Following our participation in the Build Peace Conference 2025 in Barcelona, we are now contributing to the Bridges of Peace Retreat in Dublin, Ireland, Sunday 28 June – Wednesday 1st July 2026.
Bridges of Peace Retreat 2026
The Flourishing Circle is contributing to the Bridges of Peace Retreat in Ireland, a global event focused on mindfulness, character strengths, and latest research and practice in peace psychology.
This retreat is offered by Blooming Strengths Sangha and will be co-facilitated by the caretakers of this community of practice. Blooming Strengths practices in the Plum Village tradition and aims to cultivate our wholesome seeds (character strengths) in order to live meaningful and happy lives. The retreat is from late afternoon on Sunday 28 June to the morning of Wednesday 1st July 2026. Inscriptions at Bridges of Peace Retreat.
This year the retreat will explore a path of peace topics and practices over 3 days:
- Creating conditions for peace
- Peace in the minds and hearts – Challenging beliefs, attitudes and perceptions, cultivating inner peace
- Your engagement with life – Positive peace ethics
- Interactive talk: New Pathways of Strength for Difficult Times – Lessons from Scientists and Practitioners (Ryan M. Niemiec, PsyD)
- Peace and sangha practice – Gardening togetherness
Weaving our Strengths into Belonging and Community
Through deep relaxation, spacious silence, and shared mindfulness in the Plum Village tradition, we will cultivate the character strengths that build bridges of peace — within ourselves, between one another, and in the wider community.
Mindfulness is the foundation of learning, transforming, acquiring any competence, and in general engaging with life with true freedom and peace. Transformational change and flourishing is conditioned by having appropriate intentions, which in turn is conditioned by beliefs, attitudes and perceptions, that are most often dispositional unconscious cognitive structures. Challenging these often received mental constructs is a precondition for non violent communication and peace.
For example, if one believes that for oneself to win others need to lose, this will generate intentions and experiences of conflict and violence, accompanied with wrong perceptions (dualistic views of friends or enemies) and insane attitudes (aggressivity, protectionism, blame, coercion, manipulation, exploitation, and control).
This means that a experiencing flourishing and peaceful states and behavior start by becoming mindful and ready to challenge the manifestations of unconscious dispositional constructs. Thus, mindfulness is useful when appropriately directed.
Strengths to Flourish for Positive Peace
This retreat is part of the launching pad of the Strengths to Flourish for Sustainable Positive Peace course that The Flourishing Circle will propose to peace activists and social workers.
The Flourishing Circle
The Flourishing Circle is a partnership of mindfulness and character strengths expert practitioners who help people, teams, organizations, and communities to flourish and generate positive transformational change.