UK human flourishing + ai retreat

Aligning technology with human flourishing begins by turning inward.

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Over six transformative days, we are gathering a community of founders, builders, leaders and changemakers driven by an urgency to align artificial intelligence and human flourishing, and who understand that this journey begins by pausing and turning inwards.

Drawing on the integration of spiritual and scientific ways of knowing, this contemplative practice retreat opens a natural path towards inner alignment. Through meditation, reflection, and dialogue, we will experience this path and study how its principles can help shape our lives and the future we are building.

Retreat participants seated in a meditation session in a glass-walled room overlooking gardens

“There is basic human wisdom that can help solve the world’s problems. This wisdom does not belong to any one culture or religion, nor does it come from the West or the East.

Rather it is a tradition of human warriorship that has existed in many cultures at many times throughout history”

—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The work that cannot be out-sourced.

Retreat as a practice of living fully

Perhaps now more than ever, retreat practice is the medicine for our times. Technology promises to reshape the future in profound and uncertain ways; and even today our relationship with technology challenges our basic human capacities of attention and intention. Our task, in the face of this, is to anchor ourselves in the deepest experiences that define us as human, and draw on them to approach the future with greater presence, discernment, and care.

This retreat offers a path: calm the mind, open the heart, analyse the nature of reality, and integrate the wisdom of these experiences into a clearer ability to respond to the challenges poised by transformative technology.

Over the days of this retreat, you will be supported in learning these practices and develop a confidence in them that can only be born through group practice and carefully held periods of silence. You will have moments to ground these experiences in conversation with peers and experts, cross-referencing insights through the lenses of spirituality and science.

By the time you leave, you will have developed the conditions you need to bring these practices back into your life in ways that will help you flourish — bringing agency and ownership to humanity's most urgent work of human flourishing.

“The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.”
— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

What to expect

Over six days, you will be immersed in meditation, silence, reflective dialogue and embodied practices that draw on 2500-year old contemplative traditions, and are woven together with contemporary science and emerging questions around consciousness, AI, and human flourishing. Teachings will be grounded through conversation with peers, expert facilitators and time in the restorative landscape of Broughton Sanctuary.

Together, we will investigate some of the defining questions of our age: What is consciousness? What is a life well-lived? How can we create technologies and systems aligned with human flourishing?

You will leave with practical tools and renewed perspective – and more lastingly, with a path you have walked deeply enough to carry back into the work: a clearer mind, a steadier heart, and a greater confidence in the qualities that allow us to live fully, act wisely, and contribute meaningfully to humanity's most urgent work.

For those familiar, this retreat falls somewhere between a vipassana retreat and a jhana retreat and takes a step out in a new direction towards the dharma for our times.

Aerial view of Broughton Sanctuary, a guided meditation session, and its pool and sauna spaces

Methods

Mind and heart

The meditation practices we will introduce are primarily:

  • Calm, focus, and stability of mind (Shamata)
  • Unconditional love, and joy (Metta / Maitri)
  • Analysing the nature of things / interrogating reality (Ché gom)
  • Seeing clearly and accurately (Vipassana)
  • Calm presence bridging meditation and daily life (Walking Meditations Zen Kinhin)

Body

Bio-hacking informed menu and exercises for longevity and feeling good:

  • Multiple daily exercise options including running, hiking, yoga, swimming
  • Sauna and cold plunge in the lake
  • Silent meals, a delicious seasonal menu that helps to detox

Integration

Tying the wisdom of these practices into grounded reflection on the technologies we are building through:

  • Personal study
  • Peer dialogue
  • Expert guidance from technologists working at the intersection of wisdom and AI
  • Emphasis on how to transition from the deeper contemplative space of meditation back into our daily work and contributions–and how to keep these worlds together going forward.
A bare, weathered tree reaching into a deep blue sky
“The challenges of this moment call for more than new tools — they call for a different quality of seeing. Together we will cultivate that seeing by bringing contemplative practice and the science of mind into direct experience.”
— Jonathan Garner

Personalised and impactful

Meditation is not one size fits all. Therefore, this retreat and the practices you leave with are customised to you and you will be given individual guidance along the way.

  • Pre-retreat coaching session to prepare for your experience
  • Two individual coaching sessions during the retreat to discuss your practice
  • Post-retreat integration session to extend the benefits of the retreat into your life and continue your practice routine
  • Post retreat group zoom check-in

You have the option to stay on one extra night without charge for a group integration day with the option to purchase meals at the local cafe or pub, and departure at 10am on September 19th.

