#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
#BEFRIEND DIVERSITY - MAKING FRIENDS FOR LIFE
welcome
7 Days of Rest, January 1-7, is an annual, open co-creative event dedicated to the healing and replenishment of the planet and all its inhabitants. All are invited to enjoy the rich array of offerings, including wisdom teachings, meditations, music, inspirations and more, that are generously offered by the global community.
During the first week of 2023 we celebrated 7 Days of Rest & Return to Essence.
Below you will find links to the diverse offerings from the global community.
We hope to see you next year, January 1-7, 2024!
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gateways
GATEWAYS are offered as inspiration for delving deeper into the theme of the event.
They offer a variety of content including articles, videos, photos, posters and inspiration that you are free to access throughout the event and beyond. Some GATEWAYS recur each year (eg. Deep Nourishment),
During the first 7 Days of 2023, we unite in seeding the New Year with a sacred field of intention and action towards a thriving world for all of Life. Through rest, deep listening, wisdom sharing, ceremony, and co-creative offerings, we amplify the emerging global culture of peace, health, cooperation and wise governance.
7 Days of Rest & Return to Essence offers a shared sacred space for consciously attuning to the Nature of Essence and the Essence of Nature. Shedding the noise and distractions, we slow down and listen to the whispers of our heart's calling. As we follow the path of essence, we remember our original encoding and restore our experience of kinship and communion with all of Creation.
Together we seed the New Year with clarity, courage and commitment to live lightly and lovingly, cultivating that which is most essential for the thriving of all Life.
Previous years
Shelley Ostroff PhD,
Founder and co-host of
7 Days of Rest
Yan Golding,
Co-host of
7 Days of Rest
An immense THANK YOU to Kelly Schlesinger, 7 Days of Rest Steward and co-creator, for her loving dedication to the ongoing design and maintenance of the website and for so generously sharing her creative gifts to help make this event all it is.
We honor and acknowledge with deepest gratitude all our other-than-human kin who participated actively in co-creating the event and all those who brought in their voices.
We are deeply grateful to those planetary stewards who have contributed so lovingly and generously to the
7 Days of Rest Global Event. Each of these stewards brings a powerful devotion to humanity and to Mother Earth,
and their unique contribution anchors and amplifies the energy of the 7 Days of Rest.
inspiration from the community
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Sufi Teacher
"7 Days of Rest is an opportunity to turn inward, to rest and replenish. But most important, it can be a time to return, to reconnect, to allow this deepest communion of our soul and the soul of the Earth. Only from this place of reconnection can we hold the light that is there and begin the essential work of healing and redeeming our abused Earth."
Clare Dubois
Founder of TreeSisters
"The 7 Days of Rest being the first 7 days of 2020, a whole new decade that is offering us a moment of reflection, but also of intention. This is an opportunity to step in to sacred relationship with the essence of creation. It’s a beautiful invitation, every day having its own vibrational frequency and invitation, each one of those a doorway through which you get to explore yourself and your relationship with all that is."
Cynthia Jurs
Founder of Earth Treasure Vase Healing Project
“Let’s take these 7 Days [of Rest] to recover ourselves … Creating a sacred space or a time out where we can return to something that is relaxed, open and quiet, and feel that sense of connection to something so much larger than ourselves. This is where a new story can be born, this is where we can contact deeply what we care about the most, and then offer that to our loved ones, to our communities, to the Earth, to all beings”
Sharon Rosen
Global Director for Religious Engagement, Search for Common Ground
How wonderful to be called to intentionally dedicate time to honor, appreciate and care for the dazzling diversity we are so fortunate to be a part of on this planet. Over a period of 7 days we are invited to take time out from our busy lives and simply be; be quiet, rest and listen to the still small voice within ourselves and without, calling us to open our eyes and see what we can do individually and collectively for our planet. Astronaut Michael Collins who piloted the momentous Apollo 11 to the moon 50 years ago, speaks of how ‘fragile’ the earth looks from afar. We recognize this fragility today more than ever before. So, let us take this gift of 7 days to consider how we can contribute towards a more flourishing world for all its diverse inhabitants and for the web of life as a whole. And then let us act on it.
Jate Kulchavita
Comunidad Mhuysqa de Ráquira
[7 Days of Rest] seems very important to us because in truth, humanity that lives in this time has forgotten its own path … It is important now to give time and place to an action, a culture of the human being that allows him to fully realize himself as a human being so that he may return to the path of remembering who he is. [To] look inside, walk inside, to live in fullness, to live in inner peace, to live in happiness. We must restore a permanent culture of the spirit. The inner way."
Sadhvi Bhagawatjj Saraswatiji
Parmarth Niketan Ashram
"During these beautiful and auspicious days at the beginning of the new year, as we relook at ourselves, and our lives, and our decisions, and our choices, it is crucial for us to also look at how we interact with Mother Earth ... Let us pledge to be part of the solution, to be the change we need to see in the world. That possibility is ours."
Ming Shan (Bright Mountain)
Director of E-Mei Mt. Enlightenment Institute
"In this journey of 7 Days of Rest … we will reflect on each other and the radiance of life. In this process we feel the warmth of each other, and we will find the home of happiness that existed a long time ago. Every heart will be blooming with laughter."
Dr. Sailesh Rao
Founder of Climate Healers
"Just as I begin each day with an hour of meditation, I begin each year with a week of rest and reflection. Resolving to grow more into my true compassionate self … I truly believe that act will make me much more effective during the year … The start of a new year is the perfect time to reflect on the limits we place on our compassion and to widen our circle of compassion to include all lives."
Dr. Julie Krull
Founder GOOD of the WHOLE
Join us in community to honor the 7 Days of Rest ... All healing begins with rest, it’s the first step. A time for us to slow down and allow the designing intelligence; that animating life force to do its work. The wisdom, the guidance, the energy that it takes; all of that emerges from that place of rest. The sacred space for healing. This is our invitation to begin with the rest, allowing ourselves to really muse in the wisdom of our radiant diversity”
MiraMichelle
Founder of Sacred Female Rising Institute
"7 Days of Rest, this global movement, is asking us to rest, and to nourish ourselves and our Earth. So please join me. Let us put our feet on this Earth this day, let us breathe the air, let us feel ever more deeply into this resonance, which is nature. We are nature."
Nejoud Al-Yagout
Founder of Co-Exist Kuwait
"The language of the soul is stillness and silence, and the language of the ego is noise and chaos. 7 Days of Rest is a time for us to realign ourselves with our essence. To get in touch with the divine, to spend moments in stillness, to recall the space, the unifying thread in us … to raise our frequency collectively. This is what we came here to do; to love. Sometimes we need rest in order to create a new reality