“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.”
— Kasia Urbaniak
“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: 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.
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.
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.
