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 53 - Know Who You Are: The Foundation of Authentic Living
Self-knowledge is a multifaceted journey that requires understanding yourself on three distinct levels: who you are right now, who you want to become, and your timeless essence beneath it all. We explore practical methods to develop genuine self-awareness and connect with your authentic nature beyond programming and societal expectations.
• Five practical approaches to self-discovery: journaling, therapy, trusted conversations, meditation, and deliberate experimentation
• Understanding your triggers often reveals wounds and unmet needs that require healing
• Creating a vision of who you want to become requires identifying your personal values, not those imposed by others
• Exercises to clarify your values: narrowing down from ten values to your three core drivers
• Reconnect with childhood dreams and joys for clues about your authentic self
• Beyond personality and programming exists your true essence—the timeless, loving awareness you really are
• The deepest self-knowledge comes not through thinking harder but by remembering who you've always been
Join us tomorrow as we explore the second part of our closing mantra: "love who you've been."
Resources
Episode 5 - Journaling
Episode 7 - Heart Based Meditation
Episode 52: The Third Chakra: Unlocking Personal Power and Breaking Free from Shame
Episode 30 - Are you prioritizing your priorities? And followup Episode 38: Answering a Listener Question Regarding Priorites
Episode 29 - Is Competence Keeping You Stuck
Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. At the end of every episode, I leave you with three reminders Know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be Today. I want to dive into what I mean when I say know who you are. Socrates said it simply know thyself. Lao Tzu said knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom. When I talk about knowing who you are, I mean it three ways. First, know who you are right now. Understand yourself as you are today, your patterns, your programming, your triggers, your habits. Why do you do the things you do? What keeps showing up in your life that isn't working anymore? And, just as importantly, what do you love about your life right now? Being fully present to yourself, no filters, no judgment, is the beginning of true self-knowledge. So I want to give you some ways to explore this. First, journaling. Check out the journaling episode. I'll link it below. One great new prompt is you can set a timer for five minutes and stream of consciousness right, which basically means just keep writing. Don't stop starting every sentence with I am. No editing, no worrying about grammar, just write. If you get stuck, literally write I am, I am, I am until the flow returns, it will. This exercise can uncover hidden beliefs you might not know you carry about yourself.
Speaker 1:Second suggestion therapy, or counseling. I mean, everyone talks about it. I know it's a broken record situation, but sometimes we really do need someone else to hold up a mirror for us. We can't see what we can't see. It's a stupid saying, but it's true. A good therapist will have a whole arsenal of questions to ask you, things like what challenges keep repeating in your life, or if you could change three things about your life, what would they be and why? Plus so many, so many more. Your answers reveal so much about your inner landscape, and a good therapist is going to be able to listen to how you respond and continue asking you more insightful questions that will help you really get to the essence of you know your patterning and who you are in this moment, right now.
Speaker 1:Third suggestion conversations with people you trust. So you know, the beauty of therapy is that it's an unbiased participant. Right, this is someone who doesn't know you outside of counseling. The benefit of having conversations with people that you really trust is that they know you in a deep, more intimate way. So if your relationship can hold it I mean, don't ask someone that you don't feel safe with, someone that you don't feel that you can be vulnerable with, but if you have a relationship that is supportive enough to you know withstand this kind of questioning ask that person what's something about me you think I don't realize? Or you know where do you think I might be blind to myself?
Speaker 1:Another suggestion is meditation. I'm always going to suggest meditation because it is always a truth bringer. Certain forms of meditation, more than others, make the unconscious conscious, and that's exactly what this process demands. You can listen to the heart based meditation episode if you haven't already. Another suggestion experimentation. You get curious. Follow what excites you. If you don't know what that is, try new things, explore. And you can listen to episode 29, which is all about how competence can keep you stuck. Go outside your comfort zone, because real lessons can be learned there.
