Summer Sabbatical And Re-Release Setup

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Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope. Before we dive in, a quick note. Roots of the Rise is taking a summer sabbatical and will return in September with brand new episodes. Throughout the summer, I will be re-releasing some of the most impactful episodes from the archive and sharing a few updated thoughts at the beginning of each one. Sometimes growth isn't about learning something new. Sometimes it's about revisiting what we've already learned and finding something we missed the first time around. So if this isn't your first time listening, pay attention to what lands differently, what catches your attention now that didn't before, what feels especially relevant to where you are today. The episode hasn't changed, but it's likely you have. Notice what that allows you to hear this time.

New Thoughts for this re-release

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This week's re-release is part of the chakra series and focuses on the emotional challenge most commonly associated with the root chakra, fear. As I listened back to this episode, uh, one thing that stood out to me that I wanted to emphasize even more today is that what we often call fear isn't always fear in the traditional sense. Sometimes it's simply an exhausted nervous system that no longer knows how to relax. When we have spent years anticipating danger, rejection, dealing with uncertainty, lots of criticism, loss, our bodies can remain on high alert long after the threat has actually passed. We may understand intellectually that we're safe, but our system hasn't gotten the memo. Another question I hear often is how do I know if what I'm feeling is fear or intuition? Well, there are certainly exceptions. Fear tends to feel urgent, uh constrictive, uh, very repetitive. It wants immediate action. Intuition is often quieter. It's calmer. You know, fear says like something is bad, something bad is about to happen. Intuition simply says, pay attention. It reminds me a little bit of a story Catherine Zenkina shared. I think it was on her Instagram, might have been a podcast. Um, manifestation, babe, is her handle. Uh, like many people, she hates flying. And on this particular occasion, uh, she was sitting in the plane and she just got overwhelmed with the feeling that she needed to get off. Her inner voice was basically screaming at her, like, get off, get off, get off. And the feeling was so intense that she actually did. She got off the plane, she changed flights, and you know, not super surprisingly, nothing happened to either plane. And what she reflected on later then was that this was a reminder that intuition doesn't usually scream at us. It doesn't panic, it doesn't create an incredible sense of urgency. Intuition is calm and quiet. It might be strong, but it isn't frantic. That's not a perfect rule, but I do think it's a helpful distinction to keep in mind. One of my favorite quotes about fear is from, I think it's M. Scott Peck, who said, courage is not the absence of fear. It is action in spite of fear. The goal is not to become fearless, not to call you out, but if you claim you are completely without any fears, there is a decent chance that that is some grade A denial. You know, we all have fears. The goal is to build enough inner safety, self-trust, resilience, and support that fear no longer gets to make all of our decisions. Fear may still show up, but it's riding in the backseat instead of driving the car. Another thing I want to p pull out is that it's become more and more apparent to me that fear is, well, we all know fear is protection, right? Fear is a protector, it's there to protect us in some way. And often it is pointing towards something precious. Fear of losing a relationship points toward love. Fear of failure points towards something meaningful. Fear of grief point toward points toward attachment and connection. When we are willing to look beneath the fear, rather than simply trying to get rid of it or ignore it or push it away, we often discover what matters most to us. So as you listen to this episode, I invite you to approach your fears with, you know what I'm gonna say, curiosity rather than judgment. Notice which fears feel grounded in the present moment and which are rooted in old stories, old wounds, old programming. Notice where fear lives in your body. Notice what it might be trying to protect. Members, there is a guided contemplation for you on Patreon that will help you explore all of this. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this revisit to one of the foundational conversations from the chakra series.

