreak we can possibly imagine.
Kasia: So, what so what what happens right, it requires observing your attention and acquires elevating your own ability to perceive certain things. So, there's nothing wrong with doing all these good things. What's infuriating is when the good girl autoresponder kicks in, says yes rushes to the crisis helps her help hasn't been asked for apologizes shrinks is everywhere all at once. Before we even catch ourselves.
Kasia: One of the most dramatic things I started noticing in classes that, you know, especially before the pandemic even for some people still now. Everyone's so busy, busy, busy and the women are so busy, and so I wanted to find out what basis. Of course, job kids home, we know when we're dating whatever whatever like okay yeah but let's go minute by minute. Where does your intellectual emotional and physical energy go. So we started doing this thing called the invisible labor inventory and some women at the end of one single day were absolutely floored they knew they were doing a lot of uncredited unacknowledged unappreciated undercover help work, but some of them, when going minute by minute 10 minute by 10 minute blocks, they really logged it could do the math and come to a percentage as high as 80%. I mean, 80%.
Julia: Unacknowledged, unaware labor.
Kasia: Right, including like figuring someone out trying to make guesses about how to. And where does that leave time for a passion project where does that leave time for self care, where does that leave time for forging powerful relationships, where does that even leave time for doing late Academy homework. Early. Yeah and then like taking metaphysical labor go like, now I'm no longer in goodwill conditioning because I see it, and some of the things you automatically stopped doing some of the things you delegate away some of the things you do but with your whole heart and free will and choice. And don't even care that you're not getting credit for it, some of them you make visible and take credit for it, some of it you ask for payment because the idea or some kind of reward because the idea, this is this is the other thing that's funny that I that I learned, phenomenologically, in the classroom is when we started teaching, a lot of asking. It's so many women will do something. Using the principle of reciprocity as a substitute for asking. And it never works.
Julia: And then you’re just pissed.
Kasia: Yeah, no it doesn't work because when you do something for someone you're in the role of Dewar and they're in the role of receiver and a flip is required it's they're not going to nobody flips on their own, they're like, oh, that this is the person who I can count on for this. So, good girl conditioning, big topic, big, big. The main thing that in this time in the world that I feel really really passionate about around breaking women out of good girl conditioning so they can choose what kind of good, what kind of bad. What kind of wild. What kind of loving, they want to be or need to be or is right for them. Right now, in the world. If you look at all of the qualities that describe a good girl. She is absolutely 100% designed to maintain the status quo. She keeps things running smoothly, as they are. And in my book there's this opening to that section that goes named one good girl who change the world. You can't, because she can't. It's not what she's designed for. She doesn't ruffle feathers, she doesn't make that change. And, you know, even Mother Teresa was a bad girl, she questioned her faith, she came from a wealthy family she did something really controversial, and she was always questioning. She broke a lot of rules that she was raised with and then inside of her own religion.
Kasia: So, in the in this moment in allowing for women to consciously show up as something other than the conditioning has default to is the story now my life purpose.
Julia: The key, the reason why she's here. So, what I love and just like I feel like brains are exploding right now because it's all so good, they're like oh my god someone sees me and just named all of the things that is the world of being a woman and girl and opening. But what I love is like it all comes back to awareness and this is what every exercise. I find in your Academy and when I watch you like speak and bring things it's like the first step always has to be awareness. Always.
Kasia: Yeah.
Julia: And so then you play with it and you're like, what I love about what you do is that it's so like what you said it's practical application in the moment, because nothing changed when we're all like listening to the podcast so what's something like what if we can break it down right now for somebody. Is there a way that we can give them that experience to see like to feel that smush that you call of like, and we kind of went there like you were talking with around like too much, not enough, but you have an example of someone like right now in pandemic time of like what the free how the freeze is happening with, like, you need to be busy, but not too busy right now, or you need to go out but also stay home and how it's paralyzing us from really doing what we could be doing with this time and with this energy.
Kasia: Okay so that feels like five different questions.
Julia: Probably.
Kasia: Help me out and pick one to start with.
Julia: Okay, so what's your favorite example right now, of how this smush is holding women back from being an agent of change in the pandemic?
Kasia: The one that's sticking in my mind is actually not from the pandemic. And it's, it's first in line so I can't see who else is in line. But this has to do with an asset class. Actually it was a money class, it was our power with money class. And there was a student who wanted her ex husband to pay his half of her kids doctor's bills. And the kid needed extra medical help. And it turned out to be like a few thousand dollars. And it didn't feel right. It didn't feel quite right, because it felt like, even if she did, she would still be really angry with felt really incomplete. Right. So, this speaks to good girl conditioning but this also speaks to expectations we have others and patterns that we fall into facets we see of each other, and how to create radical change really quickly in another person because people say you can't change someone else and that's absolutely not true, because there are many many faceted diamonds and we get stuck facing the same facet and miraculous appearing change happens when you can spend that diamond and really two different facets members and so that's what happened in the sense. She started with, you know, half of the doctor's bills and I was like, okay, something's up here. So, it turns out that last year you pay half the doctor's bills either. So I was like okay so now you're talking about twice the amount of money. So that's it, that's the thing that was missing. That's the thing that was missing. Yeah, but still something. Still something was up. I had to ask her if you forgot everything you knew about this man, and you wanted him to show up as amazing and you were willing to move through that rage of how he's not amazing forget it just for now and come up with an ask that would just make him show up as amazing. What would the ask be? Buy me a house. House me and your children. Boom.
Julia: Now we’re talking.
Kasia: The lights went on in the room. And it felt good to her such, a bad girl ask, “buy me a house”. She did. He went from being the worm who wasn't paying half the doctor's bills to the hero who could provide for his ex-wife and his children. Within two weeks, and she not only said, “I want a house,” but, “I want you to do all the work and finding it”.
Kasia: And she said with tears in her eyes, “I suddenly saw the man I married 20 years ago. And the vision I had on that wedding day for what I'd like to be like together.” So bad girl ask not so bad.
Julia: Yeah, so like I think everyone listening, probably has some variation where it's like you can see where you're asking for a crumb or part of what you want, you're like no way and how can I ever for what I really really want. And I think what really stood out in what you just shared is like that you have to push her I would assume it's not our comfort and our normal things like, I'm going to see him as amazing and I'm going to forget everything I know and all evidence of how this show.
Kasia: Yes, I mean, the funny thing is, it takes some work to, to imagine these things. But the ask that is in correspondence with 100% of what we actually really really want and then takes it takes some time to get to what you really really really want. We live in such a fast society where you're just supposed to know, you know you like, if somebody asked you what do you want to buy them know you look like an idiot like you're supposed to have goals, you're supposed to know like your action plan like what you want. And really it's a really tender conversation between yourself and yourself to like get to that place it takes it takes no matter what size it is when you're speaking from that place of 100%, of what I want. The chances of getting a yes are so much higher and this is the surprising thing to students but the chances of getting a yes are so much higher. And if you get a no. And we teach how to, how to work with a no. If you get a no, the entirety of the requests is known. You are fully grounded in what it is that you want. Even if you get a no it changes again. It really really does. It also signals to the other person who you see them as being capable of being or becoming. Because it's not a favor to ask. Very little especially of our partners we ask very little, we are giving them the role of a worm, or lazy.
Julia: We set them up to fail.
Kasia: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is when you ask for that, you know, we. Another good girl things you negotiate against yourself before you even get, you know, you have no say in what you want you don't invent your desires, you don't create them, they come up on their own. You have no say in it so if you have no say in what you want, and then you're you're you're you're dealing with that. If you start negotiating internal against yourself and ask for less. You're not only not doing anyone a favor. You're doing a person who listens to you and goes through the trouble of actually doing it, a huge disservice. Because when they deliver that 99% when they deliver that 40% that you ask, or whatever it is. What they don't get to see, they don't get to see you light up. And you can go, “Oh my god. Thank you, you’re amazing.” All you fucking want. On an animal level human beings know when they hit the spot and when they haven't happened over time, is if a person is doing a 99% favor or 40% favor and not getting that I hit the spot part, they start feeling useless like a failure and they don't like trying anymore. And that's somehow, sometimes when we get locked into relationships where the other person's always unknown, because they have a lot of experience with going through the trouble of doing it, and then not doing the thing.
Julia: Because you set them up for a small percentage of your desire instead of being someone that knows how to ask for the whole fucking thing.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah and and here here, like, you know, in the academy headquarters we have this giant sign that says can you use this against yourself. We run all the exercises through it, it's almost impossible to come up with something that a woman can’t use against herself. all of you out there right now going I've ruined everything cause I never ask for 100% and I don't even know what I want.
Julia: She just read your mind, and now we're going to talk about.
Kasia: Oh well yeah that's that's the other thing, you know, one of the things that solidifies with both conditions hardcore into our systems is not like you could talk about the patriarchy was not necessarily men.
Julia: Mm hmm.
Kasia: You know from out of love, out of love, our mothers our ancestors is taught us to police ourselves by policing this out of love. And now we still live in a time where most places if you wear a skirt that's too short, you get raped. It's your fault, and women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you gonna be stoned to that I mean, we're looking I mean, so of course the instruction. I love my daughter, you know, the instruction is watch yourself. Watch yourself. Watch yourself police yourself. And this habit of some tag is much stronger in women than it isn't men. I've seen it over and over men attack themselves, but like, how many men are worried about being too much. They're usually worried about being not enough. Women are worried about being too much, and not enough at the same time and the self policing that comes the self policing like I was that stupid did I do this, did I do that, that self attack. We have this illusion that, you know, the carrot and the stick, that the carrot on the stick is the way to create change. It's the carrot that works not the stick. When a woman beats herself up for doing something, she'll only do it more cuz that's what she's paying attention to. she can have 97% victory and 3% wobble. Only think about the wobble, and always be is the fucking 30%. I mean, woman. A woman gets an opportunity to make a speech, right, she spends time thinking about what she wants to say she memorizes what she wants to say the morning of she dresses she takes showers picks the outfit she gets her PowerPoint together, she shows up at the place she says delivering the speech. Everything is great she flubs one line she keeps going and she gets accolades she goes backstage and goes that one line!
