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From July 16-19, 2026, Integral Politics International held its first informal Summer Retreat for members & friends in Tomas Björkman's beautiful mountain chalet near Gryon (Switzerland). A total of 12 participants from Switzerland, Germany, France, the UK, Spain, India and South Africa made up for a lively and inspiring mix of backgrounds, ideas and cooking habits.
The group Integral Politics International had formed in May 2025 during the last Integral Europe Conference in Siófok (Hungary), with the aim to support the vision of deepening our democracies based on integral consciousness across Europe. The group had convened online on a monthly basis ever since. The retreat was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect, to expand our network and to exchange ideas and practices for taking European politics into a new paradigm operating system and culture.
Our agenda covered both substantial inputs from integral political philosophy (Jim Cowan) to spirituality (Aima Andany, Radhika Khanna) to integral economics (Jeremy Wakeford), open conversations around how European politics could be taken to a next, more integral level, and group processes around personal challenges and shadow issues. The beautiful surroundings furthermore invited a thematic hike and a bodywork session with the most impressive panorama one could imagine.
While this first retreat was conceived as a low-level experiment at first, it did feel like a prototype of something to be continued - and potentially expanded very soon. Actually, my (Elke) own inspiration was the first Congress on Integral Politics in the German-speaking area, held in St. Arbogast (Austria) in 2008, one week full of inspiration, deep conversations and flow.
In fact, one participant suggested to hold similar in-person retreats several times a year. We will keep you posted 🙂.
So far, we have set up a WhatsApp group in addition to our IPI mailing list that interested folks are welcome to join:
IP International mailing list: ip-international
lists [dot] integral-politics [dot] org (ip-international[at]lists[dot]integra
To subscribe, sign up at https://lists.integral-politic
WhatsApp group: please contact Gradlon von Kaernel at gradlonme [dot] com (gradlon[at]me[dot]com).