Holistic Life Navigation

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Join Luis for a quick chat about the taboo art of cancelling plans. Once loath to cancel, Luis revels in the deliciousness of cancelling when his body needs to.  Most of us live from our desire, or conditioned desire, and push our bodies past capacity to keep our schedules intact. But true integrity lies in our alignm...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Luis welcomes back Nicole LePera to the podcast to chat about her new book, "Reparenting the Inner Child." They discuss what it's like being real and messy in the public eye, and the role the fawn response plays in that experience. They explore how the inner child shows up in daily life, how tending to...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Neuronutritionist Timothy Frie joins Luis today. Tim learned early in his studies that the neural pathways of appetite and food-seeking are the ones most impacted by stress, and that stress increases nutrient demand. He connects the threads for us on how he followed this curiosity, healed his body and disordered eatin...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Kickin’ it old school, Luis does a solo meander around the topic of belonging. Videoless podcasting, as he is today, allows his vision the enjoyable option to focus on whatever it wants, like the ant walking on a nearby plant. (Fun HLN fact, Camille decided she wanted to learn from Luis when she saw his reaction to a...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Dopamine, amino acids, hopelessness, and beans! Let's dive in with Luis and Camille as they explore burnout and freeze alongside ADHD.  If we get our dopamine from ultra processed foods, devoid of micronutrients, lacking L-Tyrosine, we do not replenish the building blocks to make more dopamine. We find ourselves...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book "How do I stimulate myself to get through life without burning out and getting sick?" Today Luis explores this question, sharing what he wrote in a recent newsletter. He also discusses other upcoming offerings, where you can learn more in a nuanced, somatic environment. You can watch the replay of the webina...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Throwback to when Camille’s weekends contained 16 bottles of wine, and a day contained 80 cigarettes for Luis. Wine and cigarettes respectively calmed and stimulated their neurodivergent brains into surviving.  They no longer need wine or cigarettes because they live in alignment with their interests and capacity: par...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book We aren’t gonna tell you how to fix ADD/ADHD. (Spoiler alert, you or your loved one don’t need fixing.) We are, however, going to teach our 6-month group on how to relate to ADHD, in yourself or in someone else. The actual problem is a societal standard our brain wasn’t designed for.  In this podcast we are talking ab...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book At the age of nine Luis was diagnosed with ADHD. He never medicated with pharmaceuticals: instead his drugs of choice were coffee, cigarettes, and a stimulating diet. Over the years Luis has learned how to reduce the stimulants needed to keep him engaged.  ADD/ADHD is when there is not enough dopamine getting to the b...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book In this replay episode, we explore ADHD or RITC -- a Radical Inability To Conform. Luis shares with us his own childhood experiences with ADHD, Tourette's syndrome, and nervous ticks. Often people are prescribed medications to suppress these conditions but Luis questions what would it mean to allow ourselves to r...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Our favorite biochemist, Karen Hurd, joins us again to discuss how stress fuels disease. Chronic levels of stress, be it from food, relationships, physical exertion, thought patterns, or the environment, all tax the adrenal glands. Karen tells us how and why this happens. With taxed adrenals we are left feeling burnt...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Kymber Maulden joins us on the podcast today. Fertility isn't just for women who want to be mothers, it is a sign of health in menstruating females. Trauma stresses and rapidly oxidizes the body, causing it to need even more nutrients and therefore be in metabolic debt. This draws on resources contributing to low...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book The new Food Pyramid is released in the United States, turning the old one on its point. Regardless of how you feel about the administration it is released under, the focus has shifted from carbs and demonizing fats to centering protein, vegetables, nuts, beans and healthy fats. Camille reminds us that it is a guideli...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Luis and Camille banter as they dive into the concept of the Self in somatics. Along the way Luis offers 3 practices to work with finding the Self as witness. This witnessing allows us to be with a sensation or state and feel it rather than avoid it. It also helps us dis-identify from the state. From there we can expe...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Luis and Tasha talk about beauty standards, eating disorders and their role in Tasha's life. She used food as a way to control her appearance and fit into beauty standards. Her hormones tanked. Out of desperation she began the complicated journey of taking control of her own health. In 2020-2021 she found herself...

PRE-ORDER the upcoming book now: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Meet Linda Erman, Luis' Somatic Godmother, Art Therapist and Somatic Experiencing practitioner. About a decade ago Luis decided to go back to school for psychology. Instead of school his own body's resurgence of symptoms led him to Linda and her Somatic work. Linda herself found SE in her 50s. SE carefully t...

Curious about how Luis teaches? Here is your window into a nutritional teaching about stored trauma, visceral fat, and inflammation.  Stored trauma in the body sets off a chain reaction resulting in elevated insulin, putting the body into fat storage mode. Visceral fat becomes an endocrine organ producing protein molecules called cytokines that create an inflammatory response. This process primes...

3 Oreos and 1/2 an Avocado join Luis on the podcast today. Their calories are the same, but how each affects our glucose levels is very different. Refined carbs spike glucose, which increases insulin, and puts us into fat storage mode. Another factor to weight is stress and trauma, especially when in functional freeze, where we produce adrenaline, but do not burn it off with movement.  Join us liv...

Today's episode is a replay of the recent free Food Therapy session. Recovery is different from abstinence, though both are important as you heal from addiction. Abstinence is the avoiding of an addictive substance, while recovery is the balancing of your body from years of addiction. For example, some people go from cocaine to coffee so the same activating patterns of addiction are playing o...

Quick and dirty, Luis outlines the science between insulin and fat storage. It's not the least amount of calories that is the golden ticket, instead, it's the least amount of glucose spike. He teaches us which foods, and the ideal combination of those foods, that results in the least amount of glucose release, so that the body goes into fat burning mode instead of fat storage mode.  An i...

Colin is our fourth and final small group facilitator for the Embodied Masculinity program starting January 6th 2026. His journey to somatics, and Luis, started with a nail gun, and the pain resulting from repetitive use. He realized he was holding tension around accuracy in physical labor, and relationally around important topics. Somatics helped show him how to hold his body through work and rel...

Al Romano, Tim Paula, Rio Allen, and Naveed join Luis for a collaborative conversation about sex apps in the gay community, and what men really want.  Men are conditioned to discover their sexuality as boys, isolated with porn. And yet, all bodies want security, touch ,and connection. Corporations prey upon this conditioning and need with sex apps that dehumanize and objectify men, gamifying their...

2025 and it's still fringe as f*ck for men to do somatic work. Why? Because men are conditioned to suppress the parts of themselves that are tender and vulnerable with dissociation and porn. Join Luis and his friend Steven as they discuss masculinity and the upcoming 6 month Embodied Masculinity Slow group, starting January sixth.  Steven reminisces about singing with a friend when he was 11...

Our boys, too often, grow up using porn as a formulaic way to self soothe. They experience the dopamine rush, stimulation and sexual gratification in isolation. There is no touch or feedback in return, no boundaries to navigate, just dissociative pleasure. This stress loop, repeated chronically in a young body becomes a developmental trauma. The pattern spills into future relationships, where they...

Atarah Valentine joins Luis on the podcast today. They warm up talking about how we can practice self hatred, and we can practice gratitude. It's all a practice. What choices and practices have adapted you to be the person you are?  Men, Atarah saw, hurt women. He did not want to hurt women. As a result he practiced hating masculinity.  He evoked feminine energy emulating his grandmother who...