Divinity Within

Born of Indian descent in South Africa, Youmashni Naidoo, owner of Divinity Within, grew up speaking English but listening to her grandparents greet their friends, “Namaste.” When she asked her grandfather what it means, he told her, “It means acknowledging the divinity in somebody else.” Youmashni has carried the power of that sentiment all her life and it ultimately led her to life coaching, to “helping people acknowledge their divinity within … Understanding that we all have divine power, that we all have the ability to have this great life that we want and we deserve," she says. "It’s not outside ourselves, it’s within.”

The type of person to whom people divulge their most personal stories, Youmashni has always had an empathetic ear, an ability to make people feel heard. When she first embarked on this path, a customer at her parents’ café told her that she was a healer and should look into being a life coach. Youmashni researched it and discovered that it called to her – it was something she could do.

She enrolled in a life coaching program at Coach U and has continued to educate herself in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), emotional freedom technique (EFT), and took a meditation course at the Dalai Lama’s ashram in India.

While all of this study has aided Youmashni in her work over the last 10 years, she firmly believes that her gift is empowering people. “People really see, when they sit across from me, that the picture of themselves that they have in their head is completely different from who they are," she says. "They’re two different people. I came here to do this … assisting people to see who they are.”