Building Capacity for Your Dreams

How to identify your edges, widen your capacity, hold more without doing more, and expand smart.

So much of the foundational work that I do with my clients is capacity building. 

You can think about your capacity as your container to hold your life—And I mean the full spectrum of life…your deaths, your relationships, your career, your wealth, your medicine, your magic, your creativity, children, your dreams, your emotions, your thoughts and beliefs, consciousness, your expression, etc, etc, etc…

So many of us have big, bold, beautiful, expansive dreams that we wish to weave into the world. 

And maybe you look at those dreams and think that they are inevitable and not so big at all, it is just up to Divine Timing. 

Or maybe just the feeling of one of your dreams sends you into a spiral of fear, insecurity, doubt, and imposture syndrome. 

These are reflections of your capacity. 

Pause right now and write down three dreams you have for your life.

The first dream I want you to write down is something that feels easy. Maybe it’s a creative project you are working on now, and you know it’s just a matter of time before it births into the world. 

With the second dream you write down, I want you to stretch yourself…let this be outside your comfort zone, but within the realm of possibility that feels achievable to you now. Maybe this is a dream you’ve been holding for a long time, but there are still some fears or contractive feelings that arise when you feel into it. Maybe you’ve just been telling yourself you don’t have the time, sabotaging your expansion, but you know you can birth this dream. This dream should feel easy to peer into, but perhaps some hesitation or resistance arises.

And with the third dream you write down, make this extraordinarily expansive and far out. Break every glass ceiling. Write down something that feels way outside your comfort zone and big. Maybe this is the most significant and longest dream you’ve ever had, or maybe it just popped in from Divine Destiny asking you to claim it, but it feels scary or impossible. Maybe you even feel shame or embarrassment to write it down. All of this is good information!

The first dream feels light and easy. You don’t need to stretch your capacity to hold this, as your capacity is already a match. You can feel this by how your nervous system responds to the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic work required to bring this dream into form. 

With the second dream, you feel an edge. Your capacity needs to stretch a bit to match this vision and you have some alignment and clearing work to do to step into it.

With the third dream, your nervous system probably has an immediate response of contraction or impossibility. This is because your capacity cannot show up for this dream at this time. This is ok. These are my favorite dream seeds to work with clients on because tapping into this level of dreaming awakens so much in the body of an oracle, dreamer, and birther of worlds, AND shows us exactly the root tending work needed to refertilize a foundation for this dream to plant into the body. The contraction that can arise with these dreams is not because you don’t desire it, nor does it mean the dream is not meant for you, but you have more capacity-building to do before this dream can anchor. It may take years, so be patient and stay the course. That is often because these bigger dreams have a divine timing factor at play as well. These are legacy dreams that your whole life readys you for. But when there is this much contraction and “far away-ness” between you and a dream, there will be many thresholds to cross before you can hold it. This means more to let go of, things to let die, identities to crumble, and initiations to walk through and step fully into your power as a birther of this prophecy.

Whatever visions we want to materialize must match our current capacity, or we must choose to widen that capacity to match them. This is foundational.

In this piece, I am going to share with you ways you can focus on building your capacity on a physical, emotional, mental, and energetic level to actually root, birth, and hold the visions you have for your life. Because you can’t create from vision alone—it is your sacred body temple that must lead the way.

Physical Capacity - 

When wanting to hold more life, we have to be strong enough to carry it. When I was living in Santa Fe, I was experiencing a lot of issues with my lungs—triggered by the high altitude, divorce, wildfires, and Covid—that I thought would never go away. The lungs quite literally hold our capacity for life, so I knew I was being called to expand my capacity. I’ve been studying and practicing breathwork since 2017, but I suddenly had to show up for this practice daily just to walk up my stairs or get through the day without coughing or wheezing. Eventually, I started running to build even more capacity for my breath. The breath is THE tool for our expansion, expression, and transformation. The deeper and fuller we can breathe, the more life we can take in, and the more life we can express. I spent a year purging from my lungs (grief) to create space for new life (joy) and my truth to anchor. This gave me much more capacity for change to align myself with bigger dreams.

Wherever you carry physical weakness or hold onto stuck energy limiting your capacity, it will manifest in contraction when moving through your expansion. Have you ever had an old injury surface or even a new injury come up when going through significant life shifts? That’s because our body is waking us up, calling us home deeper, in order to grow our capacity. Our physical capacity relates to how much we can hold and our capacity for boundaries, containment of our alchemical life processes, and more. We can not bypass the body when focusing on our creative growth, for it is the body that keeps a record of our experiences and stories and also allows us to hold and LIVE the material reality we are dreaming up!