Julia: It will haunt her for life.
Kasia: within the three months of awesomeness that preceded it right. And now, now I have to say another thing. The most frequent response to hearing about self attack is self attacking for self attacking, I was just gonna
Julia: People listening are like but I don't get it but I do get it but now I'm just beating myself.
Kasia: Yeah, So you know the wonderful thing about the mechanism the psychological mechanism that makes self attack possible. Is this incredible architecture of awareness, with every detail. And if you already have. Do this and this education the brain synapses you already have this architecture of noticing every single detail to pick the one that's off and feel terrible about it. You also have the architecture to pick 1000 different details to celebrate that how that weirdness exists so we can think we can take that self attack mechanism and use that same same habitual machinery for self celebration. And it actually ends up being a superpower, in a way that it does is kind of an edge over men who can have like a big boast the brag, that's kind of broad, but not 1000 rich nuanced ones.
Julia: Because women have that muscle and it's usually turned against ourselves but we can turn it into a good fitness superpower.
Kasia: Yeah.
Julia: So fucking good. So guys there's hope. If you're like, holy shit. This has been my whole life, one obviously, sign up for all of the programs and courses in The Academy, read the book do the things. But what's like, how do we start to like look at the bad girl side of thinga.
Kasia: It was very very controversial exercise, outside of a classroom, this requires extra responsibility. Okay. But since you asked, we have a really fun exercise called Bad Girl protocol. And it's really simple. But one must exercise, exquisite care in doing this exercise. So, basically,you write the sentence. If I were a bad girl. I would, and we say bad girl it's a little bit condescending you know Bad Girl, but it's because that bad girl, those two words, tend to have the right trigger.
Julia: Yeah as an activation.
Kasia: Bad girl. bad girl. If I were a bad girl, I would, and fill in the blank, and repeat over and over again, over and over again until you run out of steam. It's really fun to do in a group or with a friend, because it extends your imagination.
Julia: Yes.
Kasia: Do not do any of these things. I guess the bad girl playing Call it really vicious because the viciousness we express in towards ourselves as good girls ends up being viciousness that goes outward when we play with being a backroom. So, the really really important part is that the more free This exercise is, the more dark, evil, greedy, selfish, lazy, all of the things we would never want to be, never even think about doing violent terrible terrible terrible things in this huge archive, what ends up appearing is some things that may be ruthlessly loving, or actually not bad at all, or creative, because all of the things that anytime we have a motive to quiet silence suppress the sides of ourselves. It's not just the bad things that get hidden in that closet. And it's time to take those things out. Allow them to err see the light of day, and allow some of them to mature, allow some of them to evolve, anger, rage, the desire for revenge, often falls within it the greatest passion, love desire for something to change. Belief, clarity, direction, depressive sides, sadness, all leads to some of our most tender vulnerable desires. So, the bad girl in every class. The Bad Girl burgle there's things on it of course like I would go to my boss and pee on his desk, dig a little to get to the desire.
Julia: Again you guys don't do the things, just let yourself think the things.
Kasia: But other ones are like if I were a bad girl, I would wake up whatever time I wanted or I would get exercise every day.
Julia: I want my kids to get their own breakfast so that I can work out.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in that, you know, once all bets are off the prohibition is lifted. Some of the most beautiful creative things start to appear because our imagination is liberated. Scientific studies have shown that self attack is the number one killer of creativity. So if we're talking about our own behavior and we take all of that. Just go. Yes, we're going to be terrible. Let's do a religious free for all the imagination starts to wake up. And all of a sudden it's not a question anymore of is this good is this bad, it's more like is this alive, alive or dead. Is this alive in life in gendering, or is it both these are these rules dead have no meaning. This conformity and it becomes really organic and natural to start behaving like your own wild crazy genius brilliant life loving erotic fully self expressed self. When you witness that in the area that says do not enter, there are treasures to be mined.
Julia: Yeah. And one of the things I think that stood out in taking the class and doing that exercise with you now a few times. is like you kind of know that when you let people go into that, like swing into the dark side, it's only going to end up like allowing and opening up those floodgates for women to have more power, more money, more influence in the world and do really good shit. But you have to be that person that lets them go there so that they can swing both ways and I just like, I think it's so delicious and so many of us think we can just get to the good side and do more good in the world, if we just focus on that only and don't let ourselves look at the shadowy shit and you're like oh no you have to play in that playground, like throw some sand in somebody's eye. Smash their sandcastle. That's the only way you're getting to the other place and it's just such a cool exercise to watch. Yesterday someone on a dating app asked me and they were like if you could commit one crime, what would it be? And I totally went into the good girl listening to this. I'm like, Well, I would like Robin Hood it and I'd still like I skim a billion off all the top white men billionaires in the world and then redistribute it. And now I'm like, oh my God, what a good girl thing to say. And now I kinda want to go back and be like, so I was doing this exercise. Can I share with you my bad girl exercise? But seriously, that that permission is so huge so for anyone that's listening, you can totally do the exercise with caution. Writing down if I were a bad girl, I would, and then rip up your list. You don't have to act on any of it but see what new desires, it sounds like start to like be available to you because of that freedom
Kasia: and also you mentioned the swing, because just even voicing some, some of the dark things, and meeting it with approval. Right. Pleasure. When you do swing you do feel a whole lot more generous. A whole lot more loving. And also there's a, you know, I really detest how in language, we've identified these two terms selfless and selfish. And it's really hard for me to locate an action that doesn't it's not the action itself it's like the motive can have components of both, or it's not as the language around selfish and selfless is incredibly deceptive. Because if I have, especially if I'm working in a smaller group and I have a woman who is really really really really afraid of being selfish, and we're working over a period of time, I know your assignment is to be outrageously selfish and she does only selfish things like selfish selfish selfish. Oh what a terrible thing to be getting filled up right she starts getting really really really full of everything she needs everything she wants, and the tendency, and especially if she's supervised but the tendency when you get selfish enough suddenly your cup runs over. Yeah. Suddenly you're generous, you're not like feeling scarce and what and what you have to offer what spills over is of a really rich and abundant quality. Conversely, go into selflessness long enough and your needs start showing up you can't be endlessly selfless. Like that division to me doesn't really work like it. We are a whole organisms like whole organisms, we need the right amount of water.
Julia: Like literally need
Kasia: Literally need them. praise love support, encouragement sunlight air right in order to blossom and produce fruit that is intensely generous because it has 1000 seeds in it. It's a natural thing we see you know we have a scholarship for activists at the school and activists are really fun to work with because they're doing so much good in the world but oftentimes that selfish piece is so important for them, because if you have an activist, that is dry on the inside starving. And when they're screaming and fighting for their cause they might be some of them in advertently spreading the scarcity that they're trying to overcome. So, you know, it's the good girl little girl, this is selfish. This is selfless. And we much prefer the language around well this is alive like this feels alive to me this feels like the thing that makes my entire body feels expansive not contracting. And in that sense, being embodied and having a really good body barometer is something we all can tap into and it takes some practice and I know many are practicing this letting your body telling you things. What makes you feel alive. What makes you feel expansive, regardless of what you know. We were born into a world that already has an idea about what a successful career looks like what a success relationship looks like what a successful family looks like we make that up, we come in with that menu, you know, people's ideas, what's your unique idea of what a phenomenal. It might be so off the menu that it's as unique as you are.
Julia: Surprise, it probably is. So for everyone listening, it's like, I think this opens up such a permission slip for them to start thinking about gauging that like what's alive for me right now, instead of like, Do I want this Do I not want that, it's such a heady practice to think of it that way versus like, could you visualize like the worst case scenario and the best case and does that even bring you to life right now. Or do you need something else is there, like, what is that I don't know if this is such like an individual thing but I'm curious, it sounds like you can see when you're leading a class that like light up moment when somebody came alive. Is there like any commonalities or…I'm just thinking how we can stretch people listening to be like, oh shit yeah, I have some space to go on finding my aliveness again.
Kasia: Okay, well, what you're referring to in class is another thing that was, you know, in a phenomenological experiment kind of shocking to see. So I'll give you two examples and then something that someone listening can actually try to engage with. So, two different scenarios. The first one is the right sized ask, right, which is something we talked about earlier. It wasn't just me, that knew that the house was a big. Watching the bodies in the room. Once that spot was hit. Everyone's body shifted. Even the woman in the corner, who was checking out wasn't even fully aware what was going on, everyone shifted. Everyone shifted. Everyone knew. We used to do this really fun exercise that we had to take it out of the curriculum because it was too traumatizing. I would call on a student to, like, when I felt like I was starting to move out of my body, and he needed grounding I would pick a student and surprise them with the assignment of slapping the teacher. And so I'd have the student next to me be like, here’s your reward, you get to slap me, but I want you to think of a number between one and 10 of how hard you feel I need to be slapped, and I want everyone in the room to also think of a number between one and 10 that you know and we would calibrate we do a light one at one harder one slightly harder one to three right and they would see my body react, it would feel something every single time. Every single time. When the room was asked on a scale of one to 10. What was your guest before this happens. Everyone says, I knew the same exact number, or like one number off. Never, never, never wasn't like 286, it's like 777-778-7776 right. So, how do we all know that.
Julia: Mm hmm.
