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 46 - Mirror, Mirror: When You Don't Like What You See
Have you ever looked in the mirror and struggled to accept what you saw?
That moment of disconnection between our physical appearance and our inner identity lies at the heart of this exploration of body acceptance. To truly understand, love, and heal ourselves, we must include the body in that journey—though rarely is it a simple or linear path. When we disassociate from our physical selves, we risk becoming fundamentally ungrounded—adrift, even homeless within our own being.
Episode 14 - Taking care of self physical
Episode 32 - First Chakra introduction
Episode 43: Introduction to the Chakras
The Chakras by C. W. Leadbeater
Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith
Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith PhD
Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Lee. Have you ever looked in the mirror and disliked what you saw? I'm talking on a purely superficial level, not looking into your soul, but simply seeing the visible form. If we want to truly understand, love and accept ourselves, we cannot escape our bodies. Yes, we are spiritual beings, but we're also living in physical form. Honoring this part of ourselves is essential to real healing and lasting wholeness. So do you honor yours? This week, we're talking about root chakra issues, and our bodies are an undeniable part of our experience. Part of the task of balancing the first chakra is to understand and heal the body, love it, feel it, validate it, and this is not always easy.
Speaker 1:I spent the first 35 years of my life being able to literally eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, with no discernible impact on my waistline. In fact, I was probably in the best shape of my life at 35. I was fit, I was strong, I was healthy. Don't hate me, because all that changed. I moved south and guys, the food down here is really good and my schedule changed. I went from owning a fitness studio and teaching and being on my feet all day and drinking gallons of water because I was talking all day long to being relatively sedentary, you know, maybe teaching five hours a week instead of 25. I gained a bunch of weight without even realizing it. I managed to drop it for my wedding, but basically immediately got pregnant and ballooned right back up. I did not get the weight loss from breastfeeding that many women do. The weight just stuck. I recalibrated at a solid 40 pounds more than a healthy weight for me, and it's still here. 40 pounds more than a healthy weight for me, and it's still here. My hormones went out of whack from the pregnancy, followed by two miscarriages. I developed SIBO, likely from the C-section, that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I'll talk about it. Some other episode I was super sleep deprived for almost three years because my kid was not a good sleeper. We were warned. My husband and I were both the same way. Basically, weight loss has been really necessary and also seemingly completely unattainable. I'm still working on it, even with everything I know about healthy living.
Speaker 1:My point in sharing all that is that I really do understand that it's hard. I know it on a deep level. It's hard to not recognize the person in the mirror and to not like what you see. Gaining weight is just one of the reasons why this can happen. There are so many more, why people fall out of love with their physical bodies. Abuse, emotional or physical feeling like your body is failing you, as in with getting sick, infertility, cultural and societal conditioning I mean, especially these days, the comparison culture and unrealistic beauty standards is unreal, largely because it's in our face all the time. I mean, all you have to do is go on Instagram and you will be shown like all the incredible will be shown, like all the incredible beautiful people out there. You know the filters, I mean, are we even seeing real people anymore?
Speaker 1:Devaluation of the body is perpetrated by many religious attitudes that the body is the root of all evil. Others say it's an illusion or simply insignificant. You know, maybe we have internalized shame due to the messages we were given about ourselves from our parents or the middle school bullies who called us fat or clumsy or whatever. This can turn into body dysmorphia, mental health issues that just spiral back into this self-hatred loop. Sometimes, for some people, this can go to extremes. We can begin to disassociate from this very basic, essential part of ourselves, and the problem with that is that disassociation with the body can produce dangerously disconnected actions, things like eating disorders, unhealthy promiscuity, drug addiction. To lose our connection with the body is to become homeless. You know, there's even this idea that the mind is better, that we should control the body by way of the mind, which is considered far superior, but I don't buy it. You know, the body has an intelligence that the mind cannot even fathom. When you think about all the things that your body is capable of, all the things that it does without you even having to think about it, I mean it really is a miracle even having to think about it, I mean it really is a miracle, and it's a miracle we stay as healthy as we do, given the whole myriad of things that can go wrong. But we try. We read books, how to eat, how to make love, how much sleep to get. There are entire podcasts on this. I mean, gosh, that's part of what I'm talking about, right? And we impose these practices on the body rather than listening from within, listening to what the body has to say.
Speaker 1:From an Ayurvedic perspective, the eventual perfect diet is intuitive. It's where we simply trust our intuition to tell us what to eat, and when I mean. There are tons of jokes on Instagram about this. You know, when I ask my body what to eat, it always says cake. And that might be true, because we can have faulty programming installed into anything, into any chakra, into anything we do. So let's take food for a moment.
Speaker 1:I mean, for me, one of the few unconditional ways my mom showed me love was with food. You ask any of my friends who would come over to my house. They would tell you she always had treats, brownies, cakes, cookies. She would make us fried dough God, she made really good fried dough. And she was the queen of the root beer float. She had this trick, this wonderful ability to be able to pour the exact amount of root beer in without it overflowing. But it means I associate comfort with food, love with food.
