The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #312 - Kasia Urbaniak

TRANSCRIPT

Kasia Urbaniak
When we talk about how great we are, we are expanding our capacity to receive positive energy from others. Submissive is not less powerful. It's only less powerful when you don't know you're doing it and you're not doing it right.

The seven deadly sins are only dangerous and harmful when they're disembodied. People, when they are feeling seen and felt or they're feeling connected on that level, they will move mountains for you because they'll move mountains in the name of that feeling.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying herein.

So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Okay, friends, you are in for one of the most enlightening, shocking revolutionary episodes ever today. I had the time of my life talking with the fabulous Kasia Urbaniak for her book, Unbound, A Woman's Guide to Power. As we talk about in the episode, it truly opened my eyes to an entire new paradigm when it comes to the power dynamics that happen in our day-to-day lives, our conversations, especially for women.

As we talk about in the beginning, Kasia's background is as a dominatrix. I encourage you, if any of the language or terminology seems a little foreign or not applicable to your life, just keep listening. You will quickly understand the incredible insights and epiphanies that she had doing that work and how it relates to everything that we do when we interact with others. We talk about so many things in today's episode, the good girl stereotype that is rampant in society, and yet the problems that come with being a quote, independent woman, how we get stuck in this thing called the smush, where we're not fully embodying either the dominant or submissive state.

And yes, we will define the dominant and submissive state. It's not what you think. How to actually receive compliments, the role of our wants and desires, how to ask for things and whether or not you should keep pushing it when you get a no, and so much more. I so enjoyed this conversation and I cannot wait to hear what you guys think. These show notes for today's episode will be at melanieavalon.com slash unbound. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. Definitely let me know in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life comments, something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love and then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post, and again, comments there to enter to win something that I love. All right. I think that's all the things without further ado, please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Kasia or Baniac. Hi friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have.

Melanie Avalon
It is a very long time coming. So the backstory on today's conversation, I have had multiple times on this show and my other show, Dave Asprey, who is a legend in the biohacking sphere. And I've become pretty good friends with him and about, I don't know, probably about a year ago or so, he recommended this book called Unbound, A Woman's Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniac, and he was insisting that I just read it personally, not for the show or anything like that. And I saw the book and I was like, Oh my goodness. Well, not only do I need to read this, but this would be a perfect podcast episode. So I reached out to Kasia, invited her to come on and was just so excited. Friends, this book, everybody needs to read it now. Just go get it now.

So I honestly, going into the book, I went in so blind. I had no idea what the thesis was going to be, what the mechanics of it were going to be. And what it turned out to be is a complete paradigm shift in the role of power dynamics in society, especially with men and women, what we'll talk all about this on the show, but basically it's this idea of where your attention is placed has to do with whether or not you are in a dominant or a submissive position. And I know those are sexual sounding words, which I'm sure we will touch on. Kasia has a very, very fascinating background as both a Taoist nun and a dominatrix, which is wild. So I want to hear more about that. But in any case, since reading this book, A, I learned so much about how I interact with people, how I try to get my wants and desires fulfilled as we all do and why that may be unsuccessful at times. And it does come back to this thing with attention in the book. She talks about so many things, including this, this good girl stereotype that we have in society. So I'm sure we'll talk about that. She talks about the importance of embracing our desires and why that's a good thing and why that actually helps everybody. She talks about how when making demands of people or asks of people, you're actually offering them roles and, you know, helping them enliven their lives, how to deal with rejection. There's a lot of different practices. And I, we will talk about this more, but I have concretely been trying to implement, or I guess I should say implementing some of these techniques in my life. And it's fascinating and so, so helpful. So I am so excited about this conversation that we're about to have. Kasia, thank you so, so much for being here.

Kasia Urbaniak
It's my pleasure.

Melanie Avalon
So I have so many questions for you, which actually is pretty ironic because one of the first things, not to go into rabbit hole right at the beginning, one of the first things you talk about in the book is this turning the spotlight technique and asking people questions in order to gain more control in the conversation. And I realized that is what I do. Like when I'm talking, especially when I'm talking like on a first dates or like getting to know somebody, I ask so many questions and I've been aware that I do that. But then reading your book, I was like, oh, now I think I see why I'm doing this.

And what's really interesting is when I talk to somebody, especially men, because usually I can just ask all the questions and that works. But when they ask, when they're questioners and they ask a lot of questions and I'm like, I don't know what to do here. It's like, why are you asking me questions? I'm asking the questions here. That is such a rabbit tangent hole. So before we talk more about questions and techniques and things like that, your personal story, how in the world do you have a background as a dominatric and a Daoist nun? Can you please let us know a little bit about your personal story?

Kasia Urbaniak
record, even after 12 years of study, I didn't actually make it to ordination. So I was on the path to train to be a Taoist nun, but I never became one.

However, it was one of those, one of those really strange things where, you know, I first started working as a dominatrix for money. And I don't mean that as disrespect to the art and craft of BDSM, but that was my particular entry point. And I wanted it for my education. I wanted it so that I could study with all of the world's magical masters and pay for college and do all the things. I was really hungry and insatiable and really dissatisfied with the worldview I was presented with, like probably many people listening right now can relate to, or you're like, ah, this can't be it. There's got to be more. And this was a long time ago before really the internet exploded. So you had to do things by traveling places and talking to people. And sometimes that meant thousands of miles and staying in strange places. And that costs money. What I had no idea I was getting into was this huge, huge education that depended upon two very, very opposite things, deep, deep, deep spirituality, or at least they seem opposite on this, on the surface, right? Deep, deep, the metaphysical training and this, this world of working as a dominatrix and having, you know, super powerful, worldly, powerful clients that are men that are twice my age. And oftentimes I would go straight from a very intense two week training, literally on a New York city BDSM dungeon. And, you know, I'd be returning from these places, you know, when you go, even when you do these amazing transformational workshops, you come back different, your perception is different. But on top of that, add medical, martial, magical training, energetics, you walk into a space and all of a sudden what happened to me was those two alternating, like a hot sauna and a cold plunge, alternating between those two extremes. Something started to merge where I started seeing this very exaggerated picture of male-female dynamics of power, but through the lens of seeing energy, feeling like watching people's organs function differently as I'm in the room using words and psychological ideas, like releasing erotic energy. And this was my entire twenties and part of my thirties. So that alternating current, hot, cold, hot, cold, spiritual, materialistic, sexual forged and changed the way I understood power and gender in such a way where even with my closest friends, you know, they would, you know, look at their phones and have like a dumb boy question, you know, and I'd be like, oh, what's happening is this, this, this, this, and unwittingly I did not know that even then my next career as a teacher of the arts of power for women, erotic power, worldly power, negotiation was beginning before I even had the thought.

Melanie Avalon
This is so incredible. And I was just thinking about it.

It makes so much sense that in that exaggerated or that, you know, the epitome of power, I don't wanna say caricature, but being in that dominatrix setting clearly would show you the exaggerated form of power and give insight into what's actually happening with power beyond that. Did you have an epiphany insight moment where you realized, you know, you saw what was going on in society beyond that, or was it a slow evolution in learning?

Kasia Urbaniak
I think with many things like this, when you're on a path, there are many turning points and pivots and they're, they're decisive moments. They don't happen slowly, but they don't happen all at once.

So one of the turning points was first just falling in love with working as a dominatrix, which I never expected to happen, but I started falling in love with it when I became really good at it. And I started falling in love with it when I became really good at it in a way that allowed me to fall in love with my clients. And I don't mean romantically. I mean, I started seeing these human beings who at first were difficult for me to understand. Then I felt a real empathy and compassion for them. And then I realized that my compassion and empathy was a form of looking down on them still. And there was that it was just that was that was an evolution. And I thought I was coming to terms with the work, but really what I was coming to terms with my complicated feelings of misandry while living in a society that is essentially patriarchal.

Right. So so, you know, there was lots of turning points. A lot of the turning points that happened when it comes to the outside world happened in the outside world with my friends, with with my father, with with my civilian life. And then there were a lot of turning points that happened within the dungeon itself, within the work itself, especially when I started training other dominatrixes. And I started understanding that the things that I had been doing, they were doing too, like the things that made me bad at my job, the things that made me hate my job, the things that made me resent that I needed to work in the dominatrix for money in that first year and a half.

