It takes a community to engender both conflict and it's better half, harmony. This is the hallmark of a global practice known as Winter Feast for the Soul. Created in Idaho in 2007, the Winter Feast for the Soul approaches its third anniversary as a more established and recognized event. And in the spirit of keeping the community involved, the upcoming Feast will offer a Prison Outreach and an invitation to children everywhere to participate for the upcoming Feast to be held Jan. 15 through Feb. 23.

Founder Valerie Skonie, 70, said about “10,000 people in 29 different countries found a way to incorporate stillness in their lives for 40 minutes a day, for 409 consecutive days.

A three-line poem by the Islamic poet and scholar Rumi inspired Skonie: "What nine months does for the embryo/forty early mornings will do/for your growing awareness."

Mediation, also called “sitting,” is a common practice and has shown to help people focus and alleviate stress, among other benefits. The event proposes that people commit in some form on a daily basis. This can be done on the Winter Feast website (www.winterfeastforthesoul.com).

The first year approximately 150 people signed up to the 40-day spiritual practice period either on their own or in groups, organized by Skonie, with help from the Light On The Mountains Spiritual Center, in Ketchum, Idaho.

That it grew past the small event she’d imagined surprised no one so much as Skonie.

When Skonie first read the poem, she thought, “Someone really has to try this,” she said. “Let’s make a gift to the valley. People from around the world began contacting me and wanted to be part of it.”

In 2009, Winter Feast for the Soul became a global event. Communities from 30 countries, including Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Sweden, Romania, Germany and India had committed to the second annual event.  They wrote letters, and blogged. They created their won websites to spread the word.

“Last year, we had more than 3,000 people committed on-line but that was the tip of the iceberg,” Skonie said. In fact, many people contacted her later to say they had participated but never signed up on the site.

The statistics speak for themselves: 145,000 Google links, videos on YouTube in four different languages, and a fan base that covers the gamut of places and faces.

A series of three daily, guided meditations were introduced on the website. Nearly 19,000 downloads of these meditations were tabulated during the 2009 Winter Feast, Skonie said. Since then, these meditations have continuously been downloaded.

She likes to quote the poet Stephen Harrod Buhner who wrote that only when we learn to “locate consciousness in the heart we can begin to know the world.”

“Clearing the mind is the first step, training the mind to be still,” Skonie explained. “The second is to drop the consciousness to the heart. Once that is learned by the mind and the heart you become a truly global citizen, connected to life. I am shifting to taking people to that next step. This is a heart- centered practice. On the website there will be seven different traditions including Christian, Tibetan Buddhist, Insight Mediation/Vipassana, New Thought, Sufi and children.

The Prison Outreach Program began in 2009 with 10 men incarcerated in a Boise, Idaho prison, who participated in the Winter Feast For the Soul.

One of these men wrote regularly and sent drawings of saints that came through his practice.

“’We are doing sacred work,’ he wrote. ‘What we are doing will change the world. Thank you for letting me be part of this. It is changing my life.’”

The concept is based on the ideas of subtle activism, as opposed to physical, psychological or social. The term 'subtle activism' refers to a collective activity of consciousness that participants hope will ultimately bring about social change.

Such acts aren't unique in history. David Nicol, author of the essay "Subtle Activism: Applying Spiritual Power for Social Change" wrote that during the Battle of Britain, Londoners of various faiths united daily for one minute of silence after the chiming of Big Ben at 9 p.m., a practice intended to strengthen the moral resolve of the city's inhabitants during the war.

"It is not hard to find other examples of the use of collective contemplative practice to unite people around political objectives or for social harmony," Nicol wrote. "A global meditation and prayer event, in which hundreds of thousands of people around the planet unite in silence and prayers for world peace, is a prime example of subtle activism."

Most of the ideas for global outreach came from letters and messages from people around the world, Skonie said, laughing. “I had no idea how to do it. They did it.”

It’s not only the perseverance of those who have found the website on their own that pleases Skonie. When families sign on it means a additional people practicing as a group. They have reported that their familial relationships are less strained.

“When a woman in Germany wrote and said her children were committing to it four minutes a day, I said, ‘Wow, children.’ Lets do that! So we inivited children around the world to join them.”

Skonie teaches meditation to people of all ages.

 “One student of mine (at the Wood River High School in Hailey, Idaho) said when he feels angry he knows now he doesn’t have to act on his anger. It gave him time to think.”

She reports that they are more focused during the day they meditate, less stressed. One student said she’d taken her friend aside before a Spanish exam and taught her how to meditate. Her friend joined the group the next week.

“She said ‘I am much more relaxed,’” Skonie related. “’Can I do that with sports?’ Absolutely.”

One kids said he was at church, and they were singing so he went in the elevator and meditated. They realized the value of being by themselves.

The Children’s Outreach, on the website, now includes four minutes of stillness for the earth as well as recorded stories on meditation and peace.

Bringing children into the feast is important, Skonie said. “They can form new habits easily at that age. And it’s given the prisoners a sense of connecting to the outside world. A sense of meaning. It’s like sunshine for the soul.”

As it happens Sunshine for the Soul is also the name of a short film about the Feast that was shown at the Sixth Annual Sun Valley Film Festival in September 2009.

“It’s important to know people all over the world are doing it,” Hailey, Idaho resident Cynthia Carr said. She enlisted her family in the event and saw nearly immediate results: togetherness and more cooperation.

Winter Feast for the Soul is a non-profit organization operating under the auspices of Rising Tide International, a non-profit corporation in Sarasota, Fla.

“I am pleased to convey to you His Holiness the Dalai Lama's prayers and good wishes for your next Winter Feast for the Soul which will take place from January 15 to February 23, 2010.  Best wishes.” --Tenzin Taklha, Joint Secretary, Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

This was the second year His Holiness the Dalia Lama blessed Winter Feast for the Soul. In 2008 the Feast was also blessed by Pir Zia Inayat Kahn, the head of the Sufi Order International; Anam Thubten Rinpoche, the spiritual leader of the Dharmata Foundation and the Rev. Kathy Hearn, of the United Centers for Spiritual Living, based in Colorado.