This week, I sat down with my dear friend and former somatic therapist, Isabel, for our most requested podcast: expanded capacity. We recorded this one right from her home in Greece, after spending days talking about everything from functional freeze to creativity to what it actually takes to hold a bigger life — gently.

Capacity has become such a buzzword online, but this episode brings it back to the body: what it feels like to return to work after months off, how regulation isn’t a personality trait, and why urgency has become the new dopamine people don’t know they’re addicted to. 

We also answer your questions on ambition, rest, safety, nervous system expansion, and what it means to grow without burning.

By the end, you’ll have a clearer sense of what capacity actually is, how to expand your own, and why every creative entrepreneur eventually has to confront the truth that you don’t attract what you want, you attract what you can hold. 

If you’re building a business, deepening your somatic resilience, or craving a gentler approach to success, this one will land in your body before it lands in your mind.

We dive into

🐅 Capacity vs. regulation — why “being calm” isn’t the goal, and what your nervous system actually needs in real life.

🐅 How to return from rest without crashing — what happened when we both took 2–3 months off and came back to the fullest seasons of our careers.

🐅 Why urgency feels like your autopilot — and how to gently rewire your system away from rush, panic, and overdrive.

🐅 Ambition without self-abandonment — how to want big things without burning for them.

🐅 Entrepreneurship through a somatic lens — building a business based on what your body can hold, not what the internet says you should chase.

🐅 The power of micro-movements — expanding capacity through tiny, doable steps your body can actually metabolize.

🐅 Safe relationships as nervous system medicine — why community expands capacity more than any mindset tool ever could.

🐅 Pendulation, titration, and cellular safety — the real mechanics of somatic success and sustainable growth.

Links and Resources

(EXPANSION update: SOLD OUT!)

Well well well EXPANSION opens it doors this Thursday and you already know the whole rodeo: the waitlist is here. If you're feeling a big pull, I'll see you at the other side of your Inevitable Expansion.

And if you don't know the rodeo, expansion sells out all its spots in a day or two, so if you want to come, def join the waitlist. 

BISOU!

AND OBVIOUSLY, A STATE TO CREATE RETREAT APPLICATIONS ARE HERE!!!!!! WE HAVEN'T SHARE THIS LINK WITH ANYONE YET, AND THERE'S ALREADY 2 SPOTS GONE!!!!!!!

Woah this one is a TREAT! Grab your journal and get ready to dive into what it truly means to have time freedom!

In this episode, we go deep into time freedom, what it really means, why so many of us struggle to feel safe with it, and how to actually create it. Caley and I walk you through a powerful four-part framework she first taught inside Expansion (My mastermind), now adapted for time freedom: creating, receiving, managing, and holding time freedom.

Because time freedom isn’t about “just taking a break.” and you know it. Time freedom is about reprogramming your body to feel safe when things get quiet, dissolving the control patterns that keep you working nonstop, and learning to plan your business in a way that protects your rest as fiercely as your profit.

We share the stories behind our own summers off, the inner work that made it possible, and how capacity planning (a core part of Caley’s method and my own method inside Expansion) completely changed both our businesses. 

This one’s part mindset, part nervous system work, part logistics, and it’s the missing piece between wanting time freedom and actually living it.

Listen when:

❤️‍🔥 You want to take a season off without your business falling apart.

❤️‍🔥 You’re craving rest but feel guilty or unsafe when you’re not working.

❤️‍🔥 You’re ready to scale your business with more spaciousness and less urgency.

❤️‍🔥 You know systems matter, but so does your nervous system.

We dive into:

❤️‍🔥 How to generate time freedom by charging for your value, not your hours

❤️‍🔥 What happens in your body when you try to receive time freedom (and why guilt shows up)

❤️‍🔥 Why so many entrepreneurs struggle to manage free time without filling it with “productive rest”

❤️‍🔥 How to hold free time—and why that’s a nervous system skill, not a scheduling trick

❤️‍🔥 The truth about control, safety, and why “loosening the grip” expands your capacity

❤️‍🔥 How to use capacity planning to design a profitable year with real time off

❤️‍🔥 Why discipline is essential for true freedom (and how boundaries create safety)

❤️‍🔥 The connection between somatics, pendulation, and sustainable entrepreneurship

Links + Resources

• Follow Caley Dimmock on Instagram → @caleydimmock
• Explore Caley's Profit + Freedom Mastermind 
• Explore Maia’s Expansion Mastermind
• Explore Peter Levine’s work on Pendulation and Somatic Healing

There comes a moment in every transformation when the old identity no longer fits—but the new one isn’t fully formed yet. That’s where the real shape-shifting begins. 

In today’s episode, we talk about shapeshifting as a nervous system skill, what it really takes to shed outdated identities, and how to sit with the fertile discomfort of the “space between.” I share the behind-the-scenes of my own most recent quantum leap (and it's crash lol), how I reprogrammed my Reticular Activating System, and all the somatic integration tools I used to move through expansion without glitching.

