Stéphane Ayrault

Stéphane Ayrault is a transformational life coach, author, international speaker and teacher of yoga philosophy and meditation. He also works as a spiritual mentor, and he teaches personal development, self-knowledge and non-duality. He is a co-founder of the school Nataraj Sadhana Yoga Studies. He trained in transformational life coaching at the Animas coaching centre in Edinburgh, which he describes as ICF, AC and ACSTH accredited.

His path began in computing and business: he studied industrial computing and earned a higher technician's diploma in commerce, finishing in 1993. Alongside his studies he kept reading about personal development and modern psychology, including NLP, the enneagram and self-hypnosis. He was born into a large Christian family, where he says he found the values of love, mutual help and respect, and he later explored Buddhism, Sufism and Vedanta. In 1994, aged 23, he spent three months in Quebec at the centre founded by Lise Bourbeau. He then did his civilian national service accompanying people at the end of life, and in late 1996 he volunteered in Nepal with Santé sans frontière. That journey led him to leave computing and commerce behind.

He says his coaching grew out of some 30 years of teaching in France and abroad and around 30,000 hours of work with thousands of people. In sessions he asks questions and offers practical tools to help people clarify what matters to them, draw on their own resources and take action. His guiding phrase is "accompagner, encourager et autonomiser" (to accompany, encourage and empower).

He is the author of "Les 4 sagesses du Yoga", published by Éditions Leduc in June 2020. The book presents the four great paths of yoga through stories from his own life, philosophical tales and exercises. He is also a singer and composer of bhajans and mantras, traditional Indian chants. His first CD, "Sagesse", recorded in 2015, brings Eastern and Western intonations together, with musicians from different cultures.

His site also credits him with more than 100 socio-humanitarian projects, work reaching over 20 countries, and radio appearances. He continues to share his teaching through the letters and meditations of his blog "Le Champ de Résonance" and his "Gentleman Yogi" YouTube channel.