2025 in Review: Holding the Chi Generator and Learning to Put It Down

If I had to name the felt-sense of 2025, I would call it a year of holding the chi generator.

In our practice, the chi generator is simple: you stand, you lift your arms into a specific posture, and you hold. At first it’s easy. Then it starts to burn. Then your mind begins bargaining. Then your body starts telling you stories. And the deeper invitation emerges: Can you stay devoted to your deepest why, even while something in you is aching?

That’s what 2025 has felt like for me. Not in a dramatic, poetic way, but in the literal, lived, nervous-system way.

A year where devotion and overwhelm walked side by side. A year where beauty kept arriving… and so did the edges that required me to change. A year where some things worked, some things broke, and something in me quietly began to die, so something else could be born.

And before I tell the story, I want to say something simply and clearly: I know I haven’t been in regular connection with you.

The newsletters stopped. The updates stopped. The pulse of the community went quiet from my side.

Not because I stopped caring. But because I was inside the kind of year that asks you to go inward, recalibrate your compass, and let reality teach you what you cannot keep doing.

So this is my heart-to-heart with you. Not as a polished report. Not as a marketing message. But as an end-of-year story: what this year really was… what it gave… what it asked… and where it’s leading us in 2026.

January: A Beautiful Trip, and a Quiet Depression

The year began with a trip to the U.S. for New Year’s, traveling to be with my soul friend Sumir. It was a tender beginning. The kind of beginning that looks good from the outside.

And yet, even in those first weeks, I could feel something underneath.

A low-grade depression. A sense that something was off.

At the same time, I also felt something else: ignition.

That familiar creative fire that visits me when I’m about to build something new. And in those early weeks, that fire took shape as a vision: to rebirth the training school that has been part of my life since 2012, my commitment to training facilitators in Heart iQ Circle Work and emergent field facilitation.

Thirteen years after the first academy, here I was again, going back to the drawing board, reinventing, refining, crafting a new offering. A new expression.

And yet personally, I was still inside the long echo of heartbreak from 2024.

One of the deeper truths I’m learning about myself is this: I metabolize grief slowly. Sometimes I don’t feel everything in real time. It takes weeks, months… sometimes years.

I bond deeply. I love deeply. And when something ends, my nervous system doesn’t just “move on.”

So there I was, standing in the tension I know well: inspired in my work… but carrying a personal emptiness.

And it’s important I tell the truth here, because it shaped the entire year:

When I’m in pain, my work can become my refuge. And when my work becomes my refuge, I sometimes create faster than I can sustain.

Ideas arrive in a flood. Visions expand. I say yes too quickly. I make commitments that sound doable in the moment… but don’t account for the reality of what it takes to build them with care.

And many of my commitments for 2025 were seeded in that place.

Colorado, Switzerland, and the First “Oh Shit” Moment

After spending time with Sumir in Oregon, I hosted a beautiful facilitator training in a renovated church in Loveland, Colorado, one of those moments where I remember why I do this work. The field was strong, the humans were incredible, and I felt that familiar confirmation: Yes. This matters.

When it finished, I flew straight to Florida to visit friends and my mentor. Those days were packed, part reunion, part counsel, and part momentum, because I was also actively enrolling the next generation of facilitators into the new training.

It was intense… but I was on a roll. You know that feeling when you’ve been inside an amplified field and the current is still moving through you, like the work is carrying you forward before you’ve even had time to breathe.

And then I went to Switzerland, staying in a friend’s house in the mountains.

And here’s what happened:

Only when I finally relaxed… only when the noise stopped… did I start to freak out.

In the silence, I began to feel the weight of what I’d put into motion.

It was like the year I had designed on paper was suddenly standing in front of me as a living creature, and I could feel how immense it was.

I remember thinking:

Oh shit… what am I doing? What am I committing to this year?

Because if it had only been the Circle Work Facilitator Training, it would have been intense, but doable.

What dawned on me in that quiet Swiss mountain air was that I had also, from a place of excitement, said yes to so much more.

Embodied Emergence with Rachel. A residency at New Eden with Lexmy, Denise, and Femke. Three Shadow Work retreats with Maanee over the summer.

And suddenly, the shape of the year came into focus, not as a vision, but as a weight.

Not because any of those commitments were wrong. They mattered. They were meaningful. They were beautiful.

But I could feel that my energy had been flowing outward. I could feel that somewhere along the way I’d lost my own prioritization, my North Star, my purpose, my deep why.

And that’s when the image landed:

my ship is taking on water, and I’m keeping other ships afloat.

That realization hit hard.

And it brought another: I can’t do this alone.

So I put out job descriptions, community manager, operations, marketing, all of it, only to discover that the hiring process itself became more overwhelm. Too many responses. Too much decision-making. Too much complexity.

And what became clear was this:

I didn’t need a whole team.

I needed one person. A true number one. Someone who could hold the operational and technical build, so that the rest could grow from there.

Shelley Arrives: A Lifesaver at Exactly the Right Time

And then, right as I was leaving Switzerland and heading into the UK, Shelley arrived.

I can’t overstate this: she was a lifesaver.

Shelley entered with competence, clarity, and speed. She knew how to get into the tech, build the backend, create the funnels, organize the systems, she carried the heavy operational lifting that I was drowning in.

So much of what we accomplished this year would not have happened without her.

She was the builder behind the scenes who helped bring the Circle Work Facilitator Training into real form: websites, funnels, logistics, structure.

She arrived at the right time.

And in the same season, something else arrived too.

February: Love, Lightness, and a New Kind of Relationship

In February, I entered a new relationship.

Unexpected. Quietly profound. And almost immediately, I knew: this is someone deeply special.

