What is Somatic Work and How Binge Eating is a Form of Body Communication
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Many of you may have noticed that I've been deep in exploring who else is practicing in what I'm calling this growing Somatic Nutrition field. Somatic Nutrition is a body centered approach to your relationship with food that explores your food behaviors as information from your body and finding a way of eating that connects you with your body. This means that your nutrition is going to be unique to you, the body you live in, and how you're nervous system has been shaped by past experiences that will affect your food choices and how they digest in your body. It has been interesting to learn and discover how different practitioners are combining this work in their unique way.
There's one consistent theme I have seen across practitioners though is that our food behaviors are wise and they're serving a purpose. They're trying to support you, protect you, and help you stay alive. Previous approaches to struggles with food have seen that behavior as a problem that needs to be fixed with very little curiosity about the intention and purpose of the food behavior. A somatic approach to your food coping mechanisms can start to reveal the wisdom in your food patterns. And, this is exactly what Luis Mojica and I chat more about today. Luis is the founder of Holistic Life Navigation and a trained Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Herbalist, Holistic Nutritional Counselor, and Life Coach. He credits his own life experiences, and how he recovered from them, as the best training he could have ever received to support others in their relationship with their food and themselves. Through whole food nutrition, somatic experiencing, and self- connecting, he guides others to create a more pleasurable and sensational human experience even with the inevitable traumas and pains we experience.
We talk about the somatic wisdom in binge eating behaviors, how you're drawn to specific foods for a nervous system reason, what is somatic work, and why it has grown in popularity over the past few years. If you're curious about exploring a somatic approach to your trauma based food behaviors, like chronic dieting, binge eating, emotional eating, and restricting, go to stephaniemara.com/learn where you can check out my two self paced courses, Intro to Somatic Eating® Mini Course and Somatic Eating® Intensive. Now, welcome Luis!
Well, I am so honored to have you here today. And when I found you a few years ago, I think I just got elated that there was someone else in the world that was connecting these fields of somatics and nutrition and trauma together and had been really loving just observing your journey and seeing how your work has evolved and grown. And I would love to hear a little bit more about how you came to this kind of combination of work and your history around it.
Luis Mojica 03:43
I'm interested in hearing more too about what you resonated with, you know what you do and how it connects, so maybe you'll tell me. My journey started at birth, I was born into what's known as intersex body. And my body made excessive amounts of estrogen hormones until I was 15. And so that created the various health issues but it also created very female growth in puberty. So I had wider hips, I developed breast tissue I couldn't put on muscle tone. I was very you know, feminine minded, I felt more like a girl than I did a boy. And then when I was 15 or 16 testosterone suddenly took over and no one knows why. And I started presenting and developing as a male. So I had this interesting experience of these two really powerful feminine masculine energies biologically expressing themselves through me. And I feel so grateful toward that now. It was the cause of a lot of heartache and trauma and sexual assault and bullying and self hatred and you know, body shame you name it for a long time. And then something really shifted one day. I had watched this documentary of Joni Mitchell who I was a really big fan of when I was younger, still am, but huge fan when I was younger. And in the documentary I just felt this kind of connection to the way she was relating to her guitar. And I had this guitar hanging up in my room and I didn't know how to play the guitar, but I just went in and pulled it off and started strumming it. And the vibrations of the guitar were touching all these parts of my body that I had been brutalized and made fun of, and that I had felt ashamed of. And it felt pleasurable and safe and grounding. And I think it was the first time I had a somatic experience that was one of regulation and attunement, within my own body to myself. And so that kind of opened this whole path for me, it was around, I think I was 15 going on 16, this whole path opened up. And from there, I learned about nutrition, I studied psychology, studied nutrition, then I got into somatics, because of a later event that occurred that we could go into later. And that's kind of the small the short, short story.
Stephanie Mara 05:48
Yeah, I really hear that just your experience of is it safe to even be in my body started from the time you were born, and really affected your sense of like, is it safe to be here in this being.
Luis Mojica 06:01
That's absolutely true. And to add to it what was interesting when I was two and three years old, I went to a daycare that was physically abusive. And then when I was five, I was molested in the urinal in the bathroom. So it was like, not just the body expression, but then these early experiences, the way you put that was absolutely correct. It really, my body's story was am I allowed to be here.
