Holistic Life Navigation

In this episode, Luis speaks with Natasha Levinger - energy reader, healer, spiritual coach - about energy work, attunement, Spirit, grief, and more.

"What a spiritual experience it is to be in a body."

"Attunement is a beautiful thing. I was recently using it in an example of when we’re only attuning to others and not ourselves, that’s when it gets off balance. But attuning to people is also how we have empathy and how we connect and how we notice something’s off."

"I easily talk to people who aren’t in bodies anymore. I love doing that. When I was nine, I used to look at the obituaries and write down new friends to talk to. I’m very much not an Earth-based person, necessarily? But again, it’s maybe counterintuitive, but the more I got into my energy body in the present, the more I was able to be like, “Oh yeah, I can see why I want to be on Earth, I can see what’s special about Earth and what’s special about my body.”

"It’s the meaning that we attach to things that creates tension, or contraction, or makes us want to jump into someone else’s experience."

To follow Natasha's work or listen to her podcast, visit www.highestlighthealing.com.

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

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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 speaks with Euphrasia Nyaki about her upbringing in Tanzania, the journey to somatic experiencing, engaging the ancestors, family constellation in her practice, and more.

"I think those two pieces - the somatic experiencing with the intergenerational work - I feel like that's just the gold. I see so many people who...their bodies are still behaving like their ancestors', unbeknownst to them, because it's in there trying to express itself out, right? But it lacks context. So as you start filling in the context, there's this separation and it starts to heal itself, essentially."

"What we do with family constellation is to bring the invisible out of the subconscious mind."

"One thing you said that I really resonated with was how SE (somatic experiencing) gives you the ability to feel the present. It's not just being in the present, you feel what it's like to not have a past or a future."

To learn more about Euphrasia's work, visit www.somaticexperiencing.com/euphrasia-nyaki. 

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

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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]

This episode Luis reconnects with his dear friend, Lynida Darbes, to talk about spiritual integration therapy -- which involves "an awareness of the process we go through of constantly being called on to integrate our emotions or psychological  experience  with our spiritual evolution."

"I think the falling off the cliff was pretty instantaneous, after all the pain. I think I either had to die or I had to do this “falling off the cliff.” And then... I was totally alive, just completely every tiny cell in my body was alive and turned on and open and full of love."

"I must have learned early on that it’s all about allowance, that’s the word. You 'allow' and it’s the level of willingness in you of allowance that determines how much you experience."

"That’s what I find true healing to be: when concept and ego kind of just dissipate and your body is dancing with what is. It’s magical. You don’t have to be cancer-free to heal. It’s more like your state of being versus your physical state."

"The feeling of whatever happens, it’s teaching me something. If I look at it the right way, it will teach me something."

To learn more about Lynida or to work with her: www.spiritualintegrationtherapy.com

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

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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]

Today's episode is a recording from an interview Luis did with Helena Grant for the Divine Instruments global event this past April. He speaks about somatic therapy and food and how that relates to trauma healing.

"We're talking about trauma because it's the unconscious root of all of our imbalances. What's amazing about trauma when you start understanding it somatically versus psychologically is trauma has nothing to do with the event that you've been through. Trauma has everything to do with how the body responds to the event you've been through."

"The mind is so quick to go to feelings as ideas, feelings as experiences, feelings as meaning. Often when I ask someone, I'll say "What do you feel in that moment?" And they say "I feel like--" and whenever there's that word like, I know we're leaving the body."

"We learned that at birth, we screamed out of pain and we were able to nurse or drink from the bottle. So food is the first thing we experience in this human body on this planet of calming us down, and as we get more embodied with our trauma, we learn "Is this food going over my trauma, is it pushing it down, is my trauma choosing it? Or is my body choosing it to nourish?" And you start getting clear over what drives those decisions."

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

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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]

On this episode, Luis brings back biochemist and holistic nutritionist, Karen Hurd - from [Ep. 8 - Healing Your Body With Beans], [Ep. 19 - Caffeine & Adrenaline: How They Affect the Body], and [Ep. 34 - How Dairy Affects the Body] to talk about what sugar is actually doing in our bodies.

"Some things take a lot of time to break down and enter into the bloodstream. That is not so with sugar. Whenever we put in sugar, it's what we call saccharide. Its molecular construction is such that it takes very little digestive effort - basically none - for it to cross the barriers that allow it into the bloodstream."

"You produce insulin in response to the spike. So if you're going up really rapidly with your blood glucose levels, you're going to release a boatload of insulin to bring down your sugars just as rapidly. Insulin is very effective. It actually grabs these sugar molecules in your bloodstream and will convert them into something known as a triglyceride."

"Sugar is so addictive and satisfying on so many levels and I think because initially it's this concentration of life force because we're breaking down all these foods into the building block of the life, which is the glucose feeding our cells so they can function."

To follow Karen's work or take one of her courses, visit www.karenhurd.com.

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

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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]

In this episode, Luis talks with James-Olivia Chu Hillman about self-inquiry, regulation vs. relation, attunement, somatic embodiment, blame, certainty, animism, Disobedience School and more.

"I believe the willingness to change is the willingness to live, and the willingness to witness others without judgment as they change is the willingness to love."

