Holistic Life Navigation

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...

Trauma is when events so big, so scary, and so overwhelming cause a reaction in the body the breaks us off from ourselves. Trauma is an inevitable rupture we must all experience throughout our lives. When those ruptures repair, we are left with deep wisdom and insight into life. We are given new perceptions, have more resilience & capacity in our bodies, and often emerge with more gratitude fo...

Healing intergenerational trauma is nuanced, unique, and personal. No two people will do it the same way. Vincent has found a pathway to ancestral, intergenerational, and cultural-collective trauma through the process of transitioning. We speak about the spiritual experience of being transmasculine. The process, for Vincent, helped him balance his feminine and masculine energies into a place that&...

Today's episode welcomes Holly Howard who is a business consultant, music therapist, and founder of Ask Holly How. Her work is unorthodox, radical, and powerfully transformative. I wanted to have her on because she believes that one's business is an extension of their own psyche and body. Holly speaks about the term "scarcity supremacy". She sees white supremacy as an extension...

Today's episode is probably my favorite of all time. I speak with Claudia Serrato who is, among many other things, a womb ecologist & indigenous culinary anthropologist. We speak about reawakening our  bodies with ancestral foods from our heritage, as well as wild foods ancient to the lands that we currently reside on. We speak about decolonizing our bodies and minds through our diets. We...

On today's episode, I welcome back Karen Hurd to teach us about dairy & how it affects the body. Personally, I have linked all of my childhood illnesses to dairy. I had high cholesterol, was 50 pounds overweight, suffered from debilitating asthma, and had really painful cystic acne all over my face, neck and back. Medications suppressed the symptoms for me, which offered some relief, but...

In this episode, I bring my colleagues back for a roundtable discussion about vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma is when your body experiences someone else's trauma. This can happen through media, witnessing horror in person, or while listening to someone recount a traumatic event. Vicarious trauma is especially common for therapists and medical professionals. Some things we discuss are: - Th...

On today's episode, I speak with three men (Michael, Danny, & Todd) about what it was like to grow up with the pressure of the masculine archetype. Through embracing the feminine, we found balance and restored our natural, authentic way. I wanted to record this special, 2 hour sacred conversation about our experiences in hopes to give others a reference of what it looks like when men come...

Meghan Fisher is my guest on this very special episode. I found Meghan's work on Instagram and was immediately taken by it. She started a personal project of shadow expression & integration which she called Chronicles Of A Sasquatch. Images & videos of her in this sasquatch outfit followed with deep, meaningful, and confessional texts. I loved it and wanted her to come onto my podcast...