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Five Lessons on Personal Power from a Top Dominatrix
The subtle but powerful ways women can increase personal power in everyday interactions
Introduction: Power, Sexuality, and Abolishing the Constitution
“Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” –Oscar Wilde
About a year ago, I found myself stuck on the New York subway when a car stalled underground. I began skimming the news to pass the time and within a few seconds, an article caught my eye: “Want to be more assertive in life? This former dominatrix will show you how.”
I clicked in for entertainment to kill the time, but as I read on, I was legitimately fascinated. There was nothing about leather or whips, no kinky stories, just a profile of a woman whose gaze seemed both warm and fully confident. A woman who was both a taoist nun and one of the highest paid dominatrices in the world. A woman had studied animal behavior and mysticism and understood the movement of energy and attention.
A woman who wasn’t interested in teaching women to appear powerful- she wanted them to be powerful and feel it.
This woman’s name is Kasia Urbaniak and she runs a Power Academy for women in New York City. I signed up for her comprehensive online course to see if she lived up to her reputation. This is what she taught me:
1. The Unexpected Power of Submission
One of the biggest insights I took from Urbaniak’s course was the meaning and value of ‘submissive’ power.
Though our culture celebrates the value of dominance- leading, commanding, asserting- from the perspective of a dominatrix, there are two complimentary and equally powerful roles: dominance and submission. While the power of the dominant role (dom) lies in its ability to command and lead the interaction, the power of the submissive (sub) role lies in its ability to connect to inner feelings and desires and receive what it wants. As Urbaniak beautifully puts it in her book “Unbound”:
“When a woman is in the submissive space, her attention is in, on her own emotions, physical sensations, and experience. She is in touch with what she wants. Indeed, she is so connected as to…
