Don't Get Back On The Horse

Recently I was speaking with a dear friend who just got back from an extended vacation intended to refresh him.  As he returned to his job and daily activities however, he found himself more demotivated and uninspired than ever. 

“I just can’t seem to get back on the horse”, he said.

When I was in Costa Rica on the Qoya retreat two years ago, one of the activities I chose was horseback riding.  I got thrown off a horse when I was 12 so I prayed for a calm, easy, gentle giant to return to riding.  My friend Becca on the other hand, saw a spotted looking thing with a punk rock haircut and a walleye.  “I want that one!”  she said. (Becca is a brilliant jewelry designer and has great taste for the eclectic. She owns a fabulous company with her Mother and sister called POUND. Check em' out.)

That bronco threw her off onto the rocky beach within 40 seconds.

In that moment, Becca had a choice to make.  She could be afraid of horses for the rest of her life, go back to her room and lick her wounds (justifiably), or she could “get back on the horse”. 

What would you do?

The bronco in question, Becca after the throw & a signature POUND treasure

Becca choose to get back on the horse.  The key thing is though, that she made sure to choose a different horse on which to ride. 

I often talk about how the double edged sword of living in such a conscious age is that while we are given so many tools to practice acceptance and improve our lives, sometimes we can use these tools to drive ourselves crazy.  Rather than choosing a different horse, we change the saddle, brush the horse, feed it carrots, and get frustrated when we get tossed off over and over again.

In my own journey, I saw this play out dramatically in my work life.  I worked at a corporate job in my twenties and stayed about three years past the point of when I wanted to leave. I hated my job. I felt like my soul was dying, I wasn’t sleeping and I had severe anxiety. When I encountered people who were passionate about their work I wanted to punch them in the face.  But every day I would write effing gratitude lists for my job, or I would buy flowers for my desk.  I would do all sorts of things to rearrange the deck furniture on this sinking ship.  The whole time I thought something was wrong with me that I couldn’t get back on the horse of productivity and professionalism.  What I realize now is that it would have made everyone’s life easier: myself, my family, my co-workers, if I had just listened to what my intuition that was telling me: find a different horse. 

I was raised on a horse farm, so I know about these things. :)

A very common question I get about using seduction as a spiritual practice is “how do you seduce yourself into something you don’t want to do?” Well, that is a contradiction in terms.   If you don’t want to do something, it has not, nor will it ever seduce you.  It first has to become more attractive. 

Let’s take working out as an example.  You want to get up in the morning and go to the gym but you just can’t seem to do it.  If this were me I would probably get myself some hot new workout clothes, find girlfriends to meet me at the gym in the morning, reward myself with a smoothie before my workout for even waking up, put gold stars on my calendar for every day I worked out, keep a special set of fancy bath products in my locker and worship my naked body in the mirror after my workout with sandalwood lotion.  The possibilities are endless!

However, there is one key factor that I am leaving out: at this time in my life, you couldn’t pay me to join a gym.

To me, gym culture feels violent, boring and stinks of self-loathing as a means to create transformation.  That ain’t Kitty Cavalier. (Note: there are people reading this who love the gym and I honor you.  It’s just not my journey right now.)  For me, I don’t exercise. Instead, I connect to this temple that houses my soul with pleasure based movement. Qoya, dancing in my living room, morning stretches in my bed, chasing Winnie through a grassy field, the occasional yoga class, lifting my leg to admire it and flexing it to feel musculature.  All of these “work me out”.  But I have given up on having a “workout schedule”.  It just doesn’t seduce me and never has.

Photo by Jodi Jones for Qoya

That being said, I spent at least 30 years of my life trying to fit into what exercise is supposed to look like.  I bought the gym clothes. I arranged the buddy meet ups. I made the smoothies.  But after so many years of trying and failing to “get back on the horse” it has become clear to me, that that is just not my horse to ride.

By accepting that fact, my body feels ecstatically happy and freer than ever.  All the mental clutter of self-judgment for being so bad for not exercising is gone, and what has taken its place is the time and energy to focus on the things that really seduce me.  And when I do that, I look back on my days with great love.

Ahhhh, seduction.  You get me every time.

Whirlin’ and Twirlin’,

Kitty Cavalier

PS - Want a seduction bomb that will crack open your inner seductress like an erupting volcano? Your Seductress Unveiled begins September 9th. Join us!

How I lost 30 pounds...(you asked, and it's not what you think)

Thank you all so much for your feedback and responses to my recent blog "I lost 30 pounds...Oh No"! It has been a big leap of faith to live my relationship with my body so transparently and I thank you for all your support. Many of you have asked me, “So...how’d ya do it?”.  Here's the story:

• I went to Costa Rica and became a certified Qoya teacher. I now teach Qoya every Tuesday. Qoya has completely revolutionized my relationship to my body and exercise. Because of that, I now look forward to exercising like I look forward to a massage.
• I read Kris Carr's Crazy, Sexy, Diet, really jived with her philosophy, and have started eating a ton more whole foods, raw veggies, and drinking green juice.
• I really upped the ante of love and passion in my life, my marriage, my friendships and my career. Like, REALLY upped the ante.
• I'm working with an amazing therapist, which has led to more truth telling, and less smiling while flipping the bird under the table.

