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!)

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

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 WAITLIST IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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