Tracy Friend is a world leading spiritual teacher and coach whose pioneering approach has touched thousands of people’s lives internationally.
Tracy is passionate about helping people to awaken more deeply to their true nature and to create the life they want. She is a firm believer in that as we do the work of training our mind to connect with our true essence and remove blocks to that connection that our life will be one of a positive, continuous unfolding into living our higher potential with life taking on a greater meaning as the sacredness of life is revealed.
Tracy ‘walks her talk’ with her work being a natural expression of her in-depth and extensive spiritual practice and study. She views spirituality as a deep inner calling to fulfill our highest potential in this lifetime of moving from the dualistic experience of life of the separate self to the oneness of knowing our interconnection with the world.
In 2003 Tracy co-founded the Law of Attraction Centre. She teaches the Law of Attraction in addition to teaching practices to help people achieve increasing levels of liberation.
Tracy’s work draws on her broad knowledge and experience of many different spiritual paths. She has extensively studied and practiced meditation with her having participated in over 35 residential silent meditation retreats in the UK, Malaysia, Nepal and India over the last 20 years in addition to maintaining a rigorous consistent daily practice of meditation.
My Story:
Since I was a young child I was fascinated about wanting to know how the world works and wanted answers to the deeper questions. I studied Psychology at University which I loved and it provided a framework for analysing ideas and concepts however when I graduated in 1999 I felt like it hadn’t answered the deeper questions that I had about how life works and human potential. The belief in Psychology when I studied it was that matter is primary and that consciousness arises within matter, within the human brain whereas in many Eastern spiritual traditions the belief is that consciousness is primary and that consciousness solidifies into matter.
My sister passed away suddenly in 2000. Life became very challenging due to the bereavement and I was looking for ways to deal with it. I tried many personal development and spiritual systems and I was willing to put the work in to apply them consistently. The Law of Attraction was the first system that I came across that led to dramatic changes in how I felt. The premise with the Law of Attraction is that our emotions are a result of the thoughts that we are thinking and that by changing our thoughts we change our emotions and also our point of attraction. I applied the Law of Attraction day in day out for about ten years and there were significant positive changes in how I felt and also in the circumstances of my life. Then I started to question if there was something beyond my thoughts. This led to me getting much deeper into meditation. I did my first Vipassana meditation retreat in 2013 in Penang, Malaysia. I had prior to the retreat been meditating for an hour or two a day however on the first retreat I discovered that there were precise instructions for the path of awakening. I found the retreat very challenging, sitting every day on a meditation cushion for about ten hours of meditation in silence, coming face to face with myself and I had never known pain like it in my legs. However, at the end of the retreat I intuitively knew that the meditation was leading me where I wanted to go even though I wasn’t entirely sure what the destination was. I continued to do that style of meditation every day, building up to two hours most mornings and one hour most evenings. I couldn’t initially face doing more ten day retreats due to the intensity of the experience so I started doing quite a few three day retreats. Then little by little the retreats started to get easier and then I did multiple seven day and ten day retreats. I started to read more and more about meditation from different lineages and discovered what was called the ‘Pragmatic Dharma’ movement in which meditation practitioners were taking the practical parts of the Therevada Buddhist practice and not following some of the more religious elements. Initially, I didn’t really think about meditating for awakening, I wasn’t sure if it was only something that was possible for monastics, I was just meditating because it felt like the right thing to do and that I was progressing in the direction of becoming more of who I am.
I awakened to my my true nature on 15th December 2018 on an insight meditation retreat after over 10,000 hours of meditation practice. On that particular retreat I felt on the brink of a profound letting go and fear arose in me as there was a knowing that if I let go, I wouldn’t be able to return to my previous way of being and of viewing the world and I wasn’t sure what the implications of that would be. I felt like I was on one edge of a bridge ready to go over however I had a deep knowing that if I went over the bridge, that the bridge would collapse or disappear and I wouldn’t be able to go back. I relaxed into this unknowing and the sense of being a separate self dissolved. It felt like all of the static in my mind had gone, like tuning an old black and white TV to a channel and the static going.
It is traditionally stated that people should wait a year before speaking publicly about awakening to ensure that there has been a permanent shift in perception rather than just a transitory shift in the state of the mind. The changes that I experienced have been enduring and although emotions and thoughts continue to arise there is an enduring experience of pure awareness as the background of my experience.
After I experienced this falling away of the separate self, suffering reduced dramatically and my experience has been as Dr Daniel Ingram author of ‘Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha’ puts it as he described his experience after awakening ‘suffering less, noticing it more’. It felt like and continues to feel like emotions, thoughts and sensations are arising in an infinite space. Some models of awakening suggest that after awakening there is emotional perfection, this was not my experience, my experience was that it was simply the dualistic sense of being a separate ‘I’ that fell away. The embodiment of this realisation into daily life is on-going and continues to this day.
I am passionate about helping people to experience greater levels of liberation. I sometimes describe awakening as the ‘I’ thought being like the trunk of a tree and as all emotions and thoughts being the branches of the tree. When the ‘I’ thought is seen to be unreal at the ultimate level, there is a knowing that thoughts and emotions aren’t ultimately who we are as we’ve realised there is no separate ‘I’. These two divisions of practice are sometimes referred to as ‘waking up’, waking up to the knowing that there is no separate self and ‘growing up’, doing the emotional work of transforming any unprocessed emotions and transforming our beliefs to match our true nature.
I believe that experiencing greater levels of awakening and liberation is available to all people, including people living householder lives with families and jobs rather than just monastics.
I teach the Law of Attraction to help people at the relative level of navigating daily life as a human and to create a life that is an expression of their soul and I teach meditation techniques to help people at the absolute level to awaken more deeply to their true nature.
I feel immense gratitude for everyone who has contributed to my journey and all of the teachers who have kept these profound spiritual teachings alive throughout history. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Qualifications:
- BSc Psychology First Class Honours, University of Bristol
- Member of the Federation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners (FTCMP)
- Diploma in Chinese Herbal Medicine
- Diploma in Yoga Teacher Training
- Qualified Yoga Therapist
- Qualified Reiki Level 2
- Qualified Qigong Teacher
- Qualified Meditation Teacher
- Diploma in Reflexology, Distinction
- Continuing professional development training in Reflexology in Bali, Grade A
- Postgraduate training in Reflexology for Preconception, Pregnancy and Post Natal Care
- Postgraduate training in Advanced Hand Reflexology
- Postgraduate training in Advanced Spinal Reflexology
- Postgraduate training in Using Crystals with Reflexology
- Practitioners Diploma In Traditional Thai Foot Massage
- Member of the Association of Reflexologists (AoR)
- Tracy’s work has been featured on BBC radio London and in Balance Magazine.
Tracy maintains a rigorous events schedule of workshops, seminars, retreats, meditation sessions, Qigong sessions and Yoga sessions. As well as working with individuals, Tracy works with organisations to assist employees with maintaining a positive mental state and with realising their business and personal visions.
For details of upcoming events please click here.
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