EVENTS Archives - Julie Svay • Private Advisory for Leaders and R&D Consulting https://juliesvay.com/project_category/events/ Inspired Leadership — Awaken Your Higher Wisdom for Renewed Clarity, Refined Mastery, and True Fulfillment Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:56:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.9 https://juliesvay.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/cropped-LogoPistisSophiaGold_enhanced2-32x32.png EVENTS Archives - Julie Svay • Private Advisory for Leaders and R&D Consulting https://juliesvay.com/project_category/events/ 32 32 The Khmer Waters https://juliesvay.com/project/healing-waters-ceremony/ Sun, 06 Sep 2026 21:27:25 +0000 https://juliesvay.com/?post_type=project&p=2550 The post The Khmer Waters appeared first on Julie Svay • Private Advisory for Leaders and R&D Consulting.

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The Khmer Waters

A CEREMONY OF HEALING

For Our Lost Ones, Us Who Remain, and the New Generations

In CAMBODIA & Online | FALL - WINTER 2026

Join the Experience

Cambodia's contemporary history has been shaped by successive periods of armed conflicts and hardships, with the Khmer Rouge genocide marking one of its most devastating chapters. Those who bore witness to these years carried – and many still carry – profound trauma, and wounds of loss and exile, that continue to echo across generations.

Yet the need is not only historical: current economic pressures and recent conflict-related developments, including displacement, can add to longstanding distress, stirring unresolved fears and traumatic memories. For many who faced, or still face, profound vulnerability, survival has long left little room for healing.

What we begin here reaches back to honor those who came before us,
is lived in the present to soothe the living hearts,
and helps shaping what the next generations inherit.

A sacred ceremony
to bring peace to the hearts weary from the past
and bless the souls, the waters, the lands.

Who can take part

For you – survivor, descendant, or simply wishing to join us in spirit.
You too can honor, heal, and carry peace forward.

Survivors & Youth in Cambodia

Gathered through our outreach team in rural and disadvantaged communities. No registration needed.

In presence

Survivors Abroad

This ceremony builds a bridge between those who went into exile and those who stayed. A shared path of remembrance, reconnection and healing.

Online

Descendants

For your own healing journey, to reconnect with your roots, or to honour someone who came before you. Whatever brings you here, it matters.

Online

All Who Wish to Join

All are welcome to hold an intention, offer a prayer, or simply be present, regardless of background.

Offline

Date: November 2026 - January 2027 (to be confirmed)
Places: By the waters at Siem Reap · Battambang · Phnom Penh (to be confirmed)
Time: 10:00 Phnom Penh · 05:00 Paris · 23:00 New York
Duration of ceremony: ∼ 2 hours

Free and paid options available: Entrust us with your prayer intent, keep us in your thoughts, live the experience through livestream and replay, or join an online healing circle.

Join the Experience

WHY IT MATTERS

For survivors, and those who come after

Intergenerational wounds

Trauma does not always end with those who lived it. Unspoken suffering, patterns of distress, and cycles of violence can travel through families, passed down across generations without ever being spoken of. History lives within us.

Research has found that the effects of genocidal trauma can extend to offspring who were never directly exposed, with probable post-traumatic stress disorder prevalence not substantially lower than estimates reported among civilians living in war zones.

In the diaspora and at home, many young ones are searching for a history their parents or grandparents could never put into words.

Our intention is that what is released in these gatherings transforms what is carried forward across families, distances, and generations.

A gift before leaving

For elders who lived through the worst of it, this may be the first – and for some, the last – opportunity to pass on the memories that young people need, and be held in a dedicated space of recognition, love, and peace.

Despite the admirable and tireless dedication of mental health professionals, traditional healers and spiritual leaders across the country, many survivors, particularly in rural and disadvantaged communities, never received the care and witnessing they needed.

These gatherings are our common gift of presence to them: a space to honour lives that were broken, and to honour the lives that continued despite it all.

Healing can become something a survivor chooses to leave behind. For those who have little material wealth to pass on, their path of healing from the burdens of the past can become an extraordinary inheritance – their own gift of resilience and freedom offered to their children, grandchildren, and generations to come.

The need – see the research

One of the greatest human tragedies of the twentieth century. From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 1.7 million people lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge regime to execution, starvation, disease, and forced labour. Years of war and hardship preceding and following this tragedy also continuously took their own toll.

Four decades on, the trauma has not faded on its own. A 2024 study by Cambodia's Documentation Center (DC-Cam), produced with Stanford University's Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program, found that 87% of surveyed survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide still report disturbing memories of the period, and 25% still experience recurring nightmares – more than 40 years after the regime fell.

