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Hi, I’m Stephen Tracy.
I’m a curious, big-hearted, dachshund-loving personal coach based in New York City. I support people who want more aliveness, honesty, and coherence in how they live.
How I found my way into this work
Much of my life has been shaped by learning how to pay attention to my own sense of aliveness.
As a young gay man, I learned early how life can push us in unexpected directions—and quietly ask how fully we’re able to express ourselves.
Later, through my studies in cognitive neuroscience at Cambridge and my years working in corporate and startup environments, I experienced many forms of growth and success. Still, beneath those accomplishments, I sensed a quieter longing that achievement alone didn’t resolve.
Again and again, I found myself at a familiar crossroads. One part of me wanted to stay with what was known and working. Another felt drawn toward something less defined, but more honest.
Those moments became a doorway into deeper self-inquiry. I began wondering what might happen if I knew how to relate to myself more deeply, and could support my life to unfold without needing to fully control the outcome.
What I have come to understand
Through my own exploration, and through years of walking alongside others, I have learned that aliveness isn’t something we need to manufacture or earn. It’s already present within us and becomes clearer when we slow down and learn how to listen to its subtle signals.
When we meet our inner experience with curiosity rather than urgency or judgment, life unfolds on its own.
This orientation—toward welcoming experience rather than trying to fix or change it—sits at the heart of my work.
How my experience informs my work with others
I don’t work from a set formula or predefined outcomes. Instead, I offer a space for embodied exploration, presence, and honest conversation.
Together, we slow down and attend to what’s true and alive in you—questions, longings, tensions, or uncertainties. We allow clarity and direction to emerge as a response to your own experience. My role isn’t to tell you who to be or what to do, but to accompany you as you build a more trusting relationship with yourself and your life.
“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Many gay men find their way here.
Often, they’ve built successful, outwardly full lives while carrying quieter questions underneath—about desire, intimacy, worth, visibility, or what it actually means to live honestly as themselves.
My own life as a gay man has shaped the way I listen. It’s given me rich familiarity with how shame, adaptation, brilliance, resilience, and longing can coexist—and the particular relief that comes from being met just as you are.
If you’re a gay man curious about this work, I wrote a little more about this here:
→ Coaching for Gay Men
Experience and training
My work is informed by a blend of personal experience, professional practice, and ongoing study, including:
Advanced coaching training with Aletheia Coaching (Levels I & II, and Unfolding Deeply Expanded States), with continued study in journey work and depth-oriented practice
Somatic and nervous-system-informed study. Somatic IRF certification with Maureen Gallagher PHD and 6-week course with Holistic Life Navigation
Ongoing training in sacred sexuality (Body Electric) and erotic integration (SSIT with ISEE)
Over 450 hours of paid coaching experience since 2023
Entrepreneurship, including co-founder of Keap Candles (2015–2023)
Strategy and operations experience at Google, Procter & Gamble, and as Chief of Staff for the WE❤️NYC civic campaign
Academic training in Cognitive Neuroscience (University of Cambridge) and Data Science (UC Berkeley)
These experiences shape my perspective, but the heart of my work isn’t a method or technique. What matters most is how we meet—human to human—in the present moment.
A closing note
If something here resonates, you might explore further—by reading, reflecting, or reaching out for a conversation.