Stephanie Mara 06:23
I really resonate with that of just the feedback that we get externally. I was also bullied really young as well. And so these messages that we receive of is this body welcomed here. And what I found in my relationship with food was that was the momentary experiences I could feel like it was safe to be here was when I was in relationship with food. And of course that affected my relationship with food over time. But I'm curious then how kind of the food and the nutrition piece came in for you as you were navigating like, is it okay to be in this body.
Luis Mojica 06:59
Yeah, exactly. Like you just said, I had such extreme panic and anxiety disorder because of the bullying, the sexual assault, all of which I kept a secret. The bullying wasn't a secret because the teachers would report it to my parents, but no one knew about the sexual assault. So it was holding all this. And so the huge amount of charge in me manifested through nervous tics, Tourette Syndrome, insomnia, all these really visceral kind of like impulsive expressions. And the only thing that could temporarily quell that was food. So I think it was around 11. That's when a lot of those events happened to me later in life in middle school, right? In sixth grade, I started just binge eating, you know, whatever I could get my hands on, I ate and ate and ate. And it was the only thing that would suppress that. And it was suppressed for a couple hours. And what I know now of the work that I've done is these foods are so exhausting to the body, what we call a comfort food. They're so exhausting, they demand so much energy to digest that they temporarily thwart your anxiety energy from let's say your heart, your face and your arms to your stomach. So you feel this anchor when you eat them, but then they metabolize, and then when they metabolize you go right back. That's why there's these compulsive cycles of binging. So I did that for years and years and years and years and years. And then as I started understanding, embodiment work, and I started practicing nutrition, one on one and in private practice, I started putting together these different categories based on emotional and somatic biological states. So I was finding some foods are stimulants. Some are depressants. Some were balancers. And, each category does exactly as it sounds, some depress the body, those are comfort foods. Some stimulate and excite the body. Those are the stimulants. And the balancers, just use whole foods that really give you the capacity to feel wherever you are. So as I started incorporating those and moving away from the stimulants and depressants, I suddenly was able to move out of my binge eating disorder, because I was so embodied to the eating, that it didn't feel good anymore. Whereas before I would numb out, and I understood the biochemistry and the physiology in a way I didn't before. So I was able to treat myself and that's kind of the plan I use with people I work with now.
Stephanie Mara 09:09
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that in. Because that was one of the original things that I really resonated about your work the question you asked earlier of, oh, I'm curious about what's resonated with you. Because I think that through my years of binging and then those that I've worked with as well I've gotten just really curious about why that food? Like, why binge on that specific food? Like, what is it doing for you and inside your body? And so when you kind of were sharing, I forget where but around how oh, there are some that are depressants, some that are stimulants. And what are these foods doing even inside of our nervous system to move us into different nervous system states to help in some way but only for momentarily like it can't do it long term we would have to keep eating for it to keep receiving that effect. That's a piece that really resonated with me. So I'd love to hear more about that concept of like, what have you seen when we're in maybe certain nervous system states being drawn to specific foods because they're actually trying to help us regulate.
Luis Mojica 10:13
That's right. I call this see saw regulation. And so it's, it's exactly what you're getting at. And when I started to understand these foods and how they would affect the body, and I was putting them in these categories, it was then that I could understand the person's kind of baseline. So someone that was really, let's say, let's say someone who was compulsive eating food was like pasta, bread, those are depressants. So that would tell me their baseline is actually activation, their baseline isn't depressing. So the depressant foods and the like desire and compulsion to reach out to them, somatically not even consciously, this isn't like a conscious decision, we're just reflexively eating this bread and pasta was the attempt of the body in a sophisticated manner to find something that would temporarily down regulate an activated system, then you have people who are reliant on the stimulants, these are people who have skipped meals, eat lots of sugar, drink lots of coffee, you know, eat really late into the night with chocolates, and they're up till three in the morning. These are the systems that their baseline, they're depressed, and not even just emotionally, but they literally lack energy, maybe they are living in collapse or freeze response. And so they need something to stimulate them, to burst them out of that stimulate function so they can raise their kids and go to work. What it really kind of transformed food as medicine for me, because when I was learning, I always heard food as medicine, just through the lens of what heals us. I didn't ever hear it in this way of what also temporarily assists us that might not be healthy in the long run, but has a really important function and purpose. And it was understanding the stimulants and depressants. And that opened up into the addiction world. You know, with chemical and medical addictions, substance abuse, all of this I would learn with an individual oh, heroin, your baseline is activation. Right? Oh, cocaine, your baseline is depressant. So you would kind of learn where their body was. And then from there, there was this doorway into their historical trauma experiences that never had been, you know, processed or even consciously brought to light. But the food was showing us that it was there.
