Yakety Yack!

Okay.  So this is kind of a funny story. 

I was telling this story to a girlfriend the other day and she said “Kitty, you HAVE to write a blog about this.  So here goes. 

It's about a time that I had a date with a gentleman caller and brought him home on the first date. We had a lovely time together, and decided to make it a slumber party. Around three a.m. however, trouble began to brew. 

“I think I’m going to puke,” he said. 

We hadn’t been drinking copiously so I thought this odd.  He fumbled through the dark to the restroom and proceeded to violently yack up his dinner.  Like, we’re talking 'pull a muscle in your back' kind of yakking. He came back to bed and said he felt better.  I got up to get him a baggie just in case it happened again, tissues to blow his nose, water, and even peppermint oil to rub his back.  (My mom is a nurse, and I always wanted to be a candy striper as a kid).  He said he felt a lot better.  We went back to sleep. 

At 5am, violent yakking ensued once again.  The POOR GUY! I offered to call him a cab.  He said yes, as long as it didn’t offend me that he was leaving in the middle of the night.  I assured him that his chivalry was appreciated but not necessary and I sent him off, shivering and feverish, into the dark morning, with a fresh baggie in hand. 

It begs the question, WWSD?

What would a seducer do?

Both of us were in a compromising predicament.

If this was a movie (which was kind of what it felt like) the person in my role would probably be thinking “don’t let the door hit ya’!” as I kicked him out of my bed. This guy would then go home, tail between his legs, too mortified to ever contact me again.

But what actually happened is that after the dust settled, we found each other even more attractive than ever.  In the first 24 hours of our courtship, things had already gotten really REAL.  I got to see how he deals with embarrassment and sickness: sweetness, vulnerability and even a sense of humor.  He got to see how I dealt a vomiting suitor: with kindness, compassion, and empathy.  This experience laid the ground for a hilarious text exchange the next day, and him asking when he could see me again.  I told him that once his color turned from green back to normal, we could arrange to meet.

Isn’t it funny how the most unattractive of circumstances can foster an even greater attraction than if everything went “perfectly”? Hilarious I think. 

Seduction. A spiritual practice indeed.

Yakkity-yack, don’t talk back,

Kitty

From My Bowl Full Of Jelly To Yours, With Love.

Oh, the holiday ten. 

The holiday ten is the much-loathed and dreadfully feared ten pounds that we tend to gain around the holidays. There are thousands of articles out there telling you how to avoid the holiday ten and how to “survive” parties without going overboard.  This is not one of those articles.  This article is going to share with you some tips on how to (reader beware) enjoy your inevitable indulgences, and clear out the some of guilt that may be standing in the way of you taking as much pleasure as possible from this time of year.

Let’s start by making one thing clear. There are two types of holiday indulgences: joy driven ones, and stress driven ones.  An example of a joy driven indulgence would be the other night when I consumed a downright nauseating amount of eggnog while laughing it up around a fireplace with my best friends.  The eggnog made me feel festive and I was in full acceptance of the bellyache that ensued afterwards.  It was well worth it. This is much different than year I snuck a bottle of reddi-whip into the bathroom because my family was stressing me out. I ran the water so that no one would hear me squirting it into my mouth with a speed and efficiency that would only have been rivaled by being hooked up to an IV.

Ahh, memories. 

The antidote to guilt when it comes to indulgence is to slow down and enjoy.  But if you are having a reddi-whip moment and you are anything like me, you may be prone to spontaneously bitch slap the idiot who tells you to ‘slow down’. Slowing down means feeling and often that is the exact thing reddi-whip moments are allowing us not to do. 

First of all, I still love you and think you are awesome no matter what kind of reddi-whip, cookie, biscuit, champagne overdose’s you may have experienced this month.  So if you choose not to slow down, no biggie. There are no points lost.  I've been there and I will be there again myself.  What I do want to offer you is a game that I play that makes slowing down entertaining and fun, rather that punitive.  Or, if you are already slowed down and simply want to enjoy on a deeper level, will give you a whole new dimension of enjoyment. 

