Kate Date!

What a wonderful day yesterday. After morning meditation and Journey dance with live drummers, I went on a date with my favorite Kate. We cruised around a bit, got coffee and had a patented Myles/Kate Vault session. It can feel so good to let out a lot of the secrets I've been holding inside knowing that they are being heard and locked away, never to be revealed by the listener. On the drive back to Lenox we wrote a song (well, Kate wrote a song and I provided the appropriate beatboxing accompaniment.)
Buddha Books should be receiving wide distribution sometime in the future.
Kate asked me "When I go to Philly, will all the guys have cool facial hair and be able to beat box?" I wasn't sure how to answer, as in fact many of the guys will have one or both of those attributes. Then we parked our butts in the reading room at the Lenox library and I read Noam Chomsky out loud to her. That was a bit of an emotional dip in the day, as dear Noam managed to heap on 600 years of white guilt in 6 pages.
Afterwards we headed back to the house on the hill for an amazing pranayama practice followed by 15 minutes of meditation.

Something I previously forget to mention about my meditation practice is the amazing effects of Meta. After a few weeks of meditating, I was finding that when I came out of it, I was pretty groggy, out of sorts, like being shaken awake from a gentle nap. Kate suggested ending with a few minutes of Meta, Loving Kindness, which is manifested as a mantra. The first section sends loving kindness to yourself, the second to someone in your life who you feel needs it, the third to all living beings. I play around the with the mantras, depending on what I am feeling, who I am sending Meta to and what I feel they need. Daniel talks about paying very close attention to the effect the words have on my body, particularly in the heart center.
Yesterday my Meta was entirely for myself. Sending and receiving self love has been something I've struggled with (probably forever, but certainly recently as I've become aware of the lack of self love in my life.) After the powerful pranayama, the words "I Give You This Breath Because I Love You," came from some corner of my mind and felt right. So for 10 minutes I repeated that line in my head with every inhale.
The affects were powerful. I felt my chest opening, my ribs expanding to allow more room for my heart which was growing with the words. It was as if the energy that had been held within my heart muscle and 4th chakra had finally been given permission to explore the rest of my body.

This is going to be a week about me. More to follow later.