Kasia: And another another example is a woman doing a roleplay where she's confronting. She's confronting her boyfriend who molested her kid. And we have a very emotional exchange. And I asked her if she's ready to, like, really go all out and give it to them. We have a male volunteer who's ready for this ready to stand in the place, and just take it right, ready, and she gets up on stage and she begins. And so much happens to the beginning of so much happens in her. The but the energy and the attention that lands on him. When I asked the entire room This was a class of about 80. And I asked the entire room. When I asked her on a scale of one to 10. How much did your anger lend. She said, eight. The whole room said two. So, I give you these three examples in order to maybe reinforce or introduce the idea that there is a spot to hit, and that there is a part of your body that will respond when that sparks hit. There is a, an exercise, we use to reinforce a woman's feeling of legitimacy about what she wants. So, you have no say in what you want, but putting it into language, making it specific seeing if it's the right size giving it detail is a journey. And what's incredibly helpful is to use the legitimacy exercise that I'm about to describe sort of like as a chamber of desire creation. Not creation but let's say discovery refinement. So you start with something that you think you want and feel your body get really really into any sensations in the body. And imagine that you've got it imagine that it's a yes. Then, move into the emotional body How does it feel what emotions come up. And then finally, intellectually. What is this thing possible for you when doors open. And we do this cycle three times and as that journey occurs, you start practicing the art of communicating with your physical body, your emotional body your intellectual body, getting them all aligned with where you want, and as you go, each cycle. The desire takes on more detail. It takes on more richness. It takes on it gets more and more grounded in our physical being, so that when we go out into the world, our signal broadcasts that cleanly. Oftentimes, just knowing that, and doing that is enough for someone to feel like the animal self like, Oh, you know sometimes you want to hug, but you're in a state where all of you screaming. Stay the fuck away from me. But if you get right with receiving a hug and you're like yeah that would feel really good right now. You'd be surprised how many people suddenly just want to give you a hug.
Julia: And I think that's like, and tell me what you think is like it almost allows you to the words and how you ask for it matter so much less because it's already in your body, and you're available for it in such a different way that like you could totally have that like fucked up sentence or flub it or whatever. And people are like, I know what you want, I got.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we're talking about is full whole whole world of communication that's below the level of language, but it's not in the category of like, body language or power poses, it's really like. If the words you speak tell somebody else what to think that how you are about it tells them how to feel about it and if we ask for something we want we're bracing for an attack, some part of them gets the message that if I give this to her, I will be attacking her and it makes them sense but it makes the communication wobbly. We are as humanity I think in the infancy of our development, you know, there's just so much more for us to grow and learn and really see about each other see about the possibilities and the potential and the incredible opportunity that we have as human beings. We're in the beginning and I just don't we don't blow it all up before we get there, but we like you know wreck it before we leave kindergarten.
Julia: Wow, thank God for your sandbox, and your laboratory and the Academy, so people can come play and do all of these things. Because it takes a lot of practice and a lot of safe space, and I know you hold a lot too. so I just want to appreciate you for that let you know how important it is and everyone just like buy everything she offers. But the best way to do is to practice, and that's why I think it's so good like we can talk about it here all day long, but until someone feels those experiences that you've just described, where you light up or you're in a room and you notice that “phenomenon”, and it's like, oh, that's what the fuck she means. And that smush. And that freeze.
Kasia: So I don't normally talk about this but I just inspired me to share something about where, where we're headed and what's happening right now in terms of the Academy, and this is a little bit around the book but not exactly. The practice component in community, seeing other women do exercises and doing exercises in front of other women with other women is such a key ingredient in accessing that place where you're feeling and understanding and knowing from a body based level that I want to reach more women than I can physically teach. So, a lot of stuff has gone into how to authentically transmit this experience. Without getting into bullshit conversations, about scaling a business that therefore changes its fundamental nature.
Julia: Right.
Kasia: Well, what we, what we have. Just for fun. The students are referred to as mistresses and before anyone gets sort of a reliever this mistress not as a dominatrix but if you notice there is no other feminine term for master. So, our mistresses. They all form practice groups, not all but very very many and right now we have practice groups all over the globe. We have them in Africa we have them in Australia. It doesn't cost anything to be part of this group. And so, class, or work on an exercise or bought the book can start a practice Group, a mistress group. And what we're working on right now is offering free resources for women around the globe who are forming these groups, so that they can continue their education and not necessarily be dependent upon the next time, there's a free spot in a class with almost never come there's an eight month waiting lists for almost everything except, except for our good group reform school month long thing which I'll talk about in a second. But the point is, right, we want to we want to, we want to reach million women, we want women to be powerful influential free spoken unbound. And having a great time at taking over the world, perhaps,
Julia: Yes please. A lot of that.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, I mean even just looking at how you know the female leaders dealt with a pandemic. It's kind of how much more evidence do we need, there's just evidence after evidence like put women in charge of things look pretty nice for everyone.
Julia: Yeah, I guess when we keep shining the spotlight. Cool. So tell us about the book and the things and how people can just like dip their toes in or deep dive into all of this world that we just shared.
Kasia: Okay, so in, in our, in our desire to get as many women having experiences, not just information is the book. It's called unbound, the woman's guide to power is really the best of the curriculum so moving through it during the exercise. During the exercises, is a profound experience doing with a friend. Even better, doing it in a group, even better. In order to inspire women to have more experiences with this rather than just reading the book and sort of glossing over the exercises and like, because there's some really really juicy fun parts of the book just to read without doing anything. But working in community, working with your friends working with others it speeds up the process so much that we have decided that any woman who pre-orders a copy of Unbound: A Woman's Guide to power, any woman who pre-orders, the book before August gets a free seat in our class on breaking, good girl conditioning. All she has to do is email us a receipt of the book purchase. And there's instructions on our website, we can you know give you more instructions on how to do that, but a free seat in a class that is specifically geared towards the fast, effective, good girl jailbreak. So also I have a TED talk that just was released, definitely watch that. and they just did this really cool event called a call to your night with like Oprah, Oprah, Deepak Chopra, Dalai Lama was boasting are really really really really really really, it's like it's your listeners that I want in this tab free to buy you can buy a cup of coffee for your friends if you want. If you want them to have a free seat take cost together. To start a mistress group. And this mistress group thing you know it's like. Again, it's also, you know, my classes are expensive. And, out of which a lot of people, this is a way to continue the education in a way that doesn't really require them. So, I'm committed to both I'm committed as a woman who practice practices what she preaches charging the value that I have for the classes but I'll find a way to make this educational accessible, which is in alignment with my commitment to changing the world. That's a lot. I just said, that's the most I've ever said about this.
Julia: As you should I mean I'm already committed to buying the book for all my private clients and my mastermind people so they'll just get that but everyone else was like to get access to your work for the cost of a fucking book is a no brainer. Buy it for everybody that you know, invite them to show up whether they do or they don't. I mean, we could force them and give them a little bad girl slap to be there.
Kasia: I'm sure it's not necessary. It's also going to be really fun for me because it's online but it's like it's taught by me I will be interacting with people in the room. Well fun to start talking to an audience of people who, who read a book, you know, who like. Anyway, it's I'm really really really looking forward to it.
Julia: Yeah, buy the book, sign up for all the things, get on any waitlist that you can, watch the TED talk you also have a free training on your work, there's just so many resources you guys if you're a verbal self defense dojo where you can learn how to combat the moments where you get stuff, frozen in speech.
Kasia: That's right.
Julia: That's a good, that's a great there's all the things which is part of your, your mission to be accessible and obviously just feed all of us because there's such a need such a hunger for all of this and I know everyone listening is resonating hardcore with everything so thank you for the work. Thank you for sharing all of this, and being just like a way out and a solution to more freedom, power, influence money, pleasure, all the fucking things that we want. And that we. Anything else that you just have to share or say, or leave us with?
Kasia: Yeah. I think just like one powerful sentence to sit there with for a moment, is just the idea that you have no say in what you want. The desire isn’t created. You don't make it up.
Julia: Mic drop!
Kasia: It’s blameless, shameless, innocent, childlike and authentically you. What you want is not negotiable. It doesn't mean that everybody has to comply, it just means that you just have to accept it.
Julia: And if you're like oh shit that is so far from my reality. This is why she has a body for everything by the book see the things go find her watch the TED Talk send her some love. Is there anywhere on social media you like people try and find you?
Kasia: @realkasiaurbaniak on Instagram and weteachpower.com is our website.
Julia: Yeah. Just buy the fucking book. We will put all the links in the show notes, it'll be great if you have questions they can always message me and we'll make sure. Do you have a cap on how many people can buy the book in the in the class right now?
Kasia: No, but if too many people end up doing this we might split it into subgroups.
Julia: All right you guys. Challenge accepted. Let's blow up all her glasses.
Kasia: I think one woman bought 50 books today so we'll see what happens.
Julia: Yeah, that's kind of my plan after this. All right, thank you for being here. Thank you for just sharing all of your wisdom being who you are in the world. I super appreciate you.
Kasia: Thank you I super appreciate you. This has been a wonderful.
Girlskill: Sex Dungeons, Taoist Nuns and The Bittersweet Victory of the Independent Woman
“We should be running towards heartbreak–it is the place were ecstasy lives. I’m not talking about self-destruction, I’m talking about doing something you give a fuck about.”
“The word femininity is so loaded. It is like ‘I Love You.’ It never means the same thing twice.”
Listen on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts
Girlskill: Sex Dungeons, Taoist Nuns and The Bittersweet Victory of the Independent Woman
Read the Transcript:
Anna: All right girlfriends, welcome to another episode of Girlskill podcast. Thank you for being here. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm very excited that you're joining us especially this amazing episode that just totally blew my mind. Before I tell you about my guest today, and we are talking about sex dungeons, power dynamics, and Taoist nuns with Kasia Urbaniak, let me tell you that something exciting is happening at Girlskill.
Anna: I'm offering coaching packages for women who are ready to take their femininity and their feminine embodiment to the next level. How this works is I work with women one on one. I offer them coaching sessions, not sections, coaching sessions, one on one. Besides, I give them access to the program that I've created and just a lot of support and a lot of guidance and mentoring on the journey of transformation.
Anna: If you've been a listener on this podcast for a while and you know the message of femininity that I'm talking about, and you are interested in working with me, feel free to reach out. I also recommend that first, you go and sign up for a webinar that I've put together, a video exclusive training called the live Female Success that basically explains my whole philosophy on female success, on the modern female epidemic and my approach to transforming your life and actually living your version of success as a woman because it is very different to the version of successes of men that has been sold to us and is being sold to us continuously.
Anna: If you resonate with the message and with what I'm writing, with everything, I highly encourage you that you first actually watch the webinar if you haven't and at the end of the webinar, I give you the next steps on how to get in touch with me, how we can schedule a call and where we can talk about working together. Make sure to go to Girlskill.com/webinar to check out all the details of that and I can't wait to get with you on a call because this is just so important for any woman who just wants to.
