The Power of the Pause with Carrie Slack

Trust me when I tell you that this is the most important episode I’ve ever recorded.

My goal is to empower women to agency, authority, and action, but agency comes first. Without agency, the rest is pretty much impossible. And you cannot have agency when you’re afraid.

Carrie Slack was the first person on my list of guests I wanted on the podcast. Carrie teaches Empowerment Self-Defense, a mix of martial arts, feminist theory, and practical techniques that in peer-reviewed studies has shown a 68% decrease in sexual assault in women who have completed the course. 

That’s dramatic, and it’s the message that I want you to understand: You have the means to protect and defend yourself. You just have to learn how. But it is possible and it’s available to learn, today.

1 out of every 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape.

1 in 4 women will experience physical assault in an intimate relationship.

I’m not about blaming the victim, and I don’t believe the responsibility of eradicating sexual and physical assault and Intimate Partner Violence rests on women; I believe it rests squarely on the perpetrators. 

With that being said, if there was a way to learn skills that would enable you to walk through the world without fear, on your terms, would you want to know about it?

At one point in this conversation, Carrie and I talk about all the wonderful experiences that women miss out on because of the fear of assault. This makes me incredibly sad. I want women everywhere to move through the world with agency and freedom. I hope this episode contributes to this for you, today.

Trigger warnings: assault, sexual assault, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, missing and murdered indigenous women

In this episode we discuss:

• learning from zero at all stages of life
• joy, how meaningful it is, and how it increases resilience 
• empowerment self-defense: what it is and how it differs from conventional self-defense
• the power of learning physical techniques and the fierceness it engenders
• the power of being victorious over your own fear and how you can take that out into life
• how understanding the framework of gender roles and expectations empowers women to be in the world in a new way 
• the awareness needed to move through the world with agency
• the way our internal messaging of being “nice” no matter what puts us in positions of danger
• our fear of making someone else “feel bad” and how it co-opts our own intuition
• the skill of giving yourself permission to leave and how to practice it
• Stacey Ramsower’s actionable practice of taking a pause from ep 1
• how to create a space to determine what is actually happening and what we actually want
• asking ourselves what we owe any one person in terms of time and energy, and how that applies to all areas of our life
• what it takes to tolerate the discomfort of making other people unhappy, and why this is so essential to our own wellbeing and safety
• how fawning is a deeply-held survival mechanism and not a reason to be feel shame
• the evolutionary reasons we developed fawning and why it makes sense to approach risk with this behavior
• how learning to say no and tolerate discomfort requires practice and tools
• developing a personal bill of rights of how we deserve to be treated and what our rights are in any particular situation
• the studies that show a huge reduction in attempted - not just completed - assault after completing an empowerment self-defense course and how that relates to the clarity of knowing your own rights
• how perpetrators of sexual assault push to see what resistance they will encounter and how setting a boundary early is often very effective
• why the reaction to setting a boundary is an indication of character and intent
• how boundaries are loving and help us to be good to one another
• the principles of empowered self defense: think, yell, leave, fight, and tell
• the power of awareness, noticing, and intuition
• how part of “think” is getting accurate information about the threat of violence to women
• the danger of misinformation, such as the belief that fighting back or yelling increases the risk of harm when the opposite is actually true
• the evidence that resistance drastically increases our chances of escaping sexual assault
• the importance of the conversation around what women can learn, do, and practice to increase their agency in the world
• the misinformation about where assaults actually happen and what we miss out as a result
• the fear-based messaging of the last decades and how that has impacted women’s agency and enjoyment of life experiences
• the importance of believing your intuition and embodied experience
• using your voice to speak up for yourself and others and to express your boundaries clearly
• the five-word technique to keep your boundaries clear and known
• the practice of learning how to leave the room
• the reality of Intimate Partner Violence and the violence against women, particularly those in marginalized populations 
• the compassion and support needed for women dealing with abusive partners
• the financial piece of abuse and how it traps women
• how women can successfully use physical resistance to keep themselves safe regardless of strength, speed, or fitness
• the willingness to fight for yourself and the will to live 
• how the mindset of being whole, healthy, and safe is absolutely key to overcoming a threat
• the challenge of fighting off someone known versus a stranger
• the difficulty of overcoming the societal obligation of niceness when it involves a friend or acquaintance
• the pros and cons of carrying a weapon or self-defense aid
• how the confidence in your own body cannot be taken from you or used against you
• seeking out support and the power of telling your own experience
• the importance of having control over your own narrative and how it’s shared
• the power of the pause and the practice of leaving the room
• the mental trick of reversing the situation in your mind to gain clarity and take action
• giving yourself the gift of agency

Links mentioned in this episode:

To get more information about hosting or attending a class on Empowerment Self-Defense, contact Carrie Slack at Carrie-Slack@redwoods.edu 

OLLI classes 

National Women’s Martial Arts Federation 

Abe Books 

Debbie Leung Self-Defence: The Womanly Art of Self-Care, Intuition, and Choice 

RAIN statistics on assault 

Women's self-defense and sexual assault resistance: The state of the field 

A Voice of Her Own Ep. 1: Stacey Ramsower and the Power of Pleasure 

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