Speaker 1:And last suggestion notice your triggers. You know what angers or hurts you deeply, often points us in the direction to wounds, unmet needs or part of yourself that really needs healing. And with healing comes self-awareness, comes growth. And all of this self-awareness is essential to understanding the second layer of knowing who you are, which is know who you want to be. As the saying goes, you can't know how to get to where you want to go until you know where you are. It's one of those pervasive, annoyingly accurate quotes that speaks to the importance of self-awareness. Understanding your present situation is key to meaningful growth and transformation. So once you've got a solid grasp on who you are right now, the next step is to create a vision for who you want to become in the future, which often means uncovering who you are underneath all your conditioning.
Speaker 1:What are your priorities? Not your parents, your cultures, your societies, your friends, yours. So often we live the way we're quote unquote supposed to. We look outside ourselves for clues about how to live because we were trained to seek approval instead of trusting our own inner compass. We talked about that a lot yesterday, at a crucial time in childhood. We might have learned obedience over authenticity, compliance over desire, reward for fitting in, punishment for standing out, and we might have forgotten how to listen to ourselves, desire without connecting to the deep wisdom of the heart, the body, the spirit. We become like robots, going through the motions but empty inside, although scarily enough. We'll see how long that lasts with AI and everything.
Speaker 1:But anyway, this is why you need to get clear about your values. You need to get clear about what you actually care about. So are you prioritizing your priorities? We go deep into this in episodes 30 and 38. I'll link those below.
Speaker 1:Here's another simple exercise. You can try Write down 10 values that matter most to you. Think things like kindness, adventure, integrity, success, family. I will link Brene Brown's full value list below to give you some more ideas for this. So you write down 10, then you narrow it down to five, then narrow it down to three. Those final three are usually what's called your core drivers. Once you know them, you can ask yourself monthly, weekly, daily, am I living in a way that honors these? Another thing you can do is reflect back on your childhood and try to remember what lit you up before the world told you who you needed to be. What were your dreams before they got squashed? What were your sensitivities? What were your joys? There are clues there to the real you.
Speaker 1:And just a note here, this is different from the third thing I say at the end of every episode, which is be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. You have to know it before you can be it. It's one thing to know where you want to go, it's entirely another to do the work to get there. So we'll talk more about that on Thursday. The third thing I mean when I say know who you are is know who you are underneath it all, beyond the programming, beyond the habits, beyond even your personality. I'm talking about the recognition of your essence, the timeless, invincible loving awareness you really are.
Speaker 1:As Rumi said, you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop. Pierre Deschardins said we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And yes, I know, I just butchered that beautiful French name. Other languages just are not my forte. I do my best. Honestly, though, I would take it even one step further. I would say that our human experience is a spiritual experience. Our task is not to escape the mundane, it's to recognize the divine inside of it.
Speaker 1:Knowing yourself at this deeper level isn't about thinking harder or more analysis. It's about falling inward into that quiet place within you that is already whole, already pure, already love, the part that existed before you had a name, the part untouched by fear, striving or judgment. It's not something you achieve, it's something you remember. And that place is the eye of the storm. It is the calm that never wavers. When you listen beyond the noise, you find that you are not a problem to solve, you are a mystery to welcome. And the real journey isn't about becoming someone else. Even the best version of yourself that person has always existed. It's about coming home to who you have always been.
Speaker 1:We'll dive deeper into this next week when we talk about the facets of the heart. The bottom line is that knowing who you are is the process of a lifetime, because you change, you grow at least you can. And to truly know yourself is not to gather more labels or cling to your past stories. It is to return again and again to the quiet, living truth within you. And in order to do that, you need to know who you are right now, who you want to be, who the real you is underneath all that programming, and then to go even deeper to the essence of your true divine nature.
Speaker 1:Obviously, there's so much we could explore, especially with this particular topic, so much we could explore especially with this particular topic, but this is a start. So what came up for you today. I love hearing from you. If you have questions, reflections or just want to share your thoughts, feel free to click the message me button If you're listening on Spotify, or you can always send an email to rootsoftheriseatgmailcom. And don't forget to follow or subscribe so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. We'll be talking about why I emphasize loving who you've been. Have a beautiful day and I'll say it even though you've heard it already today know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be.
