Building Capacity: The Missing Key to Lasting Health
From the Wellness Wisdom series | January 5, 2026
Your mind forgets, but your body remembers everything.
Three days ago, you might have forgotten what you ate for lunch. But if you've had undisciplined meals for weeks, your body hasn't forgotten—it's showing up as bloating, low energy, or stubborn weight. Last month's stressful week? Your mind may have moved on, but your body still carries that tension in your shoulders, your digestion, your sleep quality.
This is the truth we often ignore: the body is a reservoir of everything we've done to it, good or bad. And if we want to transform our health in 2026, we need to start by acknowledging this reality.
The Problem With Goals
Most of us approach health as a destination. "If I reach 65 kilos..." "If my blood work is perfect..." "If I can finally do ten push-ups..."
We're chasing endpoints while life keeps happening around us. The challenges don't pause. The temptations don't stop. And when circumstances feel overwhelming, we tell ourselves: "I'll focus on my health when things calm down."
But here's what I've learned from fifteen years of teaching yoga and wellness: your circumstances don't change that much. The patterns of your life—your responsibilities, your stresses, your environment—remain relatively steady. Waiting for the "right time" to get healthy is waiting forever.
A Different Approach: Capacity Building
Instead of asking "Am I healthy yet?" ask this: "Am I building my capacity to be healthier?"
Capacity building shifts everything. It means:
There's no finish line, only continuous improvement
Small progress counts as real progress
Building the ability to be healthy matters as much as being healthy
You're never too old, too far gone, or too late to start
When you focus on capacity building, you're measuring yourself against yesterday's version of yourself, not against some idealized endpoint. Last winter, did you fall sick every third week? This winter, are you managing better? That's capacity building.
Five Domains of Capacity
Let me break down the five areas where you can systematically build your capacity to live better.
1. Physical Capacity
This is the most visible form of capacity building, but it goes far beyond just strength.
Strength is straightforward: you can't do a push-up today, so you work toward your first one. Then a set. Then multiple sets. The progression is clear and measurable.
But consider digestion—an often-overlooked aspect of physical capacity. If you've been eating 20-30 grams of protein daily for 30 years and suddenly jump to 80 grams, your body rebels. You feel bloated and uncomfortable. The problem isn't the protein; it's that your body hasn't built the capacity to process that amount.
You need to prepare your digestive system. Your gut microbiome needs time to adapt—sometimes weeks, sometimes months, occasionally up to a year if you're making major dietary shifts (like vegetarian to vegan). This is capacity building.
Recovery is another physical capacity we rarely train for. At 43, I want the recovery speed of a 19-year-old. Is it possible? Yes—but only if I train for it through disciplined sleep, nutrition, and stress management. Recovery isn't automatic; it's a skill you develop.
The truth about aging: Yes, muscle and bone density decline as we age. But we never complete that sentence. The decline happens because our activity levels drop. If you maintain or increase activity, eat properly, and train with progressive overload, you don't just stop the degeneration—you build muscle.
Even at 66 years old, you can build muscle mass. It takes longer than at 18, but the growth is real and measurable.
2. Mental Capacity
Your mental capacity determines how you handle:
Uncertainty
Repetition and boredom
Stress and setbacks
The need for consistency and discipline
These aren't fixed traits—they're skills you can develop.
Think about the pandemic lockdown. We all faced similar challenges, yet some people adapted while others struggled profoundly. The difference was mental capacity—the ability to find meaning, maintain routines, and stay engaged even when circumstances were beyond control.
Consistency is perhaps the hardest mental capacity to build. The concept is simple; the execution is brutally difficult. Initial enthusiasm carries you for four days, maybe a week. Then the euphoria fades, and discipline must take over. This is where most people fail—not because they lack desire, but because they haven't built the mental capacity for sustained effort.
Here's the key insight: there is no on-off switch in your brain. You can't be one person today and completely different tomorrow. Change happens gradually, through repeated practice. Each time you bounce back from a setback, you're building mental capacity.
