A Two Part, 3 Day Journey · Twin Cities Area MN

📍 ~50 miles from MSP Airport to Lake Osceola Retreat Center, WI

Sep 12–13 (In-Person) & Sep 19 (Online), 2026

Live & Lead in the AI Age with Wholeness

Roots & Wings

From $449 · Limited to 20 spots

Calling All Who Lead from Wherever They Are! Curious, Courageous Humans Building, Healing, Growing into What's Next.

Questions? Email → training@hollowbambooai.org

Prefer a one-page overview? [Download the flyer]

Explore and Decide

Why the Retreat

I'm Niv Sharma, creator of this retreat and founder of Hollow-Bamboo Innovations. A systems engineer and Fortune 200 leader with 12 years at 3M. And a fifteen-year practitioner of meditation and inner work. I've lived in both worlds — not sequentially, but simultaneously — and from that intersection, I see something missing from the AI conversation.

The Disruption

The AI revolution is the biggest disruption of our lifetimes; rapidly displacing the intellect-work humans have built their livelihood and identity around. AI's potential is real: education, healthcare, freedom from onerous tasks. But its trajectory is extremely concerning.

A Twin Crisis is unfolding

#1 Human Identity & Purpose

Humans are facing profound questions of identity, dignity and purpose. Underneath the performance, critical questions are gathering with urgency:

What intelligence do I carry that AI cannot replicate?

What domains are human, what are for the machine?

What is my purpose? How do I create value?

#2 AI Trajectory

AI's trajectory accelerates with inadequate safeguards: bias, manipulation, power-seeking and extreme risks. Going way beyond productivity gains. With values optimized for what does not serve broader good.

Deepest human experiences are being reshaped without our knowledge or guardrails with hazardous consequences.

Capabilities double every seven months, embedding today's blind spots and values into tomorrow's systems, beyond human oversight,

Current AI governance asks, “how do we prevent harm?” Almost none ask, “what should AI serve?” And none address who trains the human leaders and builders and users, not just the models.

The problem is not primarily technical. It is not primarily regulatory. The outer alone cannot hold what the inner has not yet recognized. It is about the inner state.

You cannot regulate away what comes from within.

If our current mind created the AI trajectory problem, can the same mind solve it?

The Real Questions

The Opportunity

A human is more than their intellect. We have hearts. We have spirits. Each serves a purpose: Intellect analyzes, heart connects and the spirit reveals. Most of us live and lead from one third, as that is how we have been trained by society thus far - to be productive. This must shift now; not just for few individuals here and there but at a broader scale.

Developing all three - mind, heart and spirit together - Integrated Intelligence℠, lets us not just govern and develop better AI but also thrive: to live with joy and innovate the systems we need with creativity and courage. The twin crises can become the twin breakthroughs of the AI Age.

Roots & Wings Retreat: Two-fold Goals

#1 Develop inner capacities — mind, heart, spirit together through proven, empirical methods. We call this Integrated-Intelligence.

#2 Apply Integrated Intelligence directly to outer leadership to address real AI dilemmas. Both as an individual leader, and as a team.

We want to create a model, that is scalable.

Humans thriving. AI serving life. It starts from within.

Why Now

The stakes are already real and redlines are already being crossed. External guardrails though necessary are not sufficient. AI governance can only be as strong as the humans holding it. Consider just a few developments.

01

Autonomous weapons already kill without oversight

Documented drone killings with no human in the loop.

02

"Uncontrollable" AI is no longer theoretical

Shutdown resistance measured in current frontier models.

03

AI is reshaping human experiences itself

Companionship is now a top use case for chatbots.

04

Bias in AI hits women with a "triple whammy"

Underrepresented in building it, most exposed to jobs disrupted, fewer of gains.

05

Sacred language is being redefined within AI context

Faith & contemplative terms repurposed by AI without consent.

06

AI is already propped as a spiritual authority

A Swiss church installed an AI Jesus in confession.

Why Join the Retreat

You are already a leader making an impact wherever you are. You are curious, courageous and open to learn and grow in new ways.

Tremendous courage, creativity and resilience is needed to move through and shape the uncertainty ahead. Both for humans and the AI trajectory. This is not a technical skills problem. This is a deeper human capacity problem. You sense that and are willing to take it on.

