Holistic Life Navigation

On today's episode, Luis is joined by Annette Knopp - meditation teacher, somatic educator, nature mystic, and author - to discuss her newly released book Mystic Nomad: A Woman's Wild Journey to True Connection . In her book, Annette shares the personal experiences that shaped who she is as a person, and then how these events developed her way of teaching and showing up in the world. Par...

Meet Zach Kalatsky, a mentor for the Embodied Masculinity 6 months slow group, as well as a member of the HLN retreat team. He joins Luis today for a chat about their experience as friends, and as part of a team that holds the all male slow group members.  So many men identify as being fatherless sons, sons of men who could not connect and support their boys the ways they needed. The result is a l...

Somatics is naturally an inward focused practice involving the noticing of internal feelings and sensations, something that sociatally, in America at least, only women are "allowed" to notice. Men often feel like they need to be loud and dominant, focusing their energy outward lest they seem weak, whereas women can be fluid, sensuous and internally focused. However, it's when men le...

Join Luis as he gets vulnerable about his history with dysphoria around masculinity. His DNA is coded to express as female, yet he has male sex organs that produce testosterone. Feminine attributes made him the target of male abuse, and as a result he learned to reject his masculinity (associated with abuser energy) and femininity (associated with victim energy), both felt dangerous. The abuse and...

In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Luis invites Camille Leak and Gray Doolin into a raw conversation about the somatics of dehumanization. Together, they explore what happens in the body when we dislike someone so deeply that we strip away their humanity, and how to stay open-hearted even in disagreement. The team discusses how somatic awareness has helped them recognize that feelin...

On today's episode Luis welcomes his friend and colleague Dené Logan - group facilitator, therapist, and author - to the podcast. They discuss her concept of Sovereign Love, and dive deep into the nuance of relationships and the way we show up to them.and the culturally imposed ideas of what a love, and relationships, look like.  They explore: Culturally dominant ideas of what love and relati...

Luis and Camille dive into the complexities of free speech, exploring the difference between what is truly dangerous and what is simply triggering. They discuss how words can hurt when our sense of self isn’t yet established, and how building the inner witness allows us to pause, discern, and let go of what doesn’t belong to us. Together they unpack the distinction between harm and danger, the pow...

Today's episode is a replay of the recent free Food Therapy session. Most treatments for ADHD rely on stimulants that create dopamine spikes, helping us push through tasks that otherwise feel painfully boring. While these can help in the short term, they don’t address the deeper needs of the body. As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD at age 9 and has been working for over 15 years as a nutr...

Why do we crave junk food when we’re stressed? In this episode, Luis explores how trauma and chronic stress deplete the body, driving us toward processed foods for quick hits of serotonin and temporary relief. He explains the three categories of foods—stimulants, depressants, and balancers—how each affects our emotional state, and why balancing foods are essential for true regulation. Luis also sh...

On today's episode, Luis welcomes back Dr. Ingrid Clayton for a deep dive into fawning. Both share their personal experiences with fawning, both historical and present, and how their relationship with this trauma response has evolved over time. They discuss: how conflict and authenticity feels risky, and fawning helps to avoid it stepping into authenticity increasing capacity for discomfort a...

What if your body wasn’t broken, but brilliantly designed to survive? In today’s episode, Luis speaks with Dr. Aimie Apigian — medical doctor, biochemist, and foster parent — about her new book The Biology of Trauma. After her foster son told her he was going to kill her, Dr. Apigian’s search for answers revealed that trauma is rooted in biology, not weakness. Tune in as they discuss how trauma re...

On today's episode, Luis teaches about pendulation, a term coined by Peter Levine, and taught through Somatic Experiencing. Luis shares about his understanding of "active" pendulation, how to not bypass, and how the practice changed his life. At the end of the episode, Luis takes us through a guided pendulation practice so you can experience firsthand what he's teaching about....

On today's episode Luis discusses his practice of humanizing those he disagrees with, and how the killing of Charlie Kirk, and the response to it, inspired him to share his reaction. When one of the people who had abused him died, Luis thought he'd feel relief, but instead found grief and love underneath the fear he'd been trapped in. His own self-inquiry made him decide that it hur...

