Farah Kalsekar
Founder · Life Coach · Kids Life Coach
I never imagined I'd become a coach. I became one because I needed to understand people starting with myself, then my family, and eventually the countless children, parents and women whose stories reminded me of my own search for answers.
Like many women, I became very good at carrying things quietly.
I had children young, before I had finished my studies, before I had truly figured out who I was. My personal life was difficult. My relationships were under strain. And no matter how much I gave and I gave everything nothing seemed to land the way I intended.
Like many women, I became very good at carrying things quietly while making sure everyone else was okay. I had made myself very small, very quietly, for a very long time.
Eventually I found my way to coaching. Then back to my faith in a deeper way. Then back to my studies. Slowly, I began to understand myself not just what I was doing, but why. And something in me began to shift.
The moment everything changed.
Then my daughter started school. And she started struggling. I did what any mother would do. I looked for help. What I found were waiting lists, conditions, and the suggestion that perhaps I was simply loving her too much.
I knew it was there. I kept looking. I found a kids life coach. And I watched something happen in my daughter that I hadn't seen before. Not overnight. Not dramatically. But steadily, quietly, she began to find her footing.
The moment I knew this work had truly taken root wasn't in a session. It was on an ordinary day out with her cousins. Without anyone prompting her, she gathered them and led them through a mind holiday one of the tools she had learned. She was six years old.
Learning by teaching standing in front of real children, real parents, real women taught me things no training manual could. People don't learn through information alone. They learn when they feel safe, engaged and genuinely understood.
I needed to understand why it worked.
Watching my daughter grow wasn't enough for me. I wanted to understand why those changes were happening. What was it about coaching that allowed a child to express themselves differently? Why did play work so powerfully? How did emotional skills become lasting habits?
That curiosity became a direction. I trained as a Kids Life Coach through Kids Life Studio® under the mentorship of international coach Zelna Lauwrens. Then I kept learning through life coaching, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Islamically Integrated CBT, First Aid Mental Health, and my continued studies in Psychology and Islamic Psychology.
The answer, I have come to believe, is not advice. Not instruction. Not correction.
They need to feel understood. Everything else flows from there.
Four pillars I return to, session after session.
Evidence-informed practice.
Everything I use in sessions is grounded in established psychological frameworks ACT, CBT principles, emotional intelligence research, developmental psychology. I don't believe in intuition alone. I believe in understanding why something works.
Play-based methodology.
Children don't grow through lectures. They grow through experience through doing, creating, playing and reflecting. Every children's session I design is built around this truth.
Values-based living.
I believe emotional wellbeing and how we live are inseparable. What we value, how we treat ourselves and others, what we give our energy to these things matter, and they show up in the coaching room.
Islamic psychology.
My faith is not separate from my professional practice. It is the thread that runs through all of it. I integrate the wisdom of Islamic scholarship into my understanding of the human soul thoughtfully, authentically, and always from verified sources.
Grounded practice.
- BSc Psychology, Islamic Psychology International Open University (in progress)
- Certified Life Coach
- Certified Kids Life Coach Kids Life Studio® (Play-Based Coaching, under Zelna Lauwrens)
- ACT Practitioner The LightHouse Arabia (DHA-Accredited CPD, 14.5 CME/CPD hours)
- Certified in Islamically Integrated CBT Solace Islamic Mental Health Services
- First Aid Mental Health Aider
- Tafseer Studies Tazkiyah International
A world where no child reaches adulthood without ever having been taught how to understand themselves. Where emotional intelligence is not something we discover by accident but something we are given, gently and consistently, from the very beginning.
I believe that is possible. And I have dedicated my work to making it real one child, one family, one community at a time.