Anna: For women especially who are in transition and are feeling like something is missing. This is for you. All right, let's go into today's episode with Kasia Urbaniak. My god like this woman is literally either like a channel or an angel or like freaking out of this world. First of all, we talked about dominatrix. She has gone to the highest of the highest realms of being a dominator in the sex dungeons of New York and while at the same time, she was studying Taoist in some of the monasteries in China.
Anna: This is very controversial, contradictory so it's such an interesting conversation actually and so during her journey so we talked about all of this. I asked her a lot of questions about dominatrix because I personally am interested in. I'm sure you are interested in and how does this work, all worked. What did she learn from it and also, we talked a little bit about her journey in the monastery and what I was interested in and like why.
Anna: Why would you work in dominatrix and she explains why, and so we'll hear what she learned from this but most importantly, what Kasia is doing today. She's the founder and CEO of The Academy, a school that teaches women about power and power dynamics. She has already helped hundreds of women step into leadership positions in their personal and professional lives. Her teachings, as I mentioned before, come of 10 years of working as a dominatrix as well as pursuing Taoist alchemy in one of the oldest female led monasteries in China.
Anna: She has certifications in disciplines like Medical Qigong, systematic constellations and so on and so on so we're ready to talk about. It's such a fascinating conversation. We talked about the power dynamics and how power indeed is yours and as a woman and I love this interview because Kasia is very clear that no one is making you feel powerless. It is up to you to take the power and be an equal in any negotiation whether you're doing with a man, whether you're doing it with a woman.
Anna: She also teaches women how to respond to men, how to respond to sexual. For example, advances and so on and so on which is so helpful and I love her approach because it's coming from a powerful position even when she's dealing with difficult situation like sexual harassment and so on and so on. She's talking about a win-win situation.
Anna: One of my favorite subjects and the questions I asked Kasia is we talked about the bittersweet victory of the independent woman, something that you will hear me say and talk about in the webinar in different terms but I asked her what she means by that and our messages are so aligned because she talks about how we all wanted "independence" and then, here's our bittersweet victory and how we all have to deal with this as women.
Anna: This is exactly what my webinar is about. This is exactly what my coaching is about so I am sure that you'll really, really enjoy this interview and I hope that you share it with everyone you know because Kasia's work is simply incredible. All right, I will let you listen to it. We'll shut up and I'll see you at the end.
Anna: Today on Girlskill podcast, I'm super excited to welcome Kasia Urbaniak. She's currently in Paris but normally based in New York so Kasia, welcome to Girlskill. I'm super excited to have you today.
Kasia: Thank you for having me.
Anna: Yeah, so we're going to get into some juicy subjects in a couple of minutes but before that, let's as usual, start with our blitz questions. That's how I call it. Kasia, tell me, what is your superpower?
Kasia: I have so many.
Anna: Okay, name a couple then.
Kasia: I see people's fears and desires very easily, everybody's very well. I also have the superpower of living in a stream of constant coincidence and bringing to me the people that I most need and want and my third superpower would be asking people to do things for me in a way that when they fulfill my request, it makes them happy.
Anna: That's definitely a superpower so many women need today. Maybe we can learn from you a little bit. Maybe you can give us some tips. I love that. Okay, awesome. Let's move on. Kasia, who is your girl crush?
Kasia: I might not have one right now.
Anna: That's fine. Okay, let me rephrase then the question. Name one person dead or alive that you'd love to have dinner with.
Kasia: I would love to have dinner with Jodorowsky, Alejandro. I would love to try to have dinner with him. He's a filmmaker and a tarot card reader and a magician and he tried to make one of the Dune movies, the Frank Herbert's book Dune, the science fiction novel.
Anna: I know you're a big fan of it. Yes, I have-
Kasia: Yeah, so one of his failed attempts became a fantastic documentary. Yeah, I'd love to meet him.
Anna: Awesome. What is your biggest fear?
Kasia: Running out of time, dying before I finish.
Anna: As in finish your mission?
Kasia: Yeah.
Anna: Okay. We're going to talk about this in a couple of minutes. What is your astrological sign and how are you using it in your daily life?
Kasia: There's the standard astrology in which I am a cancer, and I also really like human design astrology, which does not have the same common names. I would be a generator, hermetic, martyr.
Anna: My goodness. I know about human design but I didn't know that human design has its own astrology.
Kasia: It is astrology. It's just a different approach to it.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, because it's based on like natal mapping and all of that but I didn't know it actually, not qualifies you but also gives you some more characteristics than Generator, Manifestor and all of that.
Kasia: Yeah. No, it's rich. It's very, very complex and very, very immense.
Anna: Okay, awesome. All right, and last question. Kasia, for you, on a scale of one to 10, how excited are you about life right now and why?
Kasia: Ten because I'm living the life of my dreams and it's a constant stream of magic and basically, I'm so fucking grateful that I get to have this human experience, even the details of it are less important than the privilege of having eyes and skin and getting to be human, have feelings.
Anna: Love it. Now, please introduce yourself Kasia and I'd love to hear more about living the life of your dreams and the magic of your human experience.
Kasia: I'm Kasia Urbaniak and I run a school for women called The Academy and I teach women about power, power dynamics and how to have what they want and love what they have and how to work through some of the conditioning that most women on this earth are subject to from the moment they're born, how to overcome it and how to live from a place that's spontaneous, fully self-expressed, really bold, natural and powerful.
Anna: My goodness. Love it. This should be the tagline of this podcast indeed because I explore femininity in womanhood and I love how you describe it. Awesome, so Kasia, let me ask you because this is the question asked when we were on the show. What is femininity for you?
Kasia: The word femininity is so loaded and it's like saying, "I love you." It never means the same thing to the same person twice but it can tell you something just about being born a biological woman is that I am very aware of the privilege of being the holder of the role of giving birth and continuing life even though I myself will likely not have children, how my entire being and position in the world is set because of this, looking at femininity from a different angle.
Kasia: I'm not sure what to make of it. There are characteristics inscribed to the feminine that are emotional or essential. I'd like those qualities to be deemed more universal and not inherently in the category of the feminine because I think what this world needs, men and women and all of us is a lot more intimacy, human contact, embodiment, connection with the body, central awareness, awareness of our surroundings, awareness of how all things are interconnected.
Kasia: An ability to feel what's alive and recognize what's dead, what no longer serves, the ability to see what needs to be watered with our attention in order to grow. Basically, orienting all of humanity towards a worship of life and being really cautious and aware of where our death drive comes in so the death drive is inscribed to the masculine and this central worship of life is inscribed to the feminine and I think it would be really lovely if we were all more oriented towards life.\
Kasia: Not giving that characteristic and also shoving it under the drawer with all of the things we hate about what we think female behavior is.
Anna: Love it. Beautiful, very wise words, Kasia and as you're speaking, I'm like, are you channeling some universal truth or wisdom here because I don't get to hear that often and I have different kinds of guests and it's clear that you have been on a journey and are still on the journey which is magical so-
Kasia: Yes, I have.
Anna: We're going to talk about it in a second but let me ask you another question, ask women on the show is do you consider yourself successful and why?
Kasia: My goodness, yes, I am outrageously successful. I have developed a discipline, two disciplines that I think make life worth living and make me successful every day and the first discipline is the relentless willingness to pour my heart into whatever I do so fully that it's susceptible to breaking. I put myself in a position of heartbreak as often as I can. If my heart can't be broken by what it is that I'm attempting to do, it's not worth doing.
Kasia: The second thing is I don't have a routine and this sounds like anti-discipline but it's not because the discipline of making choices moment by moment in accordance with what feels absolutely precisely right is one of the most difficult and rewarding things a human being can do. Both of those things together daily make me successful and outrageously successful whether I'm successful at hosting, the absolutely perfect dinner party or dressing in a way that makes me feel great or giving a lecture to 500 people.
Kasia: On the external level, I'm outrageously successful because my life purpose, my job and who I am are all exactly the same thing so there is no failure for me. There's only success.
Anna: It is all in alignment with the truth.
Kasia: I can't fail being me and if being me is my job and speaking my truth is my job and doing my favorite thing in the world which is seeing others and speaking to them about them and moving through life with them. If these things are so fundamental to my nature, if being me is my job, I cannot fail it.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I want to clarify the first thing that you mentioned. If it's not heartbreaking or you're not ready for a heartbreak, you said it's not worth it. What do you mean by that?
Kasia: Let me clarify. If it's not heartbreaking, it's not worth it. If I'm not putting my heart at risk, if I'm not putting myself in a position where my heart can't break, if I already know my heart is unbreakable, it means I'm doing something I don't care enough about. I haven't put my heart into it deeply enough.
Anna: When you say heartbreak, what do you mean by that because I think it could mean different things to different people?
Kasia: Ask any person whose experiencing heartbreak. They know when they're feeling it. You're completely fucked. You feel like everything is shattering. It's a beautiful state.
Anna: Yeah, but so many of us are afraid of it or running away from it.
Kasia: We should be running towards it. It's the only place where rupture lives. It's the only place where ecstasy lives. I'm not talking about self-destruction. I'm talking about doing shit you give a fuck about that you're willing to feel frightened, feel disappointed, feel devastated when it doesn't work out. If you're willing to put your heart into something that deeply, it's actually paradoxically one of the only ways to not have heartbreak happen because you're so satisfied in the doing that the outcome doesn't matter anymore.
Anna: How do you personally move through that? I understand it completely-
Kasia: I just follow the things I love and I don't do anything else. There's so many things that people do that I'm supposed to do that I just don't do. I don't do. It's almost impossible for me to do something I don't want to do. It's almost impossible for me to do something I don't care about. I try and it doesn't work. I can't do it so in the pursuit of the things that I most care about and love, as unrealistic, naïve or delusional they may sound, as long as I'm alive and inspired, I know I'm going in the right direction. I know that like the … Everything makes itself available to me in that statement.
