Holistic Life Navigation

Walk with Luis on a cold day as he chats about doom scrolling and horror. If someone has high somatic empathy, when they watch horror on a screen, it creates an adrenal response as if the horror is happening to them. Bodies brace for the impact of impending doom, but instead of impact, they move on with their lives in to the world, still braced. How does one interact with their life and community if they are braced for someone else's reality? What neighborhood needs are bypassed if one is living detached from their own space and place? 

Luis offers several questions to contemplate as we consider our own relationship to horror and somatic empathy. If the horror isn't happening to us, we have the privileged of choosing to feel, or not feel, horror in our own body.  

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Feeling overwhelmed? Most of us turn to carbs, which results in a hit of dopamine that turns on our adrenaline response. The faster a carb turns into glucose, the sooner we experience a low blood sugar induced adrenaline response. Historically we had to work hard to get that spike of dopamine and glucose, but our animal bodies have not evolved to keep up with machines and the processed foods they produce. Now we sit at desks and cars, consuming much higher levels of refined carbs. This leaves us, and the land, depleted. 

Luis wonders, how much of your diet is refined grains, and how much of your diet is whole grains? How does your body store trauma as fat? Why do you crave what you crave?  

Curious about how to work with this idea in your body? Luis outlines an Appetizer For Your Stress Response, along with a simple dessert recipe and a somatic practice.

If we eat to be balanced, that is where health emerges. 

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Ever wake up in a panic, with a dry mouth and a nightmare? Join Luis for this bed time snack sized podcast. Your nighttime woes might be a glucose spike cascading into an adrenaline rush. Luis outlines the physiology of what happens in our bodies, along with yummy, practical solutions to experiment with. Give it a try, and notice how you feel.

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Sitting in Costa Rica, by driftwood and the sea, Luis contemplates the mysteries of nutrition. Having studied the dense and "boring" side of nutrition, his fear of being wrong was triggered when he was called out on social media. This experience prompted his beach-side musings on efficient and non-efficient proteins, how individuals process carbohydrates, and his historic obsession with being right. 

Do we eat to suppress and comfort, or to feel, recover, and nourish? We can turn to nutrition text books for facts to find out, but there is also the indigenous research of tuning in to the wisdom of the body. Our body can help us decipher the wisdom of our cravings. When we are under stress, and likely to have cravings, our bodies need protein to turn amino acids into neurotransmitters that help balance our mental health.  Luis had a stressful double day and he craved a big fat salty chocolate chip cookie... tune in to see where the wisdom of the craving took him. 

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Ever feel anxious, panicked, or  like a "floating head" detached from your body? When in these states we can lose our instinct to tend to our body. For example, we might not realize we need to eat, pee, or take a deeper breath. 

Maybe you need a pillow, one of Luis' favorite strategies for being with stress and trauma.  The humble, and often accessible, pillow technique is explained, as is the back up for when you don't have access to a pillow. Using a pillow can help stimulate the parasympathetic response and bring blood flow back into the body, resourcing the body, and perhaps allowing us to respond from a more resourced place. Remember, it's a practice.

Listen to the episode about postprandial blood flow here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/278649/episodes/16437452

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Luis reads us a chapter of his upcoming book "Food Therapy" (2026). In it he discusses how eating is relational. Our body receives the being of a plant or animal and digests it, breaking it down into chemicals that relate to our bodies' chemicals. In this unconscious alchemy food becomes our bodies. We often use this shift to change our chemistry and avoid feeling. 

Luis worked with three wives, all who said if they gave up chocolate they would get divorced. They helped him realize that food can be broken down into three categories: depressants, stimulants, and balancers. Understanding these categories became Luis' compass, what he calls the Quiet Diet, used to navigate his own recovery from binge eating. When we embody how foods affect us we become a conscious alchemist, sober to how we actually feel. Food is a potent medicine that can shift our inner ecology and build our capacity to heal from stress and trauma. Have you noticed, how does your body relate to food?  