"What is my relationship with myself like and therefore all of my other relationships with everyone and everything? There's a thing that my dear friend Nic Strack who facilitates conversations with parents, and people who are self-parenting, re-parenting, preparing to parent: 'The relationship you have with yourself defines the relationship you have with your child.'"

 "Magical I think is exactly the right word for it, for me. A thing that I've come to recently is that everything doesn't have to make sense... Let me be more specific: I don't have to make sense in order to regard myself. Which I get kind of emotional even just saying it because it's fairly new in the last few months for me to even have that idea as something I'm willing to commit to. Like oh yeah, you don't have to be logical, the math doesn't have to add up, the machinery doesn't have to run smoothly. Everything doesn't have to make sense, I don't have to make sense, and there's magic that's holding it all together. I don't have to do this myself."

To follow James-Olivia, you can find them on Instagram at @inquisitive_human or their website: www.inquisitivehuman.com.

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

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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]

In this episode, Luis shares a pre-recorded workshop he led for Tending the Roots Festival, founded by Karine Bell, about the way we use our food and treat our bodies as a direct result of colonization, which includes a Q&A at the end.

"Part of the most effective way to getting to the trauma and healing the trauma is creating a body that is so well-nourished that it reflects safety in its biochemistry. That the foods it eats grounds and supports and strengthens rather than depresses or depletes or activates. Food is a powerful medicine and tool for healing trauma because food can create a safe body or an activated-slash-depressed body."

"What I do believe is that a lot of the things we call 'symptoms', and 'conditions', and 'problems' are unprocessed trauma responses that are stuck physiologically. So what's amazing about food - amazing and difficult and confusing - is it's, I mean, to say it's a necessity dilutes it. It's something that our bodies know, it's something our bodies need, it's something we depend on. 'It' being food, food being Earth."

"Decolonizing and colonizing is simply the difference between being in dominance over or being in relationship with. It's that simple. Now where it stems from is quite complex, we've seen that in our history, in our social constructs, in our criminal justice systems. We see how complex it's gotten. But at the root of it -- it's a mentality of: Is this here for me or is this here with me?"

Connect with Karine Bell's work at https://www.rootedandembodied.com and @karinebell on Instagram.

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

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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]

In this episode, Luis dives into animism with Daniel Foor, Ph.D., a teacher of Earth and ancestor reverence, and author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. 

"[Animism] is a way to refer to a set of values that basically says living humans are just one kind of person in a much wider field of kinship, community, and other kinds of people. Those other kinds of people include the ancestors, the plants, the animals, deities, nature spirits, planets... you name it."

"If we can’t see other people, we can’t really see them on a soul level, we’re not going to be as useful to them. And there’s going to be something that doesn’t quite click. Making a study of the different forms and patterns and expressions of the sacred is important if you’re going to be in a healing capacity, because you’ll be more able to see people accurately."

"Like any of the binaries we’re being asked to disrupt, there’s who we’ve been and there’s who we are now. And it’s not that we choose one over the other, but how do we bring all of what we are into the moment? And see the powers that are unifying, the earth that is beneath all of us, and the stars, the bigger frame that we’re being held in. It’s important to spend time resting in what’s unifying, as well." 

To learn more about the Ancestral Lineage Healing online course, ancestor circles and the work of Daniel Foor, visit www.ancestralmedicine.org.

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

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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]

In this episode, Luis embarks on  a new conversation with an old friend, Lindsay Christine, centered around Juneteenth.

Christine shares what it was like growing up as a Black woman in this country, from the way she was raised to the narrow messaging we are sold about African American stereotypes.

"My skin tone and the weight that it carries in America really doesn’t have anything to do with me. It is to do with our society and the way it’s been structured and the way that it’s been set up, but racism doesn’t have to do with how good I am as a person or what I’m like internally. I think I was able to develop a sense of self that was separate from the idea of what it means to be Black in America. I know it’s a part of me, I know by many standards it defines me, but it’s not all of me."

"The reality is there’s still work to do, but I’m not going to wait to be free until that work is done. I can be free in myself and they can catch up to me, and I’m going to keep doing the work."

"Everything I try to work towards and do in my life is to just spark positive change not just for me but for the next generation."

You can follow Lindsay Christine and sign up for the newsletter at her new project, The Wellness Feed, which is a hub for sustainable champions around the world.

You can also find her on Instagram at @the_wellnessfeed. 

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

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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]

"The mystical experience is, qualitatively, one of connection. Everyone who is able to expand enough will report this interesting experience of all is one." -Joshua Sylvae

In this episode, I speak with Joshua Sylvae about the spiritual experiences that arise from somatic practices of embodiment. The body is this incredible vessel for experience. Sensations, desires, movements, memories, images - so many things happening in our bones.

If we're not embodied, we miss all those incredible sensations. Embodiment, as we discuss, goes beyond a simple practice of stillness and peace. It helps us actually experience all the realms within and outside of us.

Joshua Sylvae is a Somatic Psychologist and one of my teachers. I was so thrilled to have him on here to lend his wisdom and heart to this discussion.

For more information on his work, please visit https://sylvae.net/.

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

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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]