Coaching in Paris

Yury Li-Toroptsov

The Personal Story Behind This Work

Many clients ask how this unusual combination of art, psychology, and coaching emerged. The answer lies in my own journey.

I grew up in a small village near Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. The landscape there shaped my perception early in life. Long winters, forests, and immense distances created an environment where observation, silence, and imagination played an important role. Images became my first language for understanding the world. Photography later became a natural extension of this way of seeing.

I place a high value on imagination. From a very young age, I understood it as a powerful force of transformation. I come from humble beginnings, yet I dreamed of doing things no one in my family had ever done. What got me there? Imagination and commitment. I visualized every detail of that future life, I saw myself there, long before it became real. And when I commit, I go all in. That’s how I became the first in my family to earn a university degree, even when people told me it was out of reach.

Years later I moved to New York after receiving an international scholarship to study at the New School for Social Research. Living in New York exposed me to a radically different intellectual and cultural environment. From a remote family farm in Russia to Manhattan, the growth was exponential. It tested everything: my resilience, adaptability, and sense of self. But it also opened my world. At the NGO where I worked, I met people who truly made an impact and I knew I wanted to do the same.

My path has never been linear. When I left New York for Paris and chose to become a full-time artist, it wasn’t a whim. It was a calling. A necessity. I settled in Paris and continued developing my work as a photographer.

But being different has its shadow. You don’t fit into categories. Sometimes, people don’t know what to make of you or you start questioning it yourself. You fear your life might just be a series of disconnected gigs.

What helped me were the people who saw me. Mentors, friends, wise guides. They believed in my difference. Because of them, I began to see the invisible thread running through it all. It wasn’t random, it was meaningful.

During these years another question slowly emerged. How do people make meaning of their lives, especially during moments of transition or uncertainty. This question led me toward professional coaching and later toward analytical psychology.

Over time these paths converged. Photography revealed patterns within images. Coaching revealed patterns within human situations. Jungian psychology deepened the understanding of symbolic meaning.

From this convergence emerged the approach that structures my coaching work today. As a coach, I work with clients who also walk this edge. They are multicultural, creative, ambitious. Expats, founders, seekers. People navigating multiple worlds at once. People who want to make an impact but sometimes feel disconnected from their own truth.

If parts of my story resonate with you, if you're looking for your place in the world and the deeper meaning behind your journey, then let’s talk.