LL says, Who Do You Luv?

I love me some hip hop and R&B. There was a great song in the early 90s called Who do you Luv? by one of my favorite artists, LL Cool J.


 
 
For me this time of year is about Love, family and friends.

I love so many people and I'd like to share about one in particular during this season of gratitude.

I love my brother, Brent. I remember being four years old and my parents told me I was going to have a brother. I didn't really know what that meant at the time. When my mom came home from the hospital, my brother was giggling and smiling. He was chubby and cute as hell. When he was 8 or 9, I tortured him and his best friend Donnie by making them fight one another. It was pretty sad. Now he's bigger and stronger so I watch my mouth and hope he doesn't plot revenge.

We are four years apart so our peer groups never overlapped until recently. Now, my brother and I are men with jobs, responsibilities and partners. We're pretty good friends too. We adventure together, talk about surfing, business, and life. He is moving to New York after the holidays for an indefinite period of time. I will miss him. I already do. New York will be awesome. He's ready to take a bite out of the big apple. New York will love him. I'm proud of my brother and proud to be his brother. Brent I'm grateful you are my brother and wishing you an awesome adventure on the East coast.

To all of you out there during this time of graditude, who do you love? Tell me and them about it. Spead Love!

 

                                                      My Brother and I and our best friends.
Love.... Luke

Neuroplasiticity, Nuetrality, and the Power of Self Love

The brain and body are inherently neutral. They don’t by nature have a preference for good, bad, right wrong, sour, salty, etc. It’s a curious phenomenon. Preferences are learned. Just as you can learn to be healthy, you can learn to be unhealthy.

In this way the brain/body serve our choices.

I use the term brain/body because they are one and the same. What occurs in the brain affects the body and vice versa. What makes humans unique is the higher function to choose, freely whatever we desire.

Over the last year, I’ve been researching the field of neuroplasticity, which has profound implications for health and consciousness. For many decades the held belief in science is that after passing through critical stages of development in early childhood the brain remains unchanged. Scientists believed (and some still do) that the brain is structurally fixed, and remains that way throughout life. As the adage goes, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” As early as the 1950s researchers challenged this notion, with studies showing that the brain did change. Through out the 1970s and into the last two decades research has extensively shown that the brain can and does change your entire lifetime.  

Neuroplasticity is the anatomical and physiological changes in the brain that occur from new learning. Every cell in the body is connected to the brain for input and output. The brain/body loop passes information and directions electrically via the central nervous system thirty times per second. Our bodies and brains are one and the same. Hundreds of studies and real life cases demonstrate that the brain does change throughout life. What you think, say, and do matters, and have a profound effect on habituating your brain/body. In Buddhism they call this idea imprints. In Hinduism it is called samskaras – the karmic traces of your past actions imprinted on the subtle system.   

Everything you’ve ever thought, said and done has left a trace of itself in your brain/body and subtle system.

Allow me to illustrate my point...

I have fond memories of sledding in the mountains of Idyllwild, and Mt Baldy, California as a kid. My brother and I built jumps and bombed our plastic saucer sleds down the track, launching into the air and laughing our heads off as we crashed into the slushy snow below. As the day went on our tracks deepened, we created a direct line that slung us bull’s-eye onto the snow ramp below. Likewise the more we think, say, or do something, the stronger the neuron or nerve pathway develops in the brain and body. When we become really good at something, we don’t have to think about it. It just happens automatically. This occurs because the amount of neuron connections in the brain increases, sending information faster than conscious thought. Through repetition and refinement we become skilled at life's activities. 

You can fully trust your brain to do whatever you tell it to through regular practice.

The neutrality of the brain and body means that innately you have freedom of choice to create the reality you want. All of us come into the world learning a reality beseeched to us by our forbearers. As life goes on, many people discover there are elements of their inherited reality that are pleasing and unpleasing. This is where remembering neutrality is important. You see, just because you see the same tendency in your mother in you doesn’t mean you’re doomed to become your mother or pass it along to your kid.

You can teach an old dog new tricks.

The first step is to recognize what’s triggering you about a particular issue. Bring consciousness to it. Breathe and make space for it to exist. Then make a new choice. Over and over. This is one of the principles of neuroplasticity. To wire a neuron you must fire it. Fire to wire, wire to fire. What you focus one will bear results over time. This is guaranteed. Whatever you’re working to shift in your life keep fiddling.

Don’t give up. When you give up you lose your ability. Which is the next principle, use it or lose it. If you are not firing a network of neurons, they become weakened and recruited for other tasks.