Anna: Can you give us an example of a situation that you have poured your heart into and then let's say there was a devastation or a state that you're talking about, how you pushed through it or like what were the realizations there or what have you come to in the end?
Kasia: It's a constant arc. It's not like a story where I want something. I go for it. I don't get it and then my heart is broken. It's like when I'm in a classroom with a student and I'm going through it with them and I'm there with them and I feel them and we're moving through a really difficult space and I am absolutely feeling everything they're feeling but I know that we have to move forward.
Kasia: It's like that. It's like even just like loving this world and being very, very aware of how fucked it is right now and wanting so much for something better is both pouring my heart into my life and totally fucking heartbreaking. It's just both at the same time. It's incredible. It's like we are sitting at this huge beautiful banquet table and everyone is starving.
Kasia: There's so much beauty and so much life everywhere and the deprivation and starvation is so intense, it's heartbreaking.
Anna: We're all waiting for that beautiful delicious dinner.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anna: We're looking for that meal-
Kasia: Except it's right fucking here.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. We just need to know how to get to it and so hopefully, with this conversation, Kasia, me and all of the listeners will get one step closer to it so let's switch gears a little bit and I want to talk about dominatrix. I know you've probably talked about it so much and you might have [inaudible 00:22:18] being yourself here a little bit, but you are the first guest-
Kasia: Actually, I haven't.
Anna: Really? Okay.
Kasia: Yeah, there's very little talk … There's a mention of my experiences in the dungeon but-
Anna: You mostly talk about the power in your work currently. Okay, cool. Awesome, so let's talk about this so I'll share with you my experience. Obviously, the whole dominatrix was introduced to my world like to millions of women and I think you know what I'm talking about is through the Fifty Shades of Grey which is like such a cheesy way of portraying the whole thing, a person I think and then through this, through these books, I have found the Story of O.
Anna: I don't know if you're familiar with that and this has completely blown my mind and I understood the Fifty Shades of Grey is nothing compared to that, and so I'm … I don't know if I'm familiar with it I guess. Through just from that book like that, for me, was the true sub-dom and whatever happens in the dungeon and Fifty Shades of Grey is nothing. I'm curious about your experience.
Anna: I know that you got into dominatrix for the money and to make a living out of it, and so I'm curious about yeah, the story of how you got to it and really, how was the experience? What did you learn and if you can share some stories with us, I think that would be amazing. I'm assuming you were … A lot of men were coming to you to fulfill their pleasures, fantasies, their deepest darkest desires and you were there with a whip I suppose and fulfilling those desires for money. I don't know if I'm right or not but I'm very curious to hear what you have to say.
Kasia: First, I don't think at the time, I was aware of how insane it is that we ask in America of 18 year olds to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a college education. Looking back, I think it's insane but yeah, I started for that reason and I didn't quite find what I was expecting.
Anna: You mean in college or in dominatrix? You started because you wanted to pay for your education.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My education had lots of interruptions and one of the things I was doing was I was studying Taoism and I was pursuing it very, very seriously. Taoism as in the Chinese spiritual practice that gave birth to Chinese medicine, Chines martial arts, the Tao Te Ching so in studying to be a Taoist, it also meant learning how to diagnose people, heal people, how to fight, how to meditate and it's a very beautiful tradition that has a lot to offer and as I was studying … One of the great things about making money is you can afford to fly places and study with really great teachers.
Kasia: I was going through this period of time where I was working in the dungeon, going to college and also flying around the world to study with Taoist masters and-
Anna: It sounds like a great story.
Kasia: The cross pollination of those things was really profound. The first thing was I had this moment where it was pretty early on and I was in the dungeon and I was doing a session and I had this naked man in front of me and I suddenly realized that he didn't know my real name and I didn't know his real name. His name was probably fake too and we were these two bodies in a room where everything spoken was imagined, essentially a lie.
Kasia: Everything is invented. I am his governess. I am his teacher. I am his master. I am his mother. I am his nurse. Whatever it is, it's made up and I had this sudden feeling that this was one of the most extraordinary laboratories for human identity because our identities and our stories were not present in the room. This was after I had been on a long retreat in China and I still had that very hyper extenuated momentum that did the perception.
Kasia: When you're practicing and studying to be able to read people's bodies and see where their energy is stagnant or flowing, where their illnesses are, if their liver is depleted or whatever. It's so much attention. You're putting so much attention on a person that I felt like in that moment, I was seeing him in hyper real colors and it was so extraordinary to be witnessing a human being that's completely naked of identity, of name, of role and we're making it up.
Kasia: We're making it up as we go along. We're making it up and I'm leading it and I found myself doing this particular session in such an extraordinary way where every sentence that I landed in his body had such a profound effect, I could see it. I was like one phrase after another. The first thing was he was very agreeable and I was looking for a place where he was rebelling so I called his chin rebellious. It was absurd and ridiculous.
Kasia: I saw something and I called it out. It was like, was that rebellious or was that shame? You like to do a good job, don't you? You like being really good. You like being really good, don't you? It started moving towards like the mother space of him obeying his mother and then the next thing you know, we're in this very different space where we're like two kids on a playground and we're play fighting and I'm the girl who kicks his ass.
Kasia: It was one of those sessions where it was like 17 sessions in one. So many things happened and the inspiration was entirely based on watching what was happening to his psychology, to his emotional body, to his physical body, to his erotic body, what was happening moment by moment by moment. Most of our interaction was in the realm of speech and it was so fucking hot and it was so crazy because I felt like both of our bodies dissolved.
Kasia: We were just energy. It was so clear to me after that session that something had happened in that room that would continue to stay with me for the rest of my life. I walked out of that session so blown open and seeing so clearly how much effort it takes to perform being a human being that's unnecessary and how essential, how easy it is to see what we all essentially need and want and how we're moving and how so much of our social conditioning is an absolute fucking betrayal of that.
Kasia: There is this beautiful period of maybe about 10 years where the practices that I was studying in this laboratory of the dungeon were informing each other. I started to see really clearly that one informed the other. One strengthened the other and it's totally crazy and weird like I was on the road to being a Taoist nun. I stopped four days before getting ordained as a Taoist nun.
Kasia: At the same time that I was becoming a very successful dominatrix so polar opposite but they so beautifully strengthened and complemented one another.
Anna: That's incredible. What you're describing to me almost seems like it's like therapy on steroids. You know why?
Kasia: Therapy approaches people like they have a problem and they're sick and one of the things that's beautiful about the dungeon is you approach everybody's fetish or shameful sexuality or desire or problem, not as something to be healed but something to be celebrated and moved into a new place. One of the things that I really insist upon now as a teacher is that people don't think of this school as a place to come get healed because that already makes the assumption that they're broken and people are not broken.
Kasia: People are not broken. There's nothing wrong with most of the people that I come across. There's nothing wrong there. The self-esteem of human beings in general is unnecessarily and ridiculously low and the habit of self-attack and self-judgment and self-criticism instead of self-celebration is such a huge problem and makes this world so much less fun and beautiful than it could be.
Anna: Where do you think that comes from because it's in all of us?
Kasia: It's a Judeo-Christian bias. It's morality. Morality is actually a problem like we think we get the right to say what's good and bad and once you decide something's bad, it seems like you have control over it and power over it but you don't. The moment you disconnect from something to humanize something, you have no say in it anymore. Saying violence is bad did not decrease war.
Kasia: Saying that extramarital sex is bad or sex for pleasure is bad has us lived in a world of porn. Saying greed is bad has us live in a world that has one of the most greedy and unbalanced economic systems in all of history. It's much wiser to look at things and say, how can I use this better? How can I take this and make this useful? How can I make this beautiful? How can I alchemize this? What purpose could this serve that's better than the one that it has now?
Kasia: I think all vices are virtues misplaced and all virtues are potentially vices. There's no good … We don't have a lot of facility with using qualities well when it comes to good and bad so we think we can decide that something that's true about us, inside of us is bad and that if we decide that it's bad and disconnect from it as much as possible, then we'll be good and we'll belong, and it doesn't work.
Kasia: It just makes us amputate ourselves. It doesn't work. It doesn't make for a whole powerful radiant loving human beings and makes for a crippled repressed angry and accidentally or intentionally dangerous and violent human beings.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. When we look at thousands and thousands of years of history, it's mostly how humans try to make sense of the world, try to create communities, establish some rules. There's this thing of like we can't deal with chaos or something that we have this, I guess, inherent need to control and it's just thousands of thousands of years of putting all these rules and conditions and whatever is happening to us today is to be solved of all of that and we're all like walking around not really broken.
Anna: This is the human experience but we're like, you're right. There's so much self-judgment and self-criticism and then all of that is just played out in the world whether in politics, whether in feminism, whether in patriarchy, whether in human interactions.
Kasia: Absolutely, you totally get it. Absolutely.
Anna: Yeah, so I have a couple of questions, Kasia, about the dominatrix. You talked so beautifully about everything right and your experience and everything but I'm still curious about so let me ask you this first of all is how did you make the decision to get into it because there are many options to make money so for example, you could go and be a waitress, a bartender or do whatever else.
Kasia: It doesn't make nearly as much money. I could've been a hooker but I didn't have the guts.
Anna: Yeah, were you ashamed at any point? Was there anything as in like guilt or some sort of because I don't know if I could like I'm thinking, would I be able to do this? I'm like, shit, I don't think I would so I'm curious about what gave you the courage or the bravery to just go for it and then get involved with this whole industry?
Kasia: There were two things. I was fucking terrified. I was really scared. My first session was a disaster. After my first session, I was so bad at it. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I went and I got a video of a dominatrix. I wrote down every fucking word she said for an hour. I memorized every single line before I went back in the next day and I was like a geek.
Kasia: I have really, really, really prepared. I really tried to figure it out and I drew inspiration from all places. I'm going to get really good at this. I have to figure this out. I have to figure this out. One of my biggest inspirations was Cesar Millan like the dog whisperer. I had some of my biggest breakthroughs reading his book. He's talking about training dogs and I learned so much about training men while he talks about training dogs.
