Meet Yastheel Phalad
Most of us spend our lives trying to improve ourselves—working harder, achieving more, seeking approval, chasing the next milestone—believing fulfilment lies somewhere ahead.
Yet beneath many of our struggles lies a much simpler question:
Do we truly understand ourselves?
That question is the foundation of everything I do.
I’m Yastheel Phalad, founder of Yaspired, a platform dedicated to helping people by bringing together insights from psychology, human behaviour, philosophy, spirituality, and conscious living in a way that’s practical, grounded, and made for real life.
My work isn’t about telling people who they should become. It’s about helping them see themselves more clearly.
Because lasting change doesn’t come from endlessly trying to fix ourselves. It comes from developing the awareness to understand our thoughts, emotions, behaviours, relationships, and the unconscious patterns that quietly shape our lives.
Today, I create educational content, facilitate workshops, retreats, meditation programmes, and transformational experiences that help people cultivate greater self-awareness, emotional resilience, clarity, and conscious living. My work that’s taken me across cultures, ages, and backgrounds, and shown me the same thing again and again: different stories, same human patterns. Fear. Self-doubt. Emotional conditioning. Attachment. Comparison. The search for meaning.
I currently serve as Vice President of Mohanji Foundation South Africa, contributing to leadership, humanitarian initiatives, media, and conscious community development. I also served as Director of ACT Foundation South Africa and has participated in service projects across multiple countries.
My path into this work wasn’t conventional.
Growing up in South Africa, I’ve always been deeply curious about how the world works and how people navigate it. That curiosity first led me to study Finance and Economics at the University of Cape Town, where I completed a Bachelor of Business Science degree, before expanding into data analytics through Google to better understand systems, and decision-making.
Over time, however, my curiosity shifted from understanding external systems to understanding how people think, decide, connect, and build meaning. Years of meditation, self-inquiry, and spiritual practice sparked a deeper fascination with psychology and human behaviour, eventually leading me to formally study psychology after nearly a decade immersed in contemplative traditions.
On paper, everything was moving in the right direction. Internally, I felt disconnected. The success I’d worked towards wasn’t bringing the fulfilment I expected—and that disconnect became one of the most important turning points of my life, forcing me to question everything I’d assumed about achievement, identity, and purpose.
Instead of chasing quick answers, I went looking for deeper ones. Meditation was where it started. During my first meditation course in 2016, I experienced a shift in awareness that changed how I understood myself and my own mind—not an escape from life, but an invitation to live it more consciously.
That search took me to India, where I immersed myself in traditional yoga through the Himalayan School of Traditional Yoga (Senior Certified Yoga Instructor (E-RYT 200)), meditation, breathwork, self-inquiry, and contemplative practice.
Under the guidance of my spiritual teacher, Mohanji, I trained in Raja Yoga and was later entrusted with the role of Acharya—a teacher supporting others on their own path of inner growth. Those years shaped my understanding of awareness, acceptance, compassion, and service, and they still shape my work today.
“Mind minus ego reveals the Divine.”
Transformation begins with understanding.
When inner healing occurs, transformation naturally unfolds in every area—health, relationships, purpose, and work. At the heart of my work is forgiveness, radical self-acceptance, and integration – rooted in unconditional love and compassion.
That is why my work brings together psychology, behavioural science, philosophy, spirituality, and contemplative traditions. Although each discipline speaks a different language, they all point toward the same truth: The quality of our lives is shaped by the quality of our awareness.
Yaspired was never intended to be a personal brand.
It’s a place for people who are genuinely curious about themselves.
A place to ask better questions.
To challenge old patterns.
To bridge ancient wisdom with modern psychology.
And to discover that growth isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about uncovering who you’ve been beneath the conditioning all along—just love.
If there’s one belief underpinning everything I do, it’s this:
You don’t transform your life by becoming someone else. You transform your life by becoming more deeply aware of who you already are.