Stephanie Mara 12:19
Yeah. And I love that you're bringing in that this isn't a conscious thing.
Luis Mojica 12:23
Yep.
Stephanie Mara 12:24
This is an unconscious act. That is your body actually guiding you towards the only thing it knows how to feel safe. Like if food has been there for decades of your life, you know, depressing or stimulating you, there's this habituation that occurs, that it's not your fault, that it actually was your best strategy at a time when you really need something, and maybe nothing else was there.
Luis Mojica 12:49
Yeah, I love those words, you say. Like, it's the only thing I knew how to do. I really resonate with that statement. And your best strategy. That's exactly what it's doing. And anyone listening, it's so good to hear this. Because what keeps binging so difficult, and compulsive and cyclical is the shame that comes from it because you judge yourself. But the shame also has a somatic experience. So the shame creates a freeze response. So then you need more of the addictive food to get out of that. So it's this constant somatic biochemical cycle, just from the judgment and shame. When you learn exactly what you said, which is, this is actually quite sophisticated. It's a strategy so you can function and you didn't invent it, your body did, then it becomes impersonal. And you think, oh, interesting. I can kind of parent or coach this part of me. I don't have to identify with it.
Stephanie Mara 13:36
Yeah, yeah. I found that when I started to embody the binge eating, it wasn't giving me what I was looking for anymore. So if the binge eating was there to actually get me out of my body, to sometimes dissociate from myself, that when I started to embody the binge and stay connected to myself in it, it was a very similar experience of what you were talking about earlier of it wasn't really making me feel actually the way I wanted to feel. I thought it was giving me something. But when I actually stayed online in the experience of binge eating, I was like, whoa, like, why do I want to harm myself in this way? Like, what is it about this, that I am kind of trying to process some somatic loop that is unprocessed in my body? And of course, once you get to that place, there can be lots of pain and grief and anguish and all the emotions get to arise in that space. But I'm curious about your experience as you started bringing in this somatic work in relationship to your food.
Luis Mojica 14:44
Oh, it was massive because I intellectually and professionally and clinically understood food now like in a really rich, deep way, and I couldn't understand why I was still binge eating. And my binging was like high end binging now you know, it used to be chips and salsa things and now it was like $30 jars of almond butter. But I was still binging. It was like the same practices happening.
Stephanie Mara 15:09
[Laughter] O I resonate with that.
Luis Mojica 15:10
I'm just like I can't afford this binging habit anymore. But that's what really changes what you said was the embodiment of it, because up until the embodiment of it, if you would have asked me, my answer would have been, I just love food, my answer would have been, it tastes so good, you know, it's what I do when I'm emotional, all this intellectual stuff, which is all kind of true. But the somatic experience of it was super uncomfortable. When I felt my anxiety coming up like that charge that moves up to your chest, then I noticed reaching out to the cupboard and opening it, getting the nut butter, and getting the honey and getting, you know, whatever it was I would combine to eat with, and I would eat so much that I would feel sick, right? There was no pleasure in that, it felt so uncomfortable. So now that I was embodied to it, I didn't even enjoy the feeling. And that started interrupting the habit. Whereas before, I was able to dissociate while I was binging because it's a trauma response, you're usually not in your full body when you're doing it. So I couldn't really feel the discomfort. All I noticed was the lack of anxiety, which was really great. But I didn't feel the other part. Maybe a couple hours later I did. And it also transforms because I heard you say why do I harm myself? That was my question for so long. And when I understood this new biochemistry with the nervous system and the adrenals, in particular, with these foods, and how to negotiate your trauma response when you eat them, that's when I realized, oh, I'm not harming myself, this is the only way I know how to help myself. And then it became so incredible. And I thought I just need to learn new ways, I have to mature in this field, because I started when I was 11. This is an 11 year olds technique. You know, what's a 34 year olds technique? So it shifted in that way quite tremendously.