Those weren't just my weaknesses. They weren't my insecurities. They weren't my fears. They weren't my bad habits. They had them too. They were doing the same things. And then when I started being able to apply them to scenarios outside the dungeon, it was like a cheat code. And I, you know, I was sharing that cheat code constantly to the point where I became, you know, the unofficial adviser to all of my female friends way, way, way before there was a school.

Melanie Avalon
Did you find, and we'll define the dominant and the submissive state of power that people can be in, you talk about in the book that women tend to revert to the submissive state in society.

Did you find that you actually easily embodied the dominant state?

Were you drawn to that and other dominatrixes as well?

Kasia Urbaniak
First, this is going to make things a little bit complicated for all of you listening who haven't heard a definition of what I mean by dominant submissive. First, submissive is not less powerful. It's only less powerful when you don't know you're doing it and you're not doing it right. Same thing with dominant. If you're not fully aligned with leading, you're going to be really bad at it. It's not a powerful state. So I wanted to clarify that.

The second thing is women are actually trained to be bad submissives. So the default state of attention going inward when something goes awry. When something goes awry in an interaction, in a situation, we generally need our attention out. There is a panic, vigilant overdrive that some people have, regardless of gender that bypasses that. But to keep things a little bit more simpler, simple at this point of the conversation, I want you to think of it this way. There is this way that we are all taught to engage with the outside world. And the way that we are taught to engage with this outside world affects our ability to shape our reality. Being able to go inward and do the work is super important. Being able to go outward, talk to people, enroll people, get people on your side, have them collaborate with you is also super important. Both are forms of power. You've got to know which one you're doing when. If you're in a bad inward state, what I mean by bad submissive, bad inward is if you need to communicate something to somebody, you need them to understand. But instead of communicating, at that moment, you're choosing to express yourself, which means wantonly, recklessly talking about all your feelings and not paying attention to how it's landing, then you're doing a bad job of communicating. You've got to know which one you're doing.

Sometimes you need to have a safe space to go inward, submissive, inward, and express yourself just to know how you're feeling. Then you ask for somebody to hold space or you go to a safe space where you journal. You figure it out. You feel it. You talk it out. You talk it to understand it. This is a high-stakes situation. You don't want to express. Expressing versus communicating. You want to communicate. You want to put your attention out on the other person. See if they're moving with you, if you are leading them in the right direction, using questions or statements or whatever. There's a lot of ways to talk about this, but here's another really simple way to think about it. Predator and prey. Very, very, very, a very large portion of the way we train men still, but definitely my lifetime. To use their attention is more predatory and for women, more prey-like. So women are going to watch out for themselves, their safety, how they fit into a space, whether they're camouflaged, exposed, whether they're not, it's even related to how our nervous system works. There's no flaw in it. There's no problem with it. It can be very, very powerful. It's very, very necessary. Going inward is very necessary. Being self-aware is very necessary. Knowing what you're feeling, getting information from the inside, not only necessary, but a superpower.

Kasia Urbaniak
Outside, predatory, seeing whole landscape, seeing how the pieces fit together, seeing where you can have impact, where you can wedge and leverage your attention and energy most significantly to affect the entire landscape. So this is a huge generalization because everybody uses both states of attention, dominant, submissive, predatory, prey, inward, outward, everybody uses both of them.

But because of how we raise boys and because of how we raise girls differently, we're going to have very different places where we get stuck. And there are many situations where women get stuck in what we call a prey, victim, or submissive state that's not aligned.

And one of those examples, which is this book was written at a time where we were all leading up to and going through the Me Too movement. So sexual harassment was a really, really big deal.

And that sexual harassment is a really good example of the default state of attention in women being this kind of collapsed, not powerful submissive. Somebody asks you an inappropriate question, says something, come up to my hotel room.

Did you dress like that to get my attention? Right? And a woman, instead of going, you are asking me a really dumb ass question right now, or putting her attention out, she puts, wait, am I? She goes inward.

Am I? Did I do something? Did I send the signal? Am I giving the impression? Have I done something? And all of a sudden, she's frozen and pinned. Yes, there's like a thing called fight, fight, flight, freeze, fawn. But in the simple energy mechanics of what's happening at that moment, all attentions on her, her attentions on her, and she can't get her attention out. She can't get a word out. She can't speak. It's an example of the default state of attention being inward. And if you wanna test and see in your life how many women versus how many men have a default that's inward or outward, just go out there and see what happens when you ask 20 women an inappropriate question and 20 men an inappropriate question.

I've done this experiment with a thousand people. I do it in my biggest workshops. I tell women, I'm in a 600 person workshop in London. I gave them the whole much more expansive view of turning the spotlight, this exercise, get off the spot, I tell all of them, I'm gonna come up to you randomly in the audience. I'm gonna ask you an inappropriate question. Your only job is to not answer the question. And still to this day, it's like, hi, do you like sucking cock or is that just the shape of your mouth? I put the fucking microphone in their mouth and they go, uh, uh, uh, I don't know. And it takes two or three tries for them, even though I told them what the exercise is and that your job is to respond with a question about me. How dare you ask me a question like that? Do you like putting women on the spot? Like, do you talk to your mother with a mouth like that or whatever, or you could be funny, you could be cruel, but the point is to put the attention, where did you get that tie? On them, on them, on them.

Kasia Urbaniak
Ask a man an inappropriate question. First thing he's gonna do 80% of the time at least, significant statistics is go something like, what you asking for, like who wants to know? What are you doing?

Melanie Avalon
Are you flirting with me? Wow.

One of the things I really liked in the book was you pointed out that in society, it's like women are nouns and we're praised for what we are and men are verbs and they're praised for what they do. This idea of, okay, I have a question. So this idea of attention is often placed on the woman and she's often in this submissive state but not in a powerful way.

What's the difference between a woman where all the attention is on her and she's responding like the example you just gave, like nervous and doesn't know what to say and looking in word and feeling out of sorts versus a woman who walks in a room and is very attractive and everybody's looking at her and she wants to be looked at? Like is that also the submissive state but in a more coherent way?

Kasia Urbaniak
So, this is where the plot thickens, and things get to another level of complexity. The simple answer to this has to do with how good she is willing to have it, how much attention can she carry, receive, how much energy from others she's willing and wanting to have keep digest. And the reason the plot thickens here isn't because the submissive state of attention is weak. It's that women are also taught not to go there. There is you're not allowed to fully deeply enjoy, savor, take in those compliments that attention. So people can throw all of this adoration or attention negative or positive, let's just stick with positive to keep it simple, say it's the kind of attention you want. Most women cannot handle two or three compliments in a row without contracting their bodies physically. You go, wow, Melanie, you have the best voice. Imagine we're seeing each other now. What happens when I start talking about how beautiful you are, how accomplished you are? When do you start going, oh, thank you. When do you start getting tight in your belly, in your throat? That from a perspective of energetics is your container being a little too small, right? Like having a shot glass capacity for a huge amount of love and attention coming your way. Oh, I, you know, no, thank you. I'm all good. Yeah. No. Oh, this whole thing. Ah, right. That is a an absolute clear manifestation of not being able to receive it. So we are also conditioned not to indulge, not to savor, not to wallow in it, not to totally take it in. And from a physical perspective, from an energetic perspective, a lot of this happens with constriction in our pelvis. So we're, we're, we're crunching in our bellies, we're tightening our throats, and we're not only not allowing ourselves to fully receive it, take it in, and even be a little bit turned on by it. It feels dangerous. It feels taboo. Oh, I'm such an egomaniac. If I take it and go, thank you. Wow. Yes. Yes. However, that's the only way to get fully aligned with being in that submissive or receiving, or let's say objective, whatever, whatever you want to call it, positive or negative. Let's, the only way to be find the power in that is to be a receiving vessel, to be a receiving vessel. And one of the reasons the first exercise I tend to teach people is the one about flipping the attention is you have to train to expand your attention, your ability to receive, whether it's attention or energy. It doesn't happen overnight. That's conditioning that needs to be overcome. Like how good are you willing to have it, Melanie? Are you willing to be worshipped and praise? When do you start feeling like, okay, I'm full, I'm full, I'm full. That's enough. And when you feel I'm full, I'm full. That's enough. That's the instruction to put your attention out and flip the dynamic to move into the dominant position. That's where that woman can, she has two ways to get powerful. She can be receiving and allow herself to get, say she walks into a restaurant and she is noticed by everyone and she is taking it in. That's one way to fully watch her grow, glow, watch her energy take over the whole room from a submissive place.

Kasia Urbaniak
She's not directing the attention. She's not, she's taking it in. She's taking it in. She's fully aligned with it.

