Holistic Life Navigation

I welcome my friend James-Olivia Chu Hillman back to my podcast to discuss their experience of practicing embodiment while also practicing self-inquiry. One practice is of feeling, the other is of thinking. Both interact, relate, and deeply affect the other. This is such a tender, deep, gorgeous conversation and I thank them for coming to it from where they truly were in the moment. For more info...

Sexual trauma is not dependent on abuse. It simply means that an event was either threatening, or overwhelming, and it involved your sexual organs, sexuality, or your body/mind in a sexual context. In this episode I discuss how experiences like medical trauma & sexual fawning can create sexual trauma - even when sexual assault and abuse are not present. To join my webinar on Feb 1st about sexu...

Today I'm joined by an incredible woman named Robin Landsong. Her story is one of literal hell and miraculous survival. By age 8 she had already experienced such tremendous abuse and trauma. She found herself being the victim of an abduction and survived several near death experiences in Africa. She was hiding in a tree, after escaping a harrowing situation, when a woman in the village began...

Today I'm joined by my friend Karine Bell . We tend to have these long, rolling conversations when we chat and this time, we chose to record it. Karine is a trauma therapist and facilitator of Tending the Roots , an incredible virtual collective that holds space for working with somatic abolitionism, cultural trauma healing, and liberating ourselves from cycles of trauma. You can get instant...

In this episode I speak about the spontaneous healing that I began to experience from playing music as a teenager. Looking back, I can see how I was co-regulating and creating safety within myself. I describe it in this episode & offer a song of mine for your own nervous system to experience and relate to. To sign up for my next 6-week course, please visit: http://www.holisticlifenavigation.co...

Sometimes we don't have the physical capacity to handle the things we desire. Relationships, money, jobs, even feeling joy - these seemingly beautiful experiences can overwhelm our nervous systems and bodies depending on our trauma histories & present-moment capacity. This episode explores the difference between capacity and desire through 2 exercises that show you how your body responds...

In this episode, I navigate how we lose our bodies when we grasp at the mind. I'm inspired by my friend & colleague James-Olivia Chu Hillman who wrote about this concept through their lens and experience. I share this here, as well as my own experience with this phenomenon. To sign up for my next course, please visit: http://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/ You can get instant access to al...

Bill Riddick is a therapist & facilitator of the Charrette Process. In 1971, he played  a pivotal role in desegregating the school district in Durham, NC. During this particular charrette, he paired together a black civil rights activist with a white KKK leader. The result was profound. What he teaches me in this episode is that conflict heals through understanding & respect. Sharing infor...

In this episode, I navigate the roots of comfort food. What drives our  body's desire to eat heavy, emotionally satisfying foods? I was inspired to talk about this after I heard Rupaul & Michell Visage talking on What's The Tee about why kale doesn't comfort them like a fried sandwich does. There's a biology behind our food habits and it relates to trauma. How adrenalized w...

Meenadchi joins me today to discuss Non-Violent Communication . It's an incredible method designed by Marshall Rothenburg & it helps us identify our needs, emotions, and requests so we can be clear in our relationships. I, personally, hit a wall with NVC because I didn't find it to be trauma-informed enough for me. This is where Meenadchi comes in. They teach and lead NVC workshops t...

In this episode I navigate the states of duty & desire. I talk about noticing which traditions and habits we've inherited and upheld from a sense of duty & which we've inherited and upheld from a sense of desire. I also include a short exercise around feeling the now &  noticing the difference between how now   feels compared to the duty we're dreading. To sign up for my...

Understanding that trauma is a biology,  not a mindset, is what makes somatic therapy so unique and beautiful. Traditional talk therapies tend to focus on the events and identifying how we think and feel about them, but they don't ask us where we feel the events. Trauma is not the event itself, it's the response to the event. I welcome Dr. Abi Blakeslee to my podcast to share her wisdom...

In this episode, I discuss the somatic experience of depression. Something we see as a fixed state may just be a part of us asking for a break, needing rest, and wanting to recover from overwhelm. I discuss the practice of seeing sensations as beings inside of us. Getting to know them, asking them questions, and letting them show you how they want to be related to. This means there's nothing...

This episode explores the many nuances and layers around cultural trauma. The reverberations of it. How colonialism works itself into our language, then our values, and then our realities. This is a powerful discussion about a man who reflected on his own internalized racism and colonialism. He talks about how teenagers in Zimbabwe rebel against their own culture, in hopes to be more "Black A...

Brigitt Thompson is a writer, author of Trust Yourself With Money , and a former student of  my 6-week course. Her personal experiences that arose from the course were so inspiring to me that I wanted to have her on here to reflect back to me, and you, my own work in her own language. What is most important to me is her statement: capacity feels like making room . This practice of making room is t...

I'm joined by indigenous medicine woman Asha Frost . We explore the nuances of cultural trauma and how to heal that collectively. Asha comes with a unique and powerful sense of unconditional love. Her presence makes this work, amongst natives and non-natives, safe and powerful because she sees us all as relatives and, essentially, needing the same thing: connection to the self, land, and one...

I'm joined my science researcher & author Annie Murphy Paul . We talk about how the mind is far more expansive than just the brain - or even the body. Her work intersects with my work to bring new language and data that supports what indigenous and body-focused cultures have always understood: the body relates to everything around it and the brain is only one piece of the equation. This h...

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...