Holistic Life Navigation

In this episode, Luis is joined by his brother-friend, Steve Rasovsky. Both Luis and Steve have had COVID and found a lot of wisdom in their experience. Fundamentally, COVID offered them both an invitation into the slowness an authenticity of their bodies because their flight response was physically inaccessible. Please note that neither Luis or Steve are medical practitioners and this episode isn...

In this episode, Luis explores why we often procrastinate and how procrastination is a form of freeze response. We procrastinate, or go into freeze response, when our bodies experience overwhelm. However, rather than relating to that overwhelm, we often to to a place of judgement and shame: "Why am I so lazy?" "Why can't I get my life together?" "Why am I so irrespons...

In this episode, we welcome back James-Olivia! This episode is a bit of an ADHD masterpiece where James-Olivia and Luis explore a plethora of topics, including:  Our attachment to stories about others The freedom to both follow and break the rules and shift with time Decolonizing Marriage & Individuating How to be free around those who don't recognize their own freedom Belonging & Spi...

In this episode, Luis explores why we often feel compelled to justify or rationalize our boundaries with others by creating a negative story about them rather than just accepting our inner knowing or our body's response as enough. This negative stories we create and repeat about others serves as the proof we need for our boundaries, but does it truly serve us? Does the story create peace or p...

In this episode, Luis is joined by Dr. Aimie Aigian, MD MS MPH. She is the leading medical expert on how life experiences get stored in the body and restoring the body to its best state of health through her signature model and methodology, The Biology of Trauma . Dr. Aimie shares with us how she came to observe and personally experience that the mind and the body are all one, inter-related system...

In this episode, Luis explores how and why we often force ourselves to be with or doings for other people simply because we love them. We often over-couple love with action, i.e. if we love someone, we should do things for them and if we don't do those things, our love is in question. With this overcoupling, love can move us to bypass our own boundaries which ultimately result in resentment t...

In this episode, we learn more abut Marika Malaea, the Operations Manager of Holistic Life Navigation. Marika generously shares with us pieces of her own healing journey, including being adopted by a family of a different culture, the pressures and desire to conform to a Eurocentric standard of beauty, and how once she was able to be embodied, it actually did not feel good. She also shares with us...

In this episode, Luis explores how being an empath can be a trauma response. Very rarely do we think about being a empath through the lens of joy. Instead, empaths often describe how they are overwhelmed by the pain, hurt, and suffering of others. Luis shares how recognizing and relating to a trauma response in conjunction with leveraging the practice of self-attunement can allow empaths to pendul...

In this episode, we welcome back Ixchel Lunar! Ixchel and Luis discuss the role of time in their lives including how time is hyper local, what it means to attune to the rhythms and the cycles of the land, why we often judge ourselves and others for honoring the pace of their body, what they've learned from observing turtles and sloths, and how we allow time to be stolen from us. They also rev...

In this episode, we are joined by Eileen Knott. Eileen offers individual healing sessions for a variety of health concerns such as pain-both physical and emotional,  nightmares, obsessive thoughts, grieving, feeling stuck, and addictions. Eileen was also a student of the Holistic Life Navigation course last year. Eileen and Luis explore why healing in an ongoing, iterative process. Both share how...

Finally, she's back!! In this episode, Luis is joined by herbalist and astrologer Aemen Bell to discuss the many, many benefits of oatstraw. Aemen and Luis discuss how oatstraw is neither a depressant or a stimulant but rather a nourishing herb that helps to bring us into our true nature. They also discuss the wisdom they've gleaned from oatstraw, what it means to have energy from a sour...

In this episode, Luis explores how attuning to the now, i.e. remaining in our safe center even when ruptures may be happening around us, provides us the resourcing to deal with threat as it comes. Threat is very really and exists all around us. But the question we have to ask ourselves is, is my body responding to remembered threat, anticipated threat, or threat that is actually in front of us rig...