This one is for the shapeshifters, the threshold walkers, the ones who know that growth isn’t linear—it’s cellular.

This is the episode I've been preparing for all my lifeeeeee (:

In Today’s Episode, We Talk About:

🦋 What shapeshifting actually means (beyond aesthetics and personas)

🦋 The real reason your nervous system resists identity change

🦋 How to use your RAS (Reticular Activating System) to rewire perception and spot quantum leap moments

🦋 Why “getting there” is a trap—and how to become them before the evidence shows up

🦋 My full-circle moment in Japan, and how it triggered the final embodiment of her new identity

🦋 Micro-experiments to build safety around your expansion

🦋 What it means to repot your nervous system after a big shift

🦋 Integrating the chaotic parts of you instead of exiling them

🦋 The metaphors of the mud, the cocoon, and the marble—and how they hold the codes for transformation

🦋 The actual neuroscience behind why you keep looping (and how to break free)

This Month’s Giveaway! 🎁

As always, I'm sending love back to this amazing community. Here’s how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner & second brain for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

🔥 The Vault – A 3-month access pass to my full somatic and mindset practice library

And as always:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode cracked you open, brought clarity, or helped you see yourself.

Expansion PSA: my 4-month deep mastermind (Expansion) is opening its doors to the waitlist only on May 5th (5.5 at 5:55 PM EST). If you’ve been feeling the pull to dive in, make sure you’re on the waitlist right here—spots do tend to fly (as in, fully booked within a day or two kind of fly).

And about this very special episode:

The person that changed my life is here. We’re diving deep into somatics, nervous system regulation, and self-sabotage with my somatic therapist, sister, and somatic queen, Isabel Georgina Taylor (@isabelgeorginataylor). This conversation is one of my most personal and expansive to date—a behind-the-scenes on what actually changed my life last year, how SE (Somatic Experiencing) helped me melt my freeze, and why you cannot override your nervous system’s definition of success.

🌬️ Isabel’s story: from failing her grades and surviving trauma in Uganda to building a purpose-led career in somatics

🌬️ What somatic experiencing actually is and how it works

🌬️ The link between overwhelm, procrastination, perfectionism, and the nervous system

🌬️ What self-sabotage really means (hint: it’s not a personality trait)

🌬️ How to feel safe taking big leaps — without frying your system

🌬️ Why success might feel unsafe, and how to work with that truth

🌬️ What happens when you work with your body’s intelligence instead of against it

🌬️ Nervous system snacks you can use right now to calm down & come back online

🌬️ The number one reframe that changed my life and business last year

🌬️ our ✨special announcement✨

THE MOST SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

You’re the first to know: we’re co-hosting a brand new round of A STATE TO CREATE — Isabel’s signature program for getting out of freeze and finally doing the thing

🧠 Isabel = nervous system queen

🔥 Maia = momentum queen

🫂 Together = you actually do the thing

🗓 Dates:

→ Waitlist opens May 12th—(waitlist gets £500 off)

→ Public launch May 19th

→ Program starts June 3rd

30 spots only

A State To Create waitlist

WHERE TO FIND QUEEN ISABEL

Instagram: @isabelgeorginataylor

NERVOUS SYSTEM SNACKS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Orient yourself: look at the corners of the room, take in your environment
• Notice your breath: don’t change it — just observe
• Feel your support: feet on the floor, seat under you
• Voo breath or gentle sighs
• Scream into a pillow (advanced but iconic)
• Ask: “What is my body trying to tell me?”
• Affirm: “Thank you body for protecting me. I got it from here.”

This Month's Giveaway!

I'm doing a giveaway for early listeners! Here's how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive these three things:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

🔥 A 1:1 Mentoring Call – To break your own ceiling

And of course:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode sparked something for you. See you next Thursday for more thought-to-thing magik

Here's a different one 🌬️

The spirit doesn’t need proof. The spirit needs presence.

Let's talk about all things Spirit. Not the aesthetic, not the performance, not the “how to feel aligned” kind of bullshit. Nope! This one is about what happens when you stop chasing clarity, purpose, or healing—and create a life quiet enough for something bigger to find you.

I’m sharing the story of what happened when I hiked 230 kilometers through the Himalayas (again), what that journey revealed about animacy, presence, and belonging—and how it completely changed my relationship to “spirituality.” 

This one’s part memoir, part myth, part reminder that you don’t need to go searching for the divine. You just need to slow down enough to notice: it’s already here.

In Today's Episode, We Talk About:

🌬️ The one question I’ve been asking for years: “What is it that makes the Spirit return to us?”