It has also reached those born after. A 2026 meta-analysis pooling seven studies across four genocides, including the one in Cambodia, found that 17.9% of the offspring of genocide survivors met criteria for probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), roughly four times the U.S. past-year population estimate (4.7%), and not substantially lower than estimates reported among civilians living in war zones, despite these descendants not having been directly exposed to the genocide. Evidence is also emerging among the third generation: a three-generation study of Holocaust survivor families found elevated secondary traumatization among grandchildren.

"The needs of psychosocial and mental health care in rural Cambodia are huge." Dr Chhim Sotheara, Psychiatrist, Director of the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization in Cambodia, Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, 2022. As of the most recent count, Cambodia has roughly 60 psychiatrists and about 200 psychologists for a population of over 16 million.

"There is a new trend moving in mental health and psychiatry - we are now working in the framework of bio-psycho-socio-spiritual." Dr Cornelio Banaag, Psychiatrist, Former President of the ASEAN Federation for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Philippines, 2022.

Sources

Yale University. Cambodian Genocide Program. Available from: https://macmillan.yale.edu/gsp/cambodian-genocide-program.

Van Schaack B, Reicherter D, Chhang Y, editors. Cambodia's Hidden Scars: Healing and Reparations for Trauma Psychology After the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. 3rd ed. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia; 2024. · Reported in: Experts: Intergenerational Trauma Harshest Reminder of Khmer Rouge Regime," Phnom Penh Post, Oct 28, 2024.

Zasiekina L, Hlova I, Kokun O, Kuznietsov I, Pastryk T, Solonenko O and Zasiekin S (2026) Transgenerational transfer of genocidal trauma: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front. Psychiatry 16:1699835. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1699835

Greenblatt-Kimron L, Shrira A, Rubinstein T, Palgi Y. Event centrality and secondary traumatization among Holocaust survivors' offspring and grandchildren: A three-generation study. J Anxiety Disord. 2021;81:102401. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102401.

Chhim S. & Banaag C., Towards collective healing: Mental health lessons from Cambodia, RMTLI Lecture Series: 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_foDB_IS8

Sennef, C., van Hoof, J., & Rato, S. Mental Health Care in Cambodia: History, Status and a Personal Report. Global Health Perspectives, Dec 2020 (updated 2025). Original data: World Health Organization, Mental Health Atlas 2017 Member State Profile: Cambodia.

The Ceremony

Being Alive

Staying in the moment, breathing and gazing.

What it holds
Rediscovering a sense of ease and presence. Creating deeper bonds that can strengthen the community.

What it means
Giving oneself permission to come back to a body that has known suffering, as a permission to be alive and to start healing. Softly soothing and opening the hearts. Connecting with universal healing resources.

Blessings

Offering prayers and blessings to pure water in vials and pouring the informed water into the river – all done by each attendant.
Our intention is to inform the waters of the river through dilution and prayers, so they can carry forth blessings, purification, and healing into the lands, the plants, the people.

What it holds
Directly empowering survivors to perform a symbolic act for their lost ones and their people, as informed water flows into the lands – permeating both alike killing fields and farmlands.

What it means
Overcoming the sense of "broken courage" (baksbat) and helplessness at not having been able to protect loved ones. A way of honouring, when no resting place is known. Soothing survivor's guilt by reclaiming the power of caring for others, and transforming it into one's luminous legacy.

Renewal

A symbolic release and renewal in the informed waters.

What it holds
Washing away the burdens and resentment that may now be released. Opening to as sense of inner peace and renewal.

What it means
Symbolically severing the ties that bind the persecutors’ power over one's lives still. Allowing oneself to be freed, and to stand in the power she/he/you have reclaimed.

Considered places

  • The Phnom Kulen Sacred River, also called The River of a Thousand Lingas, that flows from the mountain into the plains.
  • The Angkor Western Mebon Baray, a reservoir within the sacred temples complex, intended to irrigate the entire rice-growing region.
  • The Kamping Puoy Reservoir of Battambang, also known as The Killing Dam, where some ten thousands people lost their lives – most embedded on site – in forced labour for one of the Khmers Rouges' grandest irrigation projects.
  • The Tonlé Sap River, which naturally flows into the Mekong river down to the sea during the dry season, and reverses its flow when the Mekong swells during the rainy season, expanding the Tonlé Sap Lake and nourishing its floodplains and fisheries.

Our ceremonies are only a part of a broader journey, preceded by continued training of local caregivers and young people, and followed by visits and gatherings within local communities.

The number of ceremonies, the attendance (∼20 survivors and ∼5 younger people for each), the dates and locations will be later confirmed, depending on the funds raised.

