Thought To Thing

WE'RE BACK IN TEH ROOM and if you've been "too busy to create," stuck in front of a blank page, or scared that making things will drain you, this one is for you.

Here's the reframe that changes everything: creation doesn't cost you capacity, it's where your capacity comes from.

In this In the Room episode, I take you inside two coaching rooms in Expansion that had the exact same conversation two days apart, and the question that made me rethink something I'd believed my whole life. We get into the difference between creating and producing, why desire is generative and not lack, the nervous-system reason the freeze only melts when you make something, and the metaphor that reframes the whole thing: you are not a well you have to ration. You're a spring.

We dive into

○ Why "I don't have the capacity to create" is almost always a different problem than you think

○ Creating vs producing (and why one drains you and one fills you)

○ Desire as generative overflow and LIFE FORCE

○ The nervous system reason creation melts the freeze (and why you can't wait to feel ready first)

○ How to stop rationing your own life force

○ Banks for the river: how structure serves flow instead of killing it

○ What actually drains your creative capacity (hint: it's not the creating)

○ Your 30-minute somatic-gym homework

Key points

○ "I don't have the capacity to create" usually means "I don't have the energy to produce." Producing drains you. Creating, from desire, with no outcome attached, fills you back up.

○ Desire isn't a hole you're trying to fill. It's overflow. It's life wanting more life through you, and a depleted body can't even produce it, so wanting again is proof you're coming back online.

○ You don't melt the freeze so you can create. You create to melt the freeze. The making is the medicine.

○ You're not a well you have to ration. You're a spring. It flows because flowing is its nature, and refusing to flow is the only thing that makes it stagnant.

○ Let structure (your calendar, your content pillars) be the banks of the river, not the river itself.

○ What actually drains you is the hovering: the planning, the "I'll do it tomorrow," the scrolling for inspiration. Not the creating.

References, Rabbit holes

• Alexis Bates, the Substack passage on desire ("one sign your body is coming back to life... desire is the sound of a body safe enough to yearn for more")
• Napoleon Hill, the idea of a burning desire
• Alan Watts, the universe experiencing itself through you
• Shakti, and the Kundalini and Tantric view of creative energy as the generative life force
• The nervous system: survival states, the freeze response, and the default mode network (future-visioning, imagination)
• Somatic experiencing, and treating creation as a "somatic gym"
• EFT: the "my ideas can take up space" tap

Mentioned and Linked

• My previous episode, Enter the Forest
• Expansion, my mastermind (doors open mid-to-late November, last round sold out all 50 spots in 3 hours, Volume 8 next). Join the waitlist.
• Creative Living

Journal Prompts

Where in your life have you been treating yourself like a well, waiting until you feel full enough to deserve to make the thing?

And what would you make this week, if you knew you were a spring?

Write it. Then go make the tiniest version of it. No one has to read it. The mission is just to prove to your own body that the water is still moving.

love you xxxx

Enter the dark forest: what happens when you lose the path, when certainty disappears, when all the maps burn and the paths are gone and life asks you to sit in uncertainty. THIS moment right here, holds the treasure you’ve been craving to find all your life.

After four of the hardest months of my life, I'm SO back and we go deep into the mythology of the descent, from Dante and Carl Jung to the descent of Inanna and Clarissa Pinkola Estés and the river beneath the river, then into the nervous system science of how you actually hold the unknown: titration, pendulation, and real capacity conversations from Somatic Experiencing Principles and Peter Levine's work in Waking The Tiger.

Part confession, part map, part permission slip, for anyone in a season of grief, change, creative block, or quiet reinvention.

If this season has felt like getting lost, good. You might be exactly where the biggest becoming happens: underground.

We dive into

🪽 Why uncertainty is not the problem, and what actually is

🪽 All the teaaaaa on my life

🪽 The difference between losing your vision and losing the path (you can keep one without the other)

🪽 Capacity, redefined: not how much good you can hold, but how much uncertainty you can hold without collapsing

🪽 The somatic tools: titration, pendulation, and "petting the tiger"

🪽 The mythology of the descent: Dante, the hero's journey, Inanna, the river beneath the river, the desert, la noche oscura del alma, and Jungian individuation

🪽 Business as a body of work, and what survives when everything else burns

🪽 My thesis: there is no fear, only unexamined capacity

🪽 Lots of rabbitholes

Bits and pieces

🪽 Uncertainty is not weakness or failure. In every myth, the descent into the dark comes right before the transformation. It is the route, not the detour.