She's like, I got a capacity. Are you kidding me? I can have 10,000 people worship me, adore me. The moment she feels uncomfortable or unsafe, she can take that attention and turn it out and direct it. It doesn't matter in a restaurant, at a waiter, at her date, at anything. Put her attention out and start directing consciously the energy that she's received to release a little bit of pressure, to find herself, you know, to release the attention that would build up if she had forced herself to stay inward. But we are raised to neither be this. Nor that, we can't be dominant, and we can't fully find the power in the submissive. And that is a huge loss.

One of the beautiful things I learned from some of my former clients back in the day as a dominatrix is these men who entered a submissive state, they really allowed themselves to go there. They really allowed themselves to take in all the punishment, the praise, all of it. They were just eating it up. And I was like, oh man, I wish I could be one of these guys. I want to be a client that could just eat it up. I'm going to be as greedy, a little piggy as they are. And I'm going to be proud of it. And then when I started exploring that, like all of that, in terms of receiving and indulging, I found I had condition limits I needed to break through. And it was really fun to get to play pretend in a dungeon where I'm like being worshiped. I'm pretending to be, how good am I willing to have it? Am I really willing to have it how I want it? I'm really willing to receive it all the way.

Melanie Avalon
This is so fascinating to me and it really resonates with me the not being comfortable with the attention definitely from conditioning. Every now and then you learn something that's very simple but it has a radical change on your perspective and it was probably a few years ago now but somebody pointed out that if somebody compliments you like it's what you're saying now like you don't have to you don't have to justify it you don't have to discredit it you can literally just thank them for the compliment and accept it and I was like I remember when I learned that and I was like oh that's pretty mind-blowing to me and and practicing that has been has been really helpful and still at the same time even though I think I now can pretty easily say thank you if somebody compliments me I still inside of me sometimes feel that I shouldn't be feeling that or that I shouldn't be basically that I just shouldn't be in that in that state and it's just so interesting that that's so ingrained in us for for so long.

So is this the state you talk in the book about this state of the smush what is this smush state?

Kasia Urbaniak
Yeah. So can I talk about this much and also talk about what you just said about yourself? Oh, go ahead. Please do.

Because I can already tell from this conversation and from what you've shared with me and how you speak that you're an excellent dumb, you're an excellent top. You know how to look at something and be like, out of all this, this, this, and this is what I find interesting. And I'm going to guide my attention and guide this person through the process I want them to go through. And whether it's on a date or whether the way that you're listening, gauging, and asking me questions, you have that side very well muscled, like you've worked it out. And to switch to something like receiving compliments as maybe idiotic as it may sound on this level, I would say that I bet my wager is that skill as a leader, as a boss, as a dom, as the woman who can interview the way that you interview, you didn't get that for free. You weren't taught that as a five-year-old. I bet you had to fight for it. I bet you had to prove that you were competent, that you were independent, that you could handle shit, that you could be trusted with responsibility, that you were not a ding-dong, that you were not a frivolous little girl.

And so if I am correct, that you had to work for that in your own way, it would make sense that you would have in you some of the architecture that would prevent you from very easily being able to lay down on your back and let anybody who wants to tickle your tummy and tell you that you're beautiful and amazing. So the first step to opening up that receiving more is to think that whatever boss bitch you have living inside of you for stepping up and honor the work, because I think that is one of the things I see happen a lot, is we want to have everything and we want to have it all at once.

And we forget that sometimes the thing that seems like a block is actually the thing at some point that saved our lives and gave us every single thing that we care about. And being able to honor that and be like, yeah, that's right. I have hyper competence. I have proven to myself and everyone that I can create things out of thin air and I can support myself and that I'm smarter than they thought and honor that and in honoring that, start to soften the energy body. Because that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about being able to hold more life force, softening the energy body, creating a sense of safety where we can finally admit to ourselves how powerful we've been all along, like Dorothy at the end of Wizard of Oz, who could have clicked her heels and gone to Kansas from the very beginning of the movie.

You know what I mean? So in this, again, I have no idea I'm doing a very reckless, without even seeing you diagnosis, just on the basis of sound and talking. But if, let's just say if I'm correct in any way, then what you've received is an education in this mush, which is you're not really allowed to fully be the one who's leading the show.

Kasia Urbaniak
So we have to get really good at building the muscles to be hyper competent and lead without having a lot of followers, meaning do a lot of things ourselves, be really independent about it. And when we are in that dominant state of leading people through an experience so that we can get collaboration, influence, impact, we're rather like graceful and not covert about it, but it's not obvious.

We're not yelling. We're not dressed up as a dominatrix. And then in the receiving side, we also have to hide it a little bit. Like we get a compliment, we feel it, we hear it, but then we have to go, oh, no, not this, right? The smush is you are not allowed to be the baby princess who's taken care of by everybody, the receiver fully, because that takes away a lot of your status, position, respect, authority, access in society. But that would be the state of power for the submissive or you in a submissive state, we can't fully go there because oh my goodness, that would be too emotional or maybe too slutty or too like self aggrandizing. There's too much desire. There's too much ego. There's too much body. There's, it's just too much. It's just too much of all of the things that our religions tell us are wrong, but it's all about you and receiving. And I got to tell you, we all know now most probably your listeners that that state isn't bad. It's very important. We all need to get source. We all need to receive. We all need to be the baby of the family for a minute. And we're not fully allowed to go there, we're stopped. So the energy stops. We say no to things when we're offered them, even though we want them. We may want attention, but we need it a very particular way in order to feel safe. The brakes go up, the armor goes up. And then there's the other side. We can't fully go into the dominant state because that means influencing others. And boy, wouldn't that be manipulative, right? So even as doms, we're the hyper-competent doms, but we're usually running a one-woman show or only counting on people the way that we absolutely have to when we're saying things like, if you don't mind, I could really use a little bit of help here or we explode at somebody for letting us down for things we never explicitly told them that they needed to do, right? So that's the smush, the smush. And here's the thing about the smush. The way I've described it is the bigger landscape in which it lives in. But if you were deaf and could see energy the way I do, you would just see that it lives in the body. It lives in the body. And it is attention bound, never going fully in, never going fully out. If you looked at the body when it is in a deeply submissive state, you can see a woman pulling all of the energy from her environment in, being so deeply sourced that her cup runneth over. She ends up contributing to the field anyway. And it is a beautiful thing. And if you watch a woman in full dominance, it's the same shape. It's just moving in the opposite direction. Her attention's going out. She's deeply influencing everyone in the field and she's receiving energy from the other, from the followership the other way.

Kasia Urbaniak
And the smush, it's a dumb ass name, but it's the easiest way to explain how compressed we are and the feeling of walking on a tire. I'm too much, I'm not enough. I'm too loud, I don't speak up enough. I'm too obsessed with surging ahead. I'm behind, I'm behind, I'm behind. Like it's, you know, my boobs are too small until they're too big. Like what's the right amount, that tightrope feeling? That is the smush.

And it's the, you damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you find yourself in that psychological moment, check your body and see if it's compressed because literally what happens is where a volcano on the inside were hard and compressed and contracted and the life force isn't flowing, we're not connecting with the world neither as a receiver or as a giver, as a leader or as a follower, we're in it and it's isolating, disempowering, painful. And that, that is the problem, not the submissive state, not the dominant state, that it's not natural. Kids, you watch kids play, boys or girls, they are never in a smush.

I've never seen, they switch roles, they give, they receive, they're fluid. It's this thing that happens around the time of puberty and it's intense. And like what, again, what happens to boys, what I've seen is different from what happens to girls. I'm really aware that it's difficult to walk these lines of gender stereotypes, especially these days with like all of the rich, ripe kind of psycho, like gender conversations that are happening, the divisiveness around it. I need to speak this way because these stereotypes, these gender patterns exist because our education and our conditioning has been patterned for so long that it still applies. It's like, these are the games we've been playing, they haven't cleared. We're not in a new space, we're in a space of conversation, investigation, negotiation, and sometimes it's nasty and sometimes it's beautiful, but it doesn't change that I've devoted my life to figuring out how to touch those key points in a woman that will release her so she has access to power, to power, to have a world where she can lead from a place, she can lead others, inspire others, and move others from a place of what she actually truly wants and she can receive from others based on what she wants. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. So I have so many questions here.

Um, I was actually, I was wondering that when you, when you wrote the book with the publisher, was it, I was just wondering about that journey with the gender stereotypes, how difficult that was to navigate in the book. Was the publisher pretty supportive?