This is the time. This isn't a fringe idea; it is a rapidly growing field, and the momentum is building fast. MIT's AI Powered Women Conference is hosting a Consciousness Lab this September. Harvard Medical School's Meditation Research Program is publishing widely and convening an international conference the same month. Wisdom 2.0 tabled this exact topic earlier this year. My reflection on LinkedIn is shared. The Inner Development Goals (IDG) framework and the Future of Life Institute, whose Pro-Human Declaration I have signed, are both pushing in the same direction.

We are doing the work. Join the first cohort working on the most consequential issue of our time.

What you will gain

An inner shift that moves outward: for you, your leadership, and your AI impact.

01

For You

  • Insights for the problem you brought along: a felt, alive experience, not just conceptual learning.

  • Deeper connection to yourself: rooted in presence, vitality, balance, relaxation, flow, connection.

  • What embodied Integrated-Intelligence feels like (mind, heart, and spirit together): clarity, alertness, grounded, inner space to respond, access to fuller capacities you have. A real knowing that separates you from any machine.

  • Practices you take home - to transform inner blocks and power your life and mission with joy and courage.

02

For Your Leadership

  • The recognition: your own growth and AI's trajectory are answered by the same thing. Your presence and inner alignment.

  • Transform outer action: from burn-out to vitality, from fear to courage, hold contradictions (e.g. strength & flexibility, clarity & empathy), respond to what’s needed vs. react from past patterns.

  • A new depth of leadership, not skills but shifts, powered by what AI cannot replicate. Uniquely human. We call this Presence-Powered Leadership.

  • Your own leadership manifesto: what you actually stand for now.

03

For Your AI Impact

  • A wiser, joyful leader will create AI that serves life. Transform what AI is optimized for.

  • A two-fold model: Individual and Collective Integrated-Intelligence, for amplified impact across teams.

  • A wisdom-rooted framework for real AI dilemmas: as a designer, builder, in governance, or as a user in daily life.

  • Real actions you can take, immediately, for AI that serves life.

  • A community of like-minded leaders for momentum and encouragement.

Who is this retreat for?

Calling All Who Lead from Wherever They Are! Curious, Courageous Humans Building, Healing, Growing into What's Next.

All genders, all experience levels welcome. The methods used are non-religious, and blended: meditation rooted in direct experience, therapeutic approaches and inquiry.

You are intersecting with AI, whether or not you work in it directly. You see the possibilities, and you are genuinely concerned about the trajectory AI is currently on.

This retreat aims to closes a key wisdom gap: one connecting human capacity to AI that serves life. The dots we connect aren't the most obvious ones; it may make you pause, wondering how meditation and inner work ties to AI at all. This is the kind of gestalt shift this age calls for. As Kabat-Zinn put it recently: you don't meditate to meditate; you meditate to live — and lead — in the world. And certainly, if you have not tried meditation or inner work yet, if methods exist to accelerate access to fuller human capacities, and they do, now seems like the right time to learn them and put them to action.

Below you will find twelve stories, based on real voices - young professionals learning AI, mid-career and late-career leaders, executives, AI consultants and builders, moms, entrepreneurs, change agents, and more. Scan the bold titles; when one stops you, that is worth a closer look. You may find yourself in more than one.

Note that these stories are illustrative, not exhaustive. If none resonate with you exactly but something about the retreat is stirring something in you, that's enough to belong here.

Who is behind this?

Credentials & Experience

Niv Sharma brings 15+ years of leadership across Fortune 200s, mid-size firms, and startups in diverse global industries, combined with 15+ years of meditation, contemplative and inner work practices to the intersection of consciousness and AI governance.

Read more

My Journey to Hollow-Bamboo Innovations

“Work is Love Made Visible”. Khalil Gibran.

A question in 2016 that jolted me awake. A burnout in 2017 that broke it open. A quest for the song I was meant to sing — and the journey that led me to here.

Read more

Why This Work Matters Now

AI will inevitably be optimized for the priorities of the humans creating it — for power-seeking, or for the broader good. Right now, it's leaning toward the former. And AI governance is only as strong as the humans holding it — and almost no one is developing those humans.

Read more

Niv Sharma

Founder, Hollow-Bamboo Innovations

Developing leaders and innovators with integrated intelligence (embodied mind-heart-spirit). Creating governance frameworks and systems that steer AI toward serving life

About Safar Nikodem, Star Sapphire & Conscious Living Programs

Meet Safar Nikodem, Lead Facilitator for Part 1 of Roots & Wings Retreat

Safar Michal Nikodem has been facilitating Star Sapphire and Conscious Living workshops for over 15 years, leading groups across Europe, China, Japan, UAE and other countries.