🪽 You can lose the path and still hold the vision. Losing your clarity is not the same as losing your direction.

🪽 Real capacity is the ability to hold uncertainty without collapsing back into the old, smaller, familiar version of your life.

🪽 You expand drop by drop (titration), and you heal by swinging between contraction and expansion without getting stuck at either end (pendulation).

🪽 When everything dissolves, something survives. Find it. That is who you actually are.

🪽 The dark is not dead time. It is harvest time. Go and gather your bones.

References, rabbit holes

🪽 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (Inferno) and the opening image of the selva oscura, the dark wood

🪽 Joseph Campbell, the hero's and heroine's journey, and entering the forest where there is no path

🪽 Inanna's Descent to the Underworld (ancient Sumerian myth)

🪽 Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing: titration and pendulation

🪽 Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine

🪽 Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: el río abajo río (the river beneath the river), La Loba and La Huesera, the bone woman

🪽 San Juan de la Cruz, Dark Night of the Soul / la noche oscura del alma

🪽 Carl Jung: individuation, the night sea journey, the shadow, and enantiodromia (via Heraclitus)

🪽 Shiva as Nataraja, and samhara (regenerative destruction)

🪽 EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique / tapping)

🪽 The "upper limit" concept (Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap)

Mentioned and linked

• My free three months off guide on substack
• The plan your quarter / plan your year with me template + video 
• Expansion, my mastermind (doors opening soon!!!!)
• The Shapeshifter episode

Journal Prompt

When everything I built turned to ash, what did not burn?

When the whole structure dissolved, what stayed?

Who are you when nothing external is telling you who to be? Write until you find the part of you that is still holding the image. That is the one we build the next chapter from.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome back
 01:11 Why I disappeared: the creative digestion
 03:00 The summer that shook the whole puzzle: grief, home, and what I'm still metabolizing
 07:00 Beauty and chaos in the same breath
 09:30 Uncertainty is not the problem: Your relationship to it is.
 11:13 Beyond basic nervous system: into advanced somatics
 18:00 Capacity, redefined
 22:20 UNFURLING
 24:00 Titration: expanding one drop at a time
 40:00 Learning how to “Pet the tiger”
 47:00 Pendulation: the rhythm of expansion and contraction
 56:55 Dissolution: what really happens inside the cocoon
 1:03:00 Destruction as a sacred energy
 1:06:00 Business as a body of work
 1:10:00 There is no fear, only unexamined capacity
 1:14:02 The mythology of the dark forest: Dante and Joseph Campbell
 1:22:00 Inanna's descent to the underworld
 1:33:00 El río abajo río and La Loba (Clarissa Pinkola Estés)
 1:40:00 The desert, la noche oscura del alma, and Jung's individuation
 1:45:00 The gathering: what did you come here to find?
 1:49:23 The crossroad: expansion in all directions
 1:54:00 Still in the forest, and strangely at peace

What actually happens when you stop trying to do all the things, and go all in on just ONE offer?

Alexa joined Expansion last May not even following me, having read the sales page exactly once. Eight months later she had a completely different business. This is that story.

In this first episode of Expanded Stories  (a new series where I sit down with Expansion alumni and let them tell it in their own words) Alexa walks us through what it actually looked and felt like to retire a $5k/month offer ecosystem (and mentality), go all in on one signature program, and build a pre-launch that sold $22k before doors even opened.

(I’ve NEVER shared so much about my launch methodology outside of Expansion!)

Spoiler: she cried retiring the intensive. It was uncomfortable. Her nervous system screamed. And then it worked.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why having multiple offers was actually keeping Alexa scattered — and what the mirror moment looked like

🍑 The tantric relationship with one offer — what it means to give it everything and have it give you everything back

🍑 The day she cried retiring a $5k/month intensive (and what happened next)

🍑 How to set up a waitlist that does the heavy lifting — the strategy is stupidly simple, gave Lex my whole strategy and now she sold $22k before doors even opened.

