Somatic Educator Luis Mojica on Food Therapy, Healing Trauma, and Building His Own Table After Major Industry Rejection

We had the pleasure of talking with Luis Mojica. Luis had been drinking caffeine first thing in the morning for months when his body began contradicting him. There were low-level panic attacks, pressure in his chest, dizziness, fatigue, and a rise in blood pressure. The symptoms were especially perplexing because Mojica, a somatic educator and holistic nutritionist, routinely advises people to eat before consuming caffeine.

Then he remembered the rule he had decided to test.

The next morning, Mojica ate a balanced breakfast before drinking tea. Within a day, he says, the symptoms disappeared. His response was not embarrassment so much as fascination. “Without trying it, I wouldn’t have known,” he explains.

The episode captures an essential tension in Mojica’s work. He teaches people to recognize the body as a source of information, yet he does not present himself as someone who has mastered or subdued it. He remains a participant in the same experiments he asks others to conduct. “The thing I teach is the thing I still need the most,” he says.

That position separates him from the puritanical strain that can run through wellness culture. Mojica does not treat imperfect eating as a failure of discipline. He sees mistakes, cravings, and compulsions as evidence. The question is not simply whether a food is healthy, but what the body may be trying to accomplish by reaching for it.

His interest in bodily safety began long before it became a professional framework. Mojica was born with an intersex condition and experienced puberty as a period of confusion, shame, bullying, harassment, and sexual trauma. He remembers feeling that he did not belong anywhere. Around age 13, he began developing the internal practices that would eventually inform his work in somatics, nutrition, and counseling.

He does not describe that history as something neatly overcome. Instead, he connects it to his ability to recognize people who feel estranged from their own bodies or unwelcome among others. The absence of external safety, he says, forced him to cultivate it internally. What began as a private necessity later became the foundation of Holistic Life Navigation, his educational work, podcast, courses, and teaching.

Mojica’s approach rests on the idea that eating patterns often make biological sense before they make intellectual sense. One of his clearest examples came from three women who entered his private practice separately. Each was consuming unusually large amounts of chocolate. When Mojica asked what might happen if she stopped, every woman gave him the same answer: “I would leave my husband.”

The repetition caught his attention. Chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant associated with sensations of pleasure and arousal. Mojica came to believe the women were using it, instinctively, to recreate a feeling of intimacy or connection missing from their marriages. Whether every craving can be read so precisely is another question, but the encounters changed the direction of his work. Food, he concluded, could serve emotional and physiological functions that conventional nutrition advice often overlooks.

His book, Food Therapy, brings that premise into a broader argument about stress and nervous-system regulation. Mojica divides foods into stimulants, depressants, and balancers, asking readers to notice how meals and drinks affect energy, adrenaline, mental clarity, and felt experience. “Every snack, every meal, and every drink either turns your stress response up or turns it down,” he says.

His framework resists rigid dietary identities partly because Mojica has experienced their limits himself. He was vegan for more than 20 years and received his first book contract in 2018 from an independent publisher specializing in vegan titles. Nearly 100 pages into the manuscript, he began eating fish, eggs, and chicken after feeling that his body was asking for them. He says his physical and mental health improved dramatically.

When he disclosed the change, the publisher canceled the contract. Mojica understood the decision, but declined to treat it as a verdict on the work. Roughly a year later, a friend told him Hay House was looking for authors. He submitted a proposal, and the publisher acquired the project.

The reversal reinforced one of his guiding beliefs: exclusion can be information rather than condemnation. Mojica says institutions rejected him because of how he looked, spoke, or thought. “If I wasn’t welcome at their table,” he says, “I built my own.”

That independence shapes his business practices as much as his nutritional philosophy. He does not promise clients a particular result. Before teaching, marketing, or planning a project, he checks whether he has eaten, whether his breathing is deep, and whether he feels grounded. He wants the conditions under which he works to reflect the conditions he teaches.

The same principle appears in his creative life. Mojica plays piano, sings, and spends time in nature, practices he describes as foundations rather than occasional escapes. Singing, he says, gives him an immediate connection to God and access to parts of himself that may otherwise remain unavailable.

For Mojica, discernment is the larger project beneath the food, the somatic exercises, and the language of nervous-system regulation. He wants people to recognize the difference between fear and intuition, and to feel what he calls the body’s yes and the body’s no. His work begins from a deceptively simple proposition: the body is always responding. The harder task is learning how to listen without turning every response into a command, a diagnosis, or a reason for shame.

Yitzi: Luis It’s really an honor to meet you. Before we dive in and talk about your amazing work, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share with us the story of your childhood, how you grew up, and particularly the seeds and the genesis of all the amazing creativity that has come since then?

Luis: I was born with a condition known as an intersex condition. This is where your body biologically creates ambiguous hormone expressions. My puberty was very confusing, and that caused me to have a lot of body shame, body hatred, bullying, harassment, and sexual trauma. You name it, everything you could imagine with peers. I experienced a lot of not belonging. That ended up being one of the most beautiful things that could ever happen to me because I empathize so deeply with those who don’t belong and understand what that feels like. It also forced me to go inside and cultivate the practice of finding safety within myself because I couldn’t just walk into a room and belong. I didn’t really belong anywhere. That planted the seed at a very young age. I would say around 13 is when I remember starting to develop what later matured into the work I do now, somatic experiencing, nutrition, and counseling to teach people how to find that safety inside themselves.

