By Lisa Roberts, M.Phil.
For over two decades, I have walked the line between the ancient, the alchemist and the urgent. I am often called in at pivotal moments, when it feels like our center seems to be unraveling: depleted and spiritually at an inflection point with our health, our lifestyle and most importantly, our relationship with ourselves.
As an Oxford-trained archaeologist, my approach to lifestyle intervention is through deep exploration, a threshold for change to begin. It’s at this moment when clients become ready to excavate the layers of their health story.
My own life has been the runway for this work. Like many of us, I’ve celebrated motherhood, health, love, success and joy. I’ve also faced loss, complex trauma, addiction and the experience of living a life that did not honor my truth. The slow drip of cortisol created chronic health issues that impacted my immune system, nervous system, respiratory system, digestive system and my mental health. Through it all, the wisdom encoded in the life ways of ancient and Indigenous cultures helped me to recover and heal at a deep cellular level.
I didn’t just study these traditions; I lived them. My work has taken me into the kitchens, rituals and practices of ancestral cultures—from native healers in Santa Fe to Quechua farmers in the Andes mountains, from excavations throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East to celebratory feasts in South Africa.
A true lifestyle intervention is an excavation. A sacred interruption of the numbing patterns that keep us distracted and disconnected from our bodies, our loved ones, our community and our deeper purpose. In other words, the hurt, pain and isolation that’s been driving depression, anxiety, anger and addictions can no longer be ignored.
My research embodies elemental principles based on the ancient Greek concept of diaita, meaning ”way of life,” integrating science and spirit through food as medicine, rest as ritual, cooking as spiritual practice, presence as meditation, breath as anchor, relationships and community as center, and biophilia as healer. We begin by remapping nutrition and eating patterns, and recalibrating the nervous system. But we go deeper: into breath, how we grieve, how we rise in the morning, the way we create space for inner quiet at night. It lives in how we feel seen and heard.
My clients are people at crossroads in their lives. They are accomplished, but unhealthy in their lifestyle patterns—overextended and undernourished. I create sacred interruptions, or gentle but firm realignments that are practical and achievable, to help guide people back into rhythm with what really matters, and something extraordinary happens. lisarobertsfood.com