3. Emotional Capacity
If your life is run by emotions, you can never be consistent.
"I feel like exercising today." "I feel like staying up to watch one more episode." "I feel like eating puchkas." When feelings dictate behavior, you become someone who can't keep promises to yourself.
And this matters more than you might think.
When you promise yourself you'll wake at 6 AM—not because anyone is asking you to, not because there's any reward, but simply because you decided—you're testing your self-trust. If you keep that promise, you prove to yourself: I am capable of following through.
If you can do something as simple as wake at 6 AM consistently, you can tackle harder challenges. You build confidence in your own ability to execute. But if you can't keep even this basic promise, how can you trust yourself with more complex goals?
Emotional capacity is the ability to delink feelings from behavior. Your emotions don't disappear—you just don't let them overrun your actions.
Emotional eating is the perfect example. Initially, you might not even notice you're eating because you're stressed or bored. Recognition is the first step. Then comes the hard work of separating the emotion from the food. You might succeed 60% of the time at first, fail 40%. Over months, that ratio improves. That's capacity building—not an instant transformation, but gradual mastery.
4. Nervous System Capacity
A person who doesn't know how to relax cannot be consistently productive.
Your capacity to exert full effort depends entirely on how well you've rested. Effort and rest go together—they're not opposites but complementary states.
Many of us have lost the ability to stop our mental chatter. We want to rest but can't because we're trapped in effort mode, unable to switch off. This is a nervous system that hasn't learned to toggle between states.
The person who can smoothly shift between deep focus and complete relaxation has mastered their nervous system. This is a learnable skill, built through practices like yoga nidra, breath work, and intentional rest periods.
5. Lifestyle Change Capacity
Some changes require nothing more than the capacity to implement them gradually.
Want to drink more water? Start with one extra glass. Want better sleep? Move your bedtime fifteen minutes earlier, not two hours all at once. Want to meditate? Begin with three minutes, not thirty.
Lifestyle capacity is about respecting that change takes time. You're working against years or decades of patterns. Expecting instant transformation guarantees failure and disappointment.
Small, Consistent, Measurable
If you take one principle from this: small consistent effort beats large sporadic effort, always.
Three hours of strength training done irregularly can't compete with eight minutes of push-ups done every single day. The daily practice builds capacity; the sporadic effort doesn't.
Everything you do to your body gets recorded—every misstep, every kindness. Small movements, drinking water consistently, eating well, sleeping on time—it all counts. The body that remembers mistreatment also remembers care.
How to Start
Pick one domain from the five areas above
Choose one measurable capacity to build (examples: do five push-ups, eat 10g more protein daily, wake 15 minutes earlier, practice 5 minutes of breath work)
Set a timeframe (compare yourself in 3 months, not 3 days)
Track your progress (what gets measured gets improved)
Celebrate capacity gains, not just outcomes (getting better at consistency is as valuable as losing weight)
Remember: if you're 55 years old, you likely have 25-30 years ahead of you. Why wouldn't you invest in improving your condition? Why approach your body apologetically, as if effort is wasted on it?
You are never too old to build capacity. The body can change at any age—it just takes longer as we get older. But time is passing anyway. You can spend it building capacity or watching it decline.
The Body Is Not Forgiving—But It Is Responsive
Unlike humans, your body can't forgive mistreatment and pretend it didn't happen. But it responds immediately and honestly to good treatment. Every good choice counts. Every consistent effort registers.
This is both accountability and hope.
You cannot erase decades of poor treatment overnight. But you can begin mitigating the damage today. And with each day of better choices, you're not just moving toward health—you're living healthily in the process.
The journey itself is the practice. The capacity you build along the way is the real prize.
Ready to build your capacity systematically? Join our Wellness Wisdom sessions every Monday evening, or explore our yoga programs designed specifically for building sustainable health at every age.
What capacity will you build first?