🍑 Why your offers compete with each other and how one offer fixes the confusion instantly

🍑 Capacity planning and yearly vision vs monthly chaos — the nervous system piece nobody talks about

🍑 Integration: what it actually means to do less, make more, and not feel guilty about it

🍑 Why generational wealth lives in your one signature offer

You’ve been warned:

Expansion (my business mastermind) opens its doors June 2nd. If you’re reading this, we are very close.

Every round has sold out in hours, so if you want to come play in Expansion v7 be on this waitlist and see you June 2nd on the applications ♡ love you all!!

About Alexa:

• Instagram: @alexacoaches
• One of One doors open: June 17th! here's the waitlist

Expansion queens:

Did you take Expansion and would love to come talk about your Expansion story?? girl DM me. Love you so much

So two Venus in Capricorn walk into a bar and sit down to talk about well basically everything to the point that we forgot we were recording a podcast.

Desiree Pais is the founder of Benshen: a community, course, and movement that started with six women on a yoga mat in a Williamsburg living room while she kicked her ex-boyfriend out every Saturday morning. This vision grew to 30 women, then 40, then the pandemic hit and 500 people signed up overnight, and she's here to spill the whole tea on Benshen's origin story and how thoughts TRULY turn into things. She's truly one of the most grounded-yet-wildly-alive women I've had the pleasure of talking to and this convo really deserves you to make a bevy grab a cig and sit down for it.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 How Benshen started with 6 women in Desi’s apartment/How expansion started with 5 women on zoom (yep the parallel lives are eerie in this episode)

🍑 The Mykonos files, the Berlin files (you'll understand when you hear it)

🍑 Why chaos is feminine and containers are masculine, and why you need both (Hi Birjiwan♡)

🍑 The urgency addiction: getting addicted to rock bottom as your fuel source (and how to stop that!)

🍑 How to call your power back, but also how to HOLD it when it comes

🍑 Descartes, philosophy, the mind-body split, and how it explains basically everything wrong with the world

🍑 Priestess archetypes hidden in plain sight: Persephone, the divine feminine, and reclaiming power

🍑 Feminine rage as a force for building, not destroying

🍑 Astrology, Venus in Capricorn, and why two psychopaths built their businesses exactly like this

The line from this episode that lives in my head:

"The fastest way to become powerful is to keep your word. The fastest way to lose power is to not do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it."

About Desiree:

• Instagram: @desireepais
• Benshen: benshen.co 
• Benshen membership 

Referenced in this episode:

• Becoming Supernatural — Joe Dispenza
• Women Who Run with the Wolves — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• When God Was a Woman — Merlin Stone
• Mary Magdalene Revealed — Meggan Watterson
• The Magdalen Manuscript
• Dr. Carla Ionescu — history podcast
• Birjiwan — our mutual connection ❤️

Also since we are here, you already know:

Expansion Vol. 7 (my 4-month deep business and growth mastermind, starting in September) is launching next week. Applications open June 2nd, 5pm Europe / 11am New York

Make sure to join the waitlist right here if you're coming. All rounds have sold out in a few hours.

Okay hold my cigarette: you do deep, transformational work. Your know your shit. You know your body of work motherfucking changes and transforms people. But every time you sit down to write your landing page — or someone asks "so what do you do?" — you freeze.

Because what you actually help people with isn't a three-month result. It's a seed. An identity. A becoming that takes time to fully bloom. And your marketing brain keeps asking: how do I sell that?

This week inside Expansion, a marketing strategist came to the hot seat with exactly this question. And what cracked open is what this whole episode is about.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why you're not selling results, you're selling a seed (and how to actually say that)

🍑 The one step ahead reframe, why thinking that you need to be an "expert" is holding you back from meeting your most aligned clients 

🍑 How your biggest mess-ups make you more qualified, not less (my $25k fee LLC tea)

🍑 The identity shift: selling the becoming, not the deliverables

🍑 The testimonial prompt that writes your copy for you

🍑 Your unique sauce: why the HOW is what makes you irreplaceable

🍑 Why your most human moments are your best marketing assets, always

Journal prompt from this episode:

Who do your clients become after working with you?