Beginning of the Re-released episode

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Fear, the root of instability. This week we're talking about issues related to the first chakra, which means talking about safety, security, and what we feel when we don't have or perceive we don't have those things. Fear. The Oxford Dictionary defines fear as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. It's important to note the word belief here. So often we are afraid of things that are not actually an imminent threat, have not yet and will never become one. So, how often do you find yourself feeling afraid? And how valid are those fears? First and foremost, you must acknowledge that your fears are real. Don't try to use the mind to deny this. Fear itself is not a problem you can rationalize away. There's so much confusion in the spiritual world when we have teachers who say, your fears are just made up in your mind, they aren't real. Well, to you, they are real. Those teachers are speaking from a different level of consciousness where they have integrated the truth of their own invincibility. If you're not there yet, it's okay. And what you feel is real. So when we are dealing with fear, first of all, the fear must be understood. Where did it come from? Why are we feeling it? We need to be able to step back and have some discernment to see, okay, is this actually a problem? So often the fear might be real to us, but it might be highly unlikely or completely unfounded. In the beginning, I was petrified that my husband was going to leave me, that he was going to break up with me because of how deeply unworthy I felt of his love. Was this reality? Was I actually undeserving of his love? Was he actually going to leave me? Absolutely not. If you want to talk chakra connection, it was my faulty programming in the third chakra, you know, home of self-worth, that led to this irrational fear in the first, the home of safety and stability. So what we have to do is first of all, address, you know, all of our programming as a whole. So therefore, I had to work on my self-esteem stuff. But we also have to develop the strength and resources and really importantly the discernment needed in order to more effectively understand, meet, and move past similar perceived future threats. When we live in constant fear, we are unstable. We lose our center. We lose our ability to contain, to have, to hold. It tends to make us feel powerless. And sometimes that fear moves us to act in ways that are incredibly counterproductive. Let's give the example of a wife who is afraid her husband is going to cheat on her during all of his various business trips. And she becomes more and more afraid that this is going to happen, that she becomes more and more obsessive about checking in with him. She wants him to call her the moment he gets to his hotel, the moment he, you know, goes out to dinner, tell her where he's going, who he's going with, tell her the moment that he gets back. She calls obsessively at night. She calls while he's in the middle of these meetings because she's so afraid that he's going to cheat on her. Well, what do you think is going to happen to that man? He's going to feel smothered. He's going to feel, you know, that she doesn't trust him because she doesn't. Now, if he experiences this for long enough, there is every chance that he is eventually going to just get fed up. Get fed up to the point where he might cheat. He might start looking for an emotional connection to someone who is more stable, who is more trusting, who doesn't obsessively check in on him. So that's just one way that fear can actually propel us into actions that then create, you know, the situation that we're actually really worried is going to happen. I'm not saying that's the right way for him to handle it, by the way, but I think we can all appreciate the likelihood of the scenario playing out that way. You know, so many people who are struggling to heal, struggling to make sense of this world and their own pain are so busy trying to transcend their suffering, to open their third eye to see more deeply, that they forget to look down where they're actually walking, where the rubber meets the road. They're looking up so intensely that they miss all the trip hazards waiting for them on the ground, on the path. When we are able to both keep our eyes on the horizon where we want to go, but also have at least a peripheral understanding of what's directly beneath us, we move through life more easily. It's scary not knowing what's under your feet. When we do, we have a sense of being safe and secure, and that is what enables consciousness to manifest. We need to meet the needs of the lower chakras first. It's unlikely you can get someone to care deeply about philosophy or about all of these kind of moral and mental and higher concepts when they are worried about simply putting food on the table for their family. We have to feel safe before we can transcend safely. And today, not many people feel safe. Not many people are grounded. The world is too fast, things are changing very quickly, there's a lot of chaos, and all of that chaos, all of that turmoil can leave us feeling very unstable with a sense of being ungrounded. And when we're ungrounded, we tend to feel fear, anxiety, discomfort. And ironically, we become more resistant to getting in touch with what we're feeling because it would mean feeling more of it, feeling that discomfort, that fear more deeply. Once we get a handle on fear, though, I mean, then the whole world opens up for us. That helps us cope with stress. The physical world feels safe and stable. And that stability is what makes it easier for us to work with, you know, the bigger scary things in life. It also helps with chakral stability in general. I mean, think about it. We're talking about kind of this foundational sense of being safe. If that isn't there, how easy, how stable do you think any of our other programming is related to how we handle emotions or our confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle what life is throwing at us? How likely is it do you think that maybe you start putting up walls to protect yourself for fear of what somebody else may do to you, how they might hurt you? So, what can we do to help ourselves, to help find stability and let go of fear?

