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Marika, Camille, Evan and Luis reminisce about the 7 week course, how it started, and what their individual entry points were: Marika’s was admin in the very early days, Camille’s was the famous ant crawling on Luis as he taught, and Evan, as a long time musician friend, started in podcast production. Each recounts their experience of the 7 week course. 

The course was the first offering HLN ever offered, and after teaching it so many times, the time has come that it's ready to evolve into a more robust self led course. So, while the live cours...

Luis and Camille riff on GLP-1s. They are not a silver bullet, nor do they teach you how to relate to food, but they can be a great temporary auto regulator and bridge while a new food relationship is built. 

In an era of overfed and undernourished people, Luis and Camille talk about how to get nutritional needs met. Resmaa Menakem speaks about culture vs strategy. Diet culture is a strategy. Our six month Embodied Nutrition Slow group, starting July 7, slowly and sustainably shifts the culture of how you relate to your body and what you c...

Stress is a short term experience that results in elevated adrenaline that often manifests with higher blood pressure, increased heart rate, muscle tension and anxiety. Certain foods can increase our fight-or-flight stress hormones, putting our body on a hormonal rollercoaster, while other foods can increase our capacity for peace. 

Luis’ book, Food Therapy, has more of the philosophy and practices around how the body is a barometer for what to eat. Look for his bestselling book in libraries, bookstores, and as an audiobook:
https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book

If you want more in person str...

Luis and Nicole Sachs dig into the depths of pain. She believes pain is caused by fear, and the meaning we assign to the pain, keeping the nervous system in fight or freeze. If we think something is wrong with us, a stress response results, because we become our own threat. 

Nicole lived in her own cage of pain, fear and shame until she found Dr. Sarno’s work. He believes back pain is due to bottled up rage that is not societally acceptable. His work prompted Nicole to pause when the pain arose and ask herself if...

Feeling anxious? Your body might need to down-regulate. 

Feeling depressed? Your body might need to up-regulate. 

This modulation of finding balance can be achieved in two ways, through a simple supportive practice Luis offers, and through food. Food affects our biology 24 hours a day. What we eat can activate us into a fight-or-flight response, effectively inducing stress. Or, we can consciously alchemize our food to support our body to be in a place of balance. No shame either way. 

Eating to balance the nervous system helps the body build capacity to be seen. Lui...

PSA: psychiatry does not have any case reports of diseases that are validated! This shortcoming of the DSM is why Luis dropped out of psychology and instead chose holistic psychology. As Luis sees it, behavior is not a fixed identity. 

There is no biochemical data proving “mental disease”. What we can track is neurotransmitters, like seratonin. 50-90% of these are made in the gut. Cue nutrition. Food is a shortcut to influencing change in the brain’s biochemistry. 

Carbs influence glucose, which plays an active role in our mood. If you would like to track your glu...

He lost 10 pounds in a month. She lost 125 pounds in 4.5 years. 

Why? Because they didn’t focus on the weight. Camille and Luis focused on tending to their nervous systems so that their bodies could shift from fat storage mode to fat burning mode. 

Camille credits her shift to focusing on ease, energy, and flow. She also focused on reducing her adrenaline overload, then she worked on reducing her insulin. She changed her relationship to food: instead of dieting and shame she learned how to tend to her adrenals.  

Luis noted that his body...

Michaeleen Doucleff joins Luis for an effervescent meeting of minds in this joyful podcast. A reporter and an author with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, Michaeleen’s knowledge base is vast and fascinating. In 2021 she published Hunt Gather Parent, and in March 2026 she published Dopamine Kids. Luis credits her work as changing his family’s life because of fundamental parenting shifts she shares that they implemented. 

Michaeleen learned from indigenous families to include kids into the family ecosystem happenings instead of building a family schedule ladened with play dates and extracurriculars. 

At the center of the do...

Camille Leak, Grey Doolin, and Luis chat about protecting their peace amidst dysregulated political times. With the privilege of their safety, they are attuning to what is true for them and where their agency lies. 

So many are glued to screens, attuning to someone else’s story and suffering, bypassing the okay-ness of their own reality. This attunement to suffering doesn’t always resource them to mobilize, but instead oftentimes to collapse. 

Camille notes U.S. politics are edging closer to her boundary, and she is open to considering moving, but from a place of agency...

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 alignment to our body’s capacity, and therefore in our ability to hold space for ourselves to cancel. 

Drop in for a practice to discern if something is i...

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 one's capacity expands the work outside of the session or practice space, and how to reparent without merging with the inner child and regressing. They also discuss humanizing others without...

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 eating patterns, to how he now teaching practitioners Neuronutrition.

