Frequently Asked Questions
What do students do when they study at The Academy?
Our work features written, spoken and performed exercises designed to heal the habitual shutdown that women and women-identified people tend to encounter when dealing with high stakes asks, desires, invitations, or confrontation.
In our classes, you will learn by doing. The exercises are designed to engage you intellectually, emotionally and physically. They will help you take stock of your most powerful relationships, notice where power dynamics are stuck, take stock of your community, and release your long-held blocks against radically free expressions of power and influence.
Will working with The Academy help me professionally?
If being able to...
Express yourself powerfully
Ask for anything you need and feel good about it
Ask for anything you need and have others also feel good about it
...are useful skills in your professional life, then yes, absolutely. This class will help you professionally.
If you work with any men, this class will help you professionally.
Will working with The Academy help my personal relationships?
Yes! Our students have transformed their relationships with their lovers, partners, parents, children, siblings, coworkers, even problematic pets–in the way and at the scale that matters to them.
Some students come for purely professional reasons, others arrive with the intent of changing stuck or unhealthy dynamics in their personal lives. No matter which intentions they bring with them the first day of class, all students benefit and learn from each other’s presence and experience.
Who shouldn’t work with The Academy?
The Academy’s courses are designed for women-identified people who are ready to take command of their relationships and transform existing power dynamics at work, at home, and in society in general.
While our courses frequently have a tremendously positive impact on students, they are not therapy, relationship counseling, or healing work. This material is often provoking and challenging and is not intended for people whose emotional and mental needs would be better met in a therapeutic setting.
I’m not in a relationship with a man / I’m not attracted to men. Is this work for me?
No matter which gender(s) you enjoy sexually, there’s no denying that the world is full of men. Full. Of. Men. They’re practically half the planet.
Navigating relationships with men - whether business, familial, or personal - requires us to confront thorny power dynamics that are often tied up with gender identity. This course will change the way you play the game of power with all the men in your life, whether you’re romantically involved with them or not.
A main focus of our work is disentangling our culture’s conflation of gender and power dynamics. Everyone is welcome.
Is this work only for ciswomen?
Classes at The Academy are intended for all people who self-identify as female.
What if I don’t want to learn how to become dominant because I think everybody should just be equal?
To wield true power, a person must be able to fluidly switch back and forth between a position of dominant authority to one of surrendered receiving. Most of us have experienced this in the context of a vibrant conversation, where both parties move seamlessly between listening and speaking. That give-and-take exchange is part of what gives the interaction its spark.
True influence cannot exist without connection and fluidity.
Power without connection is tyranny.
Power without fluidity is performance.
We teach women to exercise power from a place of bodily, emotional, and intellectual truth. Once grounded in this type of power, a woman can begin to transform every life she touches, starting with her own. We aim to give our students every available tool to recreate the world in any and every way they see fit.