Takeaways from Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak

This book has one of the best one sentence pitches I’ve ever heard.

It’s a woman’s guide to power written by a Taoist nun who funded her spiritual teachings by doing professional dominatrix work.

She runs workshops in NYC around female empowerment too, called The Academy. So yes, it’s promotional material in that regard, but one that stands on its own.

And yes, it is written with women in mind, but every reader can learn a lot about power, sexism, and self confidence from the teachings herein. I know I did.

Here I’ll summarize the exercises and concepts that gave me the most mileage from the book. Italics are Kasia.

Concepts:

• ‘good girls’ never talk back or ask questions or stand up for themselves. They do what they are told, and this is inoculated in women from a very young age due to sexism.
• This leads to the ‘smush’ when a person feels one way but says something else. We’ve all seen this — when the tone of voice does not match the content. It feels worse than if they’re outright mean, and makes us not trust them.
• Dominant and Submissive energy is not about control. Instead it is about where the focus is. Dom energy is focused out. Sub energy is focuzed inward.
• If you want to subtly take control in a situation (like a man being inappropriate), ask them a question. Lean into what you sense that is unsaid, or what you’re noticing in them. ex: ‘it seems like X just happened. did it?’’ or interrogative ‘why do you think you can say that?’.
• Controlling the flow of attention is power, and asking reverses the flow of attention.
• Example of extremely dominant sentence formulations — say the same thing, but start it with ‘you will’. ‘you will give that to me’.
• ‘I’ve never heard of a complaint that can’t be restated as a desire.’ Don’t complain — ask for what you want!
• Patriarchy forbids female desire, and ‘a god ignored is a demon born.’
• ‘Awareness brings choice, which brings freedom.’
• ‘Anxiety is unalchemized enthusiasm; worry is unalchemized care; sadness can signal a return to yourself, and expose a desire for more of the tender things in life.’
• Since women aren’t allowed to ask, they subtly give what they want to get. Which men don’t perceive, which leads to her resenting him for something he’s unaware of.
• Impatience demonstrates a lack of confidence.
• I learned than usually sex is not allowed in a dominatrix dungeon! Dominatrixes are not necessarily sex workers — they work adjacently.

Exercises:

1. Practice pushing and pulling hands with a partner. Anoint one person the dom and the other the sub. Play with the pressure given or withdrawn. Switch!
2. Practice asking someone questions and have them only answer with ‘No’. Practice making obscenely big asks. Beg for them to say no so you’re not afraid of it.
   The book has many stories of her workshop participants making tiny asks that she workshopped into the real ask which was 10x bigger, and was often granted.
3. Answer ‘if I were bad, I would do X.’ ‘If I were really bad…”
4. List out all the unpaid emotional labor you do in your life.
5. Log all the victories in your life, and seek them out even the little ones. Celebrate them with a ‘mistress-mind group’ like a mastermind but only women.
6. List out all the things you desire in your life. Then list out all the asks you could make to get them. ‘I could ask X for Y’.
7. List out things that you leave unsaid in your life. Figure out why you are not saying them. ‘I’m not telling X about Y fact or feeling.’
8. Practice asking for things in 3 ways: a dominant way, a submissive way, and something in the middle. Find the one that works for you.
9. Get a male volunteer and practice violating his personal space as a mode of taking back power. Her workshops has women manhandle male volunteers in order to practice taking up space.

TLDR: It’s a great book whose concepts have been showing up all over my life ever since. Pick it up to get the full concepts!

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