Kasia Urbaniak
That was great that that penguin they were awesome. They initially wanted to call the book kill the good girl. So they were they were I probably took them on a really wild ride, but they were really they were wonderful doms. They were compassionate caring down for what I wanted, but also totally able to elegantly steer me away from a cliff's edge of inexperience.

I was like, no, we're gonna fight. They're like, all right, all right, all right. Let's look at some alternates. No, and also, also, this was like the the cultural the cultural weather keeps changing. And it was at a time where the cultural weather was we were we were talking about, you know, the book took a long time to write. So we were we were navigating the book deal. It was a time where I think we started talking about the book in like 2018. So it took years to write. So at that time, it was it was like, we need as much woman centered stuff as possible.

Melanie Avalon
So to answer your analysis of my upbringing and such, I think one of the key things that led to the smush in me is I was raised very religious, a very religious background. I actually was, from the beginning, kind of the high achiever, like applauded for my achievements and accomplishments and so I really liked receiving that. And at the same time, I was told over and over and over again, like, you know, be humble, be modest. I guess that's a whole another topic.

But that tension of being so accustomed to being applauded for my achievements and what I was doing and then also being told at the same time, you know, praise is not necessarily a good thing and you should be modest and you should be humble, it led to a confusing state to exist in.

Kasia Urbaniak
Makes so much sense. That's hardcore.

Melanie Avalon
So I think, yeah, and I, and to this day, and also with the, that that's also the modesty part with, you know, like walking in a room and like being comfortable with people looking at you. It's a tension that is this smoosh feeling. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Are you still humble? That's the whole question.

I mean, I guess people can be humble. I think, I think, I don't know how you escape your ego. So I don't, I think ego for me, I like playing this game where you go through the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues and you say, like when you're talking, when you're meeting somebody and you say like, which one do you struggle with the most and least of each of them? I think it's a really eye opening question. I think I struggle with ego the most. So I guess I'm not humble. And the reason I feel like I'm not humble is because I enjoy, oh man, I'm having like in real life epiphany, in real time epiphanies right now. The reason I think I'm not humble is because I really enjoy compliments and things like that. And from upbringing, I'm like, well, that must mean I'm not humble.

Kasia Urbaniak
feel if you were just like, openly fully claiming giving up humility altogether and just being what do you think would happen to you if you were a self aggrandizing ego maniac who is always enjoying how amazing she is vocally and visibly

Melanie Avalon
I think awareness, I don't know, like I really struggle with that idea because I really think valuing other people's really important. And I realize, I guess you can do, well, if you're self-aggrandizing.

Kasia Urbaniak
You can totally compliment others while you're aggrandizing yourself fully, fully, fully, fully. So I'm asking for a specific reason.

Well, I'm probably asking because I'm used to being the Dom, so I don't want to turn this interview around. But that is also how I release.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah, of like, you can feel the, we'll get back to what we're talking about. But like, when I'm in a conversation, like podcasting, I'm so accustomed to asking the questions.

And then if somebody asks me a question back, you feel it viscerally, like you feel that attention focus. And I never know, I was picking up on that in my years and years of podcasting, but it wasn't until I read your book that I was like, Oh, now I really see it. That's what's happening.

Kasia Urbaniak
And it actually feels good. It feels good. It feels good. It feels good to flip it, sometimes switch it, create balance, harmony or trade off. Sometimes it doesn't feel good.

But there's reasons for that, right? As you know, I go into that in my book, because that's, there's a deeper whole landscape of power dynamics and how these micro moves work when you're engaging with another. However, back to you and my current new mission to make sure you're the least humble person on the planet and totally abandoned humility, because I would trust you with being that. Now, I this is another, this is another scenario where I have now spent so many hours, so tens of thousands of hours, so many years working with women, but I don't fully understand why what works with women doesn't work with men. I don't know. So I have no answer. And to anybody who's out there who's listening, who's a man, I so apologize. I don't understand why humility can be good for men, and tends to be terrible for women.

But I can explain the woman part a little bit, right? So remember, when I was talking about a woman's capacity to receive is not just theoretical or psychological, it's also physical and energetic. And when a woman receives a compliment, or she like savors it, one thing that really helps her digest that is to agree with it. One thing that helps her expand her capacity to receive is to be in agreement with compliments, in general, because she literally, as a pelvic, reproductive receiver of life energy in order to continue the life of humans, has to receive that energy in her body energetically. And when we when we talk about how great we are, we are expanding our capacity to receive positive energy from others. So you know, like, you know, they say, I can't love you more than you love yourself. That is an energetic formula for women. If women can say, I'm beautiful, I'm amazing. I not be humble at all. What tends to happen in their energy body is that pelvic constriction that most Western women have that have their capacity to receive literally be like a little shot glass, sitting in their pelvic bowl, starts to open and expand and starts to be able to hold and carry energy. This does not happen the same way for men at all.

And I don't know what the I don't know what the corollary is for. I like that's a journey. The school was founded. My school was founded by me and a guy, my male partner Ruben Flores, he left the school a few years ago to go study psychology to figure out what the path is for men. I don't know what the path is for. But I know this, that when there is a stage, there is a stage, I'll admit, when a woman is learning to abandon her humility, where she can be a little incongruent, unaligned and annoying, like she's saying it, she doesn't mean it yet. That's when it sounds egotistical. And that's when it it has an edge. But she grows into it, it like develops its own glow, it grounds. And all of a sudden, she is the cup that can be filled and runneth over.

Kasia Urbaniak
So I'm really grateful that you allowed me to ask you a few questions and take you to a few edges. Because as you were answering, if I could hear you thinking through how some of this doesn't make any sense, you know, and I love that you mentioned the seven deadly sins because I actually teach the seven deadly sins as virtues as virtues really, really, really quickly. So I want to be available for more of your questions.

Here's my theory on seven deadly sins. Oh, I love this. The seven deadly sins are only dangerous and harmful when they're disembodied. They are born of seven deadly sins and, and religious philosophies that are akin to the seven deadly sins are born of religious paths that make body the enemy to a greater or lesser degrees. And they're all paths where women are explicitly excluded from religious authority. So we have a harder time being disembodied. So much of our entire worldview is is bodily connected. Name any of the seven deadly sins, embody it, and it doesn't exist as a sin anymore. Example, gluttony. If you're in your body, you know when it's time to stop eating, you can feel it. You have to be present for that moment. All of the systems upon which the seven deadly sin cycle are self regulating if you're present to them sloth Wrath. Right? Sloth, you know, when you went, you know, if you can lay down on a couch and not feel guilty about laying on a couch, then eventually you get to a point where you're sick of laying on the couch. If you lay on the couch, you feel guilty about laying on the couch, you can exhaust yourself and never get off the couch. But if you're embodied in your present, you rest and then you get up. Wrath. Wrath. If you pay attention to anger, you follow it all the way through. What you actually end up discovering isn't your enemy. It's the goal. And the thing that you perceived as the enemy is the thing that's in the way of your goal. So basically, you discover your passion and that fire that exists in Wrath. But that has to be embodied. You have to be present for it. You can't just be a hot head. You have to feel your butt, your legs. You have to be fully embodied. You discover that. Envy. Envy just points to a desire. You're disembodying. You only get envious of somebody. When you feel like they have something you can't hold in your body, you can't have. So all of them, we can go deeper into all of them, but just that alone, I cannot tell you what a beautiful reclamation it was also of my past religious, because I went to Catholic school. I'm such a stereotype. I'm the Catholic school girl that became a dominatrix. But how wonderful it was, how wonderful it was to learn through the seven deadly sins that I could trust my body to make me a good person, that I could do these totally immoral, sounding, bad, evil things, combine embodiment, meaning really get rooted in myself. And my natural goodness would alchemize whatever sinful idea about that into a virtue. I could trust myself. I could trust myself with my desires. I could trust myself with my crazy feelings. I could trust myself with my bad habits.

Kasia Urbaniak
I could trust all of it. All I needed to do was be with it, embody it, and it would turn into the thing that was its most exalted version.

Melanie Avalon
So fascinating. And actually, I'm so one of the last guests I interviewed, it was Jodi Wellman, and she has a book called You Only Die Once.

