Nidhi Thakur
Founder & Director: Ayushman Yog |Yoga Educator | Yoga Therapist | Academic Resource Faculty | Author
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Areas of Expertise
Yoga Education and Teacher Training | Yoga Therapy and Disease Management | Pranayama and Respiratory Regulation | Yogic Counselling and Mind-Body Integration | Yoga Philosophy and Vedantic Studies | Faculty Wellness and Holistic Development
About Nidhi
Nidhi Thakur is the Founder and Director of Ayushman Yog, an online yoga education platform founded with the vision of preparing serious yoga students and practitioners for Yoga Certification Board examinations, through structured, authentic, and academically grounded teaching.
With over a decade of experience spanning yoga teaching, therapy, curriculum development, and academic engagement, Nidhi brings to her work a rare combination of classical depth and contemporary rigour. She is not only a practitioner and educator, but an original thinker in the field, having developed two structured frameworks that represent genuine contributions to the way yoga therapy and respiratory practice are understood and taught.
Her approach to yoga education is rooted in a simple conviction: that yoga, taught well and with honesty, changes lives. Everything at Ayushman Yog reflects that belief.
Qualifications & Credentials
Nidhi holds a dual postgraduate foundation that bridges the scientific and the philosophical, an M.Sc. in Yoga from Annamalai University and an M.Sc. in Vedanta from Maharshi Ved Vyas International Virtual Vedic University. Her undergraduate background in Information Technology from Bundelkhand University, Jhansi, informs the structured, systems-oriented thinking she brings to curriculum design and yoga education.
She also holds a Yoga Certification Board Level 3 certification as a Yoga Teacher and Evaluator, one of the highest level of YCB professional certification, and is additionally certified as a Yoga Instructor through Yoga Alliance International.
Professional Journey
Before stepping onto the yoga mat as a teacher, Nidhi built her professional foundation in the corporate world, working across customer service and coordination roles, and eventually as a Project Coordinator at Fitness Force, a fitness software company. It was perhaps not accidental that her last corporate role sat at the intersection of fitness and technology, a space that gave her both organisational discipline and a first-hand understanding of how wellness is managed, and often mismanaged, in institutional settings.
In 2018, she made a deliberate transition, bringing that same rigour and systems thinking into the world of yoga. Her teaching practice grew across private, corporate, and institutional settings, working with students in both one-to-one and group formats. Her clinical focus deepened steadily, the therapeutic application of yoga for stress, lifestyle disorders, and musculoskeletal and respiratory conditions, always through individualised assessment and breath-based intervention rather than generic programming.
In 2022, she founded Ayushman Yog with the vision of making structured, YCB-aligned yoga education accessible beyond the walls of a physical school. Since then, she has designed and overseen all teacher training and advanced study programmes, developed curriculum integrating yogic philosophy, physiology, therapy, and pedagogy, and mentored a growing community of yoga teachers and therapists across India and internationally.
The Idea Behind Ayushman Yog
When Nidhi began her own journey into formal yoga education, she encountered what many serious aspirants quietly struggle with. Yoga education at the time was largely ashram-oriented, geographically limited, and financially out of reach for many. The Yoga Certification Board was still relatively new, and very few teachers were preparing students specifically for its examinations. Resources were scattered. Guidance was hard to find. She navigated it herself, piecing together her learning through determination and whatever materials she could access.
But as she did, a thought stayed with her. If she was finding this difficult with her background and drive, how many other sincere aspirants were simply giving up?
There was something else that stayed with her too.
During her Level 1 studies, she once reached out to her teacher with a genuine question, about the significance of the three syllables in Om. The answer she received was not an answer. She was directed to enroll in another course. It was only later, studying independently, that she found the response in the Mandukya Upanishad, one of the shortest and most accessible of all the Upanishads. The answer had always been there. It simply had not been offered.
That experience shaped something fundamental in the way Nidhi thinks about yoga education. A student who finishes a course and still cannot get a straight answer to a genuine question is not a student who has been served well. And a school that responds to every question with another course is not a school, it is a marketplace.
She also understood something practical. A yoga student's journey does not end at certification. Questions keep coming. Doubts arise in practice. Situations emerge in teaching that no syllabus fully prepares you for. Where does a student go with those questions? How many courses can one reasonably be expected to do?
That question became Ayushman Yog.
Built on the conviction that knowledge should be offered generously; not rationed, Ayushman Yog goes beyond the YCB syllabus at every level. Theory sessions are discussion-oriented. Kriyas are taught in depth. Students are encouraged to ask, to question, and to explore beyond what an examination requires. And long after a course ends, students remain part of a living community with continued access to teachers, to resources, and to the kind of unhurried, honest guidance that Nidhi once had to search for alone.
Because that is what a school is for.
Original Contributions to Yoga
Nidhi's contributions to the field of yoga span original therapeutic frameworks, structured respiratory practice, and authored academic publications that have shaped the accessibility to YCB exam prep across India.
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DPYT: Dual Phase Yoga Therapy DPYT organises yoga therapy into two complementary phases: a structured morning self-practice that harnesses the body's natural healing peak, and a therapist-led session that progressively addresses the client's condition as a whole. The framework is built on the principle that lasting therapeutic outcomes require both guided intervention and cultivated self-reliance. DPYT is not a temporary protocol. It is designed as a lifelong system of self-care.
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PRANA: Progressive Respiratory Awareness and Nasal Adjustment PRANA is a structured three-week breath retraining protocol rooted in the yogic principle of slow exhalation. It addresses the widespread but underrecognised problem of dysfunctional breathing; chronic overbreathing, mouth breathing, and shallow chest breathing, and offers a progressive, accessible pathway back to nasal, diaphragmatic breathing. Beyond long-term respiratory health, PRANA also serves as an immediate tool for emotional regulation, offering a simple, reliable intervention for anger, anxiety, panic attacks, and moments of acute emotional overwhelm. Grounded in both classical pranayama tradition and contemporary respiratory science, PRANA is designed to be a sustainable lifetime practice.
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YCB Examination Guidebooks: Nidhi is the author of the complete suite of Yoga Certification Board course materials. These guidebooks that serve as the primary academic resource for YCB examinations across globe, covering every level from Yoga Protocol Instructor through to Yoga Therapist. These publications represent one of the most comprehensive bodies of YCB-aligned academic writing produced by a single author in the field. Explore the full collection here.
Speaking & Academic Engagements
Nidhi is an invited speaker and panelist at national and international forums on yoga, wellness, and holistic health, bringing a perspective that is grounded in both clinical practice and academic rigour.
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Association of Indian Universities (AIU) February 11, 2026 | KAHER Academic and Administrative Development Centre, Belagavi Invited Resource Faculty for the National Program on Integrating Professional Growth and Personal Wellness: Holistic Wellness for Today's Faculty in Higher Education Institutions. Nidhi presented on the Role of Yoga in Holistic Wellness, addressing how yoga-based practices can support the sustained professional and personal wellbeing of faculty across India's higher education sector.
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BW Wellbeing World | International Women's Day Panel March 7, 2022 | Virtual Forum Invited panelist on the BW Wellbeing World Panel Discussion, hosted in alignment with the global theme of BreakTheBias. Nidhi spoke as part of the session titled Wellbeing at the Workplace: Holistically Bright, addressing the question of how gender equality contributes to a holistically bright future, bringing the lens of yoga and mind-body integration to a conversation about systemic workplace wellness.
Nidhi is available for online speaking engagements and panel discussions on yoga and wellness, to check availability and send a proposal, write to yogafitness.nidhi@gmail.com