![[Ep. 89] Building Capacity For Difference | Camille Leak](https://is2-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts122/v4/62/2f/fb/622ffb21-1073-c8ca-fe32-67887fbc2f92/mza_3371493362138315102.jpg/250x250bb.jpg)
Episodes
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Luis and his friend Steve Rasovsky have an openhearted chat about Steve's recent trip to Ghana. The Ghanaian people shared their dance, joy, community and presence with Steve. In that environment he was able to melt into presence alongside them. Being referred to with familial pronouns, with all the physical contact, and living next door to the people who were part of the towns commerce, all allowed Steve to feel safe enough to access this presence. Feeling his heart expand, his spine loosening, and his laughter and smile shifting, gave Steve a taste for life, allowing tension to leave his body, and for him to feel held.
Returning home to the Czech Republic he noticed a shift into a head to head connection between people that lacked eye contact. He also noted the urgency and scarcity of a winter climate. Urgency inevitably ends up leading to control. He ponders if he is celebrated or even safe there.
They use Steve's experience to explore the question of what is privilege? In Ghana they have the privilege of connection, joy, community and time to just be. It is a relational privilege. Whereas privilege in the USA is about material consumption, choice and convenience.
You can read more about Steven's work, and connect, here: https://www.intimatelyhuman.com/
You can listen to the previous interview with Steven here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/278649/episodes/10218388
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Luis tucks in for a bedtime conversation about three evening routines that can optimize sleep. Sleep is the body's ritual of repair: these 3 practices will help tend the body to do it's repair work. Think digestion, light, and sensation. Best part is, this podcast comes with a late night snack!
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
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Chronic stress and PTSD are a hormonal imbalance issue, and if one hormone is out of balance, all hormones are out of balance. These hormones, in or out of balance, control every chemical reaction in the body.
Join Luis and Karen Hurd (biochemist, nutritionist and frequent guest), as they explore the science behind what happens in the body with long-term adrenaline output. Elevated adrenaline has a cascade effect on the rest of the hormones, affecting digestion, thyroid health, and melatonin production, as well as issues with weight loss and weight gain.
Karen leaves us with her top 3 simple steps to help tend to our adrenals.
You can read more about Karen's work, and register for her courses, here: https://karen-r.mylearnworlds.com/pages/home
[Ep. 8] Healing Your Body With Beans | Karen Hurd
[Ep. 255] Can You Recover From Trauma While Drinking Coffee?[Ep. 239] Beans: Superfood or Super Toxic? These Studies Will Amaze You
[Bonus Episode] The Sugar-To-Adrenaline Pipeline
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Blood pressure is rising, heart rate is increasing, neurotransmitters are firing, muscles are tense and your nervous system is activated. Is it due to stress, or caffeine?
Join Luis as he considers these questions around caffeine:
1) How are you using it? Maybe caffeine is a medicine to energize when in a new time zone, or to help lift one out of a depression or functional freeze. Caffeine could also be adding stress on top of an already stressed out body.
2) What form of caffeine are you consuming? Are you consuming caffeine isolate, chocolate, green tea, or coffee? Each form interacts differently in the body.
3) How is it affecting your body? When do you consume caffeine relative to a meal? Does it keep you up at night?
What arises in your body around caffeine? How do you use caffeine?
You can find the links to related webinars here:
Freeze, Procrastination, & Self-Sabotage
Cravings, Destigmatized
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Sit in on this juicy conversation between Luis and interior designer Olga Naiman. They discuss creating rituals and spaces that can code our environment for what it is we seek more of in life. If we learn the somatics of what it is we want to feel, we can build it in to our home.
First see your home with the eyes of a stranger. Feeling lonely? Look around for what carries a sense of loneliness. Release the items that are antithetical to your desires. Really want a hug instead of loneliness? Maybe find a perfectly cozy chair that feels like a cradled hug. An important part of the process is building pleasure hits of dopamine in to our home. Pleasure is the antidote to trauma. Lets turn our homes into medicine.
You can read more about Olga's work, and order the book, here: https://www.thespatialalchemy.com/the-book
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
In today's podcast Luis discusses how trauma is stored in the body's posture. When being seen feels dangerous the body goes into a freeze or shame posture of hiding to protect itself. What are the automatic, baseline postures that your body holds itself in based on historic trauma, stress, or abuse? These patterns of tension are the body's way of being prepared for something bad or harmful. Luis gives us a somatic practice to assess our body's capacity for trusting non-threat in our environment. What our body tells us is neither good nor bad: it's simply information that can teach us where we are braced for threat.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
On today's episode, Luis and Camille discuss money, money trauma, and the ways in which we may have inherited or learned about relating to money.
