The Argument of Nature

As long as the sun shines, the rain falls, 

and the world spins, you will heal, physically

mentally, emotionally, and spirituality. 

Follow Nature

The pace of nature is elegant. The night blooming jasmine, emits her intoxicating fragrance hours after dusk. The desert rose curls centripetally inwards as the moon rises, with the peaking sun the desert rose uncoils white spindles of fleshy petals reaching towards the suns' rays.

The timing of Nature is exquisite. 

Gradual, steady, Nature displays its power, beauty and force with rhythm and timing. The ocean tide, steadily rises and falls, swells and subsides with exact calculation.

We can count on Nature because She is true to her Self. She honors her pace. 

I notice the opposite phenomenon in myself at times and in our world. Rushing to work, high stepping from patient to patient, scarfing lunch down with minimal enjoyment. The pace of Nature is forgotten and my energy, inspiration, and enjoyment wane. How do I become steady, consistent, and strong? Watch the Old Growth Doug Fir. Year after year, from the heartwood concentric circles over lay themselves upon one another. Five hundred years later the great grandfather tree is still going. I can learn a lot from Nature.  

      How do you go from disease to ease ... with lasting improvement? We do it like Nature. 

I can't argue with Nature. Nature is steady. In most instances a disconnection from Nature is always at the source of disease and in order to correct it we must reconnect to our source --- to Nature. 

We forget we are Nature too.  Like plants and animals we are born of the natural elements. This is where we physically come from and will return. 

How do you heal the afflictions of worldly life? Connect with Nature in you. 

I'm not talking necessarily about forests, flowers, and water here --- although that helps too. What I'm getting at is forming a connection to your Natural rhythms. Not the rhythms of work life, home life, or evening traffic. I talking about Your Rhythm. 

Nature as it freely and spontaneously seeks to express itself through you. Where to you block, impede, go unconscious and on automatic to your Nature? Do you know what I'm referring to? Nature is always making a play at reminding you to sync up. 

Are you in sync with that pulsation? 

Healing happens when we align with the undulating surge of life force. We are not meant to be at 100 percent output all the time. The lifewave rises powerfully forth surging to its crest and gently coalescing back to its source. The intercostal muscles contract drawing the ribs in all direction, the lungs fill with life giving oxygen, exhaling the ribs retract. On and on Nature shows its power. When we are not careful with nature, She reminds us with illness. How can we more fully attune to Nature?
This is our constant inquiry.

Healing. You can disagree with science, religion, politics and so on, but Nature... Nature is its own authority. And you are Nature. Tune in.

Food for Thought. Thought for Food

Love Out,

Luke

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.

Keeping It With You

Guest Post By Melinda von Reis-Iglesias

I have the good fortune of working in an environment focused on healing: physically, mentally and spiritually.


I have excitedly chosen to make this a mirror for my personal life as well.

As of late, there have been many moments of self - (and just plain) - realization.

You know what I am talking about… the “a-ha” moments; moments where your mind and body go into the state of pure bliss because, once again, you have “figured it out!”

These moments come by way of a conversation, argument, or other experience. In the space following the realization I know that I would never make that same mistake again - I know that I have learned something that deeply humbles my ego.

For the first day or maybe even few days, that “lesson” is with me... often it does not stay. How do I keep it with me? How do I avoid stumbling back into that same pattern?

How do i keep moving forward, lesson learned?

This past weekend I got into a discussion - and when I say discussion I am being diplomatic - this past weekend I got into an argument, with my partner. An argument where I didn’t want to hear much, was defensive and needed an attitude adjustment. We were discussing some serious areas in our relationship, areas where I have had various “a-ha” moments. Areas where i am “keeping it with me”…and of course, the dreaded areas where I am not.

Maybe it is my Taurean nature, but it seems old habits die hard. Specifically, being more careful with my words and what comes out of my mouth, being more understanding and not wanting things my way all the time... and mostly just working on really hearing my partner. Being a good listener is easy, actually hearing what the person is saying, is a lot more challenging. I have had countless "a-ha" moments in these same areas, but let me tell you, I risk more and more every time I don't "keep them with me".

When I say “keep it with me” I am talking about a specific neurological process that actually occurs in our brains. What I experience when my emotional + logical brains connect. For example, you are discussing a situation where you did wrong... you feel remorse about what you have done and assure the person you hurt that you are sorry. You can't believe you've done this, and you will never do it again.

...remember what your teachers used to say, ”take the ‘knowledge you learned in the classroom’ and apply it!”

The way you learn isn't that first "a-ha" moment, but rather, when you are face to face with scenarios that look just like the ones before them. The scenarios that have yielded the same end results over and over again. The difference? You make a conscious decision to change that path.

You then create a new path or synapse in your brain - for this new way of thinking, behaving, or being and it gets stronger every time you choose it.

The act of creating the new synapse actually causes the one that came before it to dissolve; severing the tie to the old behavior. Powerful image, huh?

I am choosing to look at the practice of “keeping it with you” as sort of a game. Not a game in the sense that the outcome does not really matter, or that I don’t take it seriously. Looking at this practice as a game means I really look at it for what it is - teaching my brain new things - and reinforcing them - that way I am not caught up in more than I need to be.

