Holistic Life Navigation

Devie Rosie is my guest today. She works as a substitute teacher for Canada's public school system. She's also a breathwork facilitator who is, both, trauma-informed & has studied somatic psychology. We speak about how learning is dependent on safety, connection, and capacity. Together, we chat about ideas and philosophies on why school can be so traumatic and how, one teacher at a t...

I'm joined by Tess Whitehurst and we speak about how we learn to heal from watching nature and from being in the Earth. I love this discussion because we try to understand, together, the difference between trauma response and reaction. How we use our imagination to create things, yet that same imagination can keep us in a fear response. Tess shares her practice of valuing pain and seeing it a...

There is a constant cycle of life & death occurring inside of our bodies at all times. Our DNA & how that DNA expresses can shapeshift at any time depending on our environments, mindsets, and food rituals. This is a blessing because the expressions that are not useful (illness & trauma responses) can also shapeshift into something new. In this episode, I am joined by biochemist & h...

This week Luis is joined by a pioneer in intergenerational trauma and author of "It Didn't Start With You", Mark Wolynn. They dive into language and the history of stored and inherited family trauma. They discuss how trauma unconsciously passes down through DNA and the expression of that through verbal and nonverbal trauma language. Mark also tells stories from his practice and talk...

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 peop...

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', unbekn...

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...

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 v...

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 s...

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...

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...

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 peopl...

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...

"The mystical experience is, qualitatively, one of connection. E veryone 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,...

I found Lorcan after I was searching for resources regarding the indigenous, pagan ways of the Irish people. My mother is half Irish and, when I was 13, I found myself reconnecting to my Irish roots through Wicca. Speaking with Lorcan was so lovely. He exemplifies the respectful balance of reconnecting to his indigenous roots while respecting the delicate nature of the word indigenous. It's t...

I welcome back Dr. Amber McZeal to speak with me about  decolonizing the psyche through a spiritual, somatic, and philosophical lens. I first had Amber on back in September. It was Episode 14: Decolonizing The Psyche & I recommend listening to it first if you haven't yet. It will help you with the language and understanding to fully receive this episode. For me, Amber is pure medicine. He...

My wife showed me Stasia's Ted Talk in 2018 and I was instantly taken by her story. Like most people I have on my podcast, Stasia discovered, through trauma, a gift and a tool that she could apply to her life and teach others to aid in their healing journey. And that tool was style. She found how much style impacts your psychology and emotional state. She first discovered this through her dau...

I love speaking with Carolyn. She's such a kindred soul in the way that she welcomes the trash of life as equally nourishing as the treasures of life. I find transmutation to be the exact work that I do. I'm teaching people how to feel a sensation that is threatening to the body and, rather than constrict against it, we expand into it which gives it more space to be free, move, teach us...

I love working with parents because it gives us, as adults, the opportunity to revisit our own nervous systems and learn which parts haven't fully developed. Which parts still hurt from our own wounds with our parents? Our children give us the opportunity to get triggered into those sensations and they can become our greatest teachers. We chat about how important it is for the parent to becom...

In this episode, I speak about my upcoming album titled Songs From The Land & a special ancestral & somatic healing ritual that I'm offering to the public. Through these 10 songs, my body awakened to many things. My relationship to the land & my body being the most profound. They took me through an 11 year journey of decolonizing which, for me, is removing the act of being in domi...

I saw Mira's Ted Talk about "Why Not Me?" and I was instantly hooked. I'm so attracted to people who find a way to use everything that comes their way - everything - for their own healing, gratitude, and life. I reached out to Mira because she lives by the Arabic word llhamdella, which means "I'm thankful for everything" and she means everything. Mira was born in...

This episode explores the pain & beauty of being different. I met Carolyn on IG and we had a good old fashioned phone call which was so connecting and gorgeous that I wanted to have her on my podcast. Carolyn embodies my personal philosophy and belief system: allow your pain to teach you so that you can teach others. We focus on the topic of racial & cultural trauma, however anyone can rel...

Music was the force that connected me back to myself. It was my Kintsugi - the Japanese art of putting broken bowls back together with gold. I was broken from trauma and the vibrations of music brought my back into my body and taught me capacity and, essentially, transmutation of energy. On today's episode, I invited by dear friend Fredo Viola on to speak about using music to process trauma....

I was given a very unique name growing up: Luis Monroig Mojica III. I am the third generation of this name lineage and I never quite understood it until recently. Like a seed that sits dormant, waiting for nutrients. My name sat there out in the open waiting to be nourishing with curiosity and inquiry. Growing up, I would often ask what my name meant. I was visibly white but my name and soul were...

Today's episode is about one woman's journey to reconnect with her indigenous roots. Like Kai says in this episode: our bodies are our ancestors. Our bodies carry their stories: traumas and triumphs. Oral traditions once passed down those stories so we had context of why our bodies do what they do and why we express certain behaviors and patterns. Kai grew up in America seeing images of...