You are worthy of being understood.
I meet you with curiosity, presence and openness. Together, we listen for what is alive within you and make space for your own wisdom to emerge.
-About
Warm, grounded, and
entirely on your side.
I’m Aparna Kher, a transformational life coach based in Bangalore, working with clients across the world. My work is to hold a space where you can hear yourself think - through deep listening, presence and compassion - and then to walk with you while something changes.
01My story
I came to this work the long way round.
For over fifteen years, my work was other people’s lives. As a development professional, I spent my career close to human stories, varied, textured, often difficult, learning to sit with contexts very different from my own. It gave me something I didn’t yet have a name for: an empathetic curiosity, a pull towards what’s really going on beneath the surface of a life. I was good at holding space for others. What I hadn’t learned was how to hold it for myself.
“For fifteen years I held space for other people’s stories. I’d never learned to hold it for myself.”
Then I became a mother. Motherhood cracked me open in ways nothing in my career had prepared me for, tender, enormous, disorienting. And somewhere in it, the self I’d known went quiet. I looked in the mirror and didn’t quite recognise the woman there, not her body, not the shape her days had taken, not who she was now that so much had changed. I was measuring myself against a version of my body and my worth I’d never actually chosen, only absorbed. The harder I judged myself towards “getting back to normal”, the further from myself I drifted.
“The turning point wasn’t dramatic. It was getting curious instead of critical.”
I went looking for the tools I’d never been taught, and found them in coaching, in mindfulness, in the body, and in a practice called Nonviolent Communication. I learned the two skills that changed everything: self-awareness, seeing clearly what I actually felt, needed and valued beneath the shoulds; and self-compassion, meeting what I found with kindness instead of contempt. There’s a word for that loving-kindness turned inward, maitri. It didn’t fix me; I wasn’t broken. It brought me home to myself, and let me choose my life from there, and, quietly, to unlock a potential that had been waiting all along.
“Maitri, loving-kindness turned inward. It didn’t fix me. It brought me home.”
That homecoming became my calling.
I trained as a coach, I’m now an ACC-level coach with the International Coaching Federation, and kept going: a QPR Suicide Prevention Gatekeeper, a certification candidate in Nonviolent Communication, and trained in Reiki, Hypnotherapy and NLP. My work weaves together mindfulness, somatic (body-based) practice and the NVC framework, because I learned first-hand that transformation you only grasp in your head doesn’t hold; it has to be felt, and lived, in the body.
Today I walk alongside people navigating their own thresholds, a life transition, a relationship, the tender work of parenting, or simply the question is this all? I offer what I once had to find for myself: a confidential, non-judgemental, compassionate space to meet yourself honestly, and to rise into who you’re becoming.
If that’s where you are, you’re in the right place. This is the work of coming home. Let’s begin.
Steadiness, practised
Insight alone rarely changes a life. Practice does.
Insight opens the door, but it is presence, repeated practice and compassionate attention that let a new way of living take root. Much of my own turning happened in small, ordinary moments - a pause before answering, a breath before reacting, a hand on the heart. That is the texture of this work: deep listening, presence, compassion.
02What I believe
Four things I hold to, in every session.
Insight comes alive through practice.
Awareness creates possibility. With presence, compassionate attention and small, meaningful steps, new ways of being can gradually take root.
Kindness creates the space for honesty.
Maitri, loving-kindness towards yourself, is what makes honest self-enquiry possible.
Change happens at your pace.
There is no schedule to keep up with. There is only the next honest step.
03Training & credentials
The training behind the warmth. A weave of coaching, therapeutic presence and contemplative practice.
- ICF ACC-level trained transformational coach
- Certified in mindfulness-based practices
- Somatic coaching training
- Nonviolent Communication (certification candidate)
- QPR-trained Suicide Prevention Gatekeeper
- Training in Empowerment Therapy from the Empowerment Therapy Institute (ongoing)
- Training in Presence Oriented Psychotherapy by Just Being Centre, Pune (ongoing)
- Two decades of professional and lived experience across India and abroad
Coaching is not therapy or medical care. If what you’re carrying would be better served by a mental-health professional, I’ll say so honestly, and help point you towards the right support. This is part of working responsibly, not a door closing.
“Maitri is loving-kindness. It begins with the kindness you are willing to extend to yourself.”
05Trust, quietly earned
What it is like to work with me.
“I started my therapy with Aparna six months ago during a very rough phase in my life. She helped me transform my outlook completely, from an exhausted, overwhelmed overthinker into a confident person with a positive view of life. This transformation is extraordinary, and I thank her immensely for her extreme patience and guidance. She is compassionate, understanding, and, most importantly, completely non-judgemental. This journey has changed me for the better.”
Neha
Bangalore · therapy journey
Shared with permission. Names are shortened to protect client confidentiality.
The next step
Awareness is the first step. Transformation is the journey.
If something here resonates, let’s talk. A free 15-minute exploratory call, to understand if we’re the right fit. No pressure, no obligation, just a conversation.
Book a free 15-minute call