Most of us were alone during our most traumatic experiences—and then left alone to try to heal from them. In this episode, Luis explores why isolation is at the root of so much trauma, how unexpressed survival responses can stay stuck in the body for decades, and why healing requires connection. He shares why group work is so powerful, how somatic practices and whole-food nutrition work together,...

Luis has lived the ADHD diagnosis, along with tics, tourrettes, binge eating, self-hatred and suicidal ideation. All of this stress does a number on the gut lining, which leads to brain inflammation and brain fog. Luis began to notice that all of his symptoms would shapeshift depending upon what food he had eaten. Eventually this practice taught him how to eat for a nutrient deficient brain, while...

Do you have ADHD? Has anyone ever asked you what kind of food you eat and if your life excites you?  Luis had self-medicated his ADHD with sugar, caffeine, and cigarettes because stimulants boost dopamine. This can help with short term productivity, but these substances also stimulate the heart, nervous system, and adrenals, eventually leading to burnout.  What if we learned how to use dopamine de...

Luis explores the correlation between ADHD, dopamine, and the gut. He explains how certain foods can change and shift your microbiome, which then can improve your dopamine levels and lower brain inflammation. You can get instant access to all of the HLN webinars and video courses here: https://hln.thinkific.com/collections You can order the book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-boo...

Have you ever heard the reference to, "a seat at the table"? As in, "everyone deserves a seat at the table"? Camille and Luis riff on how they feel about "the table". They. Don't. Need. Your. Table. Luis wasn't allowed into spaces to spread his work because of how he looked, so he built his own HLN-shaped table.  If we are constantly searching for a table to...

Let's explore attachment styles. Luis has learned from personal experience that avoidant attachment types are simply bodies overwhelmed by a connection that feels overly needy, like a burden, and as a result they over-identify with independence.  Anxious attachment types seek safety outside of themselves, and often end up seeking that safety in an avoidant partner. So anxious types and avoida...

Join a crow, a fawn, and Luis on a morning walk to chat about the avoidant attachment style.  There is a myth that avoidant attachment style folks are narcissistic psychopaths. He challenges this through the lens of somatics, seeing the avoidant attachment style as a habit in bodies that don't have capacity for connection. Their lack of capacity for their own feelings makes connection feel re...

Today Luis chats with Dick Schwartz, developer of Internal Family Systems (I.F.S.). Dick started his career as a family therapist. Upon asking the question, "why isn't family therapy working?" he began to develop what has become I.F.S. He learned from being in the field, and from making mistakes, how to tend to the parts of us that are usually frozen in the past. Dick found that whe...

On today's episode, Luis discusses navigating conflict through a somatic lens. As he speaks about conflict, he does not mean abuse or threat, but disagreement, disappoint and frustration. Luis teaches about his "Tending To Rupture" method, and how he's been able to apply it to his client work, as well as his personal life. He discusses how the physiology of trauma response crea...

On today's episode, Luis speaks with Will Harris, a farmer, cattleman, and owner of White Oak Pastures. Will shares his personal story of how he inherited his family farm, and how he transitioned the farm from an industrial model to a regenerative one. When taking an industrial approach to farming, Will had caused desertification on parts of his land from the use of chemicals and monocultural...

Trevor is back for a second podcast episode with Luis to discuss parenting in the age of social media and screen prevalence.  The hard first question is, what social media and screen patterns do the parents model?  Do parents use their own free time to disassociate and isolate with the screen? Do parents use the screen as a babysitter for their child/ren, so that they have time to resource themsel...

Trevor Spring joins Luis for a tender discussion about masculinity, and how to tend our boys. Many boys and men have grown up, or are growing up, in isolation around their emotions and sexuality, with little to no physical or emotional attunement from caregivers and mentors. Porn becomes the de facto teacher prompting a chemistry shift in a frozen, dissociated body. Sexuality is learned with and f...