Three Ways To Build Stability

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I'm going to give you three things to think about, three suggestions. The first is central nervous system regulation. When you are in the sympathetic response, when you're in that fight, flight, freeze, fawn response, it's very hard to feel safe. Your whole physiology is telling you you're not. This is one of the origins of kind of a generalized sense of anxiety that is so pervasive for so many people. I can't tell you how many clients come for craniosacral work, and the majority of the session is spent simply stabilizing their central nervous system, helping them regulate, helping them shift into that parasympathetic zone. And at the end of the session, usually after they've gotten a good 45-minute long nap, they tell me how much more peaceful they feel, how much more stable. So, what are some other ways that you can help the central nervous system uh regulate other than uh craniocral therapy, which is wonderful for it? Uh, you can also meditate. Meditation is so good for us on so many levels. You can listen to the episode on heart-based meditation. I'll link it below. Certain types of yoga will help calm and purify the energies, breathing practices, spending time in nature, going for a walk, all of that will help with central nervous system regulation. Second suggestion: one of the things that can really help stabilize the root chakra or stabilize our sense of anxiety or fear is routine. So, you know, kind of having a structure to how we move through our days, making sure that we get good sleep, that we eat nutritious foods, that we exercise, that we're taking care of our financial health, you know, setting aside money for savings so that we don't get completely knocked down if something unexpected comes up, planning for retirement, making sure that we prioritize time with friends and family, being in community, you know, that kind of thing. Um, you know, if we are able to kind of provide ourselves with this stable ground through routine, through setting up routines that give us this sense of order in our lives, that can be very fulfilling. It can actually encourage gravitation, meaning the movement towards something. Whether we're talking about mass or money or safety or structure or stability, the more we have it, the easier it is to attract more of the same. This can ground us, giving us security. That said, we can get obsessive. We can always go too far. And if we become too rigid in our structure, too controlling, well, that can trap us, keeping our consciousness bound and limited. And that's something we'll talk about when we talk about control later this week. So if you want to set up routine, the best place to start is getting your eating and sleeping on schedule. Just eat and sleep at the same time every day and see what happens. So the last thing I want you to think about, the last thing we need to understand when it comes to fear, is that with any emotion, even the ones that we typically deem negative, like anger, fear has a positive purpose. It's not all bad. There's, of course, the obvious, it's our protector. It tells us when we need to move, it prompts us to take action, it helps us seek safety when it's necessary. It can bring excitement and motivation. It can even help us develop courage. That's actually one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. So fear can be very useful. The experience of fear is designed to wake us up. And it's really important to remember that you are not your fear. The fear is something you are experiencing. It is not who you are. The fear is here to tell you something. Your job is to learn how to listen and then learn how to make a choice as to how you want that fear to operate in your life. In essence, to make friends with your fear.

Make Friends With Fear

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All well and good, you say, but how do you do that? Well, first you need to acknowledge it. You need to be able to identify when you're feeling fear and be able to say to yourself, oh, I'm experiencing fear. Not I am afraid, but I am having the experience of fear. This is important because what we're trying to do is dis-identify with the emotion to help make it more easy for us to deal with it. The second thing you need to do is anchor into your physical body and identify where the fear is located. Where does the fear live? There is an energetic body that is the interface between the emotional and the physical. The point of this being that the emotions don't just live in the mind. If you've ever experienced butterflies in your stomach or your throat tiny up when you're mad, you've experienced this interface. This is what we were talking about in episode 43, the root chakra introduction. This first chakra, our relationship with fear, is formed at a time when we are purely energetic beings, not yet capable of intellectually diagnosing what we're feeling or why. So if we want to treat fear, we need to treat it on an energetic level. So where does the fear live within you? Could be anywhere. And it could be different locations depending on which fear you're addressing. And what does it feel like? Describe the subtle qualities to yourself. Is the fear big or small? Does it feel cold or hot? Does it feel like it's in just one place or that it kind of jumps all over the place? Is there a color associated with it? Is there a texture? Does it feel spiky or smooth? If you were going to draw the fear, what would it look like? The third thing we need to do is be really solid and approaching the fear with love and gratitude. This fear is trying to tell you something. It is doing sorry, that's my dog. It is doing the best it can to help you. It is something you are experiencing, not who you are. You are love. If you don't identify with your true self, your identification with the fear will consume you. So remember, you are a divine being experiencing fear. Not fear inhabiting a bodysuit. So here's what I want you to think about today. What is your relationship with fear? Do you feel it often? Do you have one fear that pops up more than others? The first step is simply to acknowledge it. To simply acknowledge that you are experiencing that fear. And then look to see where does this fear live in my body? And then finally, from a place of love, ask that fear what it is trying to do for you. How is it trying to help you? Just try to send it some gratitude for doing the best it can to serve you. If this feels impossible, you're not alone. It's really hard to do when you first try, but it does get easier the more you do it. Also, meditation can help because it helps bring us to our highest self. Check out the episode on heart-based meditation that I've linked below. And lastly, be easy with this. If you get stumped, you get stumped. Call a phone a friend. You know, talk to your support system, talk to your uh your partner or your friends, talk to a professional, talk to your therapist, talk to your spiritual mentor, get help. Don't feel like you need to figure this all out by yourself. Tomorrow we'll be talking about one of the ways we deal with fear and instability. Control.

Questions To Reflect On And Reach Out

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If that sounds interesting to you, make sure you follow or subscribe so you don't miss it. Also, please email me at roots of the rise at gmail.com. Or if you're listening on Spotify, there's a little text me link. If you have any first chakra questions you'd like me to answer this week, any questions you have about fear, please, I love hearing from you. 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.

Educational Disclaimer

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Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.