Jade Lady Meditation

Center For Mindfulness

Stefan Zijlstra, MA, RYT 500, is the founder and current director of the ‘Alaska Center for Mindfulness.Stefan has been practicing mindfulness meditation and yoga since 1996, and has trained with a wide range of yoga and meditation teachers. He has been teaching Mindfulness Meditation and Mindfulness Yoga in Alaska since 2005.

Stefan is passionate about introducing the ‘Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction’ (MBSR) program to Alaska, offering classes for the workplace, the healthcare system, and to the general public.He seeks to empower individuals with an understanding of the important role they themselves play for their own health. He believes that through ‘compassionate awareness’ individuals are able to utilize the best resource they have available: their own inner wisdom.

A taste of ‘Mindfulness’

Sit back, take a moment to become aware of the surroundings you are in, the sensations in your body, the thoughts in your mind and the feelings in your heart. Are you feeling curious, excited, skeptical, hopeful or bored? Are you aware of physical sensations of tension, pain, warmth or numbness? Can you hold all of the amazing and varied things in your awareness for a moment without having to change them, get rid of them or get lost in them? Can you experience this very moment for the precious, fleeting and beautiful thing that it is?

You have just tasted some of your own ability to be mindful and we invite you to cultivate it further through participation in one of the Mindfulness programs that we offer at the Alaska Center for Mindfulness!

The ‘Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction’ program merges mindful awareness training and gentle yoga exercises. Mindfulness practice is ideal for cultivating greater awareness of the unity of mind and body, and of the ways our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can undermine emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

Our MBSR program is an 8-week intensive training in various mindfulness practices, based on ancient healing traditions, to empower participants to take an active role in the management of their health and wellness.

The mind is known to be a factor in stress and stress-related disorders, and meditation has been shown to positively effect a range of physiological processes, such as lowering blood pressure and reducing overall emotional reactivity. In addition to mindfulness practices, MBSR uses simple yoga movements to help reverse the prevalence of disuse atrophy from our culture’s largely sedentary lifestyle, especially for those with pain and chronic illnesses.

Class structure

Our program consists of a 2-hour orientation session, eight weekly 3-hour sessions, plus one all-day session on the Saturday or Sunday of the 6th week of the program.Weekly classes are a balance of didactic teaching, experiential practice, and small and large group processing. The all-day session is primarily an experiential session where we are practicing mindfulness together for a sustained period.

Students are asked to practice approximately 30-45 minutes daily at home, which includes guided relaxation & meditation practices, reading, and written reflection exercises. It is important to understand that your success in the program, whether that is to diminish your pain levels, stabilize your mood, or be less stressed, is directly related to your commitment to fully engage in the entire 8 week process, inside and outside of the classroom. The teaching and learning environment is designed to be highly supportive of each participant.

Snow Buddha - Mindfulness Meditation Yoga

Mindfulness Meditation

no-mudBased on traditional forms of Buddhist meditation, our ‘Mindfulness meditation’ classes are designed to relax, center, and balance the body and mind by bringing direct awareness and deep insight into the fundamental truth of change and impermanence that characterizes all of reality at every level.

Learn to bring attention to your breathing, and to the sensations of the body. Observe thoughts and emotions from a dis-engaged, non-attached perspective. Let go of your mind’s continuous chatter and experience reality more directly, without the need to always react.

Many of us often go on unintentional ‘roller-coaster-rides’ of cravings, desires, and clinging, followed by aversion, anger, and resistance; a never-ending cycle of grasping for experiences we ‘like’, and rejecting those we ‘dislike’. With Mindfulness we can experience reality more directly, without the need to always react emotionally to positive or negative experiences, without the endless swing between happiness and unhappiness, that can be so exhausting and draining for our energy. We can learn to rest in a peaceful calmness deep within ourselves.

Mindfulness Yoga

Meditation has always been at the very heart of virtually all yogic paths, but has unfortunately been pushed into the background with Western Yoga’s emphasis on physical posture practice.‘Mindfulness Yoga’ brings the practice back to its roots, aiming to achieve insight into and mastery over the mind by awakening the witnessing faculty within us. Our class merges Buddhist Mindfulness meditation with simple yoga postures and Feldenkrais/Somatic bodywork exercises, into a single practice of ‘meditation in motion’, that enlivens the body, liberates the spirit, and awakens compassion, equanimity and joy.

Please note: bring some loose, comfortable clothing to class. This class is NOT exercise intensive, so we do recommend long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, in order to stay warm.