It is a game of traveling the world through the senses. It gives savoring a purpose, and if you let it, it can take you on the ride of your life. 

I played this game recently on Sensual Sunday, a weekly date I have with Vivi La Voix, where we go on sensual adventures throughout the city to constantly up our seduction game.  This week we went to a restaurant that specializes in chocolate and wine pairings.  As we slowly wove our way through five different truffles that were elegantly displayed on the husk of a giant cocoa bean (which we promptly threw in our purses to bring home to our altars) we closed our eyes and went on a journey. 

The first truffle we tried was pomegranate and dark chocolate.  Oh my heavens.  Letting this masterpiece melt on our tongues, we both agreed, was like slipping into bed under the softest hot pink sheets under big, warm, fluffy dark brown duvet for a long winter’s nap.

Hand baked by Vivi La Voix.
Photo Beth Mayesh

The next bundle of joy was a cluster of hazelnut and milk chocolate.  As I bit into this slice of heaven I could feel the fierce heat of a fireplace warming my skin as I sat next to it.  For Vivi, she also felt the warmth of a fire, but in her vision, the fire was inside waiting for her as she felt cold nip her cheeks and the crunch of snow fill her mouth after biting into a firmly packed snowball.

On to the mango with paprika and white chocolate.  As I let these exotic flavors penetrate me I could feel myself swaying side to side in a howdah (carriage) on the back of an elephant.  I saw gorgeous silks inside the carriage, feeling the dust around me as my entourage made it's way across a sandy plain.  (Note: howdahs are extremely inhumane, so I am not endorsing them. I digress.)  For Vivi, she felt the caress of an ivory silk garment woven with golden threads and saffron tassels, all being illuminated by a late afternoon sun. 

Finally, the orange peel with dark chocolate.  There was an effervescence to this one, almost a bubbling.  This took us to a fizzing hot tub filled with orange slices and cocoa beans being tossed about around us, giving fragrance to the steam that rose into a chilly December night.

The one that I did not mention was Pistachio and Rose Hip.  We didn’t really like it that much, it didn’t take us anywhere. :)

If you are someone for whom this resonates, good.  If this is making no sense to you at all, that’s also good.  Because the senses don’t actually make “sense”.  What they make is sensation.  

So my invitation to you this holiday as you bite into, let’s say, a mushroom tart, is to see if as you allow that mushroom to dance across your taste buds, you might simultaneously feel soil underneath your fingernails from digging your hands into the earth to retrieve it.  Or maybe you taste the brine of a Wellfleet oyster as the mushroom’s slippery texture slides across your tongue.  Perhaps the flaky, fluffy texture of the tart itself brings visions of being in Paris on a warm spring morning, enjoying a croissant as you stroll through the Tuileries. 

Whatever happens when you embark on your journey, the only rule is to not take it too seriously.  It’s just a game.  It can be played with any of the senses.  Myself, I keep a journal of these joyrides and it's fun to look back at them" "When having my belly massaged, it feels like biting into fresh baked bread.  When smelling the inside of a cookie jar, I can feel the tight squeeze of my Aunt Cathy’s hugs.  When having an orgasm, I feel like a flower that has been filmed through it’s entire unfolding but the film has been sped up to display the whole process in a total of 15 seconds”.

Just some musings from my diary. 

I wish you the most blessed, delicious, light filled holiday this year.  If you wish to send me a note with your sensual discoveries, please do not hesitate.  There are few things that would delight me more.

I am so grateful for you.

Let the games begin!

Kitty

PS - Ever wonder what the difference is between Seduction and Sex? Or how you can use seduction to have your way outside the bedroom as well?  Join me for a free tele-class January 2nd at 8pm ET.  (If you are too busy having a seduction adventure at that time, the call will be recorded and signing up will get you access to the recording.)  

