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Who says coaching is only logistical or a neat stack of competencies? We often box it into processes and checklists, the same way pop culture has boxed “love” into romance. But love has never belonged to just one meaning. It shows up in small, everyday kindnesses.
And it also lives in coaching.
When coaches walk beside their clients, exploring challenges and holding space for growth, that presence is a form of love. The kind of love which is rooted in compassion, empathy and the desire to help someone become who they are reaching for.
Tracy Brown, a PCC coach, Coacharya trainer, and mentor coach, grounds her coaching in this idea of love.
Coaching Journey: How it all Began
Sometimes you face uncertainty and step into it anyway. And that small step can end up changing your life. For Tracy, her coaching journey began in a similar way.
On a summer day, in a casual conversation with a friend, the idea of exploring coaching as a career came up. “I thought, oh, I’d be a good coach. I’m good at giving people advice. I didn’t actually realise what coaching was.”
Still weighing the time and financial investment, Tracy asked her friend what she thought. Her friend, much like a coach would, responded with a question. “If you do this and all it does is change your life, will it have been worth it?”
In that moment, Tracy made up her mind. “It has changed so many facets of my life, including my career, but it has also really helped me change as a person. It was way more than I ever would have expected at the beginning.”
The Story Behind Her Coaching Approach
If you have read this far, you will likely guess that Tracy’s coaching and teaching draw on more than applying skills alone. And you will be right.
Tracy’s experiences outside coaching have been a major influence on her coaching style. Around the time she stepped into her first program as a facilitator, she was also learning to teach meditation and beginning to explore somatics. Inadvertently, these practices opened a door she had kept closed for years. They taught her to notice her internal landscape and understand the emotions she had once kept tightly contained.
“There were years where I kept my emotions so tightly bound, where I didn’t acknowledge them, where I didn’t allow myself to feel them. The only thing I really would express was anger. But because I wouldn’t let myself feel pain, I wouldn’t cry, I also didn’t experience joy.”
It was when Tracy finally began acknowledging what she felt and noticing what was happening in her body that something shifted. This is why she values coaching spaces that support the whole person while staying within the scope of coaching. For her, it is about being a human being who sees and values everything the other person brings, and through doing so, makes it safe to explore emotions with the intent of self-understanding. Because she knows what it is like to move through life without that kind of openness to self, she understands the learning that comes when you finally experience it.
The One Skill She Hopes Everyone Learns
When asked what skill everyone should learn, even if they never plan to become a coach, Tracy returns to one thing. Listening. We’re not talking about the type of listening that waits for your turn to speak. We’re also not referring to the type of listening that filters through assumptions and quick reactions. What Tracy means when she says listening is the kind that comes from the heart and makes space for difference. The kind of listening that allows you to hear someone even when you disagree with them. Listening that creates one small point of connection between two very different worlds.
“Imagine if people would really be open and receptive to other people’s points of view, even if those points of view come into complete conflict with what you feel is right or wrong.” Tracy believes that our relationships and our communities would look very different if more people listened this way.
Preparing Herself to Truly Listen
It is always interesting to hear how coaches prepare for sessions. It is even more interesting to know how that practice has evolved over the years. For Tracy, there was a time when she needed to meditate for twenty minutes before each session because coaching felt so unfamiliar. Naturally, this has changed with time. Now she begins by minimising distractions, clearing her workspace and checking that her phone is silent and far away. And then she comes back to her body. She notices when she leans forward with eagerness. She softens her shoulders. She exhales. She feels her feet on the ground. She settles into presence. And, finally, she opens her heart to the person she is about to begin speaking with.
Needless to say, somatic awareness has helped hone this ability. “I didn’t use to notice anything about my body; I was so disassociated from it. Somatics really has helped me notice it.”
The Human Being Behind the Coach
When asked what someone might notice if they spent a day with her outside of work, Tracy laughed and said, “Oh my God, they will just know how silly I am.” She laughs easily and makes clumsy jokes. What is most endearing, though, is how openly she embraces her imperfections and how at peace she is with being a flawed human being. There is a lightness in the way she relates to herself that you can feel in your own heart when you speak with her. That same lightness becomes the ground she stands on when she coaches. It is warm. It is human. It is the heart space she believes coaching must come from.
Perhaps this lightness is also what helps Tracy not take life too seriously. “There’s an amazing book called The Art of Possibilities. They have chapters on different things, and one of them is just not taking yourself too seriously.”
Coaches often say that working on oneself is essential before supporting others. In conversation with Tracy, you can see how deeply her own journey reflects that truth. She speaks of pausing, reflecting and letting go. Many of the moments she wishes she had handled differently came from being caught up in worries about how she might be perceived. “We’re never going to learn when we’re judging ourselves, because when we’re in a space of judgment, we’re too afraid to acknowledge the mistakes that we make.”
The Insight That Changed Everything
One insight stays with her to this day. It came before her very first cohort, during a week filled with fear and self-doubt, finding her when she least expected it.
“I kept thinking, what if everyone discovers I’m a fraud? What if I disappoint people? And I just had this insight where I thought all I can do is be myself. And when that came to me, I felt my whole body just relax and feel into that in that moment.”
Even now, she often returns to this truth. If she is not herself, then any acceptance she receives will be for someone she is not. She would rather be real and risk not being accepted than be loved for a version of herself that never existed.
The Experience of Learning with Tracy
Tracy holds space with deep care and attentiveness. Her focus on somatics, one of her deepest passions, influences how she presents herself in the learning environment. “It’s really about noticing some of those more subtle cues that people have, noticing what’s happening with their nonverbal cues and their expressions.”
When you work with Tracy, you’ll find someone who is also deeply engaged in your competency development and growth. She maintains a presence that is both observant and grounded, creating space for you to explore not just coaching skills, but more importantly, how you relate to others and to yourself.
What moves Tracy most is witnessing personal transformation. Over the years, she has heard learners share how their experience changed the way they connect with clients, colleagues, and themselves. When learners from her coach training programs tell her they feel more connected, open, and grounded, it always makes her happy.
“So, if I had to choose one thing out of all the potentialities, it would be that connection.” That’s what Tracy hopes to offer you: a learning experience that deepens your connection to your practice, to others, and to yourself.
The Superpower She Sees in Coaching
We hear people talk about love all the time. It is a word we repeat, celebrate, and sometimes even chase. But do we truly understand what it means? And what could love possibly have to do with coaching? Tracy has lived the answer.
If coaching has a superpower, she believes it is love. Not romantic love or the commercialised version tied to tokens and gestures. She means the kind of love that lets us truly see one another. The love that reminds us we are more similar than we appear. The love that helps us stay human with each other, even when we disagree. The love that allows for acceptance, even (or especially) when there are differences.
This is the love that holds a coaching relationship together. It is what makes real transformation possible. For Tracy, love is about being present and attentive in a coaching session. It is choosing to meet another person with compassion and truth. And perhaps that is the heart of it: when love becomes the way we show up for someone, coaching stops being a skill or something we do. It becomes a way of being.
Note: If you’ve read this far, perhaps something here resonated. Tracy speaks of listening with the heart, of presence, and of love as coaching’s superpower. What Tracy talks about are practices that can change how you show up in your work, your relationships, and your life.
If you’ve been wondering what it might feel like to coach this way, or if you’re curious about deepening your own practice with somatics and presence at its core, we invite you to explore our programs. Our upcoming programs offer a space to become more connected, more grounded, and more fully yourself.
