A Mindfulness-Based Approach to:
Stress Reduction / Coping Skills / Anxiety / Depression / Trauma / Bipolarity / Relationships / Communication / Life Transitions / Shame and Self-judgment / Chronic Stress / Loss and Grief / Vicarious Trauma / Burnout / Clarifying Values / Finding Meaning
About my clients
When the stressors pile up, our old ways of coping with stress, managing our lives and seeking peace may no longer work for us. Compassionate guidance and practical support can help us cultivate less stress and greater wellbeing.
Some issues my clients seek support for:
- Coping strategies and skills to reduce stress and increase wellbeing
- Anxiety that inhibits the ability to meet personal and/or professional demands
- A pervasive sense of “not ok-ness” that robs us of vitality and keeps us stuck
- Feelings of depression, isolation, self-judgment and/or shame
- Exploration of trauma’s painful residue and strategies for healing
- Developing better boundaries and communication in relationship
- Working through life changes and transitions to support growth
- Clarifying values and goals in support of increased life satisfaction
- Processing grief and loss in order to grow and move forward
- Addressing larger questions of meaning and how to live our best life
No matter the level of distress we may feel, we are not broken in need of fixing, we are hurt in need of healing.
My approach to helping
I will support you to identify, explore, and remove obstacles to your wellbeing and unleash your innate capacity for healing, resilience, and joy. I will guide you to a better understanding of yourself and others and offer you practical tools that will support growth both in and out of session.
Without awareness of our current experience (thoughts, sensations, emotions and behavior), we easily fall into old ways of coping that no longer support our health and happiness. Developing awareness of what is actually happening, moment to moment, can be a powerful foundation for healing.
Any effective therapy is strongly determined by the therapeutic connection. Good therapy builds awareness not only of what holds us back, but also our deepest inner strengths. When we “shine the light of awareness” on our lives we can begin to cultivate positive change. Together, we will create a safe, compassionate, unconditionally accepting space where all of the challenges and joys of human life can be shared in service of greater wellbeing. This relational approach not only lays the groundwork for deepening internal wisdom, but also supports new ways of interacting with others and the world around us.
While my professional specialization is mindfulness-based interventions, practical mindfulness skills are not appropriate for every client. Together we will determine what is most supportive for you based on your needs and goals. The practice still strongly informs the dynamics of our interrelationship. Whether practically or figuratively, mindfulness offers concrete tools to support therapeutic change, help us develop clarity to recognize unskillful patterns, allows us freedom to choose our responses and empowers positive changes in our lives.
More about my practice
I’ve spent the last 23+ years of my life developing the therapeutic skills to support you, no matter where you are in your life journey.
My approach is firmly rooted in my own personal practice of mindfulness; the deep exploration of my own human experience (body, mind and heart) powerfully informs my clinical work. While mindfulness tools and techniques are not always explicitly brought into session, the mindfulness framework underlies my effort to support your development of awareness, understanding, and wisdom. When we are aware, we can change.
My specialty in Mindfulness-Based Therapy, including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) offers a set of evidence-based, individually-tailored, practical, applicable tools that can be immediately applied to support awareness, healing and growth. In general, mindfulness tools help us live with less stress and more happiness. I am a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher through the gold standard training program founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMass Medical Center’s Center for Mindfulness in Healthcare and Society.
My therapeutic approach is also strongly influenced by existential and person-centered traditions, each of which powerfully inform the dynamic of the therapeutic relationship. Compassionate presence and unconditional acceptance create space and safety to explore what is arising in the here and now; this awareness of what is happening in our minds, bodies and hearts forms the basis for transformative understanding and change.
Consultation
- 20 minutes to ask questions and see how Jonas can help
Session Fee
- 50-minutes
Why mindfulness?
Mindfulness-Based Therapy helps address a wide range of mental, emotional, physical and behavioral health concerns. Mindfulness helps us develop clarity to recognize unskillful patterns, offers us freedom to choose our responses and empowers positive changes in our lives.
