  An almost Fuchsian 3-manifold is a quasi-Fuchsian manifold which contains an
incompressible closed minimal surface with principal curvatures in the range of
$(-1,1)$. Such a 3-manifold $M$ admits a foliation of parallel surfaces, whose
locus in Teichm\"{u}ller space is represented as a path $\gamma$, we show that
$\gamma$ joins the conformal structures of the two components of the conformal
boundary of $M$. Moreover, we obtain an upper bound for the Teichm\"{u}ller
distance between any two points on $\gamma$, in particular, the Teichm\"{u}ller
distance between the two components of the conformal boundary of $M$, in terms
of the principal curvatures of the minimal surface in $M$. We also establish a
new potential for the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichm\"{u}ller space.