🌬️ What happened when I hiked 230km across the Himalayas, and how it unraveled my packaged idea of “spirituality”

🌬️ The moment the Divine Mother found me—and the absurdity of how hard we try to find something that’s already breathing us

🌬️ How spirit lives in rhythm—not in performance, productivity, or “good vibes only”

🌬️ Animacy and belonging—how spending time in Nepalese + Tibetan villages reminded me that everything has eyes

🌬️ Why we don’t need more awakening—we need more remembering

🌬️ Why presence is the only true spiritual practice

This Month's Giveaway! 🎁

I'm doing a giveaway for early listeners! Here's how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive these two things:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

And of course:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode sparked something for you. See you next Thursday for more thought-to-thing magik

A spicy one. In this episode, we dive into the Unknown and explore the art of releasing control so that life can actually meet you. And for this conversation, I brought in the personification of the unknown himself—Tom, my partner—who’s lived a life of radical trust, jumping into the unknown over and over again. We talk about intuition, navigating uncertainty, and what it really takes to expand beyond what you thought was possible.

Three years ago, I packed my entire life into a backpack and flew to Nepal, answering a call that made zero sense on paper—but my gut knew better. It was the most terrifying and liberating decision I’d ever made. And now, full circle, I’m back in Nepal, standing in the aftermath of that choice, realizing just how much life doubles down when you stop gripping so hard to the plan you think you want.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT:

🧩 Why gripping onto your plan is actually blocking the one meant for you

🧩 Tom’s experience trusting the unknown and making decisions based on pull, not fear

🧩 What intuition actually is (and no, it’s not just “signs”)

🧩 How we get stuck in outdated visions of ourselves—and how to break free

🧩 The Hero’s Journey, The Call to Adventure, and why most people resist it

🧩 “The Threshold” and why fear always meets the edge of desire

🧩 What happens when you stop controlling and start receiving

🧩 “The only way out is through the fire”—why big manifestations come with big initiations

This one is deep.

Mentioned:

🧩 BUY TOM'S BOOK: Sunflowers At The End of Time

This Month's Giveaway! 🎁

I'm doing a giveaway for early listeners! Here's how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive these three things:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

🔥 A 1:1 Mentoring Call – To break your own ceiling

And of course:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode sparked something for you. See you next Thursday for more thought-to-thing magik

Your Momentum Doesn’t Need Motivation—It Needs Capacity.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about momentum—not just how to start, but how to keep going. The biggest myth we tell to ourselves is that getting started is the hardest part. It’s not. The real challenge is staying in motion without burning out. We dive deep into self-trust, nervous system capacity, and learning how to ride your wave of momentum instead of forcing it.

I’m sharing the story of how I spent a decade wanting to start a podcast—and launched this one in just three days. What changed? Not my skills. Not my readiness. My capacity. Plus, a surfing analogy on how finding your rhythm changes everything, why pushing harder is never the answer, and how a $6 digital product in 2022 became the first domino for everything I’ve built since.

If you’ve ever felt like you know what to do but can’t make yourself do it, if you start strong but always burn out, if resistance kicks in the second you commit—this one’s for you.

In Today’s Episode, We Talk About:

🧩 Why motivation is overrated, and why micro-movements are the real key to momentum

🧩 Self-trust & nervous system capacity—why you only attract what you’re ready to hold

🧩 How to read your own waves of momentum instead of wiping out

🧩 The story of how I spent 10 years wanting a podcast, but launched this one in 3 days

🧩 How a $6 template in 2022 became the seed for everything I’ve built since

🧩 Why pushing harder never works—you don’t need more effort, you need more capacity

🧩 The cracked vessel analogy—why no matter how much you pour in, it leaks if you’re not expanded enough to hold it

🧩 How resistance is not a stop sign—it’s actually proof that you’re right on time

Resources mentioned:

🌀 Gyan Chakra Kriya – The 40-day Kundalini practice we’re starting together inside Substack Chat (Join us there! free)

This Month's Giveaway! 

I'm doing a giveaway for early listeners! Here's how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive these three things:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

🔥 A 1:1 Mentoring Call – To break your own ceiling

And of course:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode sparked something for you. See you next Thursday for more thought-to-thing magik

So much love

M

Your visions don't need permission—they need momentum. In today's episode, we dive into how to stop waiting for the "right time," break free from perfectionism, and take the first step before you feel ready. I share my own experience of being stuck in the loop of over-planning for three years before finally launching my design studio—what shifted, how I moved past the fear, and the exact mindset + somatic tools that helped me get into motion.

In Today's Episode, We Talk About:

🧩 Why waiting for the "right time" is the biggest lie keeping you stuck

🧩 How I launched my design studio, mastermind, and this podcast using the "make it exist" principle

🧩 How possibility never arrives with a permission slip—you create it

🧩 How to work with your body instead of against it when fear kicks in

🧩 The four survival responses (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn) and how they show up in creative blocks

🧩 The sneaky ways perfectionism, freeze response, and imposter syndrome keep you from launching

🧩 How to strip your idea down to its "Helvetica" and make it exist now

🧩 The role of micro-movements in building momentum and rewiring your capacity to expand

Resources Mentioned:

🧩 The Memo → A simple, minimum viable pitch template to bring your idea to life (DM me "JUPITER" on IG to get it!)