Another principle of neuroplasiticity is in order to make a neuron you have to break an existing one. It’s called, make it to break it and break it to make it. If you are breaking and old habit, you don’t want to dwell on what a bad habit it is and what a bad person you are. You want to focus on the change and what a great job you are doing.

A recent discovery in neuroplasticity is that the brain becomes most plastic or changeable during an intense experience.  

Research shows the most powerful positive emotion you can experience that changes your brain/body is Love. 

When you love something your brain releases a plethora of hormones and neurotransmitters that calm the nervous system, balance the endocrine system, boost the immune system and several others. So I say lets take all that love and point it back to its source. When you love yourself your whole being shines with health and vitality you have energy to exchange with the world. This is the power behind self love. It’s not a trending fad. Self love works. Try it. Let me know how it feels. Neuroplasticity, wild stuff! .... Love, Luke

Self-love with A Soft Heart

Guest Post By Sugarwilla

I feel incredibly honored to have been asked by Luke to guest blog for this site. So much so that it actually paralyzed me. I wanted my post to be perfect and live up to the standards already set forth in his and other guest posts, so I ended up using that as a reason to procrastinate. Then I remembered that this topic is about the Love Culture Revolution and self love, and thought, anything I write will be just exactly what needs to be said and read. And then, as part of my self love, I had to reiterate it to myself a couple of times before I believed it. :)

I want to express how important it is to proceed through life with a soft heart.

And by that, I mean to be kind to oneself so that the kindness is easily passed on to others. Almost without conscious thought.


There are so many unhappy things happening in the world and so many people relate to others in harsh, unloving ways, often to get their point across. What they may not realize is that their strategy may actually be having the reverse affect on the person/people on the receiving end of the message. They are not treading softly through life.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not suggesting that we all walk around like pushovers and whisper our thoughts, beliefs, feelings. In fact, I’m suggesting the opposite. I’m suggesting that we proceed and proclaim/sing/speak our thoughts, beliefs and feelings. I’m suggesting that we proceed by checking and rechecking our value systems and standing up for our beliefs.


I’m suggesting we do this through love.

Do you realize that when love is behind a message, it’s almost entirely impossible for it to have a sharp edge and impact? Think about a mother who loses her child at the mall for a minute or two. When she finds her child, she may yell and cry and scold the child. But most often, those actions come from a place of deep love and fear of loss, not anger or control. Children aren’t often scarred emotionally from that experience because they can sense on a cellular level that their mom was simply acting out of love. It’s subtle, but obvious to our sub-conscious.

That said, if you can honestly share your opinion with others while coming from a place of love, you’re message will be received. This doesn’t guarantee that the recipient will agree with your opinion but they are disarmed and will more likely consider your stance.

Your acceptance of their opinion, same or different than yours, would come from a place of love. It is possible to accept and love someone with different political, spiritual and other values we hold dear, when you approach it with a soft heart.

The ultimate goal is to enrich our love of self in order to increase our enjoyment of our life.

So, what are other ways we can do this,
besides approaching others with a soft heart?

One thing I have noticed about many people is that when they criticize another, they are often focusing on a trait that they don’t particularly accept about themselves. It’s rather interesting to see this play out. The man who calls another manipulative or controlling often displays those traits himself. The woman who focuses on another woman’s insecurities and judges her for it, often suffers from insecurity herself.

So, let’s reframe it.

As part of the Love Culture Revolution and our quest for self-love, let’s start complimenting others on their “beauties”. Beauties being admirable character traits, talents, physical beauty, inner beauty....you name it.

For some people it’s awfully hard to give someone else a compliment, for fear that it diminishes their own favorable traits. That may stem from a place of insecurity. For example, a woman may have self talk that says “If I point out my girlfriend’s talent, the people around me may focus on her and not me”, so she refrains from giving out a very deserving compliment. Interestingly enough, if she were to check in with herself, I would guess that her holding back would actually not feel congruent. We inherently feel the need to empower others but our own limitations often get in the way.

The gift is this: By empowering others, by complimenting them, appreciating them, acknowledging them, we are empowering, complimenting, appreciating and acknowledging ourselves. And once we begin to
 believe in the beauty of ourselves, we will continue to want to pass that love on to others.

It will become natural. And as the love is given out and received, it grows and grows and grows.
Don’t worry about giving away all of your love. Love expands and the more that you give the more that comes back to you.

It really starts at “home” and home is where your heart is.
Start there and work your way outwards.