Neuronutrition is the intersection of neuroscience, neurobiology, neuro-psychology and somatic psychology. Somatic psychology is at neuronutrition’s core, allowing us reconnect to our bodies innate wisdom. Fr...

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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 bug walking on him in a presentation.) 

Luis recorded this podcast while teaching at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium. Before getting on stage, Luis found himself unexpectedly shaken. He...

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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 hopeless, unmotivated, exhausted, and overwhelmed. Frozen.

Whether we are diagnosed neurodivergent or not, ultra processed foods, and screens, can put us into a state of freeze and burnout. Our next 6 month Slow Group, starting A...

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 webinar here: https://hln.thinkific.com/courses/food-therapy-focus-without-burnout

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You can get instant...

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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: part of the process was learning to live lives that fascinated them. In month 6 of the ADHD slow group, we dive into how to cultivate a fascinating life for ourselves.   

A fascinating life isn’t a life of luxu...

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 about months 3 & 4 of the slow group curriculum. We will explore navigating overwhelm, and our capacity versus our desire. Modern society rewards our working beyond...

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 brain, usually because of low levels of brain and gut, or vagus nerve inflammation. People in this situation are sometimes referred to as “bored”, “lazy”, or "depressed", as a body collapses...

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 relate to them as expressions?

Luis begins to reframe the idea of ADHD; pivoting from "I can't focus" to "I have attention for what interests me."  He also explains how guilt or shame 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 out and reach for coffee and stimulants, forcing us to push past our bodies need to rest. Luis and Karen talk about cultural conditioning around resting in the age of a DO MORE culture. They also...

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 progesterone and elevated testosterone, which may lead to PCOS and infertility. 

Luis and Kymber discuss actionable steps to start healing hormonal health, such as tracking cycles and what to note, glucose t...

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 guideline, not a hard and fast rule, because diverse bodies have diverse needs. And, she reminds us, science is always evolving, and should be questioned, so this will not be the last food...

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 experience something unpleasant and be with it rather than fix it. From this place of witnessing, Luis finds that others cannot shame or embarrass him. This realization brings...

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 within the nuance of liminal space. She felt non-binary, identity-less. In 2022 she suffered long-COVID and learned that her body needed to shift out of veganism into eating animal products. 6 weeks later her body felt...

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 tended her body, titrating into the trauma it held. Her changed biology was the proof she needed.  

As a therapist Linda's practice helps clients titrate into creativity so that their energy can be expressed. F...

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 the body for carb consumption. Often food is either avoided, or binging is chosen, stressing the body out further.  Stored trauma also creates excess adrenaline that gets filtered through the liver. The metabolites go into the bile re...

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 live on January 13th 2026 at 10am EST as we take a deeper dive into this topic together.

You can get instant access to all of the HLN w...

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 out with a new substance. This free session focuses on the somatic psychology behind addiction (a desperation for safety) as well as the biochemistry that causes us to become addicted. Whether it's food...

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 important factor in the equation is addressing emotions and unmet needs that drive food cravings so we can learn to meet our own needs rather than bypassing them with f...

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 relationships in a way that was easeful, not painful.

Luis invites Colin to share what he loves about being a facilitator in the Embodied Masculinity slow group. Colin relishes the opportunity to witness men...

Do YOU know any gay men in long term relationships who aren’t hooking up on sex apps? 

Al Romano, Naveed Heydari, Tim Paula, and Rio Allen 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 arousal and isolation with quick dissociated hook-ups. 

Where did gay men m...

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 arousal and isolation with quick dissociated hook-ups. 

Where did gay men meet before Covid? Gay bars. Where are they meeting now? Gay sex apps. How can we intentionally create spaces beyond th...

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 years old, when a parent commented, "You are gay, aren't you?" Singing with a friend was "not masculine enough" and something to be repressed. But with somatic work, work that is inherently feminine i...

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 find themselves numbed out and disconnected from themselves  and their partners.

Join Luis for this podcast, the upcoming webinar, the 6 month Embodied Masculinity Slow Group, or for all three! Luis and his all male team w...

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 wanted to fix everything for everyone. Another woman he emulated was his mother who married abusive men attempting to fix them. 

"Real men wear white socks" he was...

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. Part memoir, part modality teaching, she wrote the book with the intention of sharing her story as a way to support others.

Luis reads his favorite excepts from the...

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 lingering and deep sense of never being supportively held by men in their life. Part of the shift and practice of the m...

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 learn to relate to their own feminine energy, getting comfortable going inward, that they can securely unfurl into their masculinity. Our 6 month Embodied Masculinity Slow Group is only for men who want to learn somatics supported in a community...

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 men with little time or capacity to connect emotionally, leaving many of us feeling abandoned by the masculine. A beautiful...

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 relate to both his own masculinity and femininity before he could shift his relationships, especially with straight men.