Safar is a trained therapist based in Prague, Czech Republic and a member of Czech association for psychotherapy. He is also trained in Star Sapphire, Psychic Massage, Constellations, Ayurvedic Balance Bodywork and Painting Art Therapy.

Safar has studied and trained for 15+ years in Star Sapphire and Conscious Living methods, with Sagarpriya DeLong, the creator of these methods over 35 years ago, while also learning the art of leading groups about Presence. These methods are blended and incorporate meditation, therapeutic techniques, inquiry and conscious living tools.

He is a seeker of truth and a meditator, and his approach involves helping the participant move from a “state of desire” to a “state of presence”. This essentially is the journey inward and relaxing into the heart and connecting with your spirit, lessening the grip of the ego and its demands for more.

Safar combines skill with a rare depth and warmth, gentleness and creates a safe space for participants to explore their inner landscape and discover their path to inner healing, balance and living with growing wholeness.

Safar Nikodem is the lead facilitator for the Roots & Wings retreat in the Twin Cities, MN. He will be using a blended method for the work: Meditations, Therapeutic Work, Inquiry, incorporating techniques to come into presence, from Star Sapphire and Conscious Living Programs he has worked extensively with.

Safar Michal Nikodem

About Star Sapphire & Conscious Living Programs

Star Sapphire helps to connect with and balance our rational and intuitive sides, for personal well-being, deeper relationships, fulfilling work and sustainable leadership. This work was developed over 35+ years back by American therapist, meditator and author Sagarpriya DeLong.

Conscious Living programs grow awareness in daily life, ultimately transforming the quality of life. Also developed by Sagarpriya DeLong.

Programs about consciousness in normal activities include hands-on experience in using the techniques. The participants work on a project or activity. From this experience they are able to report back to the group about those situations in which awareness went up (high satisfaction) and the contrasting situations in which awareness went down (low satisfaction). As a result of closer examination of the choices that are made, everyone learns how to stay more present doing the small, simple things that everyday life requires.

Read more about methods and creator Sagarpriya DeLong →

One Retreat. A 3-Day Journey, two parts.

📅 Part 1: Sep 12–13, 2026, in-person · 8am–6pm CT

Two days immersion by the lake: guided meditations, therapeutic exercises, inner work, real issues, felt shifts. Access inner capacities. The grounding to lead AI that serves life.

📍Twin Cities, MN | Venue: Lake Osceola Retreat Center, WI (more details below)


💻 Part 2: Sep 19, 2026, online via Zoom · 9am–4pm CT

One day online: Apply it to real AI dilemmas

🏷️ $449 - full experience, workshops & meals (day commute, no lodging)
🏠 $549 - with shared lodging (limited, first come first served)*

Only 20 spots available.

Meals: Nourishing, vegetarian - breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus snacks, coffee, and tea throughout the day. Special diets accommodated: just let us know.

Note: Price is for both parts, and one sign-up is required. Part 2 builds on Part 1. For a consistent experience for all participants, attendance is required in both.

*Rates may be adjusted based on type of room.

A few scholarships are available for financial hardship. Please reach out if this would help you join. Email → training@hollowbambooai.org

The Retreat Experience

Dates, Investment & Venue

Venue: Lake Osceola Retreat Center

St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin • Less than an hour from the Twin Cities Airport.

Walk straight out the door onto Lake Osceola.

A historic lake house on 100 acres of private woodland. Forest trails. Morning light on the water. The kind of stillness that is silent yet alive.

In the St. Croix Valley - where locals come to breathe.

Lodging:

  • $549 - shared room, separate beds

  • $549 - shared room, queen / king bed (with a same-gender guest or friend of your choosing)

  • $629 - one private room

  • 5–6 shared-lodging spots available

→ See example rooms in the gallery.

The Retreat: What Happens & the Approach

Wondering what meditation has to do with better AI? Here's how inner work fuels outer leadership, action, and innovation. See the Full Retreat Arc below for the deeper dive.