Stephanie Mara 16:52
Yeah. I so resonate with that. You know, something that I often say is that food was the answer, not the problem.
Luis Mojica 16:59
That's right. That's right.
Stephanie Mara 17:01
So it was the answer to something else, that once you start relating to the pattern differently, you get to bring in that curiosity of what is this actually supporting me with? And what could my other choices be? You know, and I find that just this connection with the trauma response is that, you know, trauma takes away our sense of choice, and kind of our food behaviors perpetuate that. Ya know, it kind of takes away your sense of choice that you could choose anything else. So even what you were just saying, we need to bring more choice online, to feel like oh, actually, like, I am not living in the same situation anymore that took away my sense of choice, I have an abundant amount of choice. And there are so many other different things I can choose besides foods to help myself right now.
Luis Mojica 17:46
That's so important. Because what the way I was trained as a nutritionist was in holistic nutrition. So someone had a rash, the rash was not a problem, it was an expression, it was speaking to you. So I had kind of this not pseudo, but just kind of pre somatic education of oh, the body's always speaking to you. So I understood that. Then when I got the somatic education, those two things came together so clearly. And then exactly that emerged for me, I realized, oh, a craving is a doorway into your subconscious, it's not an issue at all, it's actually pointing, it's blossoming from the unknown place that hasn't been related to, when people learn how to use their cravings to actually feel the place it's coming from and then relate to that place, you don't require the craving. And what that means is not that you never eat a cookie again, it means you're not dependent and urgent and filled with stress, right? Even the cookie, it's like actually pleasurable, and then you stop when you hit your threshold. I don't have any foods in my life that are banned anymore, I used to have so many things I couldn't have in the house. It is so nice knowing anything can be in this house and I'll survive it. I never thought I would get there.
Stephanie Mara 18:51
And now I know something that you also teach is that you can also utilize food for regulation and healing, which I find is a really great middle path. And I've been talking about this a lot on the podcast lately of that there's like kind of this division of either it needs to be you know, diet culture, or anti diet culture, you're either depriving yourself or all foods fit. And there's kind of this middle way that I've been bringing more and more into here and into my work of also, there is a way to eat that can facilitate safety inside of your body. And I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on that.
Luis Mojica 19:32
Yes, that's really the third category is the balancers. And this is what I teach, I teach a course actually have an upcoming slow group, which are these long six month groups, I do over a certain topic and we're going into nutrition for six months because it's so as you know, layered and nuanced. A big part of it is what you're saying. There's this whole category of whole foods like a vibrant, diverse category of foods that don't stimulate your adrenals and they don't suppress your adrenals, they balance your blood sugar, they nourish your nervous system, your brain, they give you blood oxygen by alkalizing you and giving you the right minerals, they help your liver metabolize stress hormones better. When people say like I don't have capacity for stress, or I want to build my capacity for things, that's a literally a biological term, your liver will metabolize and remove stress hormones from your bloodstream, which actually start calming you down in real time. If your liver is impaired, because it's so exhausted from these stimulants and depressants you've been using to help yourself, then it can't get rid of the stress hormones as well. So these balancers do so many things to the body to help the body function in a way where it can handle stress on a much deeper, easier, quicker level than maybe previously. These are just whole foods. Beans are a big part of it because they are loaded in soluble fiber. They literally remove adrenaline from your gut. Nuts, small amounts of animal protein for people that eat animal protein, vegetables, root vegetables, I mean fruits, especially if they're local, anything in its whole form, grains even as long as they're in their whole form versus the flour. So when people start incorporating the balancers, they get so nourished, so satiated, because it's so nutrient rich, but it's also very intelligent. It's not an incomplete food, like a processed food. But then what happens is because of all the fiber nutrition, they're able to incorporate some stimulants and depressants still, if they want to, without getting imbalanced. So that's exactly why it's not diet culture related. There's no no yes group, there's just, this is what these three groups do to you, and you go navigate that. And each person decides how much they can handle based on what their body does.
