August 05, 2025

Season 7: Episode 79 - Keeping Heart: The Spiritual Root System (Part 1)

43 minutes

Click here to read the episode highlights.

The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected].

Keeping Heart by Dr Chip Dodd is written in short sections. Each section focuses on some dimension of living fully, loving deeply, and leading well a life that leaves a legacy of goodness. It can be used as a daily form of orienting yourself for the day ahead of you or a book to read cover to cover.

Please visit chipdodd.com to download the free resource, The Spiritual Root System. This resource describes and illustrates the specifics of each “root” of how we are created as feeling, needing, desiring, longing, hoping people who seek to live fully in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.

The Spiritual Root System (SRS) explains:

When we “feed” the “roots” of how we are created, we will grow the “fruits” of a full life, one that blesses one’s self and others.

We feed the roots through relationship. That is the most complete nutritional support for human beings.

The nutritional support encourages us to “keep heart” amidst an exhausting pace that can wear us out, drain us, and lead us to experience the discouragement of “losing heart

Spiritual Root System = Feelings - Needs - Desire - Longings - Hope

Feelings awaken us to being fully alive, and they push us toward our needs.

If I feel, I will need.

For example:

When a person is sad about a loss, they often need comfort, or they need a listening person in their lives to help them.

When a person is fearful about some difficulty or danger, they often need help to deal with a challenge, or they need to be rescued from a danger.

The identification of feelings, leads to the needs of others and God.

Having needs lead a person to communicate their desire. Desire moves a person to ask for some form of connection that brings them to greater capabilities of living fully and loving deeply, even when life hurts.

The book Needs of the Heart describes the many essential emotional and spiritual needs that we are created to have met through expressing them.

Desire expresses the inborn energy of our craving to survive and even more, to thrive. We desire survival, of course, but we were created for more. We were born to crave a level of fulfillment that we can numb or deny; however, it still remains a part of how we are created.

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By Dr. Chip Dodd & Bryan Barley

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