[Ep. 343] Why Being Seen Is So Hard (It's Supposed To Be)

Today's podcast is an audio version of the mid-month newsletter.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Welcome to the Holistic Life Navigation Podcast. I am your host, Luis Mojica. I'm a somatic therapist and nutritionist who combines nutritional therapy with somatic therapy to help thousands of people around the world, including myself, recover from stress and trauma. This podcast serves as a way for me to teach you what I learn for free. How can food aid in the recovery of stress and trauma? What does it really mean to be embodied? And how can simple somatic practices help us better navigate this strange and sensational human experience? Let's find out. On today's episode, I'm going to read to you from one of my newsletters because this topic around being seen is something I have taught people how to find safety in for years. And a lot of coaches and therapists and practitioners really lead with being seen, which is a beautiful thing to learn how to do. I mean, I've been doing it, obviously. Yet there's a really good ancestral, primitive animal reason why being seen feels so horrible and why so much of our body resists it. So I want to dive into that with you. These ancestral bodies of ours hold a very special wisdom, a strategy that allowed our ancestors to survive. It's called fitting in. As pack animals, we survived tens of thousands of years of violent weather, famines, predators, and even other warring tribes and human invaders because of this skill. Fish know this well. When they travel in schools, they can avoid being singled out by larger predators. I was recently in Costa Rica snorkeling when about 100 small silver fish circled me like a tornado. Their small bodies collectively became one big body, and they outnumbered and outsized me. They found safety and survival in belonging to a bigger collective body. And guess what? We do too. It's only been very recent in our human evolution that we began distancing ourselves from the tribe, disagreeing, leaving our birth family for chosen family, moving to new states and countries, and establishing nuclear families where two or sometimes just one single parent attempt to embody what was once an entire village. The therapy and wellness industry glorifies this. I have too. We call it becoming your authentic self, going no contact with people who don't understand you, being seen, and of course, finding yourself. I'm not here to argue that people shouldn't distance themselves from abuse or dysfunction. Sadly, for many of us, our birth families, our tribes, are saturated with unprocessed trauma, which causes us to engage in a familial diaspora, if you will. But there is still something undeniably stressful about standing out, dissenting, not fawning, and not belonging to a group. The animal body has alarm bells going off in the form of adrenaline, the stress hormone that creates fight or flight. It was only a century ago that being alone would often mean not surviving. This is still true in areas that are undeveloped and where people have to depend on other bodies for harvesting, hunting, building, and cooking. This is why we're designed to belong, to move in a pack, to lean into a collective body that holds more than we can alone. And this is also why standing out and being seen feels so awful. Because it's supposed to. It's not because you're incapable of it or because you're a failure of some kind, it's because your body carries centuries of ancestral wisdom that says, don't you dare. And this is where animism comes in. Because many people don't have a village, a tribe, or a collective of people to lean into, we need to often look beyond the human realm for support. We need to look into the plants, trees, and natural landscapes that are more than capable of holding us. We need to look into our food habits to learn which foods help us co-regulate and recover from stressful events like being seen and which don't. We need to look into the elements of sunshine, rain, wind, and even the bricks that hold your home together. We need to look within and practice the divine separation of conscious self from animal body, so that your animal body, looking for someone to lean into, can count on you when you live in the reality of not yet having a collective of human relatives to rely on. Everything I do is focused on this piece, how to find safety in yourself however your circumstance allows. Whether you study my book or join my offerings, this is the intention of my work. And for a few of you listening, it might be ideal to join us in England and practice this in person. We are hosting an extraordinary retreat at the Broughton Sanctuary this coming September, and it's half sold out. We are capping this retreat at 25 people so that we can go deep into this practice of finding safety in yourself and in the land together. I hesitated to book this retreat because of the price, which isn't something we pick. However, I am flying my entire team across the pond, giving you organic, bean-rich meals three times a day, teaching you in our own private building with an indoor pool and sauna, and enchanting you with some really special ceremonies and events to help us all build connection without small talk or fawning. When you look at all we're setting up for you, the incredible guest cottages and accommodations, and consider how much time and money it takes to fly six people all over the world. It's actually quite a steal. And it's a week long. Go to the link in my episode details and you can check it out right now. We did our best to negotiate the teaching and lodging fees so we could break even and don't go into debt like I did last year. This is not meant to replace the tribe. Retreats cannot do that. But it can show you how much capacity you actually have when there are supportive people, practices, food, and land surrounding you. And yes, I'm aware there are tens of thousands of you listening to this, and there's only space for 13 people. But the core of this message and this podcast is important for all of you, and that is being seen is supposed to suck. Just see what comes alive for you in this realization and how you want to practice it with new understanding as you move forward. If you have any questions about this, just email info at holisticlifenavigation.com or use our contact form on the website, and a real human being will get back to you within one business day. I will say, for the many of you listening to this who are being awakened by these ideas or feeling a sense of uh clarity or even resonance, but don't know what to do with it because you can't join us in England. Look at my schedule. I have dozens of events all through the year, and some of them are free, some of them are $10, some of them are $190 a month. But you can look and get a sense of what would serve you, how me and my team could best help you start titrating in the practice of somatics and nutrition and self-relating. So being seen and standing out and having different opinions can start to feel safe in your body. I do this work all over. I do free YouTube videos every week. I do this free podcast every week. I have incredible newsletters that have practices and teach you, even free email series that go out in the newsletter. In addition to all that, I'm going to be doing quarterly free sessions online that are live. I do webinars every quarter that are well under $20. And I do six-month slow groups all throughout the year. And this is all the different ways me and my team have devised uh a structure to be able to support people, however their finances and their capacity allows. So I hope this helped you in some way. I hope this shed light on something that didn't make sense. And I'm excited to see where you go with it. Let us know. Shoot us an email. I'd love to hear. That's the end of today's episode. Take a moment to notice where you feel the episode. Take a breath into that place. Maybe even put your hand over it and let whatever wants to come up, come up. And remember, our bodies speak through sensations. What's yours saying right now? For more information on any upcoming events, please visit holisticlifenavigation.com. And feel free to check out my YouTube page where you can watch any of these episodes, leave a comment, and even request a future topic for me to dive into. I'll see you next time.