In this episode, we are joined by Maureen Gallagher, PhD. Maureen is a licensed psychologist, Somatic Experiencing faculty member, and Inner Relationship Focusing trainer. She is also a teacher of Luis. Maureen and Luis explore what it means for us to relate to our body's and sensations vs identifying with them. They discuss how transitioning to a place of witness or observer of their bodies...

In this episode, Luis explores how we can begin to move through numbness. We can often describe numbness as not feeling anything at all but in reality, numbness is a sensation -- it is the sensation of the lack of sensation. Numbness also carries with it a negative stigma; something that is wrong with us. However, numbness is our body's healthy response to overwhelm. It is our body's bou...

This Holistic Life Navigation's 100th episode! To mark this occasion, we pull back the curtains and we meet the entire Holistic Life Navigation team. Luis, Marika, and Camille share what brought them to trauma healing work, their perception of trauma healing as a business, and how their relationship with money has evolved over time. We also get to know a bit more about their past lives -- Lui...

In this episode, Luis explores how we can find safety in nature when human relationships don't feel safe. A byproduct of colonization is our tendency to view nature a resource we should dominate vs a relative we can relate to. Traumatized nervous systems can often find it difficult to r co-regulate with human beings -- but what about non-human beings? What other beings around might we regular...

Jaguar Mary X is an artist who says "I believe that it is my role as an artist to activate and be part of a remembering of the transforming power of communal space. I agree with Nina’s Simone’s dictum that the mission of the artist is to 'respond to the times in which I find myself.'" In this episode we explore their journey of becoming ungovernable, how they are challenging th...

In this episode, Luis explores how manifesting can keep us from building the capacity to be with the present. When focusing on what may come in the future, we are focusing on what we want rather than what we have. Manifesting isn't bad. But how can we also find ways to attune to the calm, joy, or beauty that is happening around us? For more information about Luis's work, please visit: ww...

This episode is so deliciously wonderful. We had the honor to sit down and speak with A'Lelia Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of Madam CJ Walker. This episode is all about resiliency and intergenerational wisdom. A'Lelia generously shares what she learned about her lineage as she was writing her great-great-grandmother's biography. We explore how a woman who was the very firs...

Out of all the things we explore on this podcast, who would've thought beans would be the most controversial? So we had to invite Karen Hurd, the Queen of Beans, back to the show to help sift through some of these bean myths.  In this episode, we cover the common concerns and fears people have about beans including: Why do beans give me gas? Don't beans have a lot of antinutrients? Don&a...

"You're not overreacting, you're overcoupled." In this episode, Luis explores how we can begin the work of recognizing when our bodies are being reminded of a past traumatic experience and how we can uncouple that from situations where there is no threat present. For more information about Luis's work, please visit: www.holisticlifenavigation.com You can get instant access...

"I'm not weird, I'm  just from somewhere different." Today's episode is all about honoring our "weird" -- the call to break from the norm, standard, or "right way". Aiyisha Castillo  is a Somatic Therapist, Intuitive Bodyworker and Yoga Teacher.  She felt called to enter into the holistic field after returning from a 2 1/2 year trip to Africa.  Her love...

In this episode, Luis explores how we can affirm our bodies' boundaries while also exploring from a place of curiosity vs. judgement, i.e. how to turn judgment into curiosity to heal trauma. Our brains work really hard to categorize things into "safe" and "threat" consistently. Not knowing is scary because it invites vulnerability. When we have a traumatized system, we sen...

Nisha Mody is a 'healing hype girl"! What stands out about Nisha is her practice of noticing the joy along with pain. This practice of seeing joy as complex, nuanced, and juicy is so important. It is very easy to mistake this practice for bypassing but Nisha shares with us how this is critically different. Bypassing is when we ignore the event or the impact of the event on us. However, a...

"The first alter of our ancestors is the body." This quote from Amber McZeal beautifully illustrates the connection between relating to our bodies, the land, and our lineage. To move from colonization to decolonization, i.e. be in relationship with rather than dominance of, applies to our bodies just as it applies to land. When we're in relationship with our bodies, we're in re...