🧩 Chelsea Riffe → your girl if you need some fire under your 🍑 if you want to launch a podcast

🧩 Pendersoundstudio → my friend Stu's music studio, all soundtrack from the Thought To Thing pod was made by him

This Month's Giveaway! 

I'm doing a giveaway for early listeners! Here's how to enter:

⭐ On Spotify: Rate ⭐, follow ✅, and leave a comment 💬 on any episode

⭐ On Apple Podcasts: Rate ⭐ and leave a written review for the entire show

At the end of the month, one winner will receive these three things:

🔥 Vision – My Notion planner for turning thoughts into things

🔥 Wealth – My Notion money home + wealth manager

🔥 A 1:1 Mentoring Call – To break your own ceiling

And of course:

Tag me on IG @maiaben if this episode sparked something for you. See you next Thursday for more thought-to-thing magik

So much love

M

Welcome to Thought to Thing, the podcast where we bend the limits of possibility. I’m Maia, your host, and in this first season, we’re diving deep into what it really takes to turn a thought into a thing. Not the usual law-of-attraction fluff, but the practical, embodied work of expanding your capacity to hold more—so you can call in more while doing less. Because we don’t manifest what we want; we manifest what we can hold. 

This podcast is about strengthening that capacity—so that instead of asking how can I get more?, you start asking how can I hold more?  Expect conversations on momentum, expansion, turning fear into fuel, melting perfectionism, and building the kind of self-trust that makes big visions inevitable. At its core, this podcast exists to make you feel fully, wildly alive—ready to squeeze every drop out of life.

In this episode, I sit with my dear friend and mentor Caley Dimmock, the woman who helped me take three months completely off this summer while my business kept growing, and my nervous system actually felt safe doing it.

This conversation is everything I love: honest, layered, and SPICY. Caley and I go deep into what it really means to build a business rooted in freedom, not performance. We talk about the somatics of control, the edge between structure and surrender, and how to find safety in expansion.

We also explore what happens when you stop chasing power and start embodying it: when your business becomes a place for your leadership, intuition, and artistry to coexist.

Aw, getting emosh!

If you’ve ever wondered how to run a business that feels as good as it looks, this one’s for you ♡ 

Listen when: You’re craving proof that ease and profit can coexist, and that you can build your business without abandoning your body.

We dive into:

🦢 What it really takes to build a business rooted in both freedom and profit: the seasons, the pivots, and the nervous system behind sustainable success.

🦢Why chasing “balance” doesn’t work: and how to design a business model that supports your actual life, not the aesthetic of one.

🦢 Money as neutrality and clarity: how to approach pricing, sales, and scaling without attachment or shame.

🦢 The myth of the “one-size-fits-all” strategy: and how Caley learned to lead through experimentation, embodiment, and truth.

🦢L etting your business evolve with you: permission to outgrow old identities and build the next version in real time.

🦢 Visibility without burnout: the practices that allow you to stay connected to your work even as it reaches more people.

🦢 What happens when you stop trying to prove, and start letting it be easy: the calm power that comes when your business finally fits.

Mentions & Links:

• Connect with Caley Dimmock on IG
• Explore Caley’s Profit & Freedom Mastermind (HIGHLY RECO!)

Part II (The workshop is already aired!)

You know when a conversation feels like an ABSOLUTE transmission? In today’s episode, I sit down with my dear friend Chandresh Bhardwaj (CB)  that I met through a dream (Yes, tune in). Seventh-generation Tantra teacher, author, poet, and one of the most artful communicators I know, to talk about Tantra, polarity, death, destruction, rebirth, and what it means to become self-sourced.

This episode is honestly an initiation in itself wow. We move from art and embodiment to the wild feminine, the rooted masculine, India, chaos, life, and ALL THINGS THAT REFUSE TO BE TAMED! 

We dive into:

🦢 How we met through Creative Living and why virality doesn’t come from strategy but embodiment.

🦢 Tantra 101: beyond sex, beyond cliché, Tantra as technology of self-awareness.

🦢The dance of creation and destruction: why death is necessary for rebirth.

🦢 Shiva and Kali, the destroyers, and the beauty of conscious destruction.

🦢Polarity, shadow, and the courage to hold both light and dark.

🦢The wild feminine and the rooted masculine, and how these archetypes are misunderstood online.

🦢 What it actually means to hold space for the feminine’s untamed expression.

🦢 Self-sourcing your power, nervous system safety, and feminine softening.

🦢 Finding your center: emptiness, aloneness, and creative expression as devotion.

🦢  CB’s Thought → Thing moment: how writing from truth led to viral resonance (and 40,000 followers in one day).

