Breathe
Notice your breath and learn a few simple patterns for moments when stress rises or your energy drops.
Breathe practices in the Four Pillars guideBody-first · Equity-centered · Community-based
Short daily practices for when stress has kept you on alert for years.
Rooted Reclaimers teaches you to notice how stress shows up in your breathing, sleep, digestion, and energy, try small changes that fit your day, and keep the ones that help.
You can start with free practices and a seven-day introduction. When you want more structure, Rooted Reset gives you 30 days of guided lessons and a weekly live group.
You can try any practice on this site without making an account.
Pause check
- 1 Breath
- 2 Shoulders
- 3 Jaw
Public Ground · about one minute
Try a one-minute breathing practice now.
Breathe in for about four counts and out for about six. Your heart beats a little slower while you breathe out, so a longer out-breath can help you calm down. Follow the circle, or close your eyes and count on your own.
- In for 4
- Out for 6
- 6 rounds
Press Start when you're ready.
If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, stop and breathe normally. If paying attention to your breath makes you feel worse, look around the room and name three things you can see instead.
The method
Each of the Four Pillars comes with small practices for an ordinary day.
Every Rooted Reclaimers program uses the same four areas of daily life. You don't need to master all four, and you can start with whichever one feels easiest.
Movement
Move in small, gentle ways, with a seated option for each practice and the Golden 8 Qigong sequence.
Movement practices in the Four Pillars guideNutrition
Make realistic choices about food, water, and rest that keep your energy steadier, especially on hard days.
Nutrition practices in the Four Pillars guideConnection
Build relationships, boundaries, and belonging at a pace that protects your privacy and energy.
Connection practices in the Four Pillars guideBody-first · Equity-centered · Community-based
How Rooted Reclaimers works
Body-first
Long-term stress changes how you breathe, how tight your muscles stay, how well you digest and sleep, and how easily you startle. Many of those responses started as ways to stay safe, and they continued after the danger passed.
A stress response usually keeps going while you try to think it through, and when it does, it's easy to blame yourself. A minute of slower breathing or gentle movement can lower your activation enough that you can think clearly about what to change. The responses that kept you going were intelligent adaptations, and you can learn to work with them.
Equity-centered
Racism, poverty, unsafe housing, disability, gendered violence, immigration stress, and chronic overwork keep a person's stress response switched on for longer, and many people live with several of them at once.
We name those conditions plainly and size each practice for the life you actually have, with options that work across bodies, identities, and circumstances. If recovery has felt harder for you, the conditions you live in are a likely reason, and that difficulty is a measure of those conditions rather than of your worth.
Community-based
Practice is easier to keep up when other people are doing it with you, and you decide how much of your own story to share.
In a group, you practice at the same time each week, and other people see the effort you're making. You can take part by listening, by staying quiet, or by stepping back for a while.
Minimum effective dose
Minimum effective dose means you do the smallest practice that still helps, and then you stop. Most practices take one to two minutes.
Pushing through tends to use up the capacity you're trying to build, so the goal is a practice small enough to repeat on your hardest day.
Where to begin
Choose where to start.
Pick the sentence that sounds most like you today. You can change your choice later.
Our suggestion
We suggest starting with Starter Ground.
It's free and takes 5 to 10 minutes a day for seven days. You can open Day 1 right away without signing up, and you can stop at any point.
Open Starter GroundPublic Ground
Start with a free practice.
You can use short breathing, grounding, and body-scan practices today without signing up for anything.
Go to free practicesStarter Ground · free · 7 days
Starter Ground gives you a guided first week.
Over seven days you try each of the Four Pillars, and on the last day you write your first Ground Plan. Day 1 is open now.
Open Starter GroundRooted Reset · 30 days
Rooted Reset gives you 30 days of structure.
You get daily lessons, a weekly live group session, and a plan you build as you go. The first cohort is a small pilot.
See Rooted ResetRooted Commons · Rooted Practice
Keep practicing with other people.
Rooted Commons is the free community. Rooted Practice is the paid membership, with live sessions, deeper practice, and more support.
Compare community optionsProfessional education
Professionals have their own page.
It has free starter tools for opening a session and using consent-based language, and you can sign up for news about future professional courses.
Go to the professional pageThe pathway
You move through five stages at your own pace.
Each stage adds more structure and support. You can pause between stages or stay in one for as long as it helps.
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Free · anytime
Public Ground
Short practices and Four Pillars lessons you can use without an account.
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Free · 7 days
Starter Ground
A guided first week that ends with your first Ground Plan.
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Paid · 30 days
Rooted Reset
Daily lessons, weekly live support, and a routine that fits your actual week.
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Paid · 8 weeks
Reclaim the Body
A deeper body-first program across all four pillars.
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Free or paid · ongoing
Commons & Practice
A free community and a paid membership for practicing with other people.
Now forming: the first pilot cohort
Rooted Reset gives you 30 days to build a routine you can keep.
Over 30 days, you learn to notice how stress shows up in your day and make one small, workable change at a time.
- 30 daily lessons with practices that take 3 to 10 minutes
- A weekly live group session with questions and guided practice
- Four Pillars exercises with seated and low-energy options
- All four full Four Pillar books, from Breathe to Connection
- My Ground Plan, so you keep track of what helps
- A clear next step after Day 30
- Length
- 30 days
- Daily time
- 3 to 10 minutes
- Live session
- To be announced
- Pilot cohort
- 8 to 15 people
- Pilot price
- To be announced
- Starts
- To be announced
Your planning tool
My Ground Plan puts what works for you on one page.
My Ground Plan is a one-page plan you fill in and keep. It lists your starting point, the smallest version of each practice, what to do on a low-energy day, and who to contact for more support.
The plan stays in your own browser, and you can change it whenever your life changes.
Who guides this work
Dr. Stephen Thompson
- DC
- DACM
- BCTMB
- CNT
- FAIHM
Dr. Thompson is an integrative clinician in the Twin Cities. He treats people living with chronic pain, burnout, autoimmune conditions, and long-term stress, and he teaches clinicians and organizations.
He built Rooted Reclaimers from his clinical training, his own recovery, and what he learned from patients who kept working and caring for other people for years while running on very little. His book, Journey from the Edge, lays out the framework behind the Four Pillars.
Part of The Founded Project
Rooted Reclaimers is the starting point for The Founded Project.
The Founded Project is Dr. Stephen Thompson's wider set of books, tools, and communities about agency, the practiced capacity to shape a life on purpose inside real conditions. It moves through five stages. Rooted Reclaimers covers the first stage, Reclamation, and each later stage depends on the capacity you build here.
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Reclamation
You are here -
Agency
The Founded Project -
Governance
The Founded App -
Discernment
RhetoricalPoints -
Contribution
GroundedVote