Compass

a Yearlong Inquiry with the Elements

 

Live with the seasons. Harness the elemental energies of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal to influence change for your story.

This is my one wild and precious life. My growth here is iterative, infinite. How do I stay open? How do I tend to the many ways I long for change? 

 

The Elemental Origins of Change

When I started learning about the elements as forces of change, my world felt more intact, more integral, and more whole. 

What is alive at our depths is also alive in our stories, in our traditions, in our practices as people. 

These days, I find I have woven elemental understanding into my language for presence, for spirit and science, for wonder, and for change. 

Every single day seems to require some shape-shifting.

I burn up the boxes — stories I’ve kept about who and how I should be — they do not fit. 

Instead, I ride the currents of mountain streams.

I follow the arcs of tree branches as they reach above the canopy.

I sink my bones heavy into the soft soil of the coming spring and let myself be earth. 

 

I Am Elemental

I want to turn myself, again and again, towards being of the world. 

My thinking, my feeling, my action, my presence — all of these are of the world. 

I come home to myself. When I build connections with the real world, my awareness is strengthened. I know my gifts, and I know how to show up with them.

The elements give us language for the relationships in nature. The relationship between water and stone, day and night, summer and winter. The dynamics among mycelia and plant rhizomes mirror stories in our bodies. 

I pay attention to learn about myself and about how to be together with you, with my loved ones, my neighbors, and the world beyond. Presence anchors me in what is true, what is possible, and where hope lives, not in some abstract vision, but in this moment, all around me.

…if I’m open to it.

 

Five Elements

With water, wood, fire, earth, and mineral, we bring language to ourselves as part of this ever-changing world. 

Compass is a gathering of inquiry and presence with the nature of change. We follow five elements through the seasons. 

 

Wood  ◐  Spring Fire  ◒  Summer

Earth  ◑  Late Summer

Metal  ◑  Autumn Water  ◓  Winter

 

We resource with them. Through our attention, through proximity, through curiosity — we learn from them. We shape ritual and story with them. We build our lives with them.

 

Three Ways to Practice

This year, I want Compass to be as accessible as possible. I especially want there to be options to be offline, analog, away from the screen. Our collective gatherings aim to be flexible, the meditations resources downloadable for you to take with you for when you find a precious moment for yourself.

Thus, the TANGIBLE COMPASS (the first tier of our 2025 cohort) is an entirely hands-on, zine series version of Compass. 

Of course, we’ve got to have an option to gather together and with the wild. COLLECTIVE COMPASS (tier two) is a way of connecting with people, plants, waters, minerals, and more through guided meditations and live gatherings.


Finally, for the folks who are eager to explore in-depth personal inquiry through an elemental lens ALCHEMICAL COMPASS (tier three.) This is an in-depth one-to-one conversation and guidance supporting you in knowing your unique elemental character. Discover how elemental understanding can support you in navigating the little and big changes you’re tending.

 

Three Tiers for Compass 2025


THE TANGIBLE COMPASS

an (analog optional) approach to elemental contemplation

Receive a monthly missive prepared with reality in hand. A customized zine, this project will center features such as poetry, plant monographs, stone notes, geological exploration, embodiment and somatic research, notes on the elements themselves and other practical and exploratory resources to deepen your practice and process with the elements. Each missive will also include a series of journal prompts to accompany you and recommendations for personal meditation. You choose whether to receive these missives by snail mail or by email.

  • Ten monthly Missives (short paper books) delivered by snail mail or email

  • Optional free (paid-level) subscription to Rough Soles writing project for one year

$25 per month or $250 one-time payment

THE COLLECTIVE COMPASS

guided meditations and integrative gatherings to weave your elemental practice with the world

Receive the Tangibles monthly missive and elemental meditations (three for each season). Join in live or recorded gatherings to unfold the facets of each element together twice each season over the course of the year. 

  • Ten 60-minute classes, which I call gatherings, to unpack the specifics of the season’s element and how it relates to the larger world (hello, shenanigans) and our personal lives right now.

  • Fifteen guided meditations for exploring facets of each season through elemental awareness

  • Ten monthly Missives (short paper books) delivered by snail mail or email

  • Optional free (paid-level) subscription to Rough Soles writing project for one year

$50 per month or $500 one-time payment

THE ALCHEMICAL COMPASS

tools to harness the elemental energies to influence change in your life

Receive the Tangibles monthly missive, Community Compass elemental meditations and gatherings, and craft your own elemental journey through one-to-one work with me. Understand your elemental constitution (think the elements that made you who you are) and your temperament (how you survive in the world). And learn how to work with the elements to bring about the changes or the peace you seek.

  • Ten one-to-one Elemental Sessions with me (two per season)

  • Guided elemental inquiry to discover your elemental constitution and temperament

  • Personal recommendations may include flower essences and stone elixirs, personalized meditation tools, seasonal practices, and recommendations for reading or study

  • Ten 60-minute classes, which I call gatherings, to unpack the specifics of the season’s element and how it relates to the larger world (hello, shenanigans) and our personal lives right now.

