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 full interview on the Luminary app here.
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.
