A brief history of Pavel
A brief history of Pavel
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Pavel’s planet was exploding in the light of the dying sun. To save their baby’s life, his parents put them into a space travelling cradle and shipped him to another galaxy. Only for him to discover, while he worked on a farm in Kansas, that the sun gave him abilities superior to any man … On that day he became super, super …Wait! Wrong origin story! Whoops!…
Actually, Pavel grew up in Russia, and moved to Arizona with his mother when he was 16. Fortunately/unfortunately, while growing up, Pavel at young age witnessed his father’s attempted suicide and subsequent challenge with mental illness diagnosis. He witnessed and cared for his aunt as she slowly passed away from lung cancer. In Arizona, he finished high school and went on to Scottsdale Community College while trying to reconcile the events of his childhood. Pursuing his interests in science and psychology, in the hopes of understanding and fixing what happened in his early life, he graduated with Honors with Associate Degrees in both the Science and the Arts. During his late teens, he met his mentor - Dr. Sanford Cohn, who challenged him and helped him to reshape his life trajectory using meditation, but more on this later.
A culmination of his inner quest for meaning, for Pavel, occurred during graduation. While walking across the stage, he discovered an utter lack of inner fulfillment juxtaposed by the abundant festivity of all present. That’s where his inner guided journey started. While trying to figure out his direction in life, he got a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology with a Minor in Family Studies from Arizona State University. Over this time span, Pavel started to attend a local Zen center and to learn about meditation through books and other media.
As he was taking deeper dives into Buddhist contemplative traditions, he finished training at the local Shambhala meditation center. He took on temporary monastic ordination and studied under Pema Chodron at the Gampo Abbey. Following that experience, he volunteered and worked in a variety of positions for over three years at Garchen Buddhist Institute as a lay practitioner. Throughout all of this time, he had the good fortune of receiving a variety of teachings both formally and informally.
In between his contemplative forays, Pavel worked in the mental health field. For the most part, he felt that the level of care at those mental health institutions was pretty low. Best case scenario - the clients didn’t get all the care they needed, worst case scenario - they would get retraumatized. Knowing that his consciousness wouldn’t let him do subpar work, he chose to do his best to pay forward all the kindness that he received and make a living doing it.
His main areas of study include Depth & Contemplative psychology, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. A true Renaissance man, he is currently pursuing his interest in being of benefit to individuals and groups through the means of both contemporary and classical sciences of the mind, videography, and acupuncture.
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