Two people wild swimming in a lake at dusk, bluebells in the foreground and the Yorkshire hills beyond
“Human Flourishing means you at your best: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually; in harmony with yourself, others, and the natural world. In practice it is pursuing both human excellence and a life well-lived.”
— Sophie Maclaren

Facilitators

Sophie Maclaren

Sophie Maclaren

Sophie works globally as a consultant, coach, and facilitator for senior leaders in business and politics. After 13 years as a fellow and Expert in Residence on Mindfulness in Business at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, she has recently moved within the University to the Oxford Centre for Eudaemonia and Human Flourishing where she works on applied flourishing, and designs leadership programmes for students and executives. She co-founded Europe’s leading consultancy for mindfulness and wellbeing in the workplace. Her clients include magic circle law firms, global banks, the UK Parliament, the European Commission, tech execs, and Formula 1.

Sophie was raised in a family of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners with teachers in the Kagyu, Nyingma, and Shambhala lineages, and has had a lifetime of practice, study and teaching in these traditions. In her early twenties, at the request of her teachers she began teaching full time and has completed multiple meditation instructor and Buddhist teacher trainings in these traditions, working with thousands of students. She has led over 100 retreats and considers this form of practice to be particularly essential for our times.

Jonathan Garner

Jonathan Garner

Jonathan is founder of Mind over Tech, co-founder of the Wisdom+AI network, author of Your Best Digital Life and a meditation instructor with over twenty years of study and practice in the Tibetan Nyingma school. His work focuses on the intersection of technology and the human mind, finding practical ways to bring awareness and intention into our digital lives.

Alongside leading meditation courses and retreats, Jonathan combines a breadth of experience including writing code, demystifying machine learning to senior leaders at fortune 500 companies and consulting organisations like Google and Deloitte on Digital Wellbeing and intentional AI adoption. He regularly speaks at events around the world, mainly splitting his time between the UK and Germany where he currently lives in a buddhist community in Berlin.

Dr. Ruben Laukkonen

Dr. Ruben Laukkonen

Ruben is the director of the Flourishing Intelligence Program (FLIP) at Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is also a senior researcher and co-director of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing at Linacre College, University of Oxford, and a visiting Professor at the Centre for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

Ruben has made significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the science of consciousness, meditation, and insight. His work reveals a pathway towards better and safer artificial intelligence based on the neuroscience of consciousness and the mechanisms underlying contemplative wisdom. His research has been featured widely, including The New York Times, TIME, Scientific American, TEDx, Vice, ABC, Aeon, VOX, New Scientist, and in the Nature collection.

Venue

A converted stone barn in the Yorkshire dales A meditation session in the glass-walled studio overlooking the gardens The wild-swimming pond with a lone tree at dawn The contemporary retreat building lit at dusk Aerial view of Broughton Hall set in its parkland and dales A bedroom with a freestanding bath beneath leaded windows An ornate drawing room with a chandelier and bay windows The indoor pool with a wall of glass onto the grounds The wood-lined sauna A group gathered among the trees in the woodland

An example day

Morning

Early mornings offer options for walks or runs around the estate, or a bit more sleep until breakfast.

Experience the simplicity of guided meditation interspersed with instruction and walking meditations until lunch.

Afternoon

After lunch the focus is on nurturing your body - choose to rest, walk the meditation labyrinth, spend quiet time exploring Broughton’s remarkable nature-recovery programme, swim in the lake, or relax in Avalon’s biophilic-designed Pool Suite with saunas, steam and indoor pool.

Afternoons alternate silent meditation, occasional small group discussion on the themes of the retreat, one to one meditation coaching, and nature-immersed meditations and silent walks.

Evening

Evenings offer special practices to prepare for deep sleep such as sound baths, Yoga Nidra, and stargazing.

Register

Registration for the retreat is made through the Broughton Sanctuary website.

Scholarship assisted places

Thanks to generous patrons who believe in the vision behind this retreat, we are able to offer a number of scholarship assisted places.

All applications will be considered, and in particular:

  • We have four full scholarship places that will be specifically given to young founders.
  • We have a number of partial scholarships for people of all ages that we will distribute across as many applicants as possible.

To be considered for a scholarship, fill out the form below. We will assess all applications and inform you of the results by early August 2026.

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