Stephanie Mara 19:32
Yeah, yeah, something I've been talking a lot lately is just how when I started to feel a general sense of safety more inside of my body, that the foods that were so hard to eat previously became seamless to navigate. And it wasn't this idea of I just needed to keep eating them, actually, that did more at the time that I was trying to do that all foods fit thing, like I wasn't able to kind of feel regulated or safe inside of my body to navigate how that food was processing in my system. But when I felt safer and more grounded and balanced inside of my body, now I can have all those foods in my cabinet and it's completely fine. But it wasn't about making the food okay first, it was actually making myself feel okay inside of my being and then I could relate to the food differently.
Luis Mojica 22:40
That's so spot on. Yeah, that's exactly what I teach exactly what I experience. And it's so much more sustainable that way. Because when you have that embodied experience, you feel what the food is doing. So you get this sense of it. You don't even, at a certain point, you won't require restrictions or guidelines, your body will so instinctively through sensation tell you what you're needing what you're not. It becomes so liberating, because there's nothing that you're bound to right.
Stephanie Mara 23:07
Yeah. And now I know for a lot of listeners a question that often comes up is this all sounds great. But how do I start listening? I'm so I'm curious, from your perspective, what have been baby steps that you've explored of how to start listening to the body when especially food has come in so long to not listen to the body?
Luis Mojica 23:28
Yeah, there are three simple sensations, people must learn to track. Without this, it's nearly impossible. And it's constriction, so any kind of tension or stress or pressure in parts of the body. Expansion, so any kind of ease, softness, pleasure in the body, ground, calm, whatever you want to call it. And then numbness like I can't sense that place. Those three places, teaching people to start with those three sensations, those three kind of categories of sensation, that's where you start to be able to track your body because if you don't know the difference between tension and ground, or openness and constriction, if you can't feel that yet in different parts simultaneously, you can't listen to the body because the body doesn't have one overall feeling. We think we do, we say I'm anxious, but all that usually means is there's a lot of pressure in my chest, the arms are fine, the belly is fine, the back of the head might be fine, the legs are fine. So we lose all these other parts. So teaching people how to track the whole body, and I don't mean whole like head to toe. But okay, there's anxiety in my chest, and my lower back is like kind of okay, like track two different things, contradictory sensations, then you have something to work with. Because when you're sitting down, working with your emails, and suddenly you're craving a chocolate bar, you get to notice where's the craving coming from and you do this work and you feel while there's a ton of constriction in my stomach, that area so badly wants some chocolate, and you sit with it and you start to learn what it wants from the chocolate. It wants pleasure. It was fun. It wants stimulation. It wants bitterness. You know, there's certain things it wants to push through the constriction, I can go get the chocolate still knowing what it's doing and kind of have a conscious relationship and go through my emails. Or I can go sit down, interrupt the craving for 10, 15 minutes and see what emotions and instructions might emerge from that constriction. But if they don't have those sensations to track, I don't know where to go, and my body is dissociated.
Stephanie Mara 25:23
I love all of that. And I was actually just teaching this in a class yesterday that a lot of the times we hear this suggestion of, just get into your body, and like, that's a lot of body to get in touch with.
Luis Mojica 25:35
That's right.
Stephanie Mara 25:35
And so just to even say, okay, I'm gonna get in touch with, like, you pointed to my chest, or I'm just gonna get in touch with what are my shoulders doing, or what is my jaw doing and come into contact with one body part feels so less overwhelming than to say, oh, I have to get inside of my body and that feels like maybe too much that it's really a lot easier to just go reach for the chocolate bar.
Luis Mojica 25:59
It's really true. I remember that was so daunting to me early on the idea of just getting in your body or being embodied, like how, what part, where do I start? And in understanding, oh, I can just anchor into my belly. And then from that place, I can just check my foot, and it was so much easier and I still want to do this today. I don't, I don't know anyone that just checks their whole body at once. We think we do, we might say I'm doing a body scan, but a body scan means my head. Now my shoulders. Now my arms and elbows. You don't have to stay with the whole body at once. That's that's way too overwhelming.
Stephanie Mara 26:33
Now, I'm curious. Somatics has kind of blown up. And...
Luis Mojica 26:37
O my gosh, yah.
