No, wait, that’s a drastic thing to say. Soul Coaching didn’t change my life. That would be too easy. What it did help me do is know myself better, which, in turn, makes me less frantic and more in control of situations. So I changed my life. And it didn’t happen overnight. Or, over the six weeks of the program. Indeed, once the sixth week was done, I was left feeling more confused than I usually felt. Just so you know, that’s a pretty high level of confusion.

But let’s start at the very beginning, as Maria von Trapp very soundly advised us to. Like most people, I have issues. Some, like my obsession with dogs, are not so worrisome. Others, like my paranoia about losing loved ones, were not. Those are just two examples; as you can imagine, there were several other things, large and small, that could snowball into really worrisome situations. And, more often than not, I dealt with things either by talking myself out of them, or by pretending I was fine. That, I believe, is the general response we all have to any situation that’s bothersome. And both paths work. Superficially, of course. Which makes all of us believe we’re fine. Most of the time.

So when my editor suggested I meet Nandinii Sen, a soul coach, and try the program, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Honestly, it seemed like too much work for a newly-married woman with a full-time job and a house to run. Why bother, when you have silence or a long chat with a friend as tempting alternatives? However, I did meet Nandinii and was intrigued by her explanation of soul coaching and how it works. Therefore, I plunged right in.

Conceptualised by Denise Linn, soul coaching is designed to help you “discover your authentic self” by taking you to your “spiritual source” and helping you find “meaning and sacredness in your everyday life”. To this end, the program is divided into four weeks, each devoted to an element and an area of your life. Therefore, you start with Air, which is your mind; next up is Water, or emotions; the third week is the Fire, or spiritual, one; and you end with Earth, which is the body. The last two weeks give you time to find ways to apply everything you’ve learnt into your daily life, without tasks to guide you.

How soul coaching works is both a simple and complex process. The barebones of it are fairly straightforward: I met Nandini at the start of the week for a session that could last 30 minutes or two hours and could speak with or email her whenever I wanted to over the next six days. In each session, we prayed together, discussed the upcoming week and I spoke to her about anything at all. I must make it clear, however, that a soul coach is not a shrink. They can only guide you along a path that you have to walk alone. However new-agey that sounds, it’s true. Nandinii only listened, and encouraged me to find my own solutions, by using the tasks I was doing every week.

These tasks differ with each element and, again, range from the very easy to the excruciating. For example, the program starts with cleaning clutter, both in the mind and in your physical environment. Needless to say, it’s far easier to clean out cupboards and get rid of all the junk you’ve been collecting for years than it is to really sit down and think about emotional and mental baggage and then start letting go of it. Similarly, in the Water week, you have to trace your emotional history, which is a cleansing but difficult process.

What I liked most about the way soul coaching works is that you can choose what you want to do on a particular day. The soul coach gives you audio files and tasks at the start of every week. You can listen to the audio – voiced by Denise Linn – at any point during the day and you can choose from three levels of tasks, depending on how you busy you are. For instance, on one day in the fourth week, you can either choose to detox your body with a quick exfoliation in the shower, or by following a diet plan for the day.

This flexibility ensures that you have no excuses to not make the most of the program.

At the end of four weeks, the audio and tasks stop. The soul coach is still available to talk to but for a fortnight, you’re encouraged to step back, take stock of the immense lessons you would have learnt, and fit them into your daily life. This is the hard part. It’s easy to feel empowered and in control when you know you have someone who is listening to you and when you have affirmations and tasks to tell you what to do. On your own, it’s hard to remember that you are a special and deserving person when someone is doing everything they can to prove you’re not.

So let’s go back to me being confused. The muddle lasted maybe a month, as I tried to understand, completely, where my problems had their roots and how I could – slowly – begin to unravel them. Six months in, I’m still in that space. What has changed, however, is that I now know my triggers and I am beginning to learn how to react to situations. I’ve learnt that many things I thought were vital to my very existence are actually not. And that I don’t really care as much as I thought I did about several other things. I turned 30 and realised that I was afraid, in many ways, to accept that my priorities have changed. The beauty of it is that as I become aware of myself, my reality has begun to change. Because I have stopped worrying endlessly, life doesn’t seem incredibly difficult and I no longer feel inadequate to deal with it.

Soul Coaching helped me get here: To a point in my life when I can even talk about my flaws without being afraid of them. Because I know I can deal with them. And if I can’t, there’s always a friend on speed-dial. Does she miss me, though, I wonder?

Nandinii Sen is a certified soul coach based in Mumbai, who works with clients across India and overseas. For more about Nandinii and other Soul Coaching Practitioners, click here