Roots of the Rise
Grounded wisdom for the journey inward and upward.
Roots of the Rise is a soul-centered podcast hosted by Sarah Hope—Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual mentor, meditation teacher, biodynamic craniosacral therapist, and energy healer. Drawing from thousands of hours of client work, group facilitation, and her own journey through childhood trauma, grief, and the profound rediscovery of love and joy, Sarah offers a grounded, heart-led space for inner transformation.
Short, daily episodes (10–20 minutes) offer bite-sized insights, ideas, and practices for inner growth and self-development. Whether you're seasoned on the path or just beginning to explore, this podcast gives you digestible nuggets to stay inspired—without overwhelm. It’s perfect for those who want to stay engaged in the work, curious newcomers feeling overloaded by long-form content, or anyone wanting to understand a loved one's journey from a broader, more accessible perspective.
Sarah’s intention is to expose you to a wide range of spiritual concepts, therapeutic tools, philosophies, and practices—all in service of helping you become the healthiest, happiest, most authentic version of yourself. The journey can be hard. It can feel lonely. But you’re not alone. Come walk this path with her—learning, healing, and rising, one grounded step at a time.
Roots of the Rise
Episode 35 - Creating Your Digital Joy Arsenal: Why We All Need a "Smile Folder"
Today I explore how Instagram's "save" feature can be a powerful mood-lifting tool when used intentionally to create a personal collection of laugh-inducing content. I share how my own "smile folder" helps me shift out of temporary low moods and explain why adults desperately need more laughter in their lives.
One of my favorites: To Be My Waffly Wedded Wife
Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. Yesterday's episode was a little heavy, so today I thought I would keep it short and light and give you one small way. Instagram can be used for good, seriously. I know a lot of bad stuff is said about social media, and rightfully so, but you know it can be useful. This morning I was feeling kind of down, just a little bit sad. I'm away on a trip. I miss my family and my dog and my cats and my house and my bed, all of that. Anyway, I thought you know this is a great day. What is up with me? It's beautiful out. I'm about to go to a training I'm really excited for.
Sarah Hope:Like this is not how I want to feel. Not that I don't honor sadness or, you know, respect and honor the fact that I'm missing my family, but also, you know there's sometimes that you just want to change your mood. You know you don't want to be sad. You want to have a different attitude, and there's also nothing wrong with that. I knew that this mood that I was in was going to be transient and I just wanted to kind of speed up the process. So I utilized one of my methods for kind of knocking myself back into a positive place, and that's what I want to share with you. So Instagram has all these reels that you can watch, as most of you know, and while I tend to look at more of the educational ones the Mel Robbins, the Jay Shetty sort of content I also love the ones that just make me laugh of content. I also love the ones that just make me laugh Comedians, animals doing silly things, babies laughing, surprises gone wrong, that kind of thing, and all the ones that get an actual guffaw out of me, like a literal laugh out loud. I save in my smile folder Anytime I get down and don't want to be when I know that it's, you know, not the big sort of I need to figure out what's really going on with me, kind of down, just the normal every day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, type of thing. I watch a few of the reels in that folder and it works like a charm almost every time. You know there's this one where a couple is getting married and the husband says waffly instead of lawfully. It's one of my favorites. I'll see if I can link it below. It just cracks me up every time and immediately I'm in a better place, because that is the power of laughter.
Sarah Hope:Anne Lamont said laughter is carbonated holiness, and we lose laughter as we get older. The NIH says that the average child laughs 400 times a day. Do you want to guess how many times an adult laughs? 14. How sad is that? Like laughter is great. You know, when you get that kind of like giddiness, that like you just can't stop laughing, when's the last time you did that Like when's the last time you had a really good belly laugh?
Sarah Hope:You know we take life so seriously, we take all things so seriously, and you know what? There's a lot of things in life that need to be taken seriously. So I'm not saying that we should laugh about everything, just laugh it off and pretend it doesn't matter, or anything like that. But you know what? We also need to laugh more because it is good for you. So let this be the day that you line up a little bit of laughter for yourself.
Sarah Hope:Start a smile folder in your Instagram, if you have that. If you don't, you know if you're a YouTube person? Well, you know, start saving some YouTube videos that make you laugh. If you're a video person where you like watching movies, you can look up those clips of the funny things in movies and start like a bookmark folder on your computer so that you can just go and watch those little clips.
Sarah Hope:Seek out the things that give you joy, because there's a lot of things that are going to come at you that are not going to bring you joy. No matter what, there are going to be moments in life that are painful and that are full of sadness, that bring you grief. You know that are going to remind you just how messed up the world is. I mean, all you have to do is turn on the television and you're going to see all the ways humanity hasn't figured itself out yet. So why not also give yourself equal exposure to the things that remind you that there are good people in this world? Funny things happen, you know. Why not give yourself an excuse to laugh? That's all for today. Just go laugh.
Sarah Hope:If you like today's short and sweet suggestion, please follow or share and have a great rest of your day. Remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. I am an Ayurvedic health practitioner, spiritual counselor, meditation teacher, energy healer and biodynamic craniosacral therapist with thousands of hours of training in these modalities and more. I'm here to help you discover as many different ideas, therapies, philosophies, spiritual concepts and inner development tools as possible in order to help you become the healthiest, happiest, most authentic version of yourself possible. I'm excited to be on this journey with you. It can be hard at times and there are moments you may feel stuck and very alone. I'm here to tell you you're not. Come with me. Let's learn and grow together.