🦢 The role of the rooted masculine in creating safety for truth to emerge.

🦢 How to hold virality, polarity, and integrity in your art!!

Connect with Chandresh

Instagram: @cbmeditates

Website: cbmeditates.com

This week I’m joined by my favorite person again (Lois) for a very special conversation on the Creative Living Principles!!!!

We had way too much fun recording this episode (delirious nap-drunk and caffeinated as always), and ended up covering the first six principles from our list of 21 Creative Living Principles:

1. Your voice isn’t fragile. Don’t treat it like glass.
2. Art needs to be honest, not beautiful.
3. You don’t find your voice, you remember it.
4. Perfection is a cage. Mess is where the magic lives.
5. Protect your mornings (or at least one part of your day) that belongs to no one else.
6. Let it be shit before anything else.

We talk about surfing wipeouts, learning languages badly, humiliating ourselves publicly, and why all of it is essential to making real art. We also go deep on what it means to put banks to the river of creativity—and why messiness is not just inevitable, but fertile ground.

At the end, we share this episode’s workbook exercise from Creative Living: How to Write a Bad Poem. This one is about letting yourself be bad, letting go of perfection, and finding truth in the process.

If you want the worksheet for today’s episode (and last week’s too), DM us “After Hours” on Instagram and we’ll send it to you.

GUYS WE ARE GETTING VERY CLOSE TO LAUNCHING CREATIVE LIVING BTW!!!! Stay so tuned ♡

This week I sat down with my beautiful friend and absolute force of nature, Marina Girgis, Expansion Round 5 queen and the visionary behind Vivacious Retreats. After Marina's 10 day Advanced Shadow Work retreat in The Netherlands, we went down the rabbit hole of shadow work as a path to liberation, and how bringing your shadows into the light is often all that’s needed to alchemize them.

If you’ve been in Marina’s orbit, you already know: she has a gift for making life feel juicier, fuller, more alive. Being in her presence makes you want more: more depth, more beauty, more LIFE!

In true stellium Scorpio fashion, we went beyond the veil in this conversation. 

We talked about:

🐅 The relationship between creativity and shadow (spoiler: the bigger your gifts, the bigger your shadows).

🐅 Integration, safety, and how to actually do shadow work in a way that’s embodied, somatic, and transformative — not just intellectualized.

🐅 Marina’s recent 10-day advanced shadow work retreat in the Netherlands and what she uncovered about shame, belonging, and the power of being truly witnessed.

🐅 Why true leadership means being willing to have your own shadows called forward — and how that creates cultures, not cults.

🐅 The gold hidden inside the parts of ourselves we’ve most disowned.

This is one of those episodes that’s both raw and deeply practical, where you’ll feel seen in the stories, but also walk away with frameworks and tools you can bring into your own life. YAY.

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling “too much,” “not enough,” or like you’re carrying shadows that hold you back from your full voice and expression: this one is for you!

As Rumi says, “where there is ruin, suspect treasure.”

Dive in loves the gold is waitinggggggg

Connect with Marina:

🐅 Marina's Instagram

Eclipse Season & The Virgo–Pisces Portal: Shape-Shifting, Service, and Expansion

YAY another series!

This week I was joined by astrologer + strategist Kessli Hall for a deep dive into the eclipses lighting up the Pisces–Virgo axis. Think of this as your Eclipse Survival Kit as equal parts cosmic forecast and grounded reflection on how these transits are showing up in our lives, our businesses, and our bodies.

From shape-shifting identities to the karmic purge of outdated systems, we explore what it really means to expand during a season where the sky is asking us to release, recalibrate, and reimagine what service and leadership look like.

Whether you’re eclipse-curious or you’re already tracking every degree in your chart, this conversation will help you ground into safety while leaving space for the quantum leaps eclipse season always delivers.

What we unpacked:

🐟 Why this eclipse season feels like a time-bend portal (and how to work with it)

🐟 The Virgo–Pisces polarity: perfection vs. surrender, doing vs. being

🐟 What Saturn in Pisces + Jupiter in Cancer are asking us to embody right now

🐟 How eclipses show up in business: goals, launches, and capacity to hold more

🐟 Practical reflection + journaling prompts for navigating eclipse energy

🐟 Why “service ≠ worth” is the medicine of this season

Journaling Prompts from Maia:

1. What identity, belief, or pattern are you ready to release in service of who you’re becoming?
2. Where are you clinging to Virgo energy (perfectionism, hyper-criticism, endless doing)?
3. Where can you invite in more Pisces energy (trust, surrender, imagination)?
4. Where are you equating your worth with productivity or output?
5. What log are you ready to place on the collective fire of storytelling during this eclipse season?

