What are you doing in the New Year?- Winter Feast for the Soul

OUR GOALS

• To create an annual worldwide period of spiritual practice for people of all faiths to come together in prayer and meditation.
• To support people around the world in finding inner peace in their lives through the creation of a daily spiritual practice.
• To recognize that every person and every group is entitled to their own unique form of expression of these goals and is encouraged to practice them without discrimination.
• To work toward a global consciousness of peace.

OUR HISTORY

A Winter Feast for the Soul was born from the inspiration founder Valerie Skonie received through a line from a Rumi poem:

"What nine months does for the embryo,
forty early mornings will do for
your growing awareness."

In its first year in 2008, the event gathered about 150 people in the Wood River Valley and beyond who committed to a 40-day meditation period organized by Skonie, with help from the Light On The Mountains Spiritual Center, in Sun Valley, Idaho. The idea grew beyond her wildest dreams. People in various cities took up the idea. Even the Iranian press wrote about what was happening in Sun Valley. Soon, people from 29 countries had committed to the second annual event in 2009.

2010 WINTER FEAST AT A GLANCE

The success of the third annual event in 2010 shows participation numbers have more than doubled around the world.

• We estimate the number of participants doubled over that of the 2009 Feast, reaching totals of about 20,000 people worldwide.
• Our Children’s Feast for the Soul found its way into countless schools and homes around the world.
• Our Prison Outreach program found its way to prisoners in state and federal incarceration centers throughout the United States.
• We expanded our Online Meditation offerings to include:
  • Christian Contemplative Prayer
  • Insight Buddhist Meditation
  • New Thought Meditation
  • Tibetan Buddhist Meditation
  • Universal Interdenominational Meditation
  • Four Minutes of Stillness for Young Children
  • 15 minutes of Stillness for Older Children and Teens.
  The response to the online meditations was overwhelming! A total of nearly 35,000 downloads of these meditations was tabulated during the 2010 Winter Feast and the meditations continue to be used daily since then.
  Listen to the 2010 Winter Feast Mediations Here
• Our Web Traffic has doubled over that of 2009.
• Our Daily Inspirational Quotes for the forty-day Feast were translated into Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish by volunteers from around the world.

PARTNERS

Charter for Compassion, Dharmata Foundation, Companions for the Silent Journey, Global Coherence Initiative, Oneness Experience, Rising Tide International, Sun Valley Film Festival, Children of the Sun

RECOMMENDATIONS AND ENDORSEMENTS

His Holiness the Dalai Llama, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, Deepak Chopra, the Episcopal Third Order of St. Francis, Scripps Institute of Alternative Medicine, Andrew Harvey, James O’Dea, and Coleman Barks.