Bios : The Minerva Institute
Bios
Founder, Board Members & Core Instructors

Chintana Ahlund
Chintana Ahlund is the Founder and Director of the Minerva Institute. Prior to launching the institute, Chintana spent over ten years performing marketing, consulting and operations management for corporate organizations such as Mark Russell & Associates, Marsh USA Inc, Universal Orlando Resorts and Compass Knowledge Group.
Chintana has studied with Natalie Goldberg (renowned teacher and author of Writing Down the Bones) for over ten years and has made writing meditation her deepest spiritual practice. To share her practice with others, she facilitates writing meditation groups and offers regular Yoga of Writing workshops. She maintains an instructional site called the yogaofwriting.net. Chintana currently practices meditation with the Orlando Zen group and yoga at Harmony Yoga Studio.
Chintana is also an active volunteer and Board member of Ten Thousand Villages. Her aspiration as the founder of The Minerva Institute is to better the lives of individuals by offering programs in self-exploration that connect people to their inner peace and wisdom. She has a passion for writing and sharing stories of transformation.

Elizabeth Cohen
Elizabeth Cohen was a co-founder of the Matrix of Greater Orlando, an organization launched in 1997 designed to honor, strengthen and enhance the inner life and souls of women. She served as a transitionary Board member to launch the Minerva Institute and is currently a core instructor of mindfulness meditation for our organization.
Elizabeth has been a practitioner of meditation and mindful approaches to wellness for over 25 years and has taught in a variety of contexts in Central Florida. She has trained extensively with the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society and teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
Her teaching experiences include breath awareness, sitting and walking meditation, mindful movement, contemplation and group discussions aimed at enhancing meditation and mindfulness practice and awakening the heart. She provides in-the-moment individual and collective guidance to inspire and remind us to trust our inward journey. For more information, visit ecohen.org

Jan Durga Ahlund
Jan Durga Ahlund is a Board member and core instructor of Yoga for the Minerva Institute. She has been practicing and studying Yoga since 1967. She shares her experience of Yoga as a writer, teacher of Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Kriya Yoga and as a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapist, which uses Yoga for emotional release. She gives Initiation seminars in Kriya Yoga, all over the world. She co-authored, performed, and produced with her husband Marshall Govindan, the Yoga video, Babaji’s Kriya HathaYoga, Self-realization through Action with Awareness. They have also co-authored several books on spiritual Yoga. Durga developed a two-year correspondence course called The Grace Course, which is a course of Yoga and self-study. She developed and teaches a 200-500 hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training Course worldwide, giving trainings in India, Canada, Germany, Estonia, Brazil and Spain. Her two latest books are “Deepening your Practice,” and “The Yoga Toolbox: An everyday guide for shaping your future.” She and her husband take students on pilgrimages to India twice a year. They have a Yoga Ashram in Quebec, Canada, but have recently become “snow birds” in Orlando.
For more information see: www.babajiskriyayoga.net and Durga’s blog at www.seekingtheself.com

Amy Johnson Chong
Amy Johnson Chong began her adult career as a community organizer in a rural town in the Dominican Republic. Following that transformative experience, Amy was selected as one of only seven Americans to participate in a masters degree program in International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. This life changing opportunity solidified her desire to pursue interpersonal peace building through tolerance, education and inclusivity. Amy has worked as a clinical social worker, a massage therapist and a yoga instructor. She founded the yoga and wellness center, Mindful Body of Maitland with the intention to combine these disciplines, explore the gifts and talents of local practitioners and build community in her surrounding area.

Janna Benge
Janna (Janet) Benge is originally from New Zealand. Prior to landing in Winter Park, Florida, she and her family lived in many interesting and challenging locations, including aboard a ship in Hawaii, near a community that lived atop the city trash dump in Manila, Philippines, in the tiny tropical island kingdom of Tonga, and on a Native American Reservation in Washington State. Janna finds cross-cultural interaction very satisfying and has learned a lot through interacting with others from very different backgrounds. During her travels, Janna has honed her writing craft, ghostwriting over 150 books with her husband Geoff. More recently, Janna and Geoff have coauthored under their own name a 60-book series of biographies on American and international heroes.
Janna has a deep interest in guiding people towards their inner wisdom. She is a certified Amherst Writer’s and Artists instructor and has run a free biweekly writing workshop out of her home for the past two years. These workshops are designed to help participants find their own voice through writing. Currently she is also secretary of the board for the Kerouac Writer’s in Residence Program in College Park.
Janna is delighted to be a part of the Minerva Institute, and looks forward to participating in many stimulating and inspiring conversations and activities it offers.
Stephanie Navas is a Founding Board Member for the Minerva Institute. Her experience with non-profit organizations began as a Walk Coordinator for the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation after the loss of her new born son to the disease. Through reading, writing, and yoga she was able to process this loss into a positive experience of personal and spiritual growth. Her aspiration is to help others realize their purpose in life by learning that challenges can become significant transformative gifts. She believes in the importance of living life with an open heart and Minerva’s mission to create a heart-centered learning community devoted to self-discovery.
Stephanie has years of experience in launching new concepts in the fields of higher education, hospitality and non-profit agencies. She has an MBA degree and specializes in recruiting, marketing and sales. She plans on leveraging her professional skills and personal goals to implement social media and ephilanthropy strategies for The Minerva Institute.