Stephanie Mara 26:39
Like, I've been in this field for, you know, over a decade now. And so it's been really interesting that, you know, when I got my master's in somatic psychotherapy, my whole family was even like, what is this somatics thing? Is this even real? And so I wanted to hear your thoughts today on why you feel like somatics has just hit this high peak of popularity right now.
Luis Mojica 27:00
So that's a good question, what my experience was with somatics, it was very underground. And then it got really popular around the pandemic, it seems like that just really pushed it. I think like a year or two before that it started gaining some popularity, it was taken more seriously, I'll say, but something about the pandemic was really fascinating to me, because suddenly, people were isolated with their pain that they were able to avoid with life and work and money and socializing. And they couldn't do that, there was no coregulation, we've lost that ability to feel safe with each other and to be in public. And then on top of that, we were given a government paycheck. So you could fund your therapy that maybe you didn't have time for before. And I was finding a lot of people because they were exposed to being online, they were finding all these hidden alleyways of modalities. And somatics just rose to the top because it was so present, it's so effective. When you start embodying your talking, you realize how dysregulated talk therapy is if it doesn't also pause and bring in embodiment practices. Cause just talking you get dysregulated. So I just think something about that being still in your home and stuck with yourself, you could feel things you couldn't feel before. And then that felt sense led you to, you know, a modality that centers the felt sense. I want to know what you think, where did you notice popularity come in?
Stephanie Mara 28:21
I think I've noticed something similar, that it was maybe starting to gain a little bit of popularity right before the pandemic. But I agree that at the beginning of the pandemic, I think that my private practice grew triple that it just gave more opportunity to find new practitioners. I think I read a study that was like eating disorders grew, I think three times as much as they were happening during the beginning of the pandemic, because individuals were stuck at home now around food and their kitchen all the time by themselves, no coregulation happening. And so yeah, I think that there was also this peak, with those struggling in their relationship with food, maybe some outlets that kind of supported them before, going to groups, being around people, even doing physical movements outside, just all of that went away and so quickly. Just like trauma happens too much too fast, all of a sudden, it's like, everything's closed.
Luis Mojica 29:19
Everything's closed. Yah.
Stephanie Mara 29:20
And so, I think that I agree with you. You know, somatics was something that it was like, okay, I'm really feeling now how much I have been trying to avoid and what do I do with this?
Luis Mojica 29:33
Yeah, even when you're saying that back to me. I've been thinking about this last few months, for some reason only now in 2024, just how culturally traumatic covid and locked down was, still is, and it's not really talked about. It ended. There was no celebration. There wasn't like a ritual. There wasn't any kind of renegotiating those years. I mean, so many people lost their businesses and their family members and couldn't go to graduation and had to retake a whole year in college or high school because they couldn't do online because their brain wasn't working that way. I mean, it's amazing the amount of stress we went through as a culture without any real community, let's sit together and process what that was like for us. I think it's just coming through me now. Because like trauma, when it's too much, you can't even see it, your body protects you from it. But when you were saying that back to me, I'm kind of seeing that formula, okay, suddenly everyone's thrown at home, you lose all coregulation, and the ways that you would find safety and get support. And then this medicine of technology is suddenly there's all this accessibility to any therapist or healer you want to work with. Whereas no one would have thought that before you wouldn't think I'm going to work with someone in Tennessee, if I live in, you know, Chicago, you just wouldn't have the thought, you'd look for someone in Chicago. So now suddenly, you had all this access, and you're listening to podcasts. And it was quite a magical, right? You know, the way these things happen. And now our world is still different from it. There's a purpose for everything. But, I just get curious about what might live in our bodies still from those years.
Stephanie Mara 30:57
Yeah, I agree with that. And, you know, a lot of the times I've seen that food can support in transition. Like even as you were saying, like, hey, there was no marking of this. Like, we're now in this really intense thing. And now we're moving out of this really intense thing. And when we feel like transitions also are too much and we don't know how to be from like, navigating one thing to the next thing, food then comes in to help us navigate that transition. And so I agree with you, I feel like as a whole, like, culturally, we're still navigating a lot of trauma from these past several years. And that's why I feel like somatic work continues to grow in its popularity, because it's continuing to invite people inside of their bodies, when a lot of maybe behaviors that have increased, and someone doesn't know why.