Boy Crazy, Girl Crazy, Love Crazy

What an a-hole this guy can be.  :)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of being boy-crazy, girl-crazy, love-crazy.  That state where you feel like you have just snorted a love potion.  You are thinking about this person, this possibility, and this new dimension of yourself that you have been flung into as a result of meeting them. 

Amidst this this lofty high, there is also sometimes an uncomfortable sense of disapproval at being so swept away.  As a seduction teacher I am all too familiar with the cannibalistic cycle women go through of getting excited about meeting someone, then feeling the sting of insecurity that we like them sooo much.  The women I work with long to meet someone they feel crazy about but then when it happens, they worry that they are in fact, actually crazy.  They wonder if there is something wrong, something rotten at the core that makes them only able to feel this level of happiness when they are on a romantic high.

And when I say they, you know I mean me.

There is an assumption that when you are a seductress, you never let yourself get too attached.  People perceive that a seductive woman has so much confidence that she doesn’t get love crazy. She doesn’t put her eggs in the basket of love and feeling, as she knows that there is too big a risk of them getting crushed.  So she places them in the basket of sex, manipulation and making sure she gets her way no matter what.  But let’s get one thing straight: the person we are talking about here is not a seductress. The person we are describing above is most likely, a pretty unhappy narcissist.

Handle with care.  Or don't. 

A seductress is a woman that has surrendered to putting her eggs in whatever the fuck basket she wants and letting her self feel everything, even the crush.  She takes epic rides on rollercoasters of life, even though there is part of her that knows she will get her heart utterly shattered.  She says yes to things that she knows will make her feel crazy, or vulnerable, or hurt in the moment because she knows that the experience will make her grow in exactly the way she needs, like going on a vision quest in the desert.  What makes this woman seductive is not a sense of detachment. It is a willingness to be deeply compassionate with herself as she goes through the process of being attached.  A process  that ultimately leads a detangling of threads and find the same lesson inside every golden egg: all that you have is your soul.

“I dim the lights, and think about you, spend sleepless nights, to think about you”.  This is a song from a Broadway show that I heard recently while performing in The Goddess Revue: Journey of a Turned On Woman.  This song is about a woman who is shell shocked because the man she was in love with suddenly dumps her, and she is left in the grip of obsessive compulsive thoughts about him.  It is to the point where she finds herself stopped in the middle of the floor, unable to move.  When I look at this woman I feel two things: a painful sense of empathy at her condition, and profound sense of repulsion at her loser-ness.  “How Pathetic!” my mind screams, all the while trying to conceal the sweat on my brow, triggered by the fear that I might soon find myself in her same spot.

Here’s what I have learned in living seduction as a way of life: seduction take serious fucking guts.  When I embark on the seduction of a lover or allow myself to be seduced, I know I am basically taking a shot of romantic ayahuasca. (a hallucinogenic plant that one takes to go on a shamanic journey). I know that I will most likely go crazy for a few days or weeks, or months.  It can be wildly pleasurable and wickedly unpleasant all at once. But I also know that it is this willingness to walk into the fire of my fears that results in the one thing that makes life worth living: loving bigger, loving more. 

You’re so swoon-able,

Kitty Cavalier

PS - The only thing that keeps me sane in love, or in general? Qoya. It's my crystal ball, my sacred coven, my retreat, my home.  January 18th and 19th is NYC Qoya Teacher Training retreat.  Whether you intend to teach Qoya or not, this is an amazing immersion in living life as a femme vitale.  Wise, wild, embodied and free.  Join us! 

One Way To Maui

The other day I got an email from a friend that read, “Your last blog was called 'A Seductress In Loss’ and I haven’t heard anything since.  Are you alive?” 

Good question E.  Thanks for asking. 