They explore:
· The relationship we have with money, rather than the money itself
· Not finding safety in money, and the reality of needing money
· The difference between how much money we have vs. the meaning we assign it
· Exploring money solutions that lie outside the binary
· Attuning somatically to the present moment ("Feeling The Now") and how the practice can help us clarify our relationship with money
They conclude the podcast with a lightning round, answering questions that were sent in through email.You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Don't wait until you are feeling anxious to practice this one! Jump right in where you are and practice pendulating. Luis teaches us how to feel where we are now, and where we feel anxiety in our bodies.
We are not our anxiety, a part of us feels anxious. What does the rest of us feel? Using this tool Luis is able access the parts of himself that are not anxious and that have capacity, so that he can walk into life more embodied.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Click for story-time with Luis as he reads a favorite chapter that was cut from his soon to be published book, FOOD THERAPY (April 2026). He posits that processed food is disassociated from the land. Often GMO crops are altered to survive glyphosate, wrecking bio-diversity, increasing chemicals, and providing reduced nutrients. Two pounds of GMO altered soy beans contained 9mg of glyphosate. No wonder 81% of the US population has recent glyphosate exposure, an exposure that increases our risk of Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Cheap processed foods create conflict in the earth and disease in our bodies.
Rather than depleting the soil and our bodies, organic crops, such as beans, add nitrogen back into the soil increasing biodiversity. Eating locally grown crops and animals is a symbiotic relationship that gives Luis purpose: to honor those nutrient dense plants and animals that feed and nourish his body. For him eating is a ritual prayer of gratitude to the earth. Eating close to the land allows his body to feel more, to tap in to aliveness, in all of it's discomforts.
But what if you are feeling low? It's the body's way of asking to be held. As his friend Asha Frost says, "Feeling low? Go lower." Let the land hold you by eating balancing foods that connect one to the land in a relationship of reciprocity. What we eat isn't just about us, it's a vote for the land.
[Ep. 119] The Myth of Normal w/ Daniel Maté
[Ep. 188] Feeling Low? Get Lower - Navigating Chronic Pain, Illness, & Generational Trauma w/ Asha Frost
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
On today's episode, Luis shares his favorite herbs, specifically for supporting PMS or menopause.
Building on the previous episode about herbs for liver, he explains how the liver is helpful for women's hormones. He teaches how to make the "triple root infusion", as well as when and how much to drink. He also includes two other herbs that can help with alleviating symptoms from a cycle, PMS, or menopause. These herbs help by addressing nervous system health, adrenal health, blood health, digestive health, hormonal balance, and blood sugar levels.
Everyone's body is different, so please consult an herbalist and/or doctor with any questions, especially if you're pregnant or planning to be.
You can find the episode about herbs for liver health here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/278649/episodes/16838021To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
On today's episode, Luis discussing the importance of liver health for full body and metabolic health, as well as it's relationship to recovering from stress and trauma.
He explains what role the liver plays, and what dietary choices can change the liver's ability to function. He then talks about two herbs to help support liver, what they do, and how to make an herbal infusion.To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Walk with Luis on a cold day as he chats about doom scrolling and horror. If someone has high somatic empathy, when they watch horror on a screen, it creates an adrenal response as if the horror is happening to them. Bodies brace for the impact of impending doom, but instead of impact, they move on with their lives in to the world, still braced. How does one interact with their life and community if they are braced for someone else's reality? What neighborhood needs are bypassed if one is living detached from their own space and place?
Luis offers several questions to contemplate as we consider our own relationship to horror and somatic empathy. If the horror isn't happening to us, we have the privileged of choosing to feel, or not feel, horror in our own body.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Feeling overwhelmed? Most of us turn to carbs, which results in a hit of dopamine that turns on our adrenaline response. The faster a carb turns into glucose, the sooner we experience a low blood sugar induced adrenaline response. Historically we had to work hard to get that spike of dopamine and glucose, but our animal bodies have not evolved to keep up with machines and the processed foods they produce. Now we sit at desks and cars, consuming much higher levels of refined carbs. This leaves us, and the land, depleted.
Luis wonders, how much of your diet is refined grains, and how much of your diet is whole grains? How does your body store trauma as fat? Why do you crave what you crave?
Curious about how to work with this idea in your body? Luis outlines an Appetizer For Your Stress Response, along with a simple dessert recipe and a somatic practice.
If we eat to be balanced, that is where health emerges.
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
----
You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Ever wake up in a panic, with a dry mouth and a nightmare? Join Luis for this bed time snack sized podcast. Your nighttime woes might be a glucose spike cascading into an adrenaline rush. Luis outlines the physiology of what happens in our bodies, along with yummy, practical solutions to experiment with. Give it a try, and notice how you feel.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Sitting in Costa Rica, by driftwood and the sea, Luis contemplates the mysteries of nutrition. Having studied the dense and "boring" side of nutrition, his fear of being wrong was triggered when he was called out on social media. This experience prompted his beach-side musings on efficient and non-efficient proteins, how individuals process carbohydrates, and his historic obsession with being right.