Yitzi: Beautiful. You probably have some amazing stories from your career helping people. Without saying names, can you share one or two stories that stand out in your mind about how you’ve been able to help and empower people?

Luis: One of the stories that moves me the most is about someone whose name I can actually use because she’s been public with it. Her name is Camille. She’s part of our team and teaches with me. She had been doing this work for about a year and a half or two years, the nutrition, the somatic practices, everything I teach. Her daughter was born with a heart condition and, at three months old, had to undergo heart surgery. The surgery went well, but afterward she went into cardiac arrest, and the nurses had to work for half an hour to revive her. She survived, but she had to stay in the NICU for seven weeks.

Camille lived in the hospital for seven weeks, knowing that at any moment her daughter could die. She told me she moved through the entire experience with such grace because she had these practices. She especially understood that she could regulate her nervous system through her diet. She came out of the experience not traumatized at all. In fact, she felt refreshed, renewed, and even more connected to herself. That was especially moving because I love her and have such a close connection with her.

Yitzi: Unbelievable. Amazing. There’s a saying that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a humorous mistake you’ve made at any point in your life and the lesson you took away from it?

Luis: I think one thing that makes me different from a lot of nutritionists is that I’m not puritanical with my approach. I’m really into making mistakes. Being able to make mistakes with your eating helps you learn how something affects your body compared to doing everything perfectly and never having that experience.

One of the simplest things I started doing was drinking caffeine first thing in the morning without eating anything, which is actually one of the guidelines I tell people not to follow. I was just testing it out to see how it would go. It felt fine, so I kept doing it for a couple of months. Then, very recently, I started experiencing something I hadn’t felt in 13 or 14 years, low level panic attacks in my chest, increased blood pressure, dizziness, and fatigue. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Then I remembered I’d broken one of my golden rules. I hadn’t eaten before drinking tea. The very next day I ate a balanced breakfast before having tea, and within 24 hours everything disappeared. It was useful because I learned that this really does contribute to anxiety for me. Without trying it, I wouldn’t have known.

Yitzi: That’s amazing. There’s a related idea that no isn’t rejection, it’s redirection. Do you have a story where you got a no that eventually led to an even better opportunity?

Luis: Absolutely. This book is the perfect example. In 2018 I received a book deal from a small independent publisher. This was before I was known for my work. I wasn’t on Instagram. It was before the pandemic, and I never even intended to write a book. I started writing because I got the deal, and I’d written almost 100 pages.

The publisher specialized in vegan books. At the time, I was vegan. A couple of years into writing, I was really listening to my body, and it was asking for fish, eggs, and chicken. After 20 years of being vegan, I started eating animal products again. My mental health and my body improved dramatically.

I told the publisher, and they immediately canceled my contract, which I completely understood because it went against their values. But because I practice what you mentioned, I saw that no as a beautiful redirection even though I didn’t know where it was leading. About a year later, a friend told me Hay House was looking for new authors. I sent them my proposal, and they wanted it immediately. Everything came together so easily. It was a perfect example of redirection.

Yitzi: Amazing. Please tell us all about the book. There are so many Hay House books and so many books similar to yours. Tell us why people should put everything else down and read yours.

Luis: Mine is different because no one is talking about nutrition and nervous system regulation together. Usually people talk about breathwork, meditation, yoga, or devices you can buy, but no one is talking about how everyday foods, not superfoods, just simple, humble foods, can lower stress levels and regulate your nervous system.

I’m teaching people to see food as therapy. Food itself is a form of therapy for the body every single day. It’s a sacred conversation between your body and the land or animal that nourished you. No one has written about this connection between food and nervous system regulation before, so I’m fortunate to be the first.

The other unique part is combining somatic psychology with nutrition. Those two fields are usually completely separate. When you learn to eat for peace, it’s very different from eating for health. Every nutrition book focuses on health. This book has very little to do with health. It’s about your felt sense, your mental well being, and how you experience yourself through food. It’s a therapeutic approach to eating that anyone can apply.

One of my favorite parts has been meeting incredibly diverse people from different cultures and religions at book signings who tell me they’re bringing these ideas back to their communities, temples, and churches. Everyone finds a way to connect with it because it’s a flexible framework rather than a rigid system.

Yitzi: Can you share one of your favorite stories from the book?

Luis: One of my favorite stories is the lightbulb moment that inspired much of this work. Three different women came into my private practice. They didn’t know each other, but they all had health issues related to sugar addiction. When I looked more closely, they were all eating enormous amounts of chocolate.

I asked each woman what would happen if she reduced her chocolate intake. Every single one answered, “I would leave my husband.”