Kasia: Another thing that I don't really talk about very often is I had a father figure who was a famous writer. He was my mother's lover and he took his life when I was a teenager and he was a huge inspiration to me and he was a very controversial writer who was, as I later found out after his death, very much in the BDSM scene and this into the state of masochistic activities in New York City. I had this like thing in the back of my mind that if I got into this world, I would learn more about this father figure of mine as an adult and I did.
Kasia: I met people who knew him and told me stories and it was incredible because I felt like a detective. Here was this incredibly powerful figure in my life, a beautiful influence who believed that I was a child prodigy writer and himself was so provocative and controversial, so fascinating and then suddenly, he kills himself and he's gone. Then, there's this period of time. He was also like pretty well-known for being a master of disguise so he loved to wear disguises and completely transform how he looked and walked through the streets of New York City.
Kasia: He was pretty well-known when I was young. After he killed himself, I would look around and I was absolutely convinced that he didn't actually kill himself. He was playing a trick on us all. He was playing the biggest fuck you trick he could think of and that-
Anna: My mother passed away when I was really young, I was eight. You were a teenager back then but I don't know if we have this thing about our big people who influenced us deeply in our life but I think for a couple of years, I actually thought it didn't happen, that she would just go off and I would look for her in the streets and I actually believed that this whole thing is set up.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anna: It's such a bizarre experience.
Kasia: I didn't know anybody else had that. I totally had that.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, it's weird.
Kasia: It was interesting because when I was making my way through that very strange New York underworld, he was a master of disguise. Everybody was wearing disguises. It really felt like a detective novel in which I was searching for a father while dominating men. It was really … I think that might've been one of the things to answer your question, that gave me more courage to-
Anna: To pursue.
Kasia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, just to be fair like at the time like to make that much money, my choices were to be a dominatrix or a hooker and like-
Anna: How much money are we talking about?
Kasia: I got really good at making money as a dominatrix so I probably made maybe like a hundred times more than the average dominatrix but like at that time, you have to remember, it was like 20 years ago. The starting rate was about $100 an hour so that's the starting rate so that's like … Then, if you're an independent dominatrix in those times, you could charge $800 an hour. I went way beyond that but you can't do that bartending.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. Is it really in like the Eyes Wide Shut. The movie where Tom Cruise walks around with like the mask and all of that and what happens in the session so if you could, a little bit, give us a glimpse of that world because I'm really curious about and men pays so much money and we're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars per hour to experience it.
Anna: It's a little bit bizarre like why do you think they do that? Why can't they do this let's say in their bedrooms or whatever because this is like a heightened version of BDSM I suppose. I'm so curious about this. As you said, it's psychological. It's something so bizarre to me and then mysterious and exciting at the same time.
Kasia: What's your question?
Anna: I'm like, said all your 10 questions so how does, if you could describe to us, how does a session look like?
Kasia: Okay, so imagine I'm doing a session with you. I can hear in your voice that you breath high so the first thing that I would do is I'd put my hand on your head and pull your hair back and look into your eyes, place my hand on your chest, press downwards to see if I could get your breath deeper into your belly and I would look and see if you're looking at me with the eyes of a child or the eyes of a rebel, the eyes of a competitor, the eyes of somebody who so badly wants to be ravished and start creating a scene.
Kasia: Now, there is this beautiful experience before a scene even begins which is the interview and that's where I get to test the possibilities of where I can go in the scene, what characters we can play, what physical experiences their body needs like a lot of women, they need pressure. They need like imagine a whole body hug delivered by three people. That's not true of all like the effect that being pierced or poked or cut or spanked or slapped, or sat on, or pressed or bound.
Kasia: All of those have different impacts. They create different psychological states. They create different physical experiences. We carry so much undigested energy in our bodies and so much pressure, so okay. Let's imagine a session for somebody, let's say a man. It might be that his sexuality is longing to be expressed through something that fascinated him when he was a teenager or a young boy. We talked a little bit about that, I asked him some provocative questions and we start to build a scene.
Kasia: The incredible range of what's possible in a scene and even the unpredictability in where it ends up is so vast that it becomes difficult to even answer a question like that like am I going to dress in like a priest? Am I going to be a superhero? Am I going to inspect him? Am I going to make him work for something prove himself? Is he going to win or is he going to fail? Does he need to fail? Does he need to breakdown into tears as a failure and have that experience and be nurtured through it or be punished for it and feel like he has to strengthen himself up again?
Kasia: The similarities and differences in dominating men and women are also really interesting. I think all human beings really in this culture and in this time and in this age long deeply, deeply to be seen. Not for what they do but for who they are to be seen and to have their imagination activated and to feel erotically alive and be in a place of both mystery suspense but also feel like they're in absolutely fucking great hands, that they can go to an edge but know that they will land safely to feel an edge of danger but knowing that they will not be crashed.
Kasia: This is the cocoon in which all of the magic happens. They have to feel my authority is absolute and they are absolutely at the end of the day no matter what we do safe, so that we can explore all of the theatrics, all of the emotions, all of the erotic possibilities. What's really interesting about this on a really, really basic level, and I said this before and it's like I could have been a hooker or a dominatrix.
Kasia: What's really interesting is that in an hour long session you're not allowed to have sex, you're not allowed to have sexual contact. Try spending an hour, putting attention on someone, getting them really excited but not kissing them, not fucking them. An hour is actually a lot of time to feel with erotic energy without … Most people don't even have that experience with foreplay.
Anna: Yeah. The other day was in the bedroom of my husband and we're also conditioned for the goal to have in the bedroom a goal, a sex is a goal and I'm like, "Can we do this for an hour without a goal?" He just looked at me like he didn't understand what the fuck I just told him. He's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "I don't know, I just want to be with you here now with your skin on the bed where we caress each other. We don't even touch each other.
Anna: I'm like, don't start with the center as in my vagina. That is the last thing you want to touch. I'm doing embodiment work by the way. I'm training in Feminine Embodiment Coach and it's-
Kasia: Very cool.
Anna: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing what I'm discovering and he just looks at me. He's like, "What?" which is so funny. He asked-
Kasia: Yeah. Wait. Wait. You just said something so, so, so, so important, so important because the gift you're giving to him is tremendous. First, through you for you and then to him, it's this sensual aliveness. Not sexual, sensual aliveness that awakens the most blessed part of the animal in us that has this have instincts and intuition that are healthy for the planet.
Kasia: This is one of the most important things that you just accidently opened up right now just by talking about being in bed with him but no, it's so, so important. What I see when I look at the world is the animal of people's bodies is asleep and dead. We can't tell when we're being lied to. We can't tell which politician is full of shit. We can't tell if a mansion is going to make us happy or a beach hut is going to make us happy. We make decisions that are disembodied.
Kasia: This whole space in which there is sensuality but no sex is one way for human beings to start bringing their animal bodies to life so that they don't need a diet in order to know what food do they need to eat to be their ideal weight and healthy, so that they don't need a religion to know God, so they don't need an ideology to know who to vote for, so they don't need a decorator or a travel agent or fucking psychologist. They don't need any of it because they know how to move through life.
Kasia: Our bodies when we're connected mind, heart and body, when we're connected fully through, we always know everything we need to know in the moment. I remember when a big tsunami hit I think it was Sri Lanka, maybe I'm fucking it up right now but it was in 2002. I just remember just one of these facts that we hear about often but this time it really struck me that all of the animals knew to go to higher ground way before the tsunami hit.
Kasia: What makes us human animals so fucking stupid that we don't have that faculty anymore, and it's the reason we have a floating island of plastic in the ocean. Our bodies are dead so we can't see these basic things like we suck at being human beings. It may sound so crazy, here is this woman teaching female empowerment who used to be a dominatrix whose mission is to teach human beings how to be animals again so that the whole Earth gets healed. It seems nonsensical but it also body-wise it's the only fucking thing that makes sense to me.
Kasia: When you're lying in bed with your husband and going I want to feel your skin. First, you're giving yourself the greater experience of having a human body of being alive, training your own heart, mind and body to be connected, to be alive and awake. Bringing your partner into that state, educating him to have the same faculties that the brilliance of nature has. I am absolutely a child of the two paths that I followed.
Kasia: Taoism is a path where the tao means the way, it means nature, it means following the life force. They talk about the three bodies, the physical body, the emotional body and the mental body. Of course, as a Taoist I brought that into the fucking dungeon and dominated and explored in that same way and found that because I was in a space of prolonged sensuality without sex, sometimes I would do 10 hours of sessions in a row.
Kasia: The amount of erotic energy, the amount of wild imagination and a heart-opening catharsis and emotions and ideas like I was in a space where I was constantly practicing the three bodies, without a fucking orgasm, without touching a dick, without any of that. This huge, huge gift I got of this sustained laboratory that I got to explore being a human animal over and over and over again, and feeling like this is the fucking solution, this is what people are missing.
Kasia: People are eating their own food, people are being lied to. They're doing jobs they don't care about. They're picking partners for the wrong reasons. They've lost some fundamental body-based wisdom that it's time for us to regain and sensuality is one of the ways. One of the reasons I deal so much in the school with women's power and power dynamics is women for whatever reason maybe we can think millennia of subjugation.
Kasia: For whatever reason women tends to have more access to their emotional and physical body. They tend to feel more, they tend to. We can have 1,000 theories about why is it biochemistry, is it because we tend to be self-aware and self-conscious, is it because we give birth, whatever. I don't give a shit what the reason is, the tendency is there. If my feeling is if we get women living and being incredibly powerful from a place where they're that connected, then we stand a much greater chance of awakening the wisdom of the animal body in all human beings.
Kasia: We're living in modern society without going back to some primitive fantasy but in modern society is alive and awake, people making decisions based on the reality that we feel through our bodies moment by moment by moment. A well-attuned, intuitive, instinctive human being, that's what we fucking need. Okay. Then there's this millennia of conditioning that turns out it's actually not that hard to break. Once a woman breaks her good girl bullshit and start seeing how privileged other people are to be maybe even dominated by her especially when she's connected to her erotic wisdom, to her body wisdom.