A note

Who this gathering is for

  • Open to all who seek a space for personal healing, mourning, or stand in compassionate support of collective healing.

What this gathering is – and is not

This is:

  • Sacred, not by doctrine but through the intention, awareness, and care that each person brings to it

  • Secular and inclusive, open to people of all beliefs

  • Open to spiritual elements, on your own terms, that may be woven in to support relief.

This is not:

  • Not a religious ceremony

  • Not a substitute for professional care. If you're in therapy or psychiatric care, please continue it alongside this gathering, not instead of it; in a crisis, contact local emergency services or a crisis line.

Your work is extremely vital and very much needed here.
Osman Khawaja
CEO Phare, Siem Reap & CEO Phare Ponleu Selpak, Battambang

Testimonial coming soon.
S.
Survivor in early childhood, Battambang

Testimonial coming soon.
Tito
Survivor in early childhood, United States & Tokyo

You helped us know the way of healing (...).
Releasing the sorrow that’s deep inside, letting our loved ones know we are sorry (...).
We learned to let it go, learned to move, learned to heal inside.
Chamroeun
2nd-generation descendant, Siem Reap

Thank you for sharing your healing power and counseling with our team.
It was truly transformative, bringing peace and empowerment to everyone.
Rattanakoudom
2nd-generation descendant, Battambang

I never thought that one day I would be able to share my story with other people, because I was afraid of being judged and seen as complaining. I was feeling so much pressure on myself, because my sorrow was just hurting me, I kept carrying it alone.
Thank you for helping us heal from our past. Thank you for making my story heard and understood. Now I feel a lot relieved and happier, you helped me heal a lot. Thank you for your caring presence, it really meant a lot to me.
Rynath
2nd-generation descendant, Siem Reap

It was a new experience, that gave me a lot. I can understand more about the meaning of things (..).
Now I know about the healing power of nature, and how to give and care for people.
Phonavy
3rd-generation teenage descendant, Siem Reap

Ways to participate

Whether you choose to make a contribution, join one of our offerings, or simply be with us in your heart, every gesture of support is deeply valued.

Every ceremony and online access are offered free of charge to the survivors and communities we support. Your financial contribution helps make this possible and carry the offering forward.

This initiative is facilitated on a voluntary basis in support of Lightrise Childcare, our non-profit dedicated to the recovery of disadvantaged rural communities after mass traumas. The association is responsible for receiving and managing the funds for this project.

Leave a Prayer Intention (Free)

A prayer for someone you have lost, a message to your ancestors, an invitation for someone you cherish to begin their healing journey, a hope, a gratitude, or simply something you would like to place in prayer.

LEAVE A PRAYER INTENTION
Follow the Journey (Free)

Stay informed with selected public resources and updates.
Hold these ceremonies in your heart with love or a shared intention.

STAY INFORMED
Make a Donation

100% of your donation goes to Lightrise Childcare to fund this initiative and future ceremonies.

DONATE
Purchase Online Access

Witness the ceremony live from wherever you are and receive lifetime access to the replay.

While no online experience can fully replace being present in person, it may offer a meaningful opportunity to feel connected with us in a shared journey of personal and collective healing.

Contribution: 33 EUR
100% of the proceeds goes to Lightrise Childcare to fund this initiative and future ceremonies.

PURCHASE ACCESS
Circle for Personal and Collective Healing

For those who wish to begin or engage further in their own healing journey.

The Circle for Personal and Collective Healing offers a safe and supportive space for survivors and their families to bear witness, and appease the regrets and goodbyes that could never be said.

3 hours live online ·  In French, English, and Khmer with translation ·  Group arranged in your timezone.

The Circle for Personal and Collective Healing is presented as a separate paid professional service.
10% of the benefits are donated to Lightrise Childcare.

Join the Circles Waitlist

THE SACRED WORK OF GRIEF

Medecine for the Soul

Whether through tears, sacred springs, or ceremonial blessings across cultures and religions, water has always accompanied humanity's life and sacred moments.

Some researchers have proposed that water may powerfully hold information in ways still being explored. Somehow it could be imprinted with frequencies – of an intention, a form or a sound ... and what are prayer and blessing if not these?
Beyond scientific questions, water holds a universal symbolism associated with blessing, purification and renewal.

Healing Waters is, at the very least, a symbolic ceremony intended to support the journey of healing hearts and souls. May it offer a moment of deep peace for ourselves, for one another. 

We will be bringing a vial of purified water, informed by a blend of more than 500 Waters coming from sources known as sacred and healing all over the Earth.

This ceremony was personally received in meditations to assist the liberation of trapped souls at the killing fields, the purification of lands cursed with blood, and the reclamation of lands as sanctuaries.

