Holistic Life Navigation

Luis tucks in for a bedtime conversation about three evening routines that can optimize sleep. Sleep is the body's ritual of repair: these 3 practices will help tend the body to do it's repair work. Think digestion, light, and sensation. Best part is, this podcast comes with a late night snack!  You can get instant access to all of the HLN webinars and video courses here: https://hln.thi...

Chronic stress and PTSD are a hormonal imbalance issue, and if one hormone is out of balance, all hormones are out of balance. These hormones, in or out of balance, control every chemical reaction in the body.  Join Luis and Karen Hurd (biochemist, nutritionist and frequent guest), as they explore the science behind what happens in the body with long-term adrenaline output. Elevated adrenaline has...

Blood pressure is rising, heart rate is increasing, neurotransmitters are firing, muscles are tense and your nervous system is activated. Is it due to stress, or caffeine?  Join Luis as he considers these questions around caffeine:  1) How are you using it? Maybe caffeine is a medicine to energize when in a new time zone, or to help lift one out of a depression or functional freeze. Caffeine could...

Sit in on this juicy conversation between Luis and interior designer Olga Naiman. They discuss creating rituals and spaces that can code our environment for what it is we seek more of in life. If we learn the somatics of what it is we want to feel, we can build it in to our home.  First see your home with the eyes of a stranger. Feeling lonely? Look around for what carries a sense of loneliness. R...

In today's podcast Luis discusses how trauma is stored in the body's posture. When being seen feels dangerous the body goes into a freeze or shame posture of hiding to protect itself. What are the automatic, baseline postures that your body holds itself in based on historic trauma, stress, or abuse? These patterns of tension are the body's way of being prepared for something bad or...

On today's episode, Luis and Camille discuss money, money trauma, and the ways in which we may have inherited or learned about relating to money. They explore: · The relationship we have with money, rather than the money itself · Not finding safety in money, and the reality of needing money · The difference between how much money we have vs. the meaning we assign it · Exploring money solution...

Don't wait until you are feeling anxious to practice this one! Jump right in where you are and practice pendulating. Luis teaches us how to feel where we are now, and where we feel anxiety in our bodies.  We are not our anxiety, a part of us feels anxious. What does the rest of us feel? Using this tool Luis is able access the parts of himself that are not anxious and that have capacity, so th...

Click for story-time with Luis as he reads a favorite chapter that was cut from his soon to be published book, FOOD THERAPY (April 2026). He posits that processed food is disassociated from the land. Often GMO crops are altered to survive glyphosate, wrecking bio-diversity, increasing chemicals, and providing reduced nutrients. Two pounds of GMO altered soy beans contained 9mg of glyphosate. No wo...

On today's episode, Luis shares his favorite herbs, specifically for supporting PMS or menopause. Building on the previous episode about herbs for liver, he explains how the liver is helpful for women's hormones. He teaches how to make the "triple root infusion", as well as when and how much to drink. He also includes two other herbs that can help with alleviating symptoms from...

On today's episode, Luis discussing the importance of liver health for full body and metabolic health, as well as it's relationship to recovering from stress and trauma. He explains what role the liver plays, and what dietary choices can change the liver's ability to function. He then talks about two herbs to help support liver, what they do, and how to make an herbal infusion. You...

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...

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...

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 get instant access to all of the HLN webinars...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 decolonizi...

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 pro...

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 Pale...

"As of today it will henceforth be official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders, male and female." - Donald Trump Luis explores how this policy effects transgender, transsexual, non-binary and intersex folks. He discusses the fluidity of gender,  whereas sex is biology assigned at birth. Luis reads this policy as a statement of two sexes, which Nature a...

Let's explore the often ignored connection between nutrition and trauma. Luis breaks foods down into three categories: stimulants, depressants, and balancers.  When we eat sugar there is a spike in blood sugar levels, triggering a spike in insulin, leading to a drop in glucose, resulting in an adrenaline spike. You heard that? Your body is having a stress response, and you haven't even h...

Luis shares part of his family story before weaving rich voices and interviews to explore the use and meaning of the phrase People of Color, or POC. Many questions and facets are explored: Do we take on ideas to belong? Does the phrase POC other specific groups in a condescending way? What is the story, meaning, or belief we have about the label POC?  Does 'marginalized' mean oppressed?...

Luis shares part of his intersex journey as he explores the idea of misgendering as progress. Join him as he discusses the difference between sex and gender, harm and difference in the context of free speech. He believes we all have a responsibility to orient to, and find safety in, ourselves. The more comfortable Luis is in himself, the less offend-able he has become. Feel free to be part of the...

Thanks to a listener request, Camille and Luis discuss cognitive dissonance through the lens of somatics and parts work. Cognitive dissonance, the friction between held and opposing beliefs, can result in an uncomfortable tension. The discomfort caused by this tension is usually avoided, or even "erased". Alternatively, leaning in to the tension can be an opportunity for growth, or, an i...