Speaker 1:When I was young I had a great metabolism, right, didn't wreak any havoc. But now not so much and I've struggled to turn off this programming of, get emotionally uncomfortable, want comfort, eat pizza and Doritos and Oreos and cake. It doesn't matter that I could see this pattern unfolding. I couldn't for the life of me turn it off until I finally began to address kind of the underlying needs, the underlying imbalances and what we need, especially the root chakra. What we need is nurturance, is nourishment. Nurturance on all levels is key to taking care of the body. We need to rest, we need good sleep, we need good food, we need to exercise, we need to move our bodies, we need pleasure, we need enjoyment.
Speaker 1:Go back and listen to episode 14, the physical self-care one. That'll give you a lot of recommendations, but giving ourselves that nourishment can be hard, because maybe we don't think we deserve it. Maybe we don't think we deserve to take care of ourselves. Maybe we think other people's needs are more important than our own. I mean, a good part of the reason why instituting an exercise routine for myself has been so hard is that I tend to prioritize husband, kid work over self almost all the time. I'm getting better at it. I've worked really hard at being better about it, but it's still my natural tendency. It's my default. They come first.
Speaker 1:One thing we can do, though, is start to think of our body as an indicator, as a feedback system. This is something we'll talk about a lot. You know that our body is a feedback system designed to help us know when we are off course, when our body is strong, when it feels good, we feel good. That's the power of exercise, as proven over and over again by research. So we have to start getting curious. Ask yourself, okay, when did this begin? When did I begin not liking my body? When I talk to myself this way, when I talk down about my body, is it my voice I'm hearing, or someone else's, as we talked about with fear?
Speaker 1:Look for a positive purpose. Could there be a positive reason why my body is doing what it's doing or why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling? Am I trying to protect myself from something, with weight gain, for instance? Not all the time, but one of the reasons why sometimes we hold on to weight is as a protection, a way to avoid getting attention from the opposite sex, because maybe we've experienced physical abuse, some sort of sexual trauma. It's not always the case, it's just an example.
Speaker 1:Now look, I know asking these questions might be really hard and it might stir up a lot of uncomfortable emotions for you If you start asking them and find yourself triggered. Uncomfortable emotions for you. If you start asking them and find yourself triggered, seek help. We are not meant to do the deep inner work by ourselves. I said it once, I've said it a million times we are meant to be supported. There is someone out there, a psychotherapist, a counselor, a mentor, who is the right fit for you to help you move through the difficult questions in a safe and supported way. So if you feel unbalanced with this inquiry, find your person, don't do it alone.
Speaker 1:I mean contemplating the positive purpose of my secondary infertility. At face value, that is incredibly difficult and painful. I just went to a retreat that was designed to invoke the divine feminine and the facilitator asked why are you here? And I was. As I was talking to my partner, I realized, oh, it's because I want to learn how to love being a woman again. The weight gain, the infertility. I didn't love my femininity anymore, I didn't love my body anymore and while I, like, knew that on some level, I needed time and space and support to truly work through it, and that's why I have mentors. You know, sure, I can look in the mirror, but I need two mirrors in order to see all sides. That's what we all need when we're investigating our deepest wounds, the things that hurt us the most, our deepest wounds, the things that hurt us the most.
Speaker 1:So, to give you a place to start, if you want it, try this exercise. It's taken from one of the books I recommend in the show notes. I can't remember which one, but it's one of the Judith books. Here we go Write a statement for each part of your body, beginning with the words I am or I feel so. If you're speaking for your neck and your neck is cramped, I am cramped. If your knees feel weak, right, I feel weak. If your ankles feel unstable, right, I feel unstable. Then read all the statements back to yourself, without defining what body part they came from, so your list might read I feel tense, I feel weak, I feel tired, I feel achy.
Speaker 1:See how this correlates to how you feel about yourself as a whole, and if that's how you experience your physical body, what might you do to start changing some of those things? What can you do to be stronger, to be less achy? What needs attention from you? Not judgment, not punishment, not hatred, but love. You may already know what you need to do, but can't seem to figure out how to get yourself to do it. We'll talk about that in the upcoming weeks a good bit in the third chakra week, since that's all about self-power, self-esteem, motivation, that kind of thing. But for now, just know you're not alone and awareness is always step one. Awareness without judgment is step two. You'll get there, just keep going.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow I thought I would finally do an actual formal personal introduction of myself, who I am, where I come from, why I'm in this line of work. Doing it during a week focusing on the root chakra, seemed appropriate, as so much of my life has been defined by the kind of trauma that is deeply destabilizing, engenders a lot of fear and the general knowledge that it's not a matter of if, but when the rug is going to get pulled out from underfoot. So I want to tell you about it and how I found my way back to trust. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure you follow or subscribe so you don't miss it. This is also last call for root chakra questions, so either click the message me button if you're listening on Spotify or you can email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be.
