About Nikolai
Who am I?
My name is Nikolai Afanasev, a Russian-Canadian, I am a holistic yoga teacher and educator, life and mindfulness coach.
As a yoga teacher, I train clients to develop stress-resilience, ability to regulate their emotions, understand their unshakable spiritual core, and develop physical and mental flexibility. I have not come across a better modality to master one’s thoughts, emotions and help express our fullest personal and vocational potential than yoga and meditation.
As a professional life coach, I help clients make tangible personal, economic, social, mental and spiritual changes in life. I help those who feel they do not want to feel stuck, anxious, unfocused, and emotionally drained to find-inner core to start setting meaningful goals, understanding mental barriers, developing strategies to overcome or mitigate obstacles and achieve set goals. My clients have enjoyed making big career, travel and lifestyle changes.
I support and challenge my clients and there is no way their limiting beliefs remain unshattered and their cherished goals unachieved through our collaboration. Your success is my success and I will do my part the best way to see you thrive. Will you do yours?
My Path
I came to Canada as an international student 10 years ago from Russia to study. After completing Theatre, Drama and Performance studies program at University of Toronto Mississauga in 2018, I have been pursuing acting since then, performing in a recent major production by the Nepture Theatre of Ballad of the Motherland, a play by Annie Valentia in 2023 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Right before graduation, I also started my inner journey of yoga and meditation. This lead to nourishment, happiness and progressive desire to share knowledge and teach. I have been teaching Acting, Drama, English, and Yoga since 2020. In the early 2023 I completed my foundations and transformational coaching education at Adler Graduate Professional school.
In September of 2023, I became as Master of Education Student in Curriculum and Pedagogy at Ontario Institute of Education at University of Toronto. My vision is to make well-being, knowledge of yoga, meditation, and self-knowledge accessible to people from their early age.
In 2021, I underwent an intense yoga teacher training (LFT training) with Acarya Shiilabhadrananda Avadhuta. I did not use my phone for 2 months, did not talk with friends, family and focused on developing self-autonomy, regulating my emotions, quieting the mind, and developing deeper understanding of yoga and meditation practices in order to share this knowledge, insights and use my training and discipline to help guide others on this path. I have realized that you have to embody the principles, values and be constantly mastering practices in order to inspire your students to learn too.
Contemplation leads to understanding, understanding to compassion, compassion to love, love to empowerment, empowerment to action, action to change, change to progress, growth to happiness, happiness to fulfilment, fulfillment to self-realization. Self-realization leads to serving others to realize themselves, their potential and increase the periphery of their love.
My strengths and core skills are: communication skills, critical thinking, improvisation, flexibility, empathetic listening, rendering compassion, reflection, contemplation, organization, teaching and researching, cultivating trust and safety, establishing and maintaining agreements, maintaining presence, evoking awareness, facilitating growth.
My pedagogy and coaching are based in compassion, dialogical learning, non-judgement, and aspiration to understand. My ideology is based on Neohumanist philosophy of Shri Prabhat Sarkar.
Experience Highlights
Yoga Teaching:
- 5 Years of yoga and meditation practice
- Over 750 Hours of Yoga teaching
- 2 Years of volunteering as a yoga, meditation teacher and retreat organiser
- Over 700 hours of volunteering for Ananda Marga and Meditation Steps Non-Profit Organizations
- 150 online meditations hosted (approximated)
- 70 in-person meditation hosted (approximated)
- Over 150 Hours of professional coaching practice
Mentoring:
- Over 150 Hours of professional mentoring practice
- Over 30 clients
Education
- Master of Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy
University of Toronto (St. George) - Honours Bachelor of Arts with Distinction
Major in Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies; Minors in Art History and Cinema Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) - 250 RYT Certified Yoga Teacher
Rajadhiraja Yoga Style with Shiva Dancing School of Yoga - Foundations and Transformational coaching
Adler Graduate Professional School (Susanna Muntz, Brian Cyr) - Second City School of Improvisation level 1-5 Leah Cameron.
Testimonials
What people say about my work.
Namaskar Nick! Today I return to my country and I wanted to tell you that I am happy for your guidance during this time I spent here 🙏🏼 you are a super human and also to me you are like Luke Skywalker ☺️🌠 Thank you for everything you do. P.S. If you ever need advice about traveling to Mexico or anything related to education or anything I can help you with, don’t hesitate to ask me ☺️
I haven’t felt passionate about any of the jobs I’ve had or could have, so I wanted to give “finding my passion” a shot. The goal was finding my mission.
We talked about my values, undug some life stories, and discussed how all that ties into what I want to do professionally. In process, I gained a deeper insight into why I’m attracted to certain activities, and what core values drive me to perform at my best. I believe this knowledge to be helpful on my quest towards discovering the line of work that I want to associate my life with.
I have been working with Nikolai Afanasev as a coach for a number of months. He has a rare gift of asking the most insightful questions to encourage you to dig deep to explore personal values to create your own solutions. He quickly helped me realize what I really wanted to achieve both in my business and my personal life and to believe it was possible. He has been an expert at helping me sort through my sometimes “muddled thinking” and to put together action plans to help me achieve my goals. Nikolai is concerned with your whole person – not just goals and action plans. He seeks to ensure you are taking care of yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually as you move along your life journey. He has a flexible and objective approach with the right balance of support and challenge to enable you to see a clearer path and achieve personal goals.
What was the challenge/problem that inspired you to do coaching with Nirmal? Feeling “stuck” in life, not knowing what I want to do. What was the focus of your coaching? Understanding what are my strengths and passions, how they align, and how they can inform me providing a new goal/direction in life. What was the process of your partnership with Nirmal? Weekly sessions full of exercises and talks focusing on digging deep into my personality, strengths, passions, behaviors, and trying to understand them. What results, insights, did you obtain? Better understanding of my own motivations and drives. Rediscovering things about me that were forgotten. A clear view of a new project I want to take on and the direction of personal development.
Dear Nikolai. Thank you for responding to my request in helping me to determine where to go from here and now. For taking the time over several months to gently guide me, help articulate and clarify my goals. For asking the right questions for self-reflection and pushing me to work on myself. Yes, there is no doubt that you helped me change my life, pushed me to change. It was after your coaching sessions that I decided to let everything go in Russia and went to India without a return ticket. I had some plans, I was planning to find something specific here. I found something completely different. Without expecting it, I was able to realize my diverse abilities, knowledge and skills, and found a new use for my talents. I realized that it is important to understand a vocation not through the head, but through the heart. It is a call. And you can hear it when your heart is open. You can be quiet, stand still for a while, listen to nature and feel or fantasize about what you can share with the community. Or you can get in tune with nature and your surroundings, and then the principle of synchronicity begins to work, where people come to you for your talents through a line of interconnections. You just find yourself in the right place at the right time and tell other about yourself, or friends tell about you to the right people. Thank you again for your coaching sessions. You really helped me realize my self-value and express myself creatively.