Key Dates to Know:

• September 7th → Full Lunar Eclipse in Pisces (Blood Moon)
• September 21st → Partial Solar Eclipse in Virgo (aligns with the Equinox)

Resources & Links

• Connect with Kessli on IG
• Kesslihall.com

So many of us live in functional freeze without even realizing it — stuck between “go, go, go” and total shutdown. Outwardly, we look like we’re functioning fine. Inside, we feel numb, resistant, disconnected, and unable to truly rest or create.

In this deeply grounding conversation, I am joined once again by my beloved sister and somatic therapist, Isabel Taylor, to unpack what functional freeze actually is, why society depends on it, and how you can begin to notice its signs in your own life.

Together, we explore:

🧊 What “functional freeze” looks and feels like day-to-day

🧊  The nervous system mechanics behind it (sympathetic + parasympathetic blending)

🧊  Why rest often feels unsafe — and how to prepare your body for it

🧊 The difference between capacity vs. “regulation” (and why capacity is the key)

🧊 How capitalism keeps us outsourcing dopamine instead of resourcing oxytocin

🧊 Practical ways to support yourself when you notice freeze tendencies: gentle movement, orienting, breath, social connection, and more

🧊 Why expanding capacity (not eliminating stress) is what allows you to hold more of the life you desire

This episode will give you the language and tools to recognize functional freeze in yourself, understand it with compassion, and take small, powerful steps toward building safety and capacity.

Join us for A State To Create!

Our 7-week program blending somatic practice and business mentorship is back for round 5! Learn to expand your capacity, dissolve shame, and create from a grounded, regulated state. 

Join the next round here!

Welcome to Creative Living After Hours, where we remember how to tell the truth.

In this first episode, Lois + Maia sit down (chaotic, laughing hysterically, and fully unfiltered as per usual) to talk about what it really means to live creatively — not just to make things, but to inhabit life through the lens of creativity as a FORCE.

We cover:

💧 Why “creativity as optimization” isn’t it (and why we’re not here to give you 5 hacks to be more creative)

💧 What happens when you stop measuring your creativity by output and start measuring it by how alive you feel

💧 The myth of “writer’s block” (hint: it’s your nervous system, not your lack of ideas)

💧 Why creativity lives in the body — especially in the sacral energy center — and how to tend to it

💧 How to create a relationship with your voice so it actually sticks around

💧 The messy, chaotic, fertile “mud” that precedes every evolution (and why we love it)

💧 What truth in creative expression actually means — and how to return to it when you’ve been parroting the voices of others

💧 The role of fear in art + how to build a relationship with it instead of fighting it

In Creative Living After Hours, we’re not talking about “creative performance”. This space is about stepping into the vortex of creativity as a way of being, letting it pull you in, and learning how to dance with the chaos instead of resisting it.

Your practice for this episode:

We’re sharing a page from the Creative Living Workbook (Vol. 1) — 12 daily prompts to help you build a sacred writing practice.

Choose one prompt a day, write freely (unedited + uncensored), and see what happens when you commit to a conversation with your own voice.

✨ To get the workbook page, DM Maia or Lois on Instagram with the word AFTERHOURS and we’ll send it to you.

Or, you can also get it right here.

SO MUCH LOVE,

L + M

Stories are not just the way we make sense of our lives, they are the way we shape CULTURE. In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend and muse Chelsea Riffe, podcast coach, host of In My Non-Expert Opinion and Expansion round 4 queen to explore how using your voice goes far beyond visibility.

Who else but the queen of resonance herself to talk about how YOUR story matters. We talk about how our voices ripple into culture, how to recognize when your body is asking you to pivot, and how Chelsea herself trusted her inner signals mid-launch (During her time on the Expansion Mastermind!) doubling her results OVERNIGHT while creating deeper alignment with her work.

Ugh, and so much more. Where to even begin but luckily I don’t have to tell you anything else because you can dive in RIGHT HEREEEEEEEEE ❤️‍🔥

This conversation is a reminder that each time you speak your truth, you’re adding another log to the collective fire of storytelling. You’re shaping what we’ll remember, what we’ll inherit, and what culture will carry forward.

Your voice is not just personal expression. It is up to YOU if you want to shape culture or let silence decide for you.

The only question is: what story will you tell?

Inside the episode:

• The difference between visibility and being known
• How storytelling shapes culture and legacy
• Why mid-pivot moments are often the most expansive
• The body’s role in guiding aligned decisions
• How your voice creates ripple effects beyond your personal brand

Connect with Chels

• Instagram: @chelseariffe
• Podcast: In My Non-Expert Opinion
• Website: chelseariffe.com

Pitch Perfect

Okay who’s coming to round 4 of her signature program Pitch Perfect??? I AM 🤍 and If you want to be there, Chels has given us a 100$ code! Use T2TPODCAST at checkout, see you there!

• Use code T2T to join: Pitch Perfect

ALRIGHT HOLD MY MATCHATINI: There’s a version of you who says they want more money. I love that for ya. And then there's your nervous system, who is simply: terrified of MORE. 