That fascinated me. I learned that chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant that affects the heart. While caffeine stimulates the brain, theobromine stimulates the heart and triggers hormones associated with bonding, intimacy, and pleasure. These women were instinctively eating large amounts of chocolate because they weren’t experiencing emotional connection with their husbands. Their bodies were trying to recreate that feeling.

That was my lightbulb moment. I realized food is about much more than health or comfort. There’s a deep instinctive strategy behind our eating that I wanted to understand.

Yitzi: Can you share a few of your unique insights into how people can improve their well being through food?

Luis: The simplest way to explain it is that stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and trauma all involve producing excessive amounts of adrenaline. Those emotional states are really different ways of describing elevated stress hormones.

After working with those women, I became curious and discovered that certain foods either increase or decrease your production of stress hormones. There are foods you can eat that will increase adrenaline within five minutes, and there are foods that begin reducing or balancing those hormones within about 30 minutes.

Every snack, every meal, and every drink either turns your stress response up or turns it down. That’s a breakthrough for people because we usually think of food in terms of health or spirituality, but very few people realize that food is constantly influencing the nervous system.

Yitzi: That’s fascinating. You mentioned coffee and caffeine. Can you share a few foods, aside from alcohol, that help people relax and increase feelings of calm and well being?

Luis: Absolutely. In the book I divide foods into three categories: stimulants, depressants, and balancers.

Caffeine is a stimulant. Depressant foods include fried foods, heavily processed dairy products, and overeating, even healthy foods. When you eat those foods, blood flow shifts from your brain to your stomach. That’s why people experience what they call a food coma or food hangover. You think more slowly, feel heavier, and temporarily experience a sense of calm. Those are often the foods people rely on when they’re comfort eating.

Yitzi: I’m fascinated that you’re not prescribing that everyone avoid animal products. How do you respond to people who say that eating animals means you’re taking in negative energy?

Luis: I’ve heard that many times. I was vegan for more than 20 years, so I understand that perspective.

What I’ve learned is that when you eat food, whether it’s plant or animal, you’re really consuming the land and the context from which it came. You can eat broccoli grown with harmful chemicals or soy that’s contributing to rainforest destruction, or you can eat a chicken raised locally in a way that actually supports the environment.

For me, it’s all about context. It’s not about plants versus animals. It’s about how the food was grown, whether it was raised responsibly, and whether it nurtures or harms the world around it. That can apply equally to plant foods and animal foods.

Yitzi: This is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success, and you’ve learned so much along the way. Looking back to the very beginning of your career, can you share five things you’ve learned that would help someone starting out in a similar field today?

Luis: I’m probably one of the worst people to ask because I’m very unorthodox in business, but I’ll give it a try.

First, don’t conform. It’s risky because saying unpopular things or expressing ideas people disagree with may limit your success in the short term, but I’ve never conformed from day one, and as I’ve become more successful, I haven’t had to compromise who I am.

Second, don’t wait for someone else to give you permission to exist. I knocked on the doors of many institutions, and they didn’t want me because of how I looked, what I believed, or how I spoke. Instead of taking that as proof I wasn’t good enough, I treated it as information. If I wasn’t welcome at their table, I built my own.

Third, when it comes to marketing, I never promise results. I tell people exactly what I’m going to teach them, but I don’t guarantee outcomes. I think that’s more honest because it leaves room for curiosity and individual experience.

Fourth, I only market from a place of safety within myself. Before writing emails, planning projects, or teaching, I make sure I’m breathing deeply, I’ve eaten, and I’m grounded. I don’t want to create or teach from a place of panic or tension.

Finally, I believe the thing I teach is the thing I still need the most. I constantly practice what I preach, even when it means canceling plans, changing my mind, or walking away from something because it’s no longer good for my body.

Yitzi: Can you share the self care routines you use to help your body, mind, and heart thrive?

Luis: I spend a lot of time in nature. I’m also a musician, so I love playing the piano. Singing gives me an instant connection to God and helps me access parts of myself I didn’t even know were there. I also eat foods that support and ground me rather than overstimulate or depress me. Nature, movement, playing piano, singing, and my relationship with food are the biggest foundations.

Yitzi: This is our final aspirational question. Because of your work and the platform you’ve built, you’re a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, what would it be?

Luis: I would encourage people to learn how to truly discern for themselves by feeling their body’s yes and their body’s no, and by learning the difference between fear and intuition. I think that’s one of the most important skills we can develop, and it could reduce a tremendous amount of pain and violence in the world.

Yitzi: How can our readers purchase your book, follow your work, and support what you’re doing?

Luis: The book, Food Therapy, is available everywhere books are sold, including libraries, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and other major retailers.

People can also visit holisticlifenavigation.com. That’s where they’ll find my Instagram, YouTube channel, free webinars, upcoming events, and everything else I’m working on.

Yitzi: It’s really been an honor to meet you. I hope we can do this again next year. I wish you continued success, good health, and many blessings. I’m excited to share this with our readers.

Luis: Thank you, Yitzi. It’s been so nice to meet you. You’re wonderful.

Yitzi: Thank you so much. Likewise. Have a great day.

Luis: You too, my friend.