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© 2025 Holistic Life Navigation
Description
This podcast explores holistic stress and trauma recovery. I am your host, Luis Mojica. My work, Holistic Life Navigation, was modeled after my own journey in healing myself from chronic illness and PTSD. I share this podcast with many brilliant minds who, like me, healed themselves through unique, unusual, and unorthodox ways.
For more information, please visit: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com
Written, produced and recorded by Luis Mojica. Edited by Fredo Viola. Intro/outro song: "Witch Love" by Luis Mojica.
355 Episodes
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![[Ep. 304] The 2nd Puberty & Embodying Masculinity w/ Naveed Heydari](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/nzbpss51bi2bb4rwqukayinplfpz?.jpg "[Ep. 304] The 2nd Puberty & Embodying Masculinity w/ Naveed Heydari")
Naveed and Luis connect over their work in the 6 month Embodied Masculinity Slow Group, a vulnerable, male only, space. Often boys traverse the transition of puberty in isolation, taught only by porn. After a lifetime of objectification from porn use it's common for men to have dissociative relationships with their penises and masculinity. The slow group provides a counter vortex from the isolation to experience a second puberty, together, in community. So many of us were raised by overworked...
![[Ep. 303] How I Stopped Hating Men](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/juk494f4gayr9tsxd4pxeur2ut41?.jpg "[Ep. 303] How I Stopped Hating Men")
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 bullying he endured in school led to intense internalized shame and self hatred. Luis learned to...
![[Ep. 302] Radical Rehumanizing: How To Dislike Someone With An Open Heart](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/9c262uijoiahqwfb3mwv0o16mebu?.jpg "[Ep. 302] Radical Rehumanizing: How To Dislike Someone With An Open Heart")
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 feelings like disappointment, disgust, or dislike don’t have to lead to dehumanization. By staying embo...
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 relationships should look likeMasculine and feminine energiesCo-dependent and enmeshed relationshipsCon...
![[Ep. 300] Hate Speech: Can Words Really Hurt Us?](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/8ybot7ihgoll6u9r57t3tiiq7a62?.jpg "[Ep. 300] Hate Speech: Can Words Really Hurt Us?")
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 power of harmful rhetoric, and the importance of developing the capacity to hold both truths: words ...
![[Bonus Episode] Food Therapy: Supporting ADHD With Nutrition (Webinar Replay)](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/nertxnuapz37rf9k06zm93dfpqvl?.jpg "[Bonus Episode] Food Therapy: Supporting ADHD With Nutrition (Webinar Replay)")
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 nutritionist and somatic therapist, Luis will teach how to use nutrition to restore your nervous system and even create more sustainable dopamine for focus and to get things d...
![[Ep. 299] The Connection Between Processed Foods & Trauma](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/dobrcww6fckyny04b8tv4jpvhre4?.jpg "[Ep. 299] The Connection Between Processed Foods & Trauma")
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 shares his top three nutrition tips for nervous system balance and reads an excerpt from his upcomi...
1On 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 itstepping into authenticityincreasing capacity for discomfort and relating to activationfinding safety in the self, and building a relationship with the selfhow fawnin...
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 rewires the nervous system, why connection and standard attachment strategies often fail for trau...
![[Ep. 296] Pendulation: The Practice That Saved My Life](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/zx0b2dc90n4ryn5rta74oqfycoy1?.jpg "[Ep. 296] Pendulation: The Practice That Saved My Life")
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. You can register for the FREE Food Therapy session here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/how-nutrit...
![[Ep. 295] Humanizing Charlie Kirk: Using Somatics & Technology To Expand Our Hearts](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/5ka8j6962jq9ohfxophf3dqvm2oq?.jpg "[Ep. 295] Humanizing Charlie Kirk: Using Somatics & Technology To Expand Our Hearts")
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 hurt him more to hate his abuser than it did to humanize him. From this realization Luis began his personal r...
![[Ep. 294] Trauma Healing 101: Learn How To Combine Nutrition + Somatics In Just 7-Weeks](https://storage.buzzsprout.com/hsyomvpconp1pwy961h7w18e79s7?.jpg "[Ep. 294] Trauma Healing 101: Learn How To Combine Nutrition + Somatics In Just 7-Weeks")
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, and what it means to witness your body rather than become it. Register for Food Therapy Explore...
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 somatics taught him how to be a conscious witness. The combination of nutrition and somatics all...
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 deficiency as a compass to find what truly lights us up? Want to learn more about h...
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 register for the FREE Food Therapy session here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/how-nutrition-impacts-addiction You can read more about, and register for, the Embodied Masculinity group here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/slow-practice-mens-group ---- ...
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 belong to we are always in a co-dependent state (that most of us were modeled as children). Fawning and controlling might get us a ...
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 avoidant types often end up partnered. The overwhelmed avoidant's behavior "proves" to the anxious type...
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 repressive work. So they push connection away. Instead of processing the feelings they often soothe...
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 when we talk to the inner critic with compassion, the deep healing work unfolds. Luis asks if Dick's work sprang fr...
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 creates the conditions that make conflicts so difficult to resolve. Luis offers practical tips and guided practic...
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really appreciate when you address the schism of how people read one's identity from your inner experience, and especially when you relate it to all different aspects of eco-social-somatics, meaning the physiology, the social, and the experiential aspects of "passing white white (cis, straight)" (recognizing the privileges that come with that, while still acknowledging) at the same time the inner experience of an identity that's different than what is perceived in the surface. and you got deep into some of complexities if that here really so well, acknowledging ancestry and so much n thanks!
this is a great one! important!
I'm quite enjoying this and thought you would as well... [Ep 14] Decolonizing The Psyche | Dr. Amber McZeal on holistic life navigation podcast. https://castbox.fm/vb/311433122 If you Install Castbox use my referral code - rewards! Se Instalar o Castbox use esse código! https://castbox.fm/tasklist/gold/invite?invite_id=YYXJED thank youuuuu sss