A mindfulness-based therapy approach supports:
- More skillful coping strategies for life, work and relationships
- Less stress reactivity and improved emotional resilience
- Reduced distress associated with depression, anxiety and trauma
- Development of better behavioral strategies that support wellbeing
- Improved communication and interpersonal effectiveness
- Brain change associated with greater focus and problem solving
- Greater balance in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs
- Decreased muscle tension and improved sleep
- Enhanced immune system function
- Lower blood pressure and faster wound healing
- Improvements in nutritional habits through mindful eating
The practice of mindfulness offers a set of evidence-based, individually-tailored, practical, applicable tools that can be immediately applied to support awareness, healing and growth. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is an evidence-based treatment specifically developed for depression, but applicable to anxiety and trauma and other issues. MBCT has been shown to be more effective at reducing depression relapse than other interventions or medication and has shown significant efficacy in the treatment of stress, anxiety, depression and other physical, mental, emotional, behavioral and relational concerns. Kindness and Compassion meditation skills also emerge from the mindfulness-based tradition as powerful tools that can support our well-being.
However, while mindfulness informs my work as a clinician and the container we create together, mindfulness enters the therapeutic work when appropriate to client needs and challenges. When practical mindfulness skills are appropriate and clients are open to the exploration, we will work cooperatively to find the most supportive strategies and tools.
Sometimes simply feeling safe and being heard are the essential ingredients for profound healing.
About me
My work as a therapist is the culmination of a 25+ year effort to better understand myself, others and the world around me.
I’ve practiced mindfulness and meditation since 1997 and spent a combined total of 12+ months in silent retreat practicing the skills I offer my clients. In 2016, I co-founded Cascadia Mindfulness Institute to provide mindfulness therapy, education and training to individuals, organizations and the community. For over a decade, I taught mindfulness and loving kindness meditation groups for veterans at the Puget Sound VA Healthcare System. As a research associate at the VA, I taught kindness meditation for a landmark studyon the effects of kindness on complex trauma. In 2018, I joined Seattle University Masters in Existential and Phenomenological Psychology as an adjunct professor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.
In my 20s, due to various causes and conditions, I found myself struggling with depression, anxiety, substance misuse, physical pain and dysfunctional relationships. I needed to do something different. I started to practice yoga in an effort to better manage physical pain. This first taste of awareness brought a previously unknown recognition of the experience of my body and the power of the mind/body connection.
Within a few months, experiences in the course of meditation utterly transformed my understanding and the synergy of these new practices had profoundly shifted the course of my life.
A deep and powerful recognition that I wanted to serve others, teach the skills that had given me hope, and support the kind of deep change that I had experienced emerged amidst this growing wisdom. That profound shift marked the beginning of decades of self-exploration, self-development and intensive education to develop the skills required to meet the needs of my clients.
In addition to my work as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in private practice, I am a mindfulness teacher and trainer with over 10 years of experience teaching mindfulness classes in the Seattle community and developing mindfulness programs for organizations including the Veteran’s Affairs Puget Sound Healthcare System, Seattle Times, Seattle Children’s Hospital and Visa, among others. I am a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Teacher through the UMass Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society and hold a Master of Arts in Counseling from Seattle University.
For over a decade, I taught MBSR and Loving Kindness Meditation to veterans at the Seattle/Puget Sound VA in support of research by Dr. David Kearney, including a landmark, multi-year study measuring the effects of Loving-Kindness Meditation (LKM) on PTSD. I previously served as Clinical Supervisor and Case Manager with the Crisis Respite Program, a 24-hour residential psychiatric crisis respite for severely and persistently mentally ill homeless adults, at Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC).
Jonas’ teaching is strongly influenced by the mindfulness tradition of Jon Kabat-Zinn as well as Buddhist teachings of Jason Bartlett, Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson, Kamala Masters, Steve Armstrong and other leading teachers. More than a year of silent retreat experience and the application of mindfulness in daily life are foundational to my teaching.
Contact Jonas
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