Part 1: GROW your access to inner capacities, beyond intellect

Sep 12–13 · In-person by Lake Osceola

1. A Real Issue You Bring: Personal or Work-Related

2. Guided Practices & Sessions

3. Felt Experience of Integrated-Intelligence: Presence, Connection, Flow and more.

A human is more than intellect. We have hearts, and spirits too. Intellect analyzes. Heart connects. Spirit reveals. Most of us stay locked in the mind, because that's how we've been trained. This work shifts that energy into heart and spirit; opening a broader spectrum of capacities, a vaster perspective, a richer life.

These inner capacities cannot be forced, only uncovered, the way clearing rocks lets a spring flow. Through Star Sapphire's blended methods refined over 35+years (meditation, therapeutic exercises, harmonizing inner conflict between right vs left brain, deep inquiry, conscious living) you cultivate your Integrated-Intelligence: embodied mind, heart, and spirit working together.

Morning and evening guided meditations, with sessions led by Safar Nikodem and supported by Niv Sharma. Breaks, unstructured time by the lake, nourishing meals woven throughout. No pressure. No performance. Just to be.

Why this matters for AI: humans who cannot locate their own inner experience are unable to say where the human ends and the machine begins.

A wise, joyful, courageous human leads and shapes AI differently. This is where it begins.

The Week In Between - Integration

You return to your world carrying the opening. A small daily practice. A few reflection questions. Some journaling. You notice what changes, in how you decide, how you relate, how you lead. You will also begin your leadership manifesto; what you actually stand for now, to bring into Part 2.

Part 2: APPLY Individual and Collective Integrated-Intelligence to Real AI Dilemmas

Sep 19 · Online

1. Reflections from the Integration Week

2. Real AI Dilemmas: Solo & Breakout Groups

3. Actions Added to Your Leadership Manifesto

Inner work meets leadership inquiry and action. Your Integrated-Intelligence joins with others to form a field of Collective Integrated-Intelligence, looking at pressing AI issues from both the individual and collective frame. Facilitated by Niv Sharma.

9am–4pm: opening meditation, then reflections from the week, then real AI dilemmas explored individually and in breakout groups, working toward solutions using a life-positive AI governance framework and insights from Part 1

Maps onto the four points where AI actually gets shaped: design, build, governance & oversight, and use. Each explored through a real human tension.

The day and retreat close with a grounding meditation and celebration.

The Experience Package in a Nutshell

Working on the most consequential problem of our times: Leadership & AI

  • Historic farmhouse on Lake Osceola

  • Cross-generational, all genders

  • Day or overnight, limited lodging

  • Unstructured time in nature and by the lake

  • No alcohol, no THC, no substances

  • Small group, 10–20 people

  • Nourishing vegetarian meals

  • Morning & evening meditations, with celebration

  • Safe container, no performance

  • 15+ year, expert facilitators in meditation, inner work, leadership and AI & tech transformation

The Retreat’s Full Arc: How Wise and Courageous Leaders Shape AI that Serves Life

Wondering what meditation has to do with better AI? You might be surprised. Here is how inner work fuels outer leadership, action, and innovation.

Part 1: Grow your access to inner capacities (Deeper Roots)

It starts with the individual.

A human is more than just their intellect. They have hearts. They have spirits.

Each of these serve a role. Intellect analyzes or dissects. Heart integrates or connects. Spirit reveals or emerges.

The human consciousness (or vital energy) for most of us, stays locked in our minds, our intellects, because that is where we operate from, most of the time. That is how we have been trained. That is how we humans have created value for society thus far.

However, the same energy can be shifted into the heart, and even a step further back, into our spirit. This opens up access to a broader spectrum of capacities, a vaster perspective, a richer life. We can learn to do this at a broader scale (vs. it happen randomly) by conscious intent and practice, using proven empirical methods. Meditation is one such method. Blended methods using Meditation, Therapeutic Techniques, Balancing Bio-energies (to harmonize inner conflict: left brain vs. right brain, rational vs. intuitive) offer another pathway used by Safar Nikodem, our expert in this Star Sapphire Method. Created by Sagarpriya DeLong, American therapist, meditator, innovator and author. Offered for 35+ years to hundreds and thousands worldwide with powerful testimonials. Learn more about Star Sapphire & Creator here.

It is worth taking a note of human capacities that cannot be replicated by AI, maybe mimicked or faked but not replicated. Our own experience tells us: Judgement, Empathy, Discernment, Courage, Sense of Inner Safety and more. This is echoed across current research: Genuine Empathy, Moral Judgement, True Creativity, Critical Thinking with Nuance, Emotional Intelligence, Authentic Relationships, Adaptability, Intuition and more.