Kasia: We have a world led by badass bitches who are teaching people to feel. A world where empathy is not a weakness. A world where what is needed next is fully felt and honored and followed, and I think it's one of the best ways to organize society.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we're doing the same work but on a different dimension because this whole feminine embodiment coaching that I'm doing and the training that I'm going through now has opened me up in so many different ways. Actually, the Girlskill brand, I'm not sure if you manage to look at the website but it's all connected to wolves, to the Women Who Run with the Wolves.
Anna: When I read the book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés it was the inspiration for me to start this whole thing because I instinctively understood that we are so disconnected and my work with women is let's get back and connect to those instincts. Kasia, you don't know this but I'm pregnant with … I'm four months pregnant now.
Kasia: Wow.
Anna: Yeah. It was crazy because as soon as I stepped into this embodiment work, I think a month or two later I got pregnant, and all of the women in our group with my coach are like, "This is freaking amazing." It is indeed because I am even deeper connected now with my body and you can't imagine how everyday I'm looking at my breasts who are just growing by themselves, filling up with whatever milk hormones. I'm looking at my belly and I'm glad my hips widening up and I've never been connected to my … I'm like, "My God, I am an animal."
Anna: I feel like there's so few people who … Even women who get pregnant but are not doing this work and dropping from the head, all we need to do as women is get from the fucking head, into the heart, into the womb, that's the work. It's incredible what's happening to me and how much more in tune I am with my body. Everything you're telling me right now is so in tuned with what I'm doing with my work and why we're here with you today. Because I'm like, "Gees, why are we so focused on the external?" I don't even want to go there.
Anna: What I love about your work is that … Let's perhaps switch to power and the work you're doing with women because you mentioned something, when a woman is in her power and you're teaching women to actually work with their bodies and I don't know how and why but inherently I have that and I've developed that perhaps through my childhood. As I told you I lost my mother and I had a very tough journey.
Anna: What I love about your work … You have a workshop called Cornering Harvey, right? You're working with these women in very high positions and CEOs and that is my quest actually, my mission is to redefine female success. Deep down inside of me know that there is a way to lead in a more feminine way, in instinctual, and what you said teaching people how to feel. There are badass bitches out there like you and me, we're teaching people specially women how to feel more and how to lean in a feminine way.
Anna: I love your work. You're accessing these women and you're teaching them all of this but without telling them that men are to blame or the patriarchy to blame. I'm so fucking tired of this word notion whatever. You say you start your workshops with actually honoring the patriarchy. I love how you also celebrate men in mass community, I know this whole thing plays. When I was listening to you interviews I'm like, "Fucking yes, this is all we need. I don't want a futurist female, I wanted both. I want a human experience."
Anna: It's not about us versus them, wanting has become us, theirs versus them. I love the approach that you're doing because you're starting with Cornering Harvey, right? You're giving them what they want I suppose but then you're giving them what they need actually in your workshops.
Kasia: I don't see a contradiction because I do think patriarchy is a problem but patriarchy as defined by psycho-emotional virus that both men and women carry like the patriarchy is not carried by men. It's carried by women as much as by men if not more. We can use different words. We can call it different things. The masculine on the planet is super wounded right now and maybe in charge and then may have lots of positions and power.
Kasia: I think it's a mistake to overlook that when there's a shift in power, when there's a shift in energy, when there's a shift in how things are, all of the different participants and all of the different whether it's men, women, everyone's affected. You can't really make long lasting profound change unless you consider everyone. Getting revenge on men is like fighting for crumbs, it's too small a vision. It's too petty. We can do much, much better than that.
Kasia: Including everyone making them allies and transforming how human beings relate to one another, that's a vision we're worth waking up for in the morning.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely.
Kasia: We don't call it Cornering Harvey anymore but A Verbal Self-Defense curriculum is really important because women withholds so much. Women sensor the fuck out of themselves. Women due to maybe a millennia of trauma, social conditioning, whatever. The point is like one of the first things to do is to teach women verbal self-defense, so they feel more access to radical self-expression, to honesty, to leadership.
Kasia: The self-inhibition of speech is so intense but sometimes it's even invisible, sometimes it's not invisible like a woman knows she's not saying what's her on mind, other times she doesn't even know she's not … I mean the right to fucking speak. Yeah. We had to think into account, women are not free on this planet like it's just a few privileged countries and it just started 50 years ago and less, in some countries, 100 years ago.
Kasia: This whole thing is new, we were property, we didn't get to vote, we didn't to have jobs and all of the planet we still are property. It's hard for us to realize and to have respect for the fact that all the shitty is really fucking new, we're just starting. It matters that part of the population that gets pregnant and gives birth is essentially in slave conditions and considered property in a huge, huge percentage of the planet.
Kasia: Then the percentage of planet where we are free we're still psychologically chained because this transitions only started to happen five minutes ago if you think of all human history. You and I are here on this planet in this time and we're going to do our part to make it more fucking juicy and fun and hot and embodied and powerful and explore and make mistakes around words like femininity or misunderstanding, understanding gender.
Kasia: One way we look at it and then five years later we look at it a totally different way, what was sexual harassment? What's sexual harassment today? What's flirting 20 years ago?
Anna: I know, right?
Kasia: Yeah. There is a space for both being fucking fierce and bold in the changes we want to see, and also keeping in perspectives that we're just getting started, this is all new, we're like infants, we're trying to figure out what being a man means, being a woman means, being transgendered means, also like what the fuck are romantic relationships for, marriages for. These are new questions that we didn't have to ask ourselves and we have the privilege.
Kasia: We have the privilege, you and I have the privilege of being fucking confused about it, exploring it and then having lots of smart answers and leading people like, "Hey guys, I found this out, check this out. Hey guys, I think [crosstalk 01:03:01] like feminine embodiment coaching works." I'm like, "Power dynamics, check this out. I learned this in the dungeon. This is how I get to have a magical life. This is how I get really powerful and get what I want." "Hey, try this."
Kasia: I feel like I'm the first generation in my family ancestry that gets to have what I want, I get to have what I want. I don't think my mother or her mother or her mother's mother had any of the privileges I have, and I intend to make full outrageously indulgent use of them. I intend to take advantage of every single privilege I have that they did not in their fucking name. Every time I party in my life I'm like, this is for my female ancestor. You didn't get to do this? I do, I get to have a harem of beautiful men.
Kasia: I get to have world travel and write books and I get to speak outrageously and offended people. I get to have unconventional sexual relationships. I get to wear crazy clothes. I'm not getting burned to the stake. I'm not getting stoned to death. I'm not being forced to be married or anything I don't want to do. I can take for breakfast. I don't have to brush my teeth. I basically can do whatever the fact I want and I don't know any previous generation that got to do that.
Anna: Absolutely. I always say whenever I go on podcast or work with women I'm like, "This is such a fucking incredible time for women." Never have we had so much opportunity, "freedom" or possibility to do whatever the fuck we want. You're right, we've just described it. I've shifted that perspective and I live in the mentality and the space of possibility and I so much appreciate it. I would love for more and more women to see that instead of as you mentioned before the revenge to everything, how everything is so fucked up and blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Anna: Kasia, I have this question for you which I find is very important. It relates to everything we're talking about. You talked about the bittersweet victory of the independent woman. What is that victory and why is it bittersweet?
Kasia: We're talking about in the span of human history moving from let's just say a move where women all had to be submissive and now can have dominant positions, positions of authority. A lot of women, what they're doing is they're taking on having positions of authority and leadership and still accommodating and doing a lot of the … This is not super accurate. I want to say they're both dominant and submissive at the same time but I actually mean is they're doing a lot of the things that men previously always did and only men did but without the support that men had.
Kasia: Up until really recently, the best thing you could hope for in your life was to marry well if you are a woman. Men did all this shit with wives and support systems that women don't have, and women are still being wives, women are still being the support system. Even when they're not, a lot of the psychological habits and the socialized habits are still there. Women don't ask for what they need, they ask for less than they need, they don't ask for what they want.
Kasia: I've seen so many women even in the workplace try to do so much with so little and patting themselves on the back for it. I think women are incredibly isolated. One of the impacts of this thing we call patriarchy is that women aren't good with each other and they're not being supported by men. They're not being supported by the men they compete with at work. They're giving a lot to their male partners when they had her sexual. They're not being supported by women.
Kasia: They're isolated, they've worked their asses off. They are resistant to receiving help. They feel less than and weak when they are adored, cherished, worshiped, nourished, nurtured, helped, anything that makes them feel less than. This is like, "Yay, I'm the boss, I'm independent, I can do everything myself. I'm totally self-sufficient and I'm fucking exhausted. I don't know how to ask for help in a way that makes me feel stronger rather than weaker. I don't have a support system, I am the support system of everyone I know.
Kasia: I even am the support system of all my friends. I give everyone advice. I make sure that everyone in the community is safe and healthy and at work and I'm killing it. I don't need money from a man. I don't need anything from, anyone." We get fibromyalgia or autoimmune disorders or-
Anna: Right, or infertility issues, or a bunch of other things.
Kasia: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, "Yay, I'm independent, isn't it bittersweet?" Human beings do things. Anything worth doing is really worth doing with others. Nobody really does anything great alone and there's just this huge … Especially in America, there's like pull yourself up by your own bootstraps mythology. It's total bullshit because every guy who's self-made was actually supported by so many people in ways that are just culturally invisible, even in the way he gets pat on the back when he's a boy.
Kasia: Even the way he gets told, "Look what you did, you did such a good job," rather than hearing what girls hear, "Look how pretty you are. Look how lovely you are." The difference between being rewarded for what you do versus how you are is huge. Yeah, that's my rant on … My rant-
Anna: No, I love it. In fact, I talk about the modern … I called it the modern female epidemic which you just described. I just actually recorded a one hour my life's work in a webinar that's called The Lie of Female Success & How It's Keeping You Stuck, Unfulfilled & Drained, and that is exactly the name or a paraphrase of The Bittersweet Victor of the Independent Woman.