Not what results they get. Not how much money they make. Who are they becoming?

If you don't know yet: go ask them. Their words are your marketing copy.

Referenced in this episode:

• Ep. 02 — Embodied Marketing: Becoming the Invitation
• Capacity Over Currency — the essay
• Expansion Vol. 7 — applications open June 2nd, 5pm Europe / 11am New York 

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode?

DM me intheroom on IG for the chatbox! Love ya!!

A fun one. Your time scarcity is keeping you out of the life you desire. Stop saying "when I have time" You have time. In this episode, you’ll see me work 3h weeks during my busiest season all year, and manage my ENERGY instead.

If I gave you infinite time right now, you still wouldn't do the million things you say you'd do with it. Because the problem was never time. It was always energy.

In this episode I recorded on the go (airport, Ibiza, in between) I walk you through the reframe that completely changed how I run my business while traveling, and the simple framework I use to stay in the game without draining myself.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why time management is the wrong game entirely

🍑 An honest (and chaotic) BTS of a 3h week during my busiest season

🍑 Energy as your real currency: where it leaks and how to get it back

🍑 The generate/respond framework: the simplest way to stay productive on the go (FIRST TIME OUTSIDE OF EXPANSION!!)

🍑 How to work from your phone without guilt (destigmatizing it, for real)

🍑 Deep work deep rest, how to truly enjoy a vacation

Journal prompt from this episode:

Where is your energy leaking right now?

Not your time. Your energy. Name three things:

tasks, relationships, habits, open loops, whatever it is that is draining you every day.

Then ask: what's one thing I can stop, delegate, or automate this week to get that energy back?

Referenced in this episode:

• Episode 01 — How to Make Responsibility Sexy (and Double Your Life With It)
• My VISION workshop (Free)
• Expansion Mastermind (I’m opening the doors soooooooon just sayen)

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode?

DM me intheroom all together for the questionbox ♡

DO WE LIKE THIS FORMAT??? let me know in the comments!

What if your marketing had nothing to do with what you post or sell — and everything to do with who you are?

Most people think their marketing problem is a content problem (ie wrong niche, wrong hooks, wrong posting schedule). I hear this all the time. But embodied marketing is built on a different premise: people don't buy your offer, they buy you. 

More specifically, they buy the transformation you've already lived. 

When your nervous system, your lifestyle, your story, and your message are all saying the same thing, that's when marketing stops feeling like work and starts feeling like showing up as YOU. easy peasy.

Becoming the Invitation is what happens when embodiment meets visibility. It's the moment your content stops being a strategy and starts being evidence: proof that the life you're selling is actually possible, because you're already living it. This is the only marketing philosophy taught inside Expansion, and this episode breaks down exactly what it looks and feels like in practice. For coaches, service providers, creators, and anyone who has ever wondered why their marketing feels flat even when the strategy is right, this episode is for ya.

In this episode we go into:

🍑 Why most people aren't failing at marketing — they're failing at being

🍑 What embodiment actually means (it's not a vibe, an aesthetic, or a matcha latte)

🍑 The difference between content and evidence — and why your Instagram should be documentation, not performance

🍑 Why you can sell shit on a cracker if you're embodied

🍑 What Becoming the Invitation actually looks like in practice

🍑 Why good marketing repels — and why that's the whole point

🍑 The “daddy essay” concept and why long-form is your best marketing asset

🍑 The hidden block keeping you from showing up — and why waiting until you're “ready” is the problem

Journal prompt from this episode:

Where in your life and work are you already living the transformation you teach — but not showing it?

Warmup prompts to get you there (grab your journal, set a timer for 10 minutes, write without stopping):

1. What are the things I could talk about forever?
2. What are the questions I get asked about the most?
3. My transformation in a nutshell — hi, I'm [name], I went from ___ to ___
4. What gets me fired up?
5. What has created resonance in the past — the things I talked about that I thought were “off brand” and people went crazy about?
6. When I write, what do I write about the most?
7. What do I read and research the most?

Be brutally honest with yourself. Peel back the layers until you get to the root of why your work matters — and why it needs visibility instead of you needing the visibility.