In this episode with your fav genz-ers we unpack why more wealth isn’t always a full-body yes, even when you consciously desire it. We’re talking about capacity over currency, and what actually happens in your body when expansion arrives.

This conversation feels especially alive right now because so many ppl in creative entrepreneurship are scaling fast (bigger launches, more visibility, more responsibility) without expanding their nervous system capacity alongside it. 

I’ve lived this! Six-figure launches that felt like collapse instead of celebration (we tell the story duh). Growth that triggered fear instead of safety. This episode is about the somatic side of success, in my opinion, the part no one teaches you in business school (I do in mine of course)

You’ll walk away understanding how your nervous system shapes your relationship with money, how to increase your capacity to hold more without burning out, and how to build a creative business rooted in somatic success, embodied leadership, and sustainable expansion.

Listen when

🌹 You’re saying you want more… but your body feels tight when it arrives.

🌹 you’ve hit a financial milestone and felt panic instead of peace.

🌹 you’re building a creative business and want your success to feel safe.

🌹 you’re ready to expand your capacity, not just your income.

We dive into

• Capacity over currency — why your ability to hold more matters more than the number in your Stripe account.
• The hidden agenda behind money — the unconscious emotional need you’ve attached to financial success (and how it’s driving your behavior).
• Nervous system regulation & wealth — how fight, flight, and freeze show up in creative entrepreneurship.
• Why big months can trigger collapse — the somatic crash that often follows expansion.
• Scarcity vs. somatic safety — what it actually means to feel safe with more visibility, responsibility, and profit.
• Expanding capacity in business strategy — how to scale your creative business without overriding your body.
• Identity, shame & entrepreneurship — how early money narratives shape your current income ceiling.
• Somatic success as a creative process — building an aligned business where ease and profit co-exist.

Resources

🌹 First, of course we will see you in ASTC, here's your invite. 

🌹 My infamous x3 6 figure launches in 2025 essay here.

🌹 GREECE with Isabel and me (ONE SPOT LEFT!)

🌹 My business mastermind Expansion (booked out but join the waitlist here!)

Alright my sweeeet sweet loves, if this episode resonated, share it with a woman building her own version of wealth ♡   and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on somatic strategy, capacity, and creative business meowww

AAAAAAND e’re kicking off the year with one of my favorite humans on the planet and everyone’s favorite internet baddie: Isabel Taylor, my former therapist turned bestie and co-creator of A State to Create. This episode starts as a conversation about planning and quickly becomes what it actually needs to be: a real, grounded unpacking of clarity, vision, and what happens to your brain when the world (and your life) feels like too much.

You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how the default mode network, reticular activating system, and stress chemistry shape your creative process, plus AS ALWYAS practical tools to restore safety, widen your window of tolerance, and take micro-movements toward your vision without collapse.

Most people try to “think” their way into clarity. More journaling. More questions. More lists. More planning. But clarity isn’t a mindset hack — it’s neurophysiological. When your nervous system is under pressure, your brain prioritizes survival over future-thinking, which means the part of you that’s meant to imagine, plan, and create goes offline. We talk about what’s happening in the brain when you feel frozen, overwhelmed, or stuck in the “should / would / could” loop — and why “seeing possibility” is a luxury only a safe nervous system can access.

Listen when you’re

🐅 trying to plan your year but your brain keeps short-circuiting into overwhelm

🐅 sick of bullshit “clarity” content that ignores your nervous system

🐅 feeling frozen, foggy, or stuck in the should/would/could loop

🐅 ready to create from safety, not urgency (aka: somatic success)

🐅 feeling super nerdy and wanna learn about all the different parts of the brain that trigger clarity

We dive into:

🐅 Clarity is a state, not a thought — why your best ideas can’t land when your system feels unsafe.

🐅 Survival mode vs. future mode — how stress hijacks your brain’s capacity for vision, imagination, and planning.

🐅 Default Mode Network (DMN) — the “future self + possibility” network, and what it looks like when it’s offline.

🐅 Reticular Activating System (RAS) — the bouncer of perception: how your brain filters reality based on what it believes is possible.

🐅 Norepinephrine + focus — the “clarity chemistry” behind tunnel vision, brain fog, and strategic thinking.

🐅 Window of tolerance = creative capacity — how much you can hold before you tip into urgency, collapse, or shutdown.

🐅 Grounding + orienting (Somatic Experiencing® tools) — simple practices that restore safety fast (and actually work).

🐅 Micro-movements (titration) in creative entrepreneurship — why tiny actions build real momentum, identity, and nervous system capacity.

Links & Resources

→ Connect with Isabel on Instagram: @isabelgerorginataylor

→ Join us for ASTC! 25% spots already GONE

→ Snag one of the last spots for the retreat

If this episode hit: share it to your stories/friends and tag us so we can repost + say hi!!!