  • Fifteen guided meditations for exploring facets of each season through elemental awareness

  • Ten monthly Missives (short paper books) delivered by snail mail or email

  • Optional free (paid-level) subscription to Rough Soles writing project for one year

$130 per month or $1300 one-time payment

More about the Spring 2025 Collective Compass Cohort

This cohort is centered on building a clear and integrative practice for yourself. That practice may look like something you can touch. It may look like something that stirs your mind or your heart. It might look like building patterns and pathways in your spirit that know how to connect with the moment for this year and all the years to come.

We’ll begin in April to flirt with the dynamism of wood in spring, crafting the life before us; stir spirits with fire as summer moves in, relishing intensity and harnessing it for our alchemical motions; and tend the earth with every mark of change; liberate our spirits with metal as autumn breezes carry us into all the wisdom we find in our bones; and dance through and around and in and beyond with water in the depths and darkness of winter.

As we move through this year of attention, attunement, and practice, we cultivate an understanding in our very depths the grace between all of the seasons of the year and maybe too the seasons of our lives.

We might mark our lives with the seasons
and steep in them and wander
through them to these places where change happens.

We might know ourselves to be
not only capable but also creative
in our presence and our agility there.

FAQ

  • Yes. You’ll have access to the recordings after each live gathering, and you can access them through the course page throughout the course. [Collective & Alchemical]

  • Nope! This class includes foundational content about the five elements as well as new and emerging information that will be inspired by the way the elements are present in the world these days. No previous knowledge required, though I will say our bodies know this stuff already. [All Tiers]

  • Of course! First, you can choose whether to get the Missives by snail mail or email. [All Tiers]

    Second, take the recording with you to the park or sit down to it with a cup of tea before the world wakes up. If you’re drawn to share something outside of our live gatherings, you can connect with me by email or snail mail. You can connect directly with the cohort through the online course page. [Collective & Alchemical]

  • No, refunds are not available after April 14. This offering is a learning container we create together. Please consider mindfully your intentions to sign up.

  • You have access to online course materials throughout the year and for up to one year after. [All Tiers]

  • Yes, if you want consistent connection throughout the course, consider the Alchemical Compass. If you’d rather book an individual session, apply your 10% Compass discount and book here.


REGISTRATION

Registration is open until April 21. Join us this spring!

ALL TIERS WILL EXPERIENCE

  • Deep study with the five elements and their seasonal affinities

  • Somatic practice finding and returning to our own edges, where wood meets fire meets earth meets metal meets water and so on and so forth in all directions

  • Elemental inspiration from guides who tend the seasons and the elements with their lives

  • Guidance and relational support for cultivating and strengthening your personal practice of ritual

  • Mindful integration through spiritual and practical reflection

This is so much of how I want to live my life,

seeping into the seams of reality with every direction of change. Find the rough and raucous sides of these elements; find their soft, sometimes subtle interiors.

Join me, delve into the richness of your own life with the elements by understanding your elemental temperaments and how you, in particular, relate with these forces.

There is only more room for us to be together.

More About the Five Elements

WOOD

Wind into the light of sun as the days stretch longer with the sincere and tempered guidance of the plants. Together, we’ll follow the pure example of the green beings, the understory and ground dwellers as well as the towering trees of the forest and then the hedges and the backyard gardens and the persistent ones who carry us along highways and byways. Sway and grow and gather into your own being the golden light of the sun as we personally and collectively gather ourselves into our vision and direction and place. 

Guided by the green beings, plants low to the ground and reaching high into the clouds.

FIRE

Blossom with the bright; trust the sun; tend your internal fires. Lend your senses to the quieter voices that breathe us towards and through and even beyond the spark that is fire. Bring your personal integrity into the creative and destructive powers of wild fire.

Guided by flashes of light and color in the blossoms of high summer and the lasting glow of the sun star.

EARTH

Settle. Observe. Adapt. Allow yourself to hold the strength and stability, the knowing and care, the extension of grace and presence that is earth. Feel the support you desire in your journey while pouring that quality of grace and meaning back into the ground beneath you. And, in so doing, build with earth the stamina and integrity you desire to carry earth with you into the chaos of the world.

Guided by the slow, clear, knowing strength of the mountain.

METAL

Stretch into the width of time and space with the lifetimes of stones. Honor the levity of change with the wind. Bring your own intuition into the steps of the everyday with this moment and the next. Tend quiet, internal spaces with curiosity, understanding, and trust. Build the subtle connections that reside deep within you as you navigate the bridges between your depths and the ways of the world. You are wisdom. 

Guided by the ancient quiet of the stones and the weaving movement of the wind. 

WATER

Stand in the water. Truly, come stand in the water. Let the stories of the ancients wash over you as they pour down from these blessed mountains. Let your heart find home in the comfort of this glorious place. Find personal ritual with water through guided collection from ancient and new waterways near you into vessels for our water gathering. 

Guided by the percolating flow of springs, the power of waterfalls, and the rhythm of the sea.

 
 
 

Still have questions? Send me a note at graham@rootdeepliving.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Want to know what else is happening around here? Get your very own irregularly delightful note from me.