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

(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

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!