And she talks about in her book, these different negative emotion states that people can be in. Do you know, do you want to guess which negative, what we see as negative, because now we're kind of redefining things, but which state of being people, A, value the most, they see it as this actually brings good things to my life, even though I don't like experiencing this emotionally, and then the one that they dislike the most and value the least. One of the ones you mentioned is one of those.

Kasia Urbaniak
Is anger the most valued?

Melanie Avalon
No, that's a good guess or at least neither. It's a good guess though. I think I would have guessed that probably. I have no idea.

Kasia Urbaniak
idea. I have no idea. I'm so deep in my own observations about emotions. I have no idea what people... I guess people would not like... I don't know. Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me.

Melanie Avalon
the thing people value the most is regret, because I guess we feel like it shows us, you know, what we could have done differently, that it's additive to our life in some way. envy is the one people value the least and dislike the most.

And that tracks with me because I know I said earlier that I say struggle most with ego, it's tied between pride and envy. I, I so dislike the state of envy. Like I don't like existing in that feeling, which is interesting with your, you know, what you're saying about being in the body, and it being, you know, a natural thing. Yeah, I don't like that state.

Kasia Urbaniak
Have a couple I have a couple solutions around me one of them doesn't work for everyone but it works for a lot of people which is Immediately contribute and support and praise the person your envious of what it tells you your energy body is the thing they have you're allowed To have to and taking action Vocal or physical in order to support them Which can be hard if that person is like a parasocial relationship, but you can still do it You like just out yourself as a fan and you can never go back to being excluded from the orb of their success Or whatever it is they have the secondary benefit it has is you show up as a fan to them and they Energetically or actually can start feeding you information that can help you get what it is that they have It's neither here nor there.

I'm really shocked by the regret things. They don't I don't understand regret I don't I don't even think of it as an emotion. I think of it as a Thought form and I don't experience it very often. So I don't really know what it is

Melanie Avalon
It's pretty rare that I experience it. And if I do experience it, I think I'm pretty good at reframing.

Like you don't know what would have happened if you had done something else. So actually it could have been worse and you know, you just don't know.

Kasia Urbaniak
Yeah. And that's, you're saying a beautiful thing at the end of the day.

The thing that we need to cope with is that we really don't know very much. We only know what we feel and know in the moment, like we can't reliably, there's like this kind of illusion that the world stays the same, and the rules stay the same, and what works stay the same. There's something that we do to normalize our perception of reality. So don't freak out. But the truth is, it's always changing. And it's kind of crazy. It's a little psychedelic. It's wild out there.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, I love it. I love that concept.

If you're in a place that you don't want to be in in that moment, you don't even have to do anything and it will change because everything changes. That's very freeing to me.

Kasia Urbaniak
Yeah. And I think that's also why I'm so passionate about teaching people about power and power dynamics, because the engagement point I see is how we use our attention and how we use our attention is the only way we get to do the one magical thing that human beings get to do.

We create reality. We create things out of nothing and we do it. We do it with our attention and we do it by getting other people on board. Like we do it with our, it's kind of amazing. We can take something out of the invisible world and create it here in material reality. That makes us magicians. And it's exciting and it's beautiful. And one of the, one of the things that really depends on is being embodied, being present. And one of the things I see as a threat is we live in this virtual technological world where it's really easy to have these experiences that don't land fully, that don't come fully from the whole depth and breadth of who we are. And that limits our magic.

It really limits what we're capable of, how much we can give and receive from each other, what we can co-create, that group synergy that human beings are able to do, that built the cathedrals and created all of human civilization. Like all of that starts to weaken when our ability to command our attention weakens. And that's essentially our power. Our power is the how to make magic using human attention. Everything we know, whether it's art or laws or justice, everything we know, it doesn't exist without attention.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. So in the few different directions to go here, one last question about the good girl, because you also talk about good girl 2.0, which is this independent, the independent woman. So what's happening there? So because that really, that really resonated with me, that section.

Kasia Urbaniak
So first, the good girl itself, the OG formula, so that I can build on it is I think we all know what it feels like to all of a sudden out of nowhere being be like body snatched or hijacked by our inner good girl, where all of a sudden, we're literally lying through our teeth and smiling, even though we have like rage in our eyes, or we're apologizing for something we don't feel sorry for, or we're just like managing a situation with this tool that is the good girl instinct, the good girl reflex, the overworking, the over worrying, the perfectionism, and being really, really, really deeply in this mush. It's really, really important to me that we don't get time blind.

And we remember that I'm not old. And in my lifetime, women couldn't get credit cards, start businesses, there's like a lot of places in the world where women still don't have basic rights, and were essentially and have been for a very long time treated as property.

So if you're only access to any kind of advancement, survival, economic upward mobility, was to marry well, then what be what looking marriageable looks like is the good girl. I'm not too much trouble. If you marry me, I won't cost you too much. I am resourceful. I make do I shut the hell up. I manage I harmonize. I am an excellent candidate for your wedding because I will not bother you. I will be quiet. I will not be visible, but I'll also never fall behind. I'll make sure everything works. And this this like this like energetic structure of the good girl is she still she doesn't have to be explicitly taught. You don't have to tell somebody. You don't have to tell a young girl this is who you need to be in order to be loved accepted in order to survive in order to be upwardly mobile. There's an ancestral current. It's in our grandmothers, it's in our mothers, it's in us. And like the liberation from that, the way to stop that is to liberate ourselves from it, right? Like, a lot of people, and this is one of the beautiful things about social media, have been using these like micro pop psychology moves to teach each other, inspire each other to break out of that giving each other social permission to, you know, sometimes it happens in crude forums, like some of the boundary conversations are ridiculous, some of them are great, like, sometimes whatever, but we're doing it, we're collectively doing it, it's great.

But that good girl, you're an object, you're going to be the most efficient, effective, non intrusive object to be married into a family. So you make things that wouldn't normally work, work smoothly function. It's like being on the marketplace for being both invisible and very useful. Now, enter a society where the currents are changing. And the first steps out of the good girl look like the opposite of the good girl. But she's still the good girl. She's the independent woman. So she's taken the step to be willing to have those goals, but have them for herself, instead of counting on choosing the right partner being chosen by the right partner being choosable by the right partner.

Kasia Urbaniak
So she's going to do it, but she's going to do it all herself. She's going to make sure that it's covert, right? She's she's powerful, she's strong, but she doesn't bother anyone. She's exhausted.

She's doing the impossible. She's doing the impossible for everyone else. She's teaching everybody else how to do the things that they should know how to do. And there's still the confinement and the constriction of the good girl because she's siloed. The thing about power and influence in the dominant state is that you deeply and completely influence others and combine that labor in the direction you see fit. And even when I say that, I can almost hear and feel how it sounds. That is literally what leadership is.

the things that we want, that we can achieve by ourselves, if our limit is just that, we're thinking really, really small because anything really cool, anything really cool in life that's like really worth doing requires more than one person. Aside from maybe reaching enlightenment by meditation, but even that requires receiving, you know, inspiration, instruction, divine support, but like almost anything that you wanna do that's worth doing is gonna require other people, whether you see it or not, it's gonna require other people. So the ability to be able to fully own your power so you can get other people on board to do the thing that you want. Right now, the only way we know how to do that, bypass the uncertainty of that is if we have enough money to pay people. But even that, even that can be a troublesome thing. So, okay, independent woman, she really is the sister of the good girl and to liberate her, it's the same stuff as liberating the good girl. It's fully, deeply, completely about being able to embrace your desire, being able to fully own and receive how wonderful, beautiful you are and being able to command attention.

Melanie Avalon
the good girl piece, it's just so saturated in society. And I love when there are examples that are so specific and so eye-opening because you give in the book a list of things that we do as good girls.

And one of them was so specific, but it's something I've been doing for so long and reading your book, I was like, yeah, why do I do that? It's that I have a really wonderful housekeeper that's been coming for years. And I clean up before she comes. And every time I do that, like on like a slightly sub-perceptual level, I question why I'm doing that. And you gave a list of examples, but that was just like one of the little ones. And I was like, oh, that's so true. Because I guess it's me being uncomfortable with, like I'm paying this person to clean my apartment. And I mean, that's what it is, but I need to somehow like justify myself or, you know, like there's this whole other layer there. I just love when there's really specific things that makes so much sense.

Kasia Urbaniak
One of the beautiful things about writing a book is that everything becomes a little bit more solid and more official. So the things that are either thoughts floating around in my head or things I've said to students become immortalized, right?

