The Heart of Coaching: Loving-Kindness or Compassion?

If you’ve been around Awaken Coach Institute for a while, you’ve probably heard the word loving-kindness. It’s the way we like to be. But how does it relate to compassion, another of our favorite words in coaching and community?

There’s a saying I love:

“When the sunshine of loving-kindness meets the tears of suffering, the rainbow of compassion appears.”

When sorrow or difficulty arises, and we stay connected to that kind, caring state we’ve cultivated in ourselves, compassion flows naturally.

The more we strengthen our loving-kindness on a daily basis, the more likely we are to respond with compassion, both when we fall short ourselves and when others around us are struggling.

This is the inner work of a coach: to cultivate presence, gentleness, and care until they become a way of being. 

Practising Loving-Kindness

Many people enjoy loving-kindness meditations, which include sending kind thoughts to a variety of people. Researcher Dr Kristin Neff (founder of self-compassion.org) suggests beginning with someone you already appreciate. Feel that genuine warmth toward them, and let it expand.

Then, turn that same warmth toward yourself, which can be more challenging. Most of us find it easier to be kind to others than to ourselves. But in coaching, self-compassion is essential. We can only meet our clients as deeply as we are willing to meet ourselves.

Finally, extend loving-kindness toward someone who feels more difficult to love. When we practise this regularly, our capacity to stay open and kind, even in discomfort, begins to strengthen.

The Role of Compassion in Coaching

In transformational coaching, compassion is not pity or fixing. It is presence with what is. It allows us to hold space for another’s truth without trying to rescue or reshape it.

When we meet our clients with loving-kindness, even their mistakes, fears, and long silences become holy ground. From this place, real transformation happens, the kind that begins in love and expands outward.

Compassion helps us build resilience. It softens the edges of judgment, restores connection after conflict, and helps us hold hope when the path forward isn’t clear.

This is the heart of coaching: to be so grounded in love that we can hold both sunshine and tears, and witness the rainbow that appears.

From the Heart of Coaching

At Awaken Coach Institute, acceptance is one of our core pillars. Every participant who joins our ICF-accredited coach training programs agrees to practise the radical acceptance of others without trying to change, convince, or fix.

In our classrooms and community spaces, we welcome people with profoundly different beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences. What unites us is the commitment to listen deeply, honor one another’s truth, and choose love over judgment.

When every person in a room is accepted just as they are, something remarkable happens. Defensiveness softens. Curiosity grows. Real listening begins.
The space itself becomes alive with grace, the kind of atmosphere where people can breathe, reflect, and discover who they really are.

This kind of love doesn’t come from technique alone. It comes from being willing to be brave enough to look inside yourself and love yourself, even through the hard things.

The more you can love yourself, the more you can love others. It’s not an airy-fairy kind of love, it’s the real deal. It’s the work that transforms both coaches and clients from the inside out.

If this reflection on love and compassion resonates with you, you might also enjoy our short Coaching Mastery video, What Is Transformational Coaching? Becoming an Aligned Coach.

In it, Christi Byerly, MCC, shares how being a transformational coach means living in full alignment, from your daily actions to your deepest spiritual purpose. It’s a reminder that real transformation begins within us, long before it reaches our clients.

That’s what makes our approach to coach training transformational. It’s not just about learning to coach. It’s about learning what it means to belong, to be accepted, and to hold that same space of love for others.

If you’d like to explore how acceptance, compassion, and love can transform not only how you coach but how you live, we’d love to welcome you.

Join our next live Q&A to discover The Heart of Coaching, or email communitycare@awakencoaching.com with your questions.

You can also hear more about this in our Coaching Mastery video where I explore how love, courage, and self-acceptance form the foundation of spiritual and transformational coaching.

If you’d like to hear more about how this vision of belonging shapes everything we do at Awaken, I invite you to listen to the very first episode of Awaken Voices, our community podcast. In #1 The Vision of the Awaken Community, I share how creating communities of grace has transformed both my coaching and my life, and why I believe love, courage, and presence are at the heart of true transformation.

With great love,