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts / Spotify — leaving a review helps this work reach the people who need it most. ♡

In this episode, I sit down with our resident astrologer / resident witch Kessli Hall, for a 2026 Insight. MY BABES, next year is giving baddie Olympics.

We zoom out to the big collective shifts: outer planets moving from water + earth into fire + air (yin → yang), aka: the end of “dreaming about it” and the beginning of doing it. We talk embodied leadership, why being seen trying is about to be cool again, why collaboration becomes non-negotiable, and what all of this means for business, visibility, community, and your message.

What we cover

• The collective weather report for 2026: from dreaming → doing
• Pluto in Aquarius + the collapse of guru/pyramid models (hello horizontal leadership)
• Saturn + Neptune in Aries: action-based authority, not status
• Uranus in Gemini: the future of message, media, storytelling, and “made by human”
• Jupiter in Leo: visibility, creativity, joy, and leadership as life-force
• Mercury retrogrades in water signs (check-in seasons, not “bad luck”)
• Why collaboration is basically mandatory, and why it’s the fastest portal to expansion

Links / Ways to work with Kess

• Equinox Mastermind (intimate leadership + identity work)
• Architected (tools + resources + ongoing support)
• The Mirror (her astrology-to-business AI tool + transit prompts)

PART TWOOOOO BINSHES!!! Too juicy to do one. In this episode, I sit with Ximena again for Part II of our conversation on eros, power, and what it really means to be fully alive in your, YOUR body.

We go into the myth of Lilith and Eve, why women’s desire has been treated as dangerous for thousands of years, fantasy novels as portals for reclaiming sensual power, and how witches, grandmothers, and “too much” women were historically punished for knowing too much and feeling too deeply. 

We also explore capitalism’s invisible pact with women’s bodies, the difference between reclaiming power with others vs. climbing into patriarchal power over others, and why pleasure is political, ecological, and revolutionary.

UGH! 

We talk about:

🦢 Lilith, Eve, the apple, and why “seeing the unseen” has always been punished in women

🦢  Witches, grandmothers, and the way women who know the earth get exiled and called crazy

🦢  The capitalist pact between productive work and reproductive labor (and how women’s bodies got drafted into it)

🦢  Fantasy novels, fairy smut, and why women are flocking back to sensual worlds written by women

🦢  Pleasure as a measure of freedom, and how systems profit from us being numbed out and exhausted

🦢  Power vs. patriarchal power: hierarchy, pedestals, and why some “feminine power” spaces still feel masculine

🦢  The body as first land: sovereignty over our flesh, our boundaries, our pleasure, and our aliveness

🦢 Eros as life force, present-moment pleasure vs. performing an optimized self

This is a conversation about women, yes—but really it’s about every human who’s tired of being OPTIMIZED and controlled, and is ready to remember that feeling deeply is not a liability. It’s the revolution baby!!!!

Hope you LOVE Ximena as much as I do bc I'm joining her ROOTED IMPACT group and so should youuuu!

OH MY GOD what a juicyyyy episode! I sat down with someone who has shaped entire eras of my life: philosopher, ecosomatics thinker, and regenerative guide Ximena Gabilondo!

What begins as a reunion between past-life versions of ourselves ( jungle farming Maia and ecofeminist-activist Ximena) quickly becomes a masterclass in ecology, embodiment, and personal power. Together we explored why so many of us feel disconnected from our bodies, our creativity, the earth, and our own desire, and what it actually takes to reclaim the natural intelligence living inside us.

Ximena unpacks ecofeminism in a way that lands not in the mind but in the BONES: how the violence, extraction, and objectification done to the earth mirrors what has been done to women’s bodies, and why liberation can only happen through the body, not around it.

The conversation travels through:

🦢 The split between mind and body that created our current systems

🦢  Why optimization culture is just capitalism wearing yoga pants

🦢  The invisible ways we treat ourselves as products instead of living beings

🦢  Reclamation as a lived, somatic practice (not a concept)

🦢  The erotic as the force of life, creation, and connection

🦢  Ecosomatics and remembering your body as part of the earth

🦢  How patriarchy and capitalism depend on your disconnection

🦢  The power (and threat) of women who feel pleasure without permission

🦢 Lilith, Eve, witches, and the ancient fear of women who can see

This is one of those episodes that rearranges your insides, I AM SURE. You may want a notebook. You may want to lie on the floor. You may want to leave your whole life.

And that's ok because that's what Ximena does to our psyches.

Lil Glossary:

🦢 Ecofeminism: How the domination of land and the domination of women come from the same worldview, and how seeing this changes everything.

🦢 Ecosomatics: Reconnecting to the body as land, as ecosystem, as a living landscape with its own intelligence.

Catch part II for: Eco–erótica

☁️ Instagram: __ximenaximena__

☁️ Podcast: velvet philosophy (INCREDIBLE)

☁️ Join Rooted Impact, her course (I'LL BE THERE!)