Note that the true sources of all these is the inner - these capacities can be cultivated and grown by bringing our consciousness inside. Also, many of these capacities emerge - by providing the right milieu - of stillness, of relaxation. They cannot be forced or pushed. It works more like removing the rocks covering the spring inside - and then it starts to flow, first a dribble, then more, then gushes forth as an overflow.

This is the well of wisdom, that the human being can learn to cultivate and access. To be more joyful, more wise, more rooted in their fuller capacities - able to access their Integrated-Intelligence (embodied mind, heart and spirit).

What is Wisdom? Not accumulated knowledge, not doctrine inherited from outside. It is nourished by the assimilated experiences of human lives, cultures and traditions across centuries. And it ultimately flowers from within: the natural expression of a growing inner state that sees clearly what is needed now, feels deeply what matters, and responds to the current moment from something larger than the individual self. Not from past patterns or accumulated data, but from present awareness and discernment. Ethics and reverence for life flow naturally from this state; not as rules imposed from outside but as the organic expression of who you are becoming.

A wise, joyful human will create AI that is good for all. A compassionate human will create compassionate AI. A courageous human can actually steer AI's trajectory with strength, clarity and conviction.

This retreat supports to open these deeper capacities and insights. Yes, it will help reduces stress, enhance well-being but will support the participant to go beyond. To cultivate Integrated Intelligence: the growth of true emotional and relational intelligence, along with a depth of presence most of us rarely have learnt how to access in daily life.

How Inner Capacities Support Better AI (Four Examples)

1. A Doorway into Presence & Deeper Human Capacities

Challenge: the biggest confusion today is knowing which domains are human and which are machine. For example: claims of AI being conscious or self-aware grow harder to dispute without humans knowing that experience firsthand.

How this helps: restores the clarity and boundaries between what's human, what's machine.

2. A Taste of Ego-lessness, Being in the Moment

Challenge: AI today is largely optimized for one thing: gaining power and influence.

How this helps: humans who can balance "only for me" with "good for all" are capable of steering AI somewhere different.

3. Wisdom From an Awakening Inner State

Challenge: some companies try to build ethics into AI from the outside; e.g. Constitutional AI is one attempt. The public stand-off from early 2026 between Department of War & Anthropic shows the difficulty.

How this helps: AI ethics can only be as strong as the humans willing to uphold them.

4. Embodiment & Practice

Challenge: more time spent in purely virtual existence is already a mental-health hazard: addictive engagement, digital companions.

How this helps: embodied practice rebuilds the felt, physical ground that virtual existence quietly erodes restoring real anchors and experiences.

Next section: Part 2 of Full Retreat Arc

The Retreat’s Full Arc Continued

Part 2: Apply Integrated-Intelligence to Real AI Dilemmas

Stronger Wings: Flight Ready for New Heights

This is where inner work done in Part 1 meets leadership inquiry and action, to address real life AI dilemmas and challenges.

In this session, Integrated-Intelligence of the Individual Leader will join forces with others to generate a field of Collective Integrated-Intelligence, and look at the most pressing issues from both the individual and collective frame.

Participants will be coming in with 1 week of integration time and reflection, with some small amount of pre-work done for this workshop - primarily reflection, journaling and optional reading.

Hollow-Bamboo has developed a governance framework for Wisdom-rooted, Life-Positive AI, which is being vetted with partners and collaborators. This framework will serve as a guiding tool for this facilitated workshop.

The group inquiry will map onto the four points where AI actually gets shaped: design, build, governance & oversight, and use, each explored through a real human tension, possible ways to approach, actions to take, and where further support / augmentation may be needed.

Examples of Real-Life AI Dilemmas (Part 2 Focus)

Build Stage:

An AI builder who already meditates and cares about steering AI toward serving life; however, the concern has not translated into action yet.

Design Stage:

A designer knows creativity, empathy, and presence matter but hasn't developed these within himself, and isn't sure how to design them into an AI system.

Governance & Oversight

Someone raised a concern through the proper channel and paid for it. Someone else who saw the same thing stayed silent but still carries the weight of it.

AI Users

The much larger population living with AI day to day: sacred terms repurposed, a digital companion taking over their teen’s relationships, job cuts looming while training one's own replacement, and more.

Note: these are just a few examples. Participants will bring other perspectives including their own experiences of job transition and/or AI-driven attrition.