Referenced in this episode:

• Episode 01 — How to Make Responsibility Sexy (and Double Your Life With It) 
• Capacity Over Currency — the Substack essay 
• Expansion Mastermind 
• Sovereign by Ines 

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode?

DM me intheroom on IG (: (@maiaben)

NEW SERIES HELLO WE ARE SO BACK?! What comes to body when you hear the word responsibility?

For most of us, it's not good. It's heavy. It's more money, more responsibility said like a warning. It's the nervous system bracing for something it doesn't think it can hold.

In this first episode of In the Room (a new series where I bring the juiciest conversations from my coaching practice into this room) we crack open one of the most quietly life-changing reframes I've ever sat with: what if responsibility wasn't a burden, but a doorway? a doorway to MORE!

We go into:

🍑 Why "fear of commitment" is usually fear of responsibility in disguise

🍑 The etymology that changed everything — response + ability (ty Ximena)

🍑 Why freedom without responsibility is just escapism (and the Swami in the Himalayas who told me so)

🍑 Hidden agendas — the emotional need you've secretly attached to your money goal, and why it will sabotage you every time

🍑 Why you can't grow what you can't track — and you can't deepen what you can't respond to

🍑 A journaling prompt to find exactly where you've been avoiding your own life

Journal prompt from this episode:

What would my life look like if I accepted responsibility for the areas I've been avoiding?

🍑 Divide your life into areas — finances, love, body, business, relationships, creativity — and rate yourself 0–10 on how willing you are to respond to each one right now.

Referenced in this episode:

• Ximena's course I'm taking — Rooted Impact (say hi for meee)
• Episode: Why More Wealth Isn't a Full Body Yes 
• Free Vision Workshop 

Want to ask a question for a future In the Room episode? DM me (@maiaben) the word intheroom (altogether) and I'll send you the question box! 

And as always:

• If you want to be in the room, but like IN THE ROOM FOR REAL, I'll leave you the Expansion Mastermind waitlist right here (every cohort has sold out in a couple of hours, so def be on the waitlist if you're thinking of joining)

In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Emmie Rae — writer, teacher, founder of The Daily Rest, and one of the clearest voices I know on rest, receptivity, and doing hard things gently. Emmie lives in Tokyo and has built a whole world around softness, devotion, and the kind of spaciousness that doesn’t make you less ambitious but makes you more HONEST.

If you’ve been rethinking success, craving more spaciousness, or trying to build a creative business that doesn’t cost you your aliveness, this episode is for you. 

This is a beautiful one for anyone building a creative business, deepening their relationship to their voice, or learning how to make expansion feel safe in the body.

We dive into

🪽 Doing hard things gently — using fear as a lighthouse instead of a stop sign, and learning how to let growth be challenging without making it violent.

🪽  The addiction to edge — why expansion can become addictive, and what it means to actively choose sweetness, slowness, and enoughness after a big season of becoming.

🪽  Rest as a creative practice — not rest as optimization, but rest as a portal into intuition, nervous system regulation, and real creative leadership.

🪽  Soft business and spacious success — building a business that supports your life instead of consuming it, and refusing the cultural script that says scale must come at the expense of softness.

🪽 Nervous system capacity and business growth — what happens when momentum arrives before your body feels safe holding it, and why so much “self-sabotage” is actually a capacity issue.

🪽  Creative entrepreneurship without force — choosing devotion over hustle, staying with your work for the long haul, and building slowly enough that your whole self can come with you.

🪽 Writing as medicine and method — how journaling, daily writing, and long-form expression become a practice of self-trust, marketing, and creative process all at once.

🪽  Finding your actual voice — shedding the styles, identities, and communities you once wrote to belong to, and returning to the way you naturally see and say things.

Links & Resources

→ You CANNOT MISS Emmie's YIN immersion!

→ Connect with Emmie Rae: The Daily Rest Studio + Japan retreats at her site.  

→ Follow Emmie on Instagram: @thedailyrest.

→ This is where we met, at her Onsen retreat. Could not recommend it more you guys.

→ Read Emmie’s long-form writing on Substack, where she writes essays and reflections through The Salon / The Deep Rest Salon.  

→ If this episode moved something in you, share it with a friend and tag us so we can see what landed!

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