Emotional Capacity - 

If we do not have the emotional capacity to be with our grief, our sadness, or our pain—which includes the ancestral and earth experiences we carry in our bones, cellular memory, and soul records—we will not have the capacity to hold more joy, pleasure, or life as we weave our dreams. Many humans (consciously and unconsciously) resist their expansion because they are resisting their contraction, meaning they are not allowing themselves to feel the depth that is being asked of them to create space for new life. Think of your body like a garden. Each day, life brings you new seeds of potential, you have to clear the soil to make room for these seeds, but also birds come and eat some of your seeds, rains come and demolish your sprouting seedlings, the wind blows everything about and makes a mess, and so on...you get the idea. Life happens. But without a proper drainage system, consistent watering, and necessary weeding to create space around the plants you really want to thrive, little will survive or will be fighting to survive. You must cultivate space to cleanse and clear for the new life to grow. If we are not feeling through and letting go of our stagnant emotions, we will not have space for new life.

Emotion cannot be metabolized with the mind, and this is where so many get stuck. The waters of our expereince must be fully felt and moved through the body. This is how our physical capacity gets minimized as well, as these emotions get stuck in the body and take up space. There are so many tools and practices that can support this, but if we do not want to deal with our pain, the ancestral stories, old heartache, fears, and insecurities, we may as well be telling the universe that we don't want to hold what we want to bring forth. Let go and let flow, and you’ll be amazed how much opens up.

Mental Capacity -

A sharp, clear, and focused mind is a great tool on our evolutionary journey. When our mind is clear, we can efficiently act on our intuition, make clear decisions, feel connected to our inner knowing and wisdom, and have trust in life. The problem is that we are overstimulated as a culture, taking in more information and excess stimulus every day than any of the previous humans/eras. This is the reason for a lot of attention deficits, mental disorders, and anxiety. Our minds can't naturally hold the stimulus of the modern age. Luckily, our brains are like plastic, not stone, and can be stretched and molded as needed. But this requires work. We don't have to live with chronic overwhelm, brain fog, distraction, anxiety, and excess stimulus sending our bodies into a stress response, but we must devote ourselves to building mental capacity if we want to thrive as highly sensitive beings in the modern age, having full capacity to use our minds in the most efficient and optimal ways. 

When it comes to mental capacity we are also talking about subconscious capacity. This has to do with our subconscious beliefs. If you don't believe that you can have your dream, that shows you where your mental capacity is. If your dream is to call in the love of your life this season, but you don’t believe that kind of love exists, then that shows you your mental/subconscious capacity around love and your heart’s true desires. All limiting beliefs are just stories (threads) we carry within us and then weave with. If you believe in scarcity, you will experience scarcity. If you believe you are not good enough for your dream, you are widening the gap between yourself and your dream. Any limiting beliefs you have that widen the gap between you and your dream need your mental capacity tended to to close that gap so that you can mentally hold this dream with a sound mind, discernment, knowing, truth, and clarity. 

Energetic Capacity - 

Our energetic capacity speaks to the more ethereal realms. If we are hiding or using our energy incorrectly for us, we will have a weak and dim auric field. It is the aura that actually can magnetize our dreams to us, so we want it to be big and bright! A big, bright aura that takes up a lot of energetic space can hold a lot of energy, which is required to birth a dream. This isn't about being big and bold and flashy necessarily, but it does mean speaking your truth, shining in your authenticity, moving in energetic alignment (making choices from your soul), being clear with your energy, not being afraid to be seen, and strengthening your energetic boundaries. All of this matters greatly. 

We can tell our energetic capacity simply by tuning in with our own auric field, energy centers, and even how we feel energetically (energy levels, vitality, what we are attracting, and our sensitivities). If we are feeling extremely sensitive, fatigued, and unable to move or hold a lot of energy, we are at an energetic capacity and need to clear our field or shift something in our lives.

Hitting any capacity, whether energetically or physically, does not need a label or diagnosis like much of the healing and wellness world has presented, nor does it mean you can't pursue your dream. It just needs your attention and intention! The first step is to check in and clarify where you need to widen your capacity and place your attention. When you meet an edge, when you feel yourself at capacity as you pursue a vision or creative project, check in with the following:

Physical:

How is my body? Am I physically healthy and strong enough for this? Where am I feeling weak or physically depleted? What is my body telling me? What is my body calling for to expand to this next level of creative capacity? What do I need to clear what my body is carrying and expand my capacity for material creation? Do I have enough vitality to step into the fullness of this vision?

Often, a specific plant ally, movement practice, or exercise can also come through to support in this realm of capacity building. Maybe you need more sleep in this season as you tend to a certain vision, or to spend more time grounding with the earth. Maybe you are depleted of a certain mineral or need more exercise to help with all the clearing you are working through. Sometimes, you may need to change your diet and feed yourself differently to accommodate your needs as your capacity expands. Although healing is much deeper than the physical, we must tend to the physical to anchor our visions into our sacred vessels tasked to nurture and birth them.

Emotional:

How is my heart? Am I feeling things fully and letting go? Do I still have some residual anger or grief that needs attention before I step into a new reality? Am I overwhelmed because I am not giving myself the emotional support that I need? Do I need more nurturing in my life to step into this next level of creative capacity? How can I call this in? 