So it's funny you mentioned that because I have a housekeeper too. We have a running joke where she comes in and I go, Tessie, I made a huge mess for you. And she goes, oh goody, challenge me, challenge me. But that joke is based on me recognizing that sometimes I would have that feeling too, where I'd be like, is this a disaster? What kind of animal am I? What is she going to think? Maybe I should make it a little easier for her to do the things that I know she likes. I'm like, whoa, hold on. I actually wrote a book where that was an example. It runs deep, baby. It runs deep.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. It just goes to show how pervasive it is and how it's these little things that we don't even realize, you know, until we start realizing them. Just while we're talking about personal realizations of implementing this after reading your book, actually, and maybe you can help me understand if I was doing this correctly or how I could have worked on this because what I've realized in bringing awareness to where my attention is, first of all, it's interesting. It was really interesting for me to hear that you were saying that I'm dominant or that I can embody the dominant form while podcasting. That never really occurred to me.

So that's really, really interesting because I've been perceiving that I'm struggling with keeping the attention out. I think it's mostly when I am asking for something and we haven't talked about ask yet, which is a huge part of the book, but when I am asking for something that I feel, probably a lot because of my good girl conditioning, that even though objectively I deserve it, I feel like I don't. So an example is I just got back from Vegas and when we checked in, they had told us wrong information about our rooms. I really need late checkout. I got to have late checkout. So we thought we had late checkout and we did not, but we were supposed to. So talking with the person at the front desk was such an exercise for me because I knew that we were supposed to have it and they were trying not to give it to us. So I felt like when I was talking to him and he was talking to me and everything he said, I just wanted to go inside and think, is he right? To question myself and to make myself small and go inward. So I tried as hard as I could to just know my intention and my desire, which was we need this late checkout, which we were supposed to have and just pursue that and keep my attention outward. Afterwards, my sister, she was like, you did such a good job. And I was like, I'm trying to implement. I'm learning in this book. Long story short, we did not that night get late checkout, but they did give us a lot of credits to make up for it, which was amazing. And then we ended up getting late checkout anyways. So it all worked out.

Point being is, so that experience of having my desire and having an ask that I want to have and knowing I deserve it, but then wanting to look inward, is that a typical experience when we're working on these skills?

Kasia Urbaniak
Well, I'm really curious about what you did. Did you go sub or did you go a dom? Did you do both?

Did you talk to them with your attention on them and ask them about their policies, their process, how they feel about it, what they can do, what they can't do, what they really can do, what their boss would do, what their circumstances and situations are, because that can be a winning strategy, but going sub can be a winning strategy too.

Melanie Avalon
So perfect question because I was trying to do DOM, so I was keeping attention out. I was, everything they said, I was asking them about their policies.

Can I talk to their manager? Why is this the case? Lots of questions, putting it back on them. When I walked away, I was like, oh, I wonder what the subversion of that would have looked like. And would that have been more effective? What would the subversion of that look like?

Kasia Urbaniak
So you could do in that situation, you could do good sub which I always advocate or you could do bad sub too, which is passive.

Melanie Avalon
aggressive, right?

Kasia Urbaniak
No, it would be like faking a nervous breakdown, having a huge scene and having them to take care of you. Just creating a huge scene.

Like, you don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand.

Melanie Avalon
Not a character for me.

Kasia Urbaniak
Right, right. No, but also I wouldn't, I wouldn't advocate that, but there are some really bad, bad Dom and sub things you could do in a certain situation, depending on the power dynamic. It's a little bit taking advantage of the fact that you're the client. So maybe, maybe I shouldn't even be talking about that here, but it would be you very genuinely going into a place of deep feeling and talking about why a late checkout is non-negotiable for you.

Right. But not from a stubborn place and not from a non-negotiable place, but just take them into your situation, in your process and wait and do not leave. You do not leave. You speak and you, they'll say repeatedly, like there's nothing we can do. It's like, okay, but what am I supposed to do now? Like what am I supposed to do now that I'm going to be like unable to, what happens when I wake up and I'm ill and I can't and like I'm there and what happens that I got, like, what do you want me to do? How do you expect me to, you know, that's, that's submissive. It's, it's, you're asking about your own experience. You're talking about your own situation. It can be really heartfelt. It can be really genuine. It can be emotional. It can be really how you're feeling like about it in a way that is absolutely non-accusatory. Because the thing is the moment you have an accusation, it's not that it's negative, it's that it's outward, right?

So you're splitting the power of your sub by going, by saying anything. So if you're, if you're suffering in front of somebody, but you're implying blame, you're not doing, you're not doing sub, you're not doing a fully aligned sub. You're not like, you're just receiving the information. You're having your experience and you're letting them into your world. You're letting them into your eyes. You're letting them, your eyes go from predatory to receiving Marilyn Monroe eyes. You let them in, you let them feel you. And from that place, you get them to want to do everything they can. Move mountains to help you. They have to, it means that your magnetic power and your submissive surrender power has to be that has to have such a big capacity that they step out of their professional role. They step out of and you get them on board that way. The other way is the dumb way, which is you enter them. You start asking them questions about not just what they can do or what they can't do, what they're allowed to do, but they're predicament. You can say, like, I see you and I see that you really want to help me. I know you're hamstrung and limited by what you can do professionally, but like you as a human being, you really want to help me. What, what would you do? Like, what could you recommend? Like, you start going, you start going into them as a person. And then seeing if you can, again, elicit their support, elicit their, and ask questions like, sometimes I've been into how does it feel to like not be able to do the thing you want to do because you're at your job, even if it means being that direct of being that intimate, like,

Kasia Urbaniak
and not in a shitty way. I mean, literally, like, in a genuine way, there are lots of variations of that sub and that dumb, but those, those would be examples. And sometimes you can, if you're clean about it, do both in a single interaction, but it requires switching also requires like really knowing like going deeply into one or the other to know which one's working. And sometimes you just want to stay with one because it's working and it feels right. It feels good.

It's getting you and the other person connected for real. It's like, this is the more human attention you can actually merge and connect the more powerful it is. It's, it's, this is one of the beautiful things I discovered about my, you know, in my journey to understand power is that they, people say it's, it's evil. Some people say it's neutral, but when power is working in its most powerful way, people are on board, heart, body and mind. It is the deepest kind of connection and it's intimate. And people, when they are feeling seen and felt, or they're feeling connected on that level, they will move mountains for you because they'll move mountains in the name of that feeling.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, that was insanely enlightening and actually appropriately enough. So I think for the first encounter with when we got there and I had the conversation and I was working on the, trying to embody the dominant approach to the conversation, which I think I got there like 70%, but I was very much aware of wanting to switch revert back to the submissive state, hearing your characterization of what it might look like on a more submissive form. I think I would have been more comfortable doing that.

And this, when we actually did end up getting late checkout, that's what I did just naturally, and it was with a different person and it worked very quickly and easily. So in interactions daily with people, there's not a lot at stake. Is it good to practice the dominant side to get more comfortable with it? Like, is one better? Like, do you need to be doing one more than the other?

Kasia Urbaniak
Yeah, so I get to answer this question with the experience of having done one particular Dom sub exercise hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times with many, many different people and watching many different people do this exercise. So here's the thing, you encounter another person on a Tuesday, that particular day, they are carrying maybe a lot of stress. Maybe on that particular day, you have a softer or lower energy. That same person on a Wednesday, it might be completely switched, they're getting over a cold, you just got into a fight with somebody. One day, they're higher density, higher fire, you're lower density, lower fire in terms of energy. And the next day, same people, right? Opposite, which one you're going to do is going to depend on the moment, it's going to depend on the feeling. And if you're not sure, you try one and if it's not working, switch to the other. So if you want to practice, the rule still applies. Because if you're trying to, if you don't know, and you try one, great, and you or if you want to practice Dom, because you want to practice Dom, go ahead. But it could be that in that dynamic, the reason it isn't working is because in that particular dynamic, they're carrying more or less energy than you.