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Large amounts of refined foods have the power to elicit big hormonal responses in our bodies. If we have a subconscious desire to shape shift to a new state, we often go to food to make that change for us. Depressed? We might reach for foods that make us feel more alive. Wound up and anxious at the end of a long day? We might reach for foods that depress us enough to fall asleep. 

What we eat, and how much of it we eat, has the potential to release opioids, serotonin and dopamine into our system, facilitating that shift for us. It is the state the food puts us in that we are addicted to, not the food itself. Luis asks, what need is the food meeting and what is the state change I am after? He offers a practice around binge eating to help us relate to our animal bodies and start to release shame. Join Luis and explore how we can relate to ourselves in ways other than with food. 

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Camille and Luis enjoy a playful conversation about the trendiness of terms including DEI, decolonization, woke-ness, Queer, witch, and liberal. Trends are cut off from the deep rooted culture of the thing itself, and therefore come and go. Luis reveals how the appropriation of these words into trends feels in his body and why.

They discuss intent and impact before conversation flows to decolonizing versus re-indigenizing. A question forms, are we dominating or relating to our body, the land, and others? True healing, whether in the DEI or decolonizing realms, takes time and space to go deeper and root. The speedy passing of trends does not allow for this rooted healing to occur. 

Discussion includes exploring inclusion as holding space for each person to have their own opinions, knowing we will not all agree. Consensus and rules, or mandates, do not equate to inclusion. They acknowledge the roots of the term Liberal as "Big Tent", as an inclusive place that holds many perspectives.

Essentially, is something a dissociative trend, or is it culture, deeply rooted and healing? 

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Are beans an anti-nutrient due to their phytic acid content, or are they a superfood? Come investigate what is really behind the phytic acid scare around beans. How much phytic acid IS in a 1/2 cup serving of cooked beans anyhow? Luis does the math and gives us tips on how to reduce phytic acid, why it's worth the trouble, and how a little bit can be a benefit to our health. Beans contain protein, fiber, minerals, and vitamins, and can help detoxify the gut. Learn how this pre-biotic powerhouse affects toxins, stress metabolites, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels.  Luis also offers suggestions on how to titrate this sustainable superfood into your every day diet. 

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]

Ownership is the question explored in this epic podcast where Luis interviews Unique Hammond, Zeena Ismail, and Hadar Cohen to share their distinctive perspectives of being forced out of their home/land. The inspiration for the podcast arose from the ashes of the LA wildfire where Unique's home was burnt to the ground as nature evicted her.  Forced from their homelands, Zeena Ismail is a Palestinian living in Jordan and Hadar Cohen is a Arab Jew living in the United States. 

Luis' queries if it is more painful when nature takes your home, compared to your home being taken by humans and war? All were forced to leave their homes, and there is a wisdom in their leaving. Unique notes that when you fight with reality, reality wins 100% of the time. Indeed, we may leave our land, but the land is carried in our bones, and never leaves us. Zeena shares her experience of learning to belong to a new land and welcoming it's wisdom. As the author Robin Wall Kimmerer says, she became indigenous to (a new) place. The added layer of identity is weighed. Identity, as Hadar sees it, is just a lens, not eyesight itself. Can we release the bind and binary of identity? 

Ultimately we can claim, colonize, and extract from a place, or we can belong to a place. As Hadar asks, if you belong to the land why do you need to control it? Would there even be war if we did not have ownership? A universal question emerges, do we grasp at what was, or can we allow transformation to occur? 

You can visit Unique Hammond's website here: https://www.youregreat.com/

You can visit Zeena Ismail's website here: https://www.zeenaismail.com/

You can visit Hadar Cohen's websites here: https://www.hadarcohen.me/ www.malchut.one

You can read more about, and register for, the Navigating Weight & Body Image With Somatics webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/weight-and-body-image-webinar

You can register for November's Community Somatics here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/community-somatics-november

----

You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation

Questions? You can email us at [email protected]