Anna: I feel like this is such an important message in so many of us who just are not aware of it. I became aware of it on my quest to femininity. Today, I ask my husband and all the men around and all the women around to do things for me. Like what you said in the beginning, your superpower is to ask for help from other people that fucking feels good and I feel great about it.
Anna: I'm still working actually on it because I feel like I have this again the bittersweet victor of independent woman is in me. I feel bad sometimes for even asking my husband to carry something that's heavy and I'm pregnant, and then I have to work through this, but it's a muscle, but it's crazy. Yes. It's like a [crosstalk 01:10:31].
Kasia: If you were my student I'd tell you to do what I tell all my pregnant students to do, which be what it's like to totally, totally, totally, totally take advantage of your pregnancy, how much you can get away with. Really, just for the next four months or five months, see what you can get out of being pregnant.
Anna: I've been doing this and it's been fucking incredible because I'm telling everyone, "I'm sorry, could you help me? I'm pregnant," like physically, emotionally-
Kasia: Yeah. Why are you saying it like a victim? Even though what you just said it right now you should be like, "I'm pregnant. I'm making humans, give me that seat. What else do you want from me? I need people."
Anna: Yeah. This is an exercise because it's new for me as well. I've gone through a terrible first trimester where I just went down the rabbit hole, and then now he comes from work when I was doing nothing, "doing … It's like, "What did you do today?" I say, "I was making a baby today." Now he looks at me, he's like, "Okay," but he understands. Anyways, this has been a great conversation, Kasia. I think you should come back to the podcast then we can just talk for hours and hours, but unfortunately we have to wrap up.
Anna: I just got one last question for you before we go into now some of the people you follow and books you can recommend. I love this concept when you talk about power, you're actually redefining what we mean by power. In fact, not actually redefining, you're actually defining it for all of us because I don't think we understand what it means. Right now today, we think that power is all … Men have the power and we don't have the power.
Anna: I love how you say that the sub-dom and your experience in the dominatrix has taught you or the revelation was it's human, yeah, so we can play with it. It doesn't matter what gender you are. It is just power the more we have and how we use it. Now, you're teaching women to use it obviously, but talk to us a little bit about the true definition of power and how can we use it every day in our interactions.
Kasia: Okay. I wouldn't say true definition of power but I would say a very useful definition of power. I use this definition of power, it tends to be very satisfying. A powerful person is one that has powerful relationships, and a powerful relationship is one where what you give to the other person. You love to give, they love to receive and they use very well. What they love to give to you, you receive and love to receive and use well.
Kasia: This may seem super simplistic but if you think about it they really take a look at your community and the people in your life whether they're your professional people, your family people, your lovers, your friends. The greatest power comes from being in this position and having created these relationships where you are essentially the center of a very powerful network where resources are shared, whether they're emotional or financial or intellectual, extremely well.
Kasia: Behavioral economist's definition of power is the person or a group of people who has the most power has the most amount of resources. This really, really just shrinks down resources into gas, land, water.
Anna: Material resources.
Kasia: Yeah. I'm talking about material resources too, money. I'm talking about emotional resources. I'm talking about in those relationships that are powerful, there's a very generative and synergetic flow of creative ideas, of solutions, imaginations used to build things. I think one of the worst crimes of the patriarchy is how isolated human beings are. Our idea of community is totally destroyed. This definition of power means you have created and are in a very powerful community of people who are all in powerful relationship to you.
Anna: Love it. Love it. It's transcending beyond us versus them, you versus me, man versus woman. How can we create a win-win situation for everyone where we are all powerful? Gaining energy from all of the resources that we share and resources are not scarce, we create the resources. It is the abundance that we live in.
Kasia: Right. Yeah, I agree.
Anna: Yeah, and you are teaching women that. Tell us, Kasia, for everybody listening and … Are you doing workshops only in New York or traveling around the country or what's your activity now?
Kasia: We meanly do them in New York, the schools in New York. I do travel around the world doing workshops but right now we're expending our online school a lot. We have our Verbal Self-Defense Dojo program which is the first step in breaking the moment where women freeze in argument or fight or negotiation. We're about to launch a whole series of other ones, and I travel a lot.
Anna: Love it. Where can women go and take the workshops or follow you online or get to know more? I feel like your work is incredible, all women just need to get that.
Kasia: Thank you. Thank you. The easiest thing to do is just to go to the website. We teach power.com and see what's listed there, especially while I'm on my summer travels.
Anna: Yeah, love it, love it. I love that you're branching online as well because there's so much more possibility, opportunity to just reach [crosstalk 01:16:44].
Kasia: We're having so much fun with our online programs right now because the … Especially the first one, the training program, you basically get to scream at a screen where a sleazy man is saying shitty things to you. You're getting strategies and tools on what to say back and how and the effect that it has which is super fan, because that's the shit women hear all the time and it's also some things that we hope to never ever, ever, ever hear.
Anna: Yeah. Just one last thing before we go. I was thinking about the work that you're doing and the women who come to you and I was just thinking like, what is different about me that I don't … Because you teach, ask with a questions, answer with another question, put attention on him. Since I was a little girl and I guess it was just inherent at me because I was always rebellious.
Anna: I never allowed anyone to cross my boundaries. I think the biggest test for me was within evil stepmother that I was in a mission to completely subjugates, do me or dominate and I never allowed it. Therefore, we got into fights and to me leaving the house, her being suicidal, whatever. Then it continued through life where … I'm sure I could benefit from the training, absolutely, and I would love to come to your workshop.
Anna: Somehow I have this boundary in the defense that you don't fuck with me but at the same time I tried to come from a place of love and empathy and even towards men who are trying to come and, I don't know, kick me up or whatever.
Kasia: Maybe you had a weak father.
Anna: I don't know, my father was very conservative. I don't know, I'm just thinking what makes … I guess it's a personality thing. I had to mature very quickly because my mother passed away when I was basically left alone since I was eight. I had to figure out my way up in the world. Yeah. Yeah.
Anna: Perhaps it's that but I was just thinking like I'm a woman but then why don't I have that and why … I know why. I do appreciate the masculine because on the other podcast I was interviewing men about women in relationships and I understood what you talked about the wounded masculine and how they are human and they're just so confused now and what the fuck do I do with this feminist men, how do I support women.
Anna: Actually, there are not many resources for men now and I just forced this documentary. I don't know Kasia if you watched them, The Red Pill, about the men's rights movement?
Kasia: No.
Anna: It's just fascinating and then talks about all the men in shoes and how they do it. Anyways, so it's been great conversation. Let's finish up Kasia with some of the people. Who are the people that you follow today perhaps online or anywhere else for inspiration that you love to recommend?
Kasia: That's just so difficult, this is a question that stumps me all the time.
Anna: Really? Why?
Kasia: Because the answer is I don't.
Anna: No one. Okay.
Kasia: For the last five years and since I started the school, I stopped reading, I stopped watching TV, I stopped all media input, I stopped reading articles, I stopped doing research. Basically I stopped all incoming information that was not the classroom. I spent most of my time in the classroom watching human beings, watching women, watching their habits, watching their body language, learning the patterns, learning how to break the patterns, learning what works.
Kasia: I went on a really severe, not just media but information fast. I wanted to find something that was devoid of anything that I had been … As to create as pure, a phenomenological space as possible, as clean a laboratory as possible. There are no books that created what happened in the classroom and then the laboratory of the school. Roman Polanski's movie Venus in Fur is fascinating but it's not … Actually, I would recommend that people watch that and I would recommend that people read Cesar Millan's book the Dog Whisperer, the first one.
Kasia: Aside from that, I don't know what much else to say except I'm currently writing a book and I hope when it comes out everybody reads it.
Anna: I hope so too. Perhaps what I've been doing is exactly the same. I'm creating my own laboratory because I stopped watching news, I'm drained by social media, I can't fucking stand it, I'm not reading blogs, I'm not reading anything. I think I'm doing the same thing as in like asking myself the questions, talking to women, working with women, being on interviews like asking you the questions that create neural pathways and I'm just discovering it all for myself.
Kasia: Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah.
Anna: Even the training that I recorded and working one on one with women, because I know if I'm going to go and start, my God, research competitors, and I'm like, "I don't want to do all of that because I'm just get influenced. I'm going to start feeling incompetent that I don't know anything and it's like comparing myself like, "You know what, I'm done with that." I'm just doing my thing, that's it.
Kasia: Yeah. Also the wonderful thing about life is that all mysteries reveal themselves in good time when we put our attention on what it is that we want to know. We have all of the answers, and the ability to sit in uncertainty and in ambiguity and feel and allow the treats to reveal itself like you have all the fucking answers.
Anna: My body has the answers too.
Kasia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do believe it's important to seek wise teachers and to respect the sages and to learn from tradition. I spend most of my life learning in very specific ways, and this especially since the founding of the schools has been really important for me to go very deeply internal and stay very present and stay very, very neutral, and as free of influence as possible and as deeply influenced by what I see in front of me moment by moment as possible. Staying almost like innocent of my past training.
Anna: Love it. Kasia, I feel like you're like my older sister in a way on this journey because I know you've experienced … I guess, I don't want to compare experiences but it really feels like I can learn so much from you and I really feel like we've connected on some deeper level I suppose. I want to thank you so much for coming for the work you're doing.
Anna: Once your book is out, I'd love to spread the message and support. I hope we meet in person one day one of your workshops or who knows, wherever else in the world. If you're in Australia for the next two years, I'd love to meet up.
Kasia: Wonderful.
Anna: Thanks so much for coming.
Kasia: Thank you so much. It's so lovely meeting you and so lovely talking with you. Thank you.
Hello Freedom: Verbal Self Defense DOJO
“I find that a lot of the women are coming my way because they’re kind of sick of this female empowerment idea where a group of women comes together to love themselves and fluff themselves up in isolation and then go out to meet the real world and find themselves finding comfort to retreat, place to land, but without relationally knowing how to do something different, how to give the gift of self-awareness to another man. There’s also a lot of anger there. I think we’re angrier than ever. We’re breaking through a lot of nice girl, good girl behavior.”