And the most effective flow is going to be different. And again, you try it, you feel it doesn't work, you switch, right? Like, also, there's a lot of different ways of doing it. So you can just decide to try one more than the other. But this quality of, you know, it's useful to think about how it can change from day to day because you might even notice that you have a partner that you live with at home. And you have an idea about their set point and how they are. But you can catch them on a different day in a different mood and try something completely different and find that, wow, it worked on a Tuesday, didn't work on a Wednesday. It really does require and ends up being a kind of training in reading people. Because you see very quickly, like you see very quickly, I'm doing Dom, it's not working, I'm trying, I'm going to try sub. Oh, wow, sub is really working. Or right now, I'm talking about myself and I am the last thing they want to hear about right now. Sub is not working. They do not care for a single second about my feelings, my joy, what would delight me, my pain, my suffering, how I can. Oh, what they really need is attention on them right now. I see I have to go Dom because they are not engaging on this level. But I put attention on them. Oh, they're going a little bristly. Is this a bad thing? You know, maybe I'm just moving too fast. I slow down. I slow down. Oh, yeah, let lighting up. I asked them a question about what they need, oh, it's working. Dom is working. Dom is working. Okay, okay. And then maybe I hit a point where it's just like their capacity to receive is a little too much. It's like being reached. Oh, they're getting full. They're getting full. They're starting to like not know how to answer or they're starting to get a little All right, I'll put the attention to me.

Kasia Urbaniak
You know what I feel, I think. Oh, wow, I'm in sub now and it's working. It's working now. Now they got they got a little bit of leadership energy, a little bit of attention, a little bit of penetration. They're okay now.

Now, now they can follow my lead from the surface of place. Now I'm taking them through my story, my journey and like this like knowing when to switch. It's so cool because when you start doing it, you realize that you knew how to do it all along. It was just unconscious, but you do it consciously, you start learning about not just power dynamics, but these invisible forces, right? energetics, these invisible forces, you understand how to read a person like a polygraph test without being all in your head about it. Are they lying? Which micro expressions are they showing? Like the way that men teach each other when they've done FBI course, like it's bullshit, like we don't need that. And knowing when it's time to give and receive it's it's it's erotic, even when the situation isn't erotic. It's a form of dancing. It's the the human art form. It's how we create all cool things, whether it's human life or art or, or even government policies, we do it with this back and forth.

Melanie Avalon
This is a really specific question, but if you go into this conversation and you try the DOM route and it doesn't work, so you switch to sub, and that is an effective route for that person, does it make it less likely that you'll succeed if you switch?

Kasia Urbaniak
No, more likely that it'll work. A lot of times the reason the interaction isn't working isn't because they're not ready for DOM or SUB. It's because they have a buildup of armor or stress energy.

And when you jiggle back and forth between SUB and DOM, you're sort of pumping all the excess energy out. So you're deflating their extra armor and tension.

Melanie Avalon
like a moment of relief for them when you switch.

Kasia Urbaniak
Absolutely. It's kind of a massage. It's like press release, press release, press release. So it can really, really, really help to just siphon off all the bullshit or the unnecessary extra energy that's in the way to go from dom to sub to dom to sub in simple ways.

So you might start out, you might start out dom, then go sub and be like, oh, sub is working. You try a little dom and you're like, wait, now dom is working, but it wasn't working before. Sometimes you'll just want to stay in one. But again, it starts being like music, you're jamming. And the thing is that they don't have a real say in what's going to work and what's not going to work. They're not being stubborn. You also don't really have a say in what's going to work with you, what's going to feel right for you. And the cool thing is, even when humans don't agree, they almost always agree. They can't help but agree on the truth of what's working, what's not working in the moment when it comes to sub and dom. So it's almost like which way the energy is flowing is something that's a function of their dynamic at that time that you can't lie about, they can't lie about. It just is what it is. You don't have to tell them about it. You don't have to talk about it. But if you follow the flow of that, you'll see how much of human misunderstanding and conflict and unwillingness to work together is not about the content of the conversation at all. It's exactly about this, this clumsy sharing of attention. And when you get smooth at sharing the attention with just this simple binary and flipping it back and forth, knowing how to play with it, all of a sudden, everybody in your life is going to authentically reveal that they've been much more agreeable and much more willing to play than you ever imagined. And that is a phenomenal discovery. That is a joyful revelation that we all actually want to get along and we all want to work together. Like, wow.

Melanie Avalon
Wow. Wow. Okay. Yes.

And so a huge question I had or thought I had throughout because we're talking right now about these conversations and I was giving the example of a desire and wanting something. So basically making an ask of a person. There's a lot in the book about asking for something that you want from somebody and how to, well, how to get that and also the importance of the word no and how I love this, how a person saying no, it's actually often them protecting some, they're protecting something. They're not actually really saying no to you. They're protecting something important to them. A big question I have about this is one of the most freeing things I did in my life was when I made a conscious decision that I don't want anybody to do what they don't want to do. For a long time I was very much about if I want something, I'm going to try to get it. I'm going to try to convince people to do it. And then I had a turning point and I was like, oh, I don't want anybody to do what they don't want to do. So if I ask somebody about something that I want them to do or go to or whatever it may be and they say, no, I just, I drop it.

I'm like, okay, I'm not going to try to convince anybody of anything. So my question is, what is the appropriate approach here for identifying our desires, asking people for things that we want, receiving no's, when should we stop with the no and when should we still try to get what we want?

Kasia Urbaniak
That is a brilliant, brilliant question. It's such a good question, an excellent question. I cannot believe I haven't received it before. It's really, really, really beautiful because you're right.

When I talk about no, I talk about somebody else's no being a flag to protect what it is that they most care about. Therefore, you should keep going to find out what it is that thing that you can care about. And when you do, if you can stand as an ally or validate it in any way, all of a sudden the no dissolves. And I can see now how that looks and sounds like hearing a no and trying to convince them and going forward and ignoring and disrespecting their no. And nothing could be further from the truth. So this question of yours is really illuminating because now I want to go ahead and rewrite that section of the book to add an addendum. And it would sound something like this. First, first, your decision, your discernment and your realization that you actually want people to do what they want to do. You don't want to force them or bend them or coax them or twist their arms is a freaking power move. That's not just like a good and moral thing. That is a power move.

That means my standards are so high that I will not let anyone contribute to my vision or to my desire unless they're their mind, heart and body. I don't just want their labor, their machinery and their nod. I want their enthusiasm, their inspiration, their ideas, their resources. I want them to be so into it that they dig deep and offer me everything they have. Not just what I could get from a high functioning robot. So power move, power move 100%. The issue I have with what happens when women hear no is very rarely in the women that I've met in my classrooms. Very rarely are they worried. Are they backing away? The problem isn't that they're backing away from no. When they hear a no is because they have high standards like you and want full engagement and expect nothing less.

The reason that they're stopping when they hear a no or even stopping before they hear a no because the truth is a lot of women won't ask unless they know it's an absolute yes. They ask when there's no possibility of no is because the moment they hear no, guess what happens? They make it about them. They don't make it a no to the request. They make it a no to them and invalidation of their desire, which already is incredibly a tender relationship because we're not supposed to want too much because it makes us unworthy of the marriage that will save our lives. So like we hear no, we make it about us. We put it, we take the energy of the no. And if you see energy bodies, you'll see a woman hearing no draws the negative energy of that no deeply into her body. Submissive, inward. That is not a thing you draw inwards. That no is there to protect what they care about. That no isn't there for you to take it in and poison yourself with it. That is the default state of attention for women. Ouch, right? Now, so training how to hear a no and not flinch, not take it in, takes a minute. We have drills for that at the school. Like we practice over and over again. It's not exactly rejection training.

Kasia Urbaniak
It's training and energetics and not taking it and letting it sit where it sits. Sometimes people do say no to attack us, but guess what? It happens quite rarely. Most of the time, even if they sound brusque, it's just a slamming on the door to protect something they care about.

Now, after you hear no, very rarely do we even hear the word no. We hear a proxy for no. We hear an explanation that implies a no. Very rarely do we hear the word no. So when you hear a word no, it usually is the most extreme example. At that point, it absolutely does make sense to step away from the conversation, honor the no, like circle back later, right? Because now you know that something happened that flared up to protect something they care about. Maybe it's not a good moment to go for. However, usually that no won't happen as a no. That no will happen as a longer sentence. And what the strategy for that would be is like, you have to feel like, you know, this is a question of sensing and testing and feeling the moment. Do you have the margin at that moment to express any interest in curiosity and what they're trying to protect without sounding like a total douchebag, right? Like, I'm not talking about going like, you said no. What are you so afraid of? What are you trying to protect? No, you like ask them, you know, assuming that it's not a hard no that took a lot for them to generate, that's, that's a slam door that you need to honor thank them and circle back later to do aftercare. If it's some kind of explanation, it's usually a perfect entry point where you can start inquiring softly about their concerns, what it is that they care about and get on board with that just expressing to you need a you need a full night's sleep. Oh, okay, so waking up early to join me for this and this or help me with this and this, like, I love that you're taking care of yourself, you know, you get curious about it, you show support, you ask for you ask for more, maybe that's a dumb example, but it's an example, right? And then once that happens, and they really feel you genuinely being like, oh, yeah, you do support the thing I care about, all of a sudden, you'll be not after a while, you won't be surprised, but as being you'd be surprised at all of a sudden, how a door of imagination opens, and they start going like, maybe I can help and maybe it's a different way. Maybe it's like this. The point is that so long as the no exists as a problem, they have to choose between what they care about and making you happy. And you do not want that situation, you do not want that situation, because if they choose to make you happy over what they care about, that's personal to them, you're getting a very weak form of support that helps that does not help the dynamic does not help either of you.