Am I alive? These days, there are times I would say…barely. I know that sounds like I live in Victim City USA, but the truth is that this has been the toughest year of my life.  As my friend Rochelle said recently with her classic, chipper, optimistic enthusiasm: “Wow, the Universe is really kicking your ass right now, girl!” 

So what does a seductress do when she feels like she's been tumbled around inside a dryer for a year? She listens. She listens very, very carefully.

For example, she may hear the part of her that says she is alone and empty and will never really love or be loved.  But she does not listen. 

She hears the part that tells her she should be conservative with her money because she’s been living off savings for the past few months and things are getting tight.  But perhaps, she does not listen.

She hears the part that tells her this broken heart feels particularly acute today because she has PMS, or because it’s winter now, or because she’s been cooped up at home all day, and that it will get better.  Just give it a little time.

Well, I am tired of these days that have turned into months that are quickly turning into a year. This shit is not moving.  So it’s time for me to make a move. 

About three weeks ago when I was in yoga class I heard a whisper inside my soul that said “go to Maui and learn how to be a yoga teacher”.  Of course, this seemed preposterous in the moment.  But isn’t that the case whenever genius comes along?  Don’t genius and foolishness actually share the same placenta in the end?  

Eagle Leg Shoulder Stand by Me.  Photobomb by Winnie. 

In the past, when ideas of the Crazy Genius variety entered my mind, I could barely hear them.  They would softly vibrate like a cord on a piano, pressed ever so gently into the pad of felt that lies underneath the keys. Then, eventually, their siren song would get louder and stronger until that C Major was the only thing I could hear ringing through my ears. 

I am proud to say that because I have done the fieldwork over the years of slowly coming to trust Crazy Genius, these thoughts now strike me with the tremor and grandeur of a Beethoven symphony.  I feel that Crazy Genius quake within me and think “Ooooooh! Something preposterous?? We must finally be onto something really good here.  Sign me UP!”

Steve Jobs says, “You cannot connect the dots going forwards.  You can only connect them going backwards.”  For example, in college, he took a class in calligraphy.  Everyone laughed at him for taking a course that was so frivolous.  10 years later, Apple was the first company to debut artistic typography in personal computers.  Had he not taken that calligraphy course, would we all be reading blogs on our IPhones? Who knows? 

The last time I took an impulsive trip to another country with an inexplicable yearning to teach movement I became a Qoya Teacher.  At first, I thought I would do nothing with the certification, that I didn’t have the courage or experience.  A year and a half later I can say that teaching Qoya has by far been one of the most rewarding, fulfilling, educative, spiritual experiences of my life. (click that link for the shameless plug to my January Qoya Teacher Training! :)  I kiss the ground daily in gratitude not just for Qoya itself, but the honor to be a leader in the philosophy of “if it feels good, that’s how you know you’re doing it right”.  My seduction work would not exist without the awakening that Qoya has given me. 

Le' No-Brainer

The last time I hacked into my savings to invest $5,000 into satisfying a mysterious longing to immerse myself in something new, I ended up in credit card debt for about a year, while making a salary of $40,000.  Two years later, I was out of debt and making four times that amount as a result of the confidence I had gained from making such a bold move.  There is no way one could have happened without the other. 

This concept so beautifully demonstrates the way in which seduction truly is a spiritual practice.  Hawaii has seduced me, 100%.  That is not to say that I don’t have doubts, but my body has given a clear enough message for me to make a move, evidence that I have in fact been fully seduced.  Listening to where that tide of seduction is leading allows me to confidently let the dots fall where they may.  The dots that I know will someday connect the lines: mending, re-building, and finally mapping a New World on my tender heart. 

If nothing else, “One Way Ticket To Maui” will make a great title for a chapter in my book.

Aloha wau ia 'oe,

(I love you),

Kitty

PS - NYC Qoya Teacher Training January 18th and 19th.  Words can't describe it, but they do their best if you click here.  Just read it. You don't even have to come to the training, I just want you to read it. (wiiiiiiink)