Niamh Barrett
I'm a mother, mindfulness teacher, trainer and supervisor, learning co-ordinator at a foster care charity, and former documentary producer.
I've been facilitating mindfulness courses (MBSR) since 2010, I'm a member of the Mindfulness Teachers Association of Ireland and I'm a student of socially-engaged Buddhism and the Way of Council, with Roshi Frank De Waele of Zen Sangha vsw (Belgium) and Jared and Ann Seide of Beyond Us & Them, respectively. In 2024 I received the Zen Peacemaker precepts from Roshi Frank De Waele and I continue to be his student.
In 2019 I began showing up, a framework of online and in-person retreats and courses to facilitate mindful engagement with the deepening housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland, and with other social issues. On Nollaig na mBan ('Women's Christmas' which takes place on January 6th) 2019 I facilitated a women's day-retreat, inspired by the bearing witness practices of Zen Peacemakers, on the theme of bearing witness to gender-based violence and resilience.
Since 2023 I've been organising workshops in the Way of Council in Dublin with trainers Jared and Ann Seide from Beyond Us & Them. I experience council circle as a profoundly beautiful, prosocial and unifying practice.
In May 2025 I'll be honoured to co-lead a five-day Bearing Witness retreat in the tradition of Zen Peacemakers on the theme of the mother and baby homes in Ireland, with my teacher Roshi Frank De Waele.
A deeper background
I began vipassana meditation practice in 2005 with Gar Freaney and Bernadine Cody at Lotus Village in County Kilkenny and through them, began to sit retreats with their guest teachers Frits Koster and Marjo Oosterhoff. My fellow trainee mindfulness teachers introduced me to many other wonderful teachers and I sat retreats and received teaching from Roshi Robert Kennedy, Roshi Melissa Blacker and Roshi David Rynick and Christina Feldman, among others. These encounters have nourished my life incalculably.
My mindfulness and social engagement offerings have been primarily inspired by the retreats, teachings and example of Roshi Bernie Glassman and Zen Peacemakers, along with the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Sr Chan Khong, Roshi Joan Halifax, Rhonda V Magee, David R Loy and Joanna Macy.
My daughter was born in 2009. Becoming a mother and watching her grow was a great source of joy. However during this same period of time, following the global financial crash of 2008, I was witnessing a deepening disregard for human dignity and well-being being played out on the world stage and in Ireland. I became drawn to exploring the connection between meditation and responding to the suffering in the world. This drew me to Zen Peacemakers and their socially-engaged retreats. I joined a street retreat with Roshi Frank De Waele in 2017 in Helsinki, co-organised with Mikko Ijas of Helsinki Zen - Peacemakers Finland.
On the street retreat and on a Zen Peacemakers' Bearing Witness retreat at Auschwitz the following year I experienced the possibility and power of entering into difficult places with an open heart and mind, supported by mindfulness and by community. This way of practice continues to inspire me to stay engaged and to share this with others.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought for me, in part, conditions for accelerated learning. During this time I studied with teachers online and offered a series of mindfulness- and circle-based courses which offered ways to listen deeply together to the situation. Prompted by the pandemic and the effect it had on my family, and beginning to join the dots of multiple crises in my mind, I began to study whole-systems thinking, ecological literacy and regenerative design with Gaia Education.
According to my Peacemaker vows, I'm committed to standing with others in solidarity with all forms of life affected by systemic discrimination and structural inequality, learning about the part I play in these structures and expanding my capacity to change this over the course of my lifetime.