Luis Mojica 31:48
That's right. I completely agree with that. Because somatics is really kind of just a new term for an old technology, right? How to animisticly speak to your body. And so it's very ancestral, you know, our ancestors did not need to be taught somatics. But this term is really important. And this whole pioneering of learning somatics in the last few decades, it's really important for the modern world, because we speak more mind now, we're less embodied, and we speak less body, we even look down on body and kind of prioritize mind and technology and such. I think it's interesting that medicine was just kind of hanging around. And then here's the opportunity for it to come up.
Stephanie Mara 32:23
I'm curious from your words, or your language, how you would describe somatic work, because I know that as it's grown in popularity, also there's a lot of people that are confused on what this work even is. "I know that it's kind of maybe about the body and like feeling things, but I'm not really sure what it is."
Luis Mojica 32:43
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna ask you the same because I'm curious. I think for me, somatic work is really about learning how to have a relationship with your body. And it's very spiritual and psychedelic for me. It's not very scientific. For me, it's very instinctual. And it's about this far out experience of oh, this body isn't me. And so I can track this body, it's so different from I'm anxious to there's anxiety in my chest is two different things. So for me, it's about dis identifying with the body so you can actually partner with the body, friend the body, parent the body and track how it experiences different things around you, and then help this animal really update to where it is, instead of having these kind of like, animalistic responses where they're incongruent. Having anxiety when I see a pile of clothing is incongruent from the ancestry of I should have anxiety when there's a fire or snake, you know, so it's something that doesn't threaten my life feels like a threat. It's a big answer, but that's the thread I weave around what somatics is and why we're doing it. I wonder how you hold it, how you define it for yourself?
Stephanie Mara 33:55
Yeah, I really agree with you on it is about learning how to be with and relate with the body. And I also find that it is a way for me to also learn about how I am digesting life because my body is reacting to how it's perceiving my external world. And if I'm tracking that I'm also learning about how my body is taking in and assimilating my life and do I need to support this body in some way to know it's not in danger or to know it's safe or to make sure that it feels safe you know. Sometimes, I make a funny correlation of like, can we see this as a pet? And I always reference my dog and just like would give him the world. If he's hungry, he will get food, if he needs water, if he, I bought him a new winter sweater this past year like I would do anything for this animal being to make sure that he felt safe in the world. And so, you know if I can see like, oh, this doesn't use you know words to talk with me, it uses symptoms and it uses sensation and uses emotions to tell me what it needs, can I be on this body's team to support it as much as I can to feel safe here? I think that's where I've gone a little bit with this somatic work of it's yes, relating to the body, but also relating to the body to learn about my experience of life.
Luis Mojica 35:23
I loved how you said how my body digests my experiences in life, it's so spot on, it's exactly what it is.
Stephanie Mara 35:30
Well, I have just loved having you here today and love this conversation. I am just thrilled to connect with another somatic practitioner combining this field of nutrition and trauma work and you mentioned earlier about you have another program, and I'm wondering how people can keep in touch with you and the amazing work that you're doing in the world.
Luis Mojica 35:50
I'm taking a break from social media right now. It's been really fun. After four years of non stop posting, I'm like, I'm going to stop posting for a while. So it's all through my newsletter right now is the best way to get all the information, but it's on my website. So holisticlifenavigation.com. And the program starts in July. At the end of May I have a webinar. That's called cravings destigmatized. And it's everything that I just talked about, I'm going to teach people how to actually trace from a craving to a source in the body and how to hold that and be with it. So that's a great way to get a taste of this if people don't want to do a full six month program.
Stephanie Mara 36:24
I love that. Cravings get a really bad rap and I am really enjoying this new conversation that's coming out of this somatic world that cravings are also just information.
Luis Mojica 36:36
Exactly. Exactly.
Stephanie Mara 36:38
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and taking the time and I'd love to connect with you again in the future.
Luis Mojica 36:45
Absolutely. It's so beautiful. Thank you my friend.
Stephanie Mara 36:47
To all that are listening, thanks so much for being here. If you have any questions as always, I will leave our contact information in the show notes and I will talk to you all again soon. Bye!
Keep in touch with Luis here:
Website: https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holistic.life.navigation/