I welcome you from my heart in this sacred space of remembrance, love, and the restoration of our inner power and freedom.

Julie Bonitha Svay
France, July 2026.

Kuan Yin with her jar of healing water
Boddhisattva of Compassion
also known as The Goddess of a Thousand Waters.

A child of wartime, exiled before the genocide, I have been searching for the meaning and the greater gift of life, beyond it all.
"The wound is the place where the Light enters you," writes Djalāl ad-Dīn Rumi, the poet and mystic.
And so it is. The journey to truth and inner peace is one of courage and grace, gifting us more than we could ever imagine.
Through these ceremonies, I offer back what was received along my way.

Each of us has the choice to become the one
who begins healing within our own lineage.
Each of us holds a unique key
to the healing of our peoples, and of humanity.

 

Mass trauma calls for mass healing.
Together, we can weave a new legacy
- one heart, one lineage, one generation at a time.

 

It is high time.
Join us, and rise with us in a wave of healing ༄

THE VISION & THE STEPS

PHASE 01 ︱ Q3-Q4 2026

Fundraising & Launch

Call for donations and registrations for remote participation.

PHASE 02 ︱ Q3-Q4 2026

Preparation

Liaising with rural communities and local NGOs, managing administrative authorizations and logistics. Dates, places, and modalities to be confirmed.

PHASE 03 ︱ Q4 2026 - Q1 2027

Pilot Ceremonies

2-4 pilot ceremonies for 2-3 groups, live streaming, Circle gatherings for remote participants.

PHASE 04 ︱ FROM Q2 2027

Expand at a larger scale

Deploying our ceremonies in more times, more waters and more peoples in need on the Earth, calling forth a global movement of healing.

Help make these ceremonies of healing possible

These ceremonies are offered free of charge to survivors of local rural communities.
We gratefully receive your support.

I WISH TO DONATE

Stay Updated

We are currently setting up our first pilot ceremonies and building the registration process.
Please stay tuned by joining our channels for updates.

🇬🇧 English space on Telegram
https://t.me/InspiredLife_withJulieSvay

🇫🇷 Espace en français sur WhatsApp
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbDMm51EgGfS3ZIKIw0j

Created and guided by Julie Svay.

More about Lightrise Childcare →

More about me →

All rights reserved @ Julie Svay 2026.

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]]> Holding the Passage of the Year 2025-2026 https://juliesvay.com/project/holding-the-passage-of-the-year-2025-2026/ Wed, 17 Dec 2025 18:43:27 +0000 https://juliesvay.com/?post_type=project&p=1046 The post Holding the Passage of the Year 2025-2026 appeared first on Julie Svay • Private Advisory for Leaders and R&D Consulting.

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A Year-End Gathering to

Pause, Reflect, and Renew

Live Online | DECEMBER 28, 5PM CET

FREE REGISTRATION

A gathering to pause,

integrate the ending year,

and welcome the year ahead
with renewed appreciation for life,
care and responsibility.

The world around us feels intense and unsettled.
At this threshold between years, you are warmly invited to join us – holding space with presence and care.

During this live session, you’ll be invited to:

✨ Settle into a calm presence
✨ Acknowledge what this year has brought to you – both in its gifts and its losses
✨ Harvest the wisdom from your experiences, and how they can inspire you to live more fully
✨ Hold caring intentions for those around you and for our world.

The gathering will weave moments of gentle guidance and silence for your personal reflection and intention-setting.

Who this gathering is for
  • Professionals and leaders seeking a reflective pause at year’s end
  • Open to all who value reflection and a thoughtful respect for life and the world we share.
What this gathering is – and is not

This is:

  • A personal reflective gathering, held in shared presence, without group discussion or expectation to share.

  • Secular and inclusive – open to people of all beliefs

This is not:

  • A workshop or training

  • A planning or goal-setting session

  • A religious ceremony

Details

Date: Sunday, December 28, 2025
Time: 17:00 @CET
Duration: 45 min
Format: Live online (link sent after registration)
Cost: Free

Register

Can’t join us live? A replay will be available for 48 hours to all registrants.

Registration

Once registered, you will receive the access link 1–2 days before the event.

Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Thank you, your subscription has been successful.

By registering, you consent to receive emails related to this event and occasional future announcements. You may unsubscribe at any time.

This gathering is offered as a gift.
Optional donations are welcome to support our humanitarian actions for global healing and peace.
With gratitude.

I WISH TO DONATE
Facilitated by Julie Svay

The post Holding the Passage of the Year 2025-2026 appeared first on Julie Svay • Private Advisory for Leaders and R&D Consulting.

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