The list goes on and on. My point is, none of the things on this list, nor the weight loss itself, would ever have transpired without one thing.

Prescription Drugs. :)

Not what you were expecting to hear? Me either. Here’s the story.

My whole life I have experienced moderate to severe depression  (I know, who hasn’t?).  The last few years it got more severe as it began to be served alongside a hearty serving of nighttime anxiety, which led to intense insomnia. Pretty much everyone knows what it feels like to be depressed, but this was depression resulting in an average of 4-6 hours of sleep every night for a good three years.  I would sometimes catch up on weekends, but most of the time I walked around in a state of bitchiness at best, what-the-fuck-is-the-point of-even-living at worst. It was like I had forgotten how to sleep.

Sleep is an essential bodily function, like being able to pee.  Imagine if you just somehow forgot how to pee. The thing about sleep though, is you can survive without it, unlike being unable to pee.  So for a good two to three years I would chase my tail each day and night, lying awake, praying for sleep.  I’d wake up a few hours later in an absolute panic that I hadn’t slept, terrified that I wouldn’t be able to sleep again that night, and the cycle would repeat. This fear would paralyze me throughout the day, and the lack of sleep made me an absolute grouch, anti-social, and opened the door for severe depression.

I tried everything I could think of. Therapy. A new king size bed.  Quitting my corporate job that stressed me out so much.  Rescue Remedy.  Gemstones under the pillow.  All of these things would help temporarily, but each time it was like getting a taste of my tail only to have it slip through my teeth once more, when I’d find myself wide eyed and awake at 2am yet again.  

Now, you might be thinking, “girl, go to the doctor!” I wasn’t raised by hippies, but I do seem to have this gene that leads me to believe I should be able to fix everything with my mind and behaviors (or at least by taking some herbs).  If I just started eating right, exercising each morning, taking the right supplements, meditating, doing the things I really wanted to be doing with my time,  took a watercolors class, did a cleanse at an Arizona spa...I’d be able to work it all out.

Thank God for my husband.  Imagine this poor guy having to deal with a cracked-out insomniac, clinging to her gemstones and chamomile tea as he gently nudged me for two solid years in the direction of getting medical help.  

Sleep aids? I think not.

Antidepressants? Oh no, I am not letting the pharmaceutical companies catch me like a fly in their spider web.

Seeing a psychiatrist to examine my family’s history of depression and mental illness? And then take some magic pill to make it all go away? No thank you.

Wait a minute.  What if there was a magic pill that could make this all go away? Not exactly make it all go away, but at least get me sleeping again. If I could sleep maybe I would have the energy to do something other than barely survive.   And what if there is something going on in my body where I was not getting enough serotonin or whatever.  I mean, even my therapist told me it is not normal to wake up every morning with a feeling of absolute dread.

So finally, I surrendered to the experiment.  I moved the gemstones to a pretty bowl on my nightstand and I went to see a psychiatrist.  After a two hour evaluation, his response was basically, “How has it taken you this long to come see a psychiatrist?” He gave me some Prozac and Klonopin and told me to come back in a month. I figured, let’s give this a go for a year or so, and see what happens.  It can’t get any worse.

That was about six months ago.  I’m happy to say, the experiment is working. I sleep like a dream now. But not a drugged-out, “Can’t sleep without me pills!” sleep.  I am back in the pattern of going to bed, reading or watching Downton Abbey repeats, and just nodding off.  I wake up refreshed and ready.  This morning I have already practiced my Qoya routine for tonight’s class, made lunch for this afternoon, and a green juice for later.  I’ve dressed cute for the day, and I gave myself the luxury of 30 minutes of writing instead of 30 minutes of Facebook.  Because I am rested I now have the energy now to do all the things I described in the bullet points above which, yes, led to my eventual weight loss.

Now, let me make one thing VERY CLEAR.  This is not an ad for prescription drugs. I am not saying that everyone should go get some Prozac and in turn we’d create world peace.  It is simply a transparent account of my journey with my health.  And how interestingly, the thing we resist the strongest, even if that thing might be the easiest way out, is often the very thing that will create real, lasting change. Again, I’m not saying it takes the pharmaceutical industry to create lasting change.  I’m simply saying that this step, which I resisted for so long, is the one thing that has finally worked.    

There will come a day when I’m ready to stop taking these drugs, and I will probably resist that for way longer than I need to as well.  But this has been a powerful learning experience: the thing you think is the last thing you need is at least worth a try.  

I know this is a charged topic.  And I want to hear from you.  What has been your experience with making big life changes you resisted for a long time, and what finally worked? Leave me a comment below.

There are two more chapters coming on this topic. The next is how you can use the art of seduction to make those big life changes with ease and grace.  But that one my doves, you will have to wait for. Unless you want to jump right in with me in September's Seduction Is A Spiritual Practice.