You may need to clear emotional attachments to move deeper emotions, or even call on better emotional support in your life as you dance through creation. The heart’s capacity also speaks to our capacity to receive love. Do you need to open your heart wider to trust and receive more love? Opening, trusting, and receiving more love is an important expect of birthing our dreams, because our dreams are not just for us, they are for our villages, families, communities, and the whole earth!

Mental:

How is my mind? Am I experiencing information overload? Is my brain at capacity and unable to problem solve and think through the materialization of my dream? Am I experiencing brain fog, mental loops, or lack of clarity that is preventing me from moving forward? Am I experiencing anxiety that needs to be addressed? Is my mind trying to process or compartmentalize my big emotions and use all my mental energy? Do I have the mental energy to contain my vision and bring it into form? What does my mind need to have the clarity and peace of mind needed to birth my dream? 

If you are feeling overwhelmed or anxious, this is often a sign that you have reached your mental capacity. This could be from excess stimulus, but it can also be from using your brain too much or trying to figure things out that are causing mental tension. Maybe you just need to simplfy things. Typically, in these spaces, you need to empty your brain to build greater mental capacity! Silence, meditation, grounding in nature, and digital detoxes are great allies.

Energetic:

This is where we go a bit deeper. Of course, all these layers are connected, but we can zoom in directly to the energetic body and tune into where energy is stagnant or leaky, where we can resource energy from to support other areas of our healing, and overall give us more clues around what needs to be shifted to expand our capacity. This is where we can identify any threads of karma that are ready to be cut to free up our energy to weave our dreams. You can use many techniques to tune into your energetic frequency, such as a body/energy scan using your psychic senses to receive information. Understanding how you read energy is key for this. You may experience vibrational information energetically, physically, emotionally, with your inner vision, through sound/words, a direct download through your knowing, through touching your body, psychic taste, smell, and so on. If you are an energy practitioner or a reader, you are most likely very attuned to when your energy is off, and you’ve reached your energetic capacity. 

We also need to consider our energy capacity as the ability to hold energy. A 2-hour online workshop with fifteen people is much less energy to hold than a 9-month deep mentorship container with four people, for example, just as a 1:1 private client is much less energy to hold than a small group for a retreat. Dream #1, which you wrote about, is much lighter to hold than Dream #3. Do you see what I am getting at here? If your dream is not materializing, you might want to reflect on your energetic capacity, which can also be worked through by working on your physical, mental, and emotional bodies, as all these layers are connected.

Dream weaving is alchemy work. It requires us to transform, transmute, and continue to go deeper and deeper still to resurrect the parts of self that are aligned with our truest soul visions. 

It takes courage and attunement to divine will. It takes being intimate with death. It takes knowing yourself so deeply and honoring your truth and vision. It takes risks. Sometimes, it even takes getting your heart broken open from time to time so its capacity can widen. It may take hitting rock bottom so that you can take the time to find and cultivate your medicine there. It takes a willingness to not know, to dive into the mystery again and again and swim to your depths while holding firm to the light of your soul.

This is how we build capacity. 

You can't sustain making more money by working more hours that deplete you. This is shrinking your capacity and will keep you stuck in survival.

You can't hold more love in your life by pushing people to love you who don’t want to. 

You can't birth the dream by making it happen with sheer force, just like you can’t make a baby be born before its time without disrupting the nature of things.

These are all acts of force and are not smart ways to expand your capacity because they deplete your life force by acting out of alignment with your soul and divine nature and instead in alignment with your wounded ego, impatience, hustle-culture conditioning, or poisoned will.

Capacity building is actually about UNDOING, not doing more. It is about unraveling, falling apart, letting go, taking a breath, opening your heart, changing your mind, grieving the old, falling into the mystery, and sometimes doing nothing but resting as you stretch yourself and naturally discover your truth, wisdom, and magic along the way. 

Your dreams want you just as much as you want them.

Don't let your capacity and fear limit you from expanding to meet your dreams. Learn to hold more, and the universe will so beautifully and effortlessly hold you in return. 

In devotion to the dreams of the earth,

Ash

Free tools for capacity building:

• Your breath. Consistent breathwork heals your nervous system, clears stuck energy and emotions, and expands your capacity to breathe in more life.

• Your heart. Opening your heart and feeling through your emotions allows you to hold more.

• Stillness and spaciousness. Give your mind a break with meditation, lying on the earth and participating in the art of nothing, cultivating quiet time to simply be, going on a walk when overwhelmed, or simply taking a nap.

• Courage. Practice stepping outside of your comfort zone from time to time and trying new things. It’s good for you!

• Dancing. Movement helps our body clear energy, cultivate more flow in life, feel into taking up more space, and even strengthen and brighten the aura.

• Choose to let go of what limits you. Let go of what drains your energy so you can have more capacity for your dreams.

What support? Apply for my 1:1 mentorship or join one of my group containers at ashleyriver.co, as this is a focus in all my offerings it would be an honor to guide you in.