Do we eat to suppress and comfort, or to feel, recover, and nourish? We can turn to nutrition text books for facts to find out, but there is also the indigenous research of tuning in to the wisdom of the body. Our body can help us decipher the wisdom of our cravings. When we are under stress, and likely to have cravings, our bodies need protein to turn amino acids into neurotransmitters that help balance our mental health. Luis had a stressful double day and he craved a big fat salty chocolate chip cookie... tune in to see where the wisdom of the craving took him.
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Ever feel anxious, panicked, or like a "floating head" detached from your body? When in these states we can lose our instinct to tend to our body. For example, we might not realize we need to eat, pee, or take a deeper breath.
Maybe you need a pillow, one of Luis' favorite strategies for being with stress and trauma. The humble, and often accessible, pillow technique is explained, as is the back up for when you don't have access to a pillow. Using a pillow can help stimulate the parasympathetic response and bring blood flow back into the body, resourcing the body, and perhaps allowing us to respond from a more resourced place. Remember, it's a practice.Listen to the episode about postprandial blood flow here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/278649/episodes/16437452To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Luis reads us a chapter of his upcoming book "Food Therapy" (2026). In it he discusses how eating is relational. Our body receives the being of a plant or animal and digests it, breaking it down into chemicals that relate to our bodies' chemicals. In this unconscious alchemy food becomes our bodies. We often use this shift to change our chemistry and avoid feeling.
Luis worked with three wives, all who said if they gave up chocolate they would get divorced. They helped him realize that food can be broken down into three categories: depressants, stimulants, and balancers. Understanding these categories became Luis' compass, what he calls the Quiet Diet, used to navigate his own recovery from binge eating. When we embody how foods affect us we become a conscious alchemist, sober to how we actually feel. Food is a potent medicine that can shift our inner ecology and build our capacity to heal from stress and trauma. Have you noticed, how does your body relate to food?
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Large amounts of refined foods have the power to elicit big hormonal responses in our bodies. If we have a subconscious desire to shape shift to a new state, we often go to food to make that change for us. Depressed? We might reach for foods that make us feel more alive. Wound up and anxious at the end of a long day? We might reach for foods that depress us enough to fall asleep.
What we eat, and how much of it we eat, has the potential to release opioids, serotonin and dopamine into our system, facilitating that shift for us. It is the state the food puts us in that we are addicted to, not the food itself. Luis asks, what need is the food meeting and what is the state change I am after? He offers a practice around binge eating to help us relate to our animal bodies and start to release shame. Join Luis and explore how we can relate to ourselves in ways other than with food.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Camille and Luis enjoy a playful conversation about the trendiness of terms including DEI, decolonization, woke-ness, Queer, witch, and liberal. Trends are cut off from the deep rooted culture of the thing itself, and therefore come and go. Luis reveals how the appropriation of these words into trends feels in his body and why.
They discuss intent and impact before conversation flows to decolonizing versus re-indigenizing. A question forms, are we dominating or relating to our body, the land, and others? True healing, whether in the DEI or decolonizing realms, takes time and space to go deeper and root. The speedy passing of trends does not allow for this rooted healing to occur.
Discussion includes exploring inclusion as holding space for each person to have their own opinions, knowing we will not all agree. Consensus and rules, or mandates, do not equate to inclusion. They acknowledge the roots of the term Liberal as "Big Tent", as an inclusive place that holds many perspectives.
Essentially, is something a dissociative trend, or is it culture, deeply rooted and healing?
You can read more about, and register for, the Sugar-To-Adrenaline Sequence webinar here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/events/the-sugar-to-adrenaline-pipeline-webinar
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] -
Are beans an anti-nutrient due to their phytic acid content, or are they a superfood? Come investigate what is really behind the phytic acid scare around beans. How much phytic acid IS in a 1/2 cup serving of cooked beans anyhow? Luis does the math and gives us tips on how to reduce phytic acid, why it's worth the trouble, and how a little bit can be a benefit to our health. Beans contain protein, fiber, minerals, and vitamins, and can help detoxify the gut. Learn how this pre-biotic powerhouse affects toxins, stress metabolites, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels. Luis also offers suggestions on how to titrate this sustainable superfood into your every day diet.
To read more about, and register for, the 2025 Menla retreat, click here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/menla-retreat
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You can learn more on the website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/Learn more about the self-led course here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/self-led-new
Join the waitlist to pre-order Luis' book here: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book
You can follow Luis on Instagram @holistic.life.navigation
Questions? You can email us at [email protected] - Show more
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