It's beautiful..
We all have this auspicious ability in all of us... ultimately, we will be the ones healing ourselves.

Does Self Love Make You Squirm?

The inquiry of what you love about you is shaking things up. Its making people squirm, me included. I have asked a lot of people the question this last week and it has revealed some cultural tendencies we carry around self worth, success and self love. I have heard responses like, "isn't that narcissistic?" or "that's a hard one" on occasion. Immediately and every time, I witness a physical reaction; fidgeting, eye twitching, emotions coming up through the voice.  Watching myself ask others the question, sometimes I feel a little uneasy and self conscious thinking, "do I seem like a wimp for asking this?".

The question, what do you love about you hits right up against its' opposite, What do you not love about you?

Asking and answering what do you love about you is healing and freeing physically, spiritually and emotionally.

Watch how you and others react when you ask and answer the question. It really amazes me how quickly the question melts me into my Heart. Keep asking yourself, what do you love about you?

What you love about you is about is social change. We are refining culture to value self love. As I said in the previous post, this is not the next new age fad of love thy self. With a light heart, I am serious that in order to deal with the crises of human rights, clean drinking water, renewable resources and so on, we need to start at home with self love. A friend, mentor and extraordinary healer, David Elliott says this about self love:

 "Self love connects you to everyone and everything. Once you love yourself you can effectively move out into the world and love others...For love to exist in the world it has to happen inside you first, then it can propagate 360 degrees around you"

Loving you takes some effort. It takes work. I've worked with thousands of people on this and the ones who change, keep at it daily. After some time, the change takes root and the old values fall away.


In general, the old values of success are based on material accumulation and physical sacrifice. From this antiquated notion of success we will never be able to solve our socio-environmental crisis without changing our values of success. Notice, I didn’t include economic in the previous statement. I’m confidant our economy will shift. The question is, can we sustain it?

To take it further – because we fundamentally do not value ourselves, do not practice loving ourselves, and self love is not a cultural value, we can’t truly love and respect each other, the planet and its resources.

This is not a black and white issue. Of course some of us do love ourselves to various degrees. What I see in the world is that most people don’t or have very little self love. The primary value around success is more like the following:

If you are not dog-ass tired by the time you finish work – then you didn’t work hard and you are not a success.

If you don’t have a big house and a fancy car then you didn’t make it.

If you don’t have your act 100 percent together then work harder.

If your health isn’t suffering a little then you are not sacrificing enough.

A strong work ethic is important, don’t get me wrong. I’m not promoting abandoning your real world responsibilities. The trend I’m seeing in my clinic in Eugene and in the media is that people motivate by beating themselves up, self flagellation – perhaps a relic from the Judeo-Christian inheritance. I am seeing people from every social economic stratum in major health crisis because they’ve beaten themselves up so hard with their over-sized commitments that their bodies are surpassing the tipping point of what can be physiologically withstood. I am seeing this trend in nearly every age range.

Self-love may seem simple and straightforward. It's not. 

Self-love does not happen automatically, we have to bring awareness to it; breathe it into our cells. Our innate default is to glaze over our achievements or just as useless, gloat in them.

Humility is not ignoring your goodness. It is deeply valuing it.

When we beat ourselves up and perpetuate the cycle of giving without receiving, the cycle of giving and receiving is incomplete. If we push hard enough, we reach a point of depletion, where we have to take a break or quit. This is not sustainable. At some point the body stops us or we become resentful of someone or some thing. The objectification of resentment is a smoke screen that hides resentment of self and the pain of not honoring your Heart. This all stems from lack of self love. 10 things you love about you. Love Cultural Revolution starts with you. Let's go.

more Love… Luke

10 Things You Love About You

Mark this day in your calendar. Today is the launch of the Love Cultural Revolution. I'm starting a self love campaign. Beneath the crisis of oil, water, coal, foodstuffs, healthcare, human rights, environmental protection, lies the fundamental lynch pin that keeps all other crisis spinning in chaos. I'm talking about the crisis of no self love. Today we are shifting the values of our culture. We are shifting the way we relate to ourselves, so as to shift the way we relate to one another and the planet. I am starting with me. These are the ten things I love about me:

I love my sense of humor

I love being goofy and singing loud when I get home from work

I love my good Heart

I love that I’m learning to take care of myself and be gentle

I love that I show up to work, even when I want to stay in bed

I love that I know when to change my diet when my body shows signs of weariness

I love that I love my wife, family, and friends

I love that right now my heart is swelling and aching as I share what I love about me

I love being creative an innovative about business, healing and spirituality.

I love being courageous and sensitive in challenging situations

I love myself deeply

I think that was eleven, but you get the idea. When you write these down take a few deep inhalations and exhalations to root the self love into your being. Then say them out load and breathe them in even deeper. Every time I do this my body begins to tingle and heat up. We are social beings and reality gets created by sharing with each other what's happening in life. So in order to launch the Love Cultural Revolution, I request that you share the 10 things you love about you with me and every one you can think of and that you ask people, “What do you love about you?”.  Let's hear it.

Love you … Luke