Our Journey with Water – Winter 2026

Join us on an immersive year-long journey through the five elements of nature: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal and learn how they reflect and affect your own inner landscape. Each element has its own season, emotions, qualities and wisdom.

Through nature connection, creative practices, personal reflection, movement, meditation and shared experiences in stunning locations, you’ll explore how this ancient and eternal cycle can support your health, understanding and flourishing, along with that of our planet.

This is a space to engage with the wider systems and cycles of life, to reconnect with our beautiful surroundings and our shared, evolving story, as we celebrate the depth and complexity of being human.

Our Journey with Water – Winter 2026

In this dark, reflective time of year, immerse yourself in the element of Water, associated with winter, yin, wisdom, vitality, and the life force within. Through meditations, nature connection, deep listening, creative expression, and invigorating adventures, we’ll explore fearless, equanimity, and the ebb and flow of life.

Along the way, we’ll dive into playful, watery creative activities: watercolour, music, and other flowing crafts that awaken the senses and spark imagination. Set in stunning locations around the bay, this course offers a space to connect deeply with yourself, with others, and with the natural world, celebrating the fluid, ever-changing nature of life.

Session 1 – The Sea: Trust and Connection
We begin where all life began, at the edge of the sea. This first gathering invites us to slow down, listen, and attune to the deep-time rhythms of water and our own inner tides. Water, the element of Ultimate Yin, connects us to the feminine, the hidden, and the shadowed aspects of life. Through gentle movement, shared reflection, and creative play, we’ll explore themes of trust, flow, and interconnection, building a sense of safety that allows us to soften and open. Expect time in nature, collective crafts, and moments in or by the water as we begin our journey with a feeling of renewal and belonging.
Session 2 – The River: Flow and Emotion
Our second session takes us inland to the river, following the movement of water as it flows through the landscape and through us. We’ll examine the cycle of water through time and space, and the ways it shapes both ecosystems and our inner lives. We’ll also explore the emotions of Water, fear and lack of fear, adrenaline and excitement, and the part these emotions play, and have always played, in our lives. Through movement, mindful listening, and creative expression, we’ll open to the ancient wisdom of water and all it can teach us about moving effortlessly through life. This day is about letting movement and feeling guide us toward connection and compassion, through emotion, tears, laughter, release, and renewal.
Session 3 – The Source: Wisdom and Equanimity
Our final session takes us to the sources, the hidden springs where water begins its journey. Here we turn toward the deeper patterns: the ways water reflects fear, courage, and clarity in our lives and in our collective systems. Through reflective practice, collaborative dialogue, and nature art, we’ll explore how to meet uncertainty with steadiness and grace. This is a day for integration and insight, for finding stillness, reverence, and quiet wisdom at the source before flowing onward on our own meandering journeys through life.

Course Dates: January 17th, 24th & 31st, 2026

Location: Torbay

Cost: It is our heartfelt wish to offer this course as authentically as we can and to anyone who is drawn to it. Therefore, we are offering it based on Dana. Dana is an ancient Pali word meaning generosity or giving and comes from the Buddhist tradition.

In practice, it means that at the end of the course, you will be asked to consider the value of the experience and teachings you have received and give what you can to ensure that courses can continue for others. There is no set price – just like all other aspects of our lives, each of our financial circumstances is unique. In the Dana tradition, the amount is less significant than the intention to enhance the lives of others. This is an intention which has kept the Buddhist tradition alive for the last 2,500 years, it is a commitment to our Collective well-being.

See all courses here

In Our Element for courses on the five elements. Understanding you element for personal and planetary wellbeing.

Open to the Elements
A Quest for Personal & Planetary Well-being

 

By Rachel Geary

Rachel Geary: Teacher, facilitator I am a practicing acupuncturist and have been running my own multi-bed clinic in Torbay for the last fourteen years. This has given me first-hand experience of the rich diversity of talent and potential held within my local community as well as the challenges of harnessing it. I have also been practicing meditation in the Buddhist tradition since 1995. Buddhism and Chinese Medicine have been instrumental in shaping and deepening my understanding of the natural cycles and intricacies of the living world, lessons that I personally try to integrate into the way I live my life. This desire to ‘Be the change’ led to my decision to study Sustainability and Behavior Change at CAT and to develop this into the shared journey of exploration that has manifested in this course.