Kasia Urbaniak
However, if you get synergy, where both the importance of what they want, and what you want, get to be acknowledged starting with them first, because if you're in the dominant position, and you're asking them, they're the sub, they're the ones that's where the sub has all the power, there's the they're the non negotiable territory, then you are working on a level where power is at its biggest and its finest. And it's a lot, it's a lot easier to get to than this long explanation might imply, like you see it, you feel that at the moment, these are all things that exist below the level of language.

So when you see them, you feel them, you witness them, you're like, oh, wow, oh, wow, this is so much easier than going back and forth and fighting a lot. This is so much easier than trying to do this alone. This is so much easier than being mad at them for for things that were misunderstood.

Melanie Avalon
Okay, yeah, that is so helpful. So when I was reading that chapter, because you're mentioning like, and I didn't dumb or something, you do talk about respecting the people's knows. So I was just, I was just contemplating it more. And yeah, this is so, this is so, so helpful.

I love this idea that people are, you know, that they're protecting something. And you, and like you're saying, and you say in the book that people, people don't like resisting, you know, like, I feel like most people don't want to say no, but it's like you're saying they are, there's something that's important to them that needs to be honored. So how can we, how can we find that and support that? Yeah. Okay, well, I think I think listeners can see now why I am overwhelmingly obsessed with your work. It is so, so powerful. No pun intended. And was there any other topics you want to touch on or share with listeners? Oh, and by the way, listeners, so there are in the book, there's all of these exercises that you can practically like actually do. So this is all very, because I know we're talking about a lot of what this looks like and how it manifests and things like that. There's an addition to learning more about it. When you read the book, you'll get actual exercises so that you can, you know, practice this yourself. Oh, and there's, there's, oh, I wanted to point this out. You talk about people forming their own mistress groups and how that word, because mistress is the only, I guess, feminine form of master in society. And that's why you use that word.

Kasia Urbaniak
Isn't that wild, though?

We have mistress and master, and how those words feel, what the implications are, couldn't be more opposite.

Master is somebody who's mastered the flex.

They are at the top, right?

And a mistress is either a dominatrix or another lover, but it is the feminine form of person of, utmost, peak power and authority.

Melanie Avalon
It's so interesting.

Kasia Urbaniak
interesting. The whole journey to writing the book was kind of intense because I was running classes for years with, which were entirely full of people who came via word of mouth without writing any class descriptions, without explaining what it is that I do. And I'd get people in a room and I'd have women ask for things and I'd coach them. And so there wasn't a lot of language for these concepts. And this, you know, now writing, having written a book, I have words, I have prepackaged concepts, I have, you know, language for this that I didn't have until I had to undergo the process of writing, which is why it took so long.

However, the exercises in the book are what matter because I realized that most people on earth will not get a chance to take a class with me. And what can I do? How can I use this thing called a book as a way to reproduce the classroom experience as much as possible? So there are a huge amount of exercises in that book. And I care about people's experience and the experiential form, the embodied, somatic, felt education more than anything else, because all the ideas in the world, they can actually get us into a lot of trouble, they can steer us astray. And so we're talking right now, because this is a forum called the podcast. So, you know, we can we can bring in examples, we can like live it as much as possible. But concepts don't matter. Really, what I care about is this helps this helps women get what they want. That's all I care about. And that's the ultimate test. And the test lives in the exercises.

Melanie Avalon
That must have been such an incredible journey for you, writing it and coming up and putting it to paper and crystallizing the ideas. Wow. Well, you did a great job.

Kasia Urbaniak
It was the hardest thing ever. It was the hardest thing ever who was the hardest thing ever Yeah, it was intense.

I Like how do I explain what I see when I see energy and make it accessible and available for? Human beings who won't see what I see or be there to feel like the energy in the room change once we've done this exercise

Melanie Avalon
One of my habits with this show is the night before, I always go on Amazon and I read all, I read every single review of the book. You have an exuberant amount of reviews and they are, I mean, not shockingly, it makes sense. They are overwhelmingly women just going on and on about how this has changed their life so radically. And it's for good reason. So wow.

Well, thank you so, so much. So how can people get the book? Can people take classes with you? What are the resources there?

Kasia Urbaniak
Yeah, I think the easiest way to find out about what classes are available when one listens to this podcast would be to go to my website. That's weteachpower.com.

The book is available, I think, where all major book publishers sell their books. So I know it's on Amazon, it's on a few other places. And also up on social media, like everyone else is, almost everyone else.

I look forward to hearing from some of your incredible listeners who are used to high-level concepts, because that's not always the case. Sometimes I have to dumb it down.

Melanie Avalon
No, yeah, they're great. They love all this stuff. And I'm so excited to meet you in person at the biohacking conference.

Kasia Urbaniak
Ah, yes!

Melanie Avalon
It will be so, so fun. Actually, speaking of, since we met indirectly through Dave, one of the things he told me, and it kind of captures a lot of what I feel like we talked about now and is in your book. And it was, I said something at some point and was saying that, but I needed to be nice or something. And he said, don't be nice, be kind. And that was actually a radical mindset shift for me.

And I feel like it kind of speaks to everything in your book about how we're conditioned to be like this nice thing. And we have these ideas of how we should present ourselves. And really, we just need to be kind humans. And the work that happens with embracing these states of power, like you're saying throughout this interview and in the book, like it leads to the most beautiful manifestation of humans, because then you're embodying the energy the way it should be. It's collaborative. It does support each other. It helps with conflict. I just, it's like kindness in a way.

Kasia Urbaniak
Nice can be actually really dangerous and unkind it can be on and sometimes kindness can look like a smack in the face i mean maybe not literally especially not these days but shaking someone up so it's about meeting the need in the morning.

Melanie Avalon
Exactly. I cannot agree more.

The last question I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Kasia Urbaniak
deeply grateful for psychedelics. I'm grateful for a lot of things, but I've recently had some really eye-opening experiences lately that have opened my heart and my mind and it's still reverberating through me.

I'm really grateful that we're living, I'm really grateful to have been born in these crazy times. I feel like I came here on purpose, I came here for this shit show, like I came here to get down, I came here for this, I came here to serve here and now I'm grateful for women, I'm grateful for the goddess in a non-religious way. I'm grateful to get to be a human and feel pain and pleasure and see things and learn things and get to discover, at least I think I'm discovering for the first time how being a human being works, but maybe I've done it hundreds of thousands of times. That's more than one, but I'm grateful for a lot of things.

Melanie Avalon
I love it. I love that you started with the psychedelic one actually the episode that's airing while we're recording this week on my show is it's with one of the world's top supermodels talking about their experience with psychedelics and how it just changed their life completely.

I love the list.

Kasia Urbaniak
I think there's a reason why it's happening now. I think there's a reason why we're becoming more open to these things. Oh, we live in crazy times.

Melanie Avalon
I know, and I'm so grateful for you. Kasha, thank you so much and thank you for your time today. Thank you. This was wonderful.

Kasia Urbaniak
Oh, this was probably my favorite podcast that I've ever done. I've done tons of them. I've never felt so at ease and so.

Melanie Avalon
free to speak. Thank you so much. I literally I was thinking during this how I was just having the time of my life and I want everybody to hear this and you're wonderful and I will meet you soon.

Kasia Urbaniak
I can't wait to meet you in person!

Melanie Avalon
I know, it's going to be so fun. Awesome.

Kasia Urbaniak
We'll enjoy the rest of your day.

Melanie Avalon
I know, I know. We got to get that figured out for you. Awesome. Thank you for that tip. You're welcome. All right. Well, enjoy the rest of your day and I will see you soon. Talk soon.

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What, When, When, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit MelanieAvalon.com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at MelanieAvalon.com. And always remember, you got this.