This relationship has been one of the great gifts of 2025.

Not because it’s perfect, but because it carries a different imprint.

A relationship that isn’t built on trauma processing as the center of gravity. A relationship that has offered nervous system regulation, lightness, play, depth… and the simple joy of living.

We’ve been inseparable since. Traveling through Switzerland on those stunning trains, sledding down mountains, watching her literally fly off a slope because she couldn’t stop, which still makes us laugh deep from our bellies.

Walking the Devonshire coast where I grew up. Spending time in Dubai, twice. A month in Bournemouth in the UK, reconnecting with old friends who would later become part of the Heart iQ ecosystem.

And she stood beside me through so much of the intensity of this year, through retreat after retreat, and through the moments where I could feel my system nearing its limits.

The Vision for a Community-Led Foundation (and the First Seeds of Something Bigger)

Also in February, another idea arrived.

A vision.

I realized: Heart iQ can’t only be a business that sells trainings and retreats.

We need an arm of the ecosystem devoted to community and outreach, where belonging isn’t gated behind high ticket programs and retreats.

But here’s the important nuance: This wasn’t about me creating something founder-led.

It was about seeding something community-led.

So the first step wasn’t “launch a foundation.” The first step was: let leadership emerge that isn’t under me.

And something beautiful happened.

Five people found each other. Bonded. Devoted themselves to the work. Started building their own internal fabric as a team. And through the year they began offering Sanctuary calls and Compass calls, small but meaningful steps in weaving community.

Among them were two people from my earliest academy days: Dan, who was part of that emerging team, and Stephanie, who once led the Heart iQ Academy and co-facilitated with me at New Eden for years.

Back in 2018, when the financial burden of New Eden became overwhelming, I had to release almost my entire team. Steph and Dan were among them. And we lost touch.

It’s been a heartbreak. These were people deeply close to me, deeply aligned to the work.

So in April, while I was in the UK, I felt an impulse to reach out.

I suggested a walk in the New Forest.

My partner and I met Steph and Dan, and something reopened.

It wasn’t just “catching up.” It was a rekindling. A sense of right timing. A reconnection into a future that is still forming.

And this, this is only the seed.

The bigger vision is still coming: eventually forming a legal charity (an ANBI in the Netherlands), building scholarship pathways, receiving donations, and bringing the work into places and communities that can’t afford to pay for our premium programs and retreats.

But for now, the seed was: leadership emerging by devotion, not by hierarchy.

And I’m deeply moved by that.

The Circle Work Facilitator Training: A Major Creative Birth

One of the biggest achievements of 2025, one that I really want to honor, was that my team and I successfully birthed and delivered the Heart iQ Circle Work Facilitator Training I had envisioned earlier in the year.

This wasn’t just a program. It was a creative act. A new piece of art. A new transmission.

We began in May by filming and releasing a brand new course called As in Circle, As in Life, a foundational series that opened the doorway to this whole training path. We offered it to over 200 people, and it became the ground layer of the entire journey.

From there, we held two powerful five-day facilitator trainings, one at New Eden in June, and one in the U.S. in July. Both were complete hits, with close to 50 people in each.

And woven through all of it was the deeper arc: a full six-month level one training that ran from May through November.

This included eight weeks of supervised pod practice, eight weeks of masterclasses with me, and an incredible integration journey that culminated with 60 graduates completing the full program.

For those on our professional track, this also connected into the trauma-informed certification taught by Rachel Rickards and Catherine Hale, creating the beginning of a multi-year pathway for those who feel called to professional mastery.

It’s hard to describe what it means to build something like this while also living inside such an intense year. But I want to say it clearly:

This was a major win.

It was real.

It was impactful.

And it confirmed something I’ve always known: this work wants to be trained, shared, and stewarded into the world.

The Residencies: Testing a New Eden Dream (and Learning So Much)

Another meaningful experiment this year was our exploration of community residencies at New Eden.

This vision began in 2024, when a small group of us started dreaming about what it could look like to create a deeper community-based residency model on the house side of the land.

In April, we decided to test the vision.

We created our first residency laboratory, facilitated by myself, Lexmy, Denise, and Femke.

It was a wonderful learning field.

A place to experiment with what happens when people don’t just arrive for a retreat and leave… but live together in a shared container.

We explored an architecture that included weekend Thriving in Tribe retreats, with an experimental Living in Triberesidency container between the weekends.

And then, in August, we ran a second residency experiment with a different team, Vanessa, Roel, Sheila, and Laura.

Again, a 10-day container.

Again, deep learning.

Again, a sense that something is being seeded.

We gathered real data. Real feedback. Real insight.

And while we’ve decided not to run more residencies next year, because we are simplifying and focusing, these experiments gave us a strong foundation for what might be possible in the future.

A Relentless First Half: Retreats, Travel, and the Intensification of the Field

The first half of 2025 became a cascade.

I facilitated and supported multiple retreats and intensives.

Embodied Emergence with Rachel. Healing in Tribe in April with the Sound Field and Sylvie. Advanced Shadow Work retreats with Maanee. Residences at New Eden

Then the U.S. in July, where I got deathly sick after a relentless run of events and travel.

And it wasn’t just “busy.”

It was the kind of intensity that rewires you.

Over the year I have facilitated seventeen deep dive retreats.

And here’s what’s real:

When I’m in that many amplified fields, I start to lose my baseline.

I lose my routines. I lose the grounded rhythm needed to build sustainably. I lose operational oversight, not only of Heart iQ, but of New Eden, which I also carry.

And as the year progressed, the consequences of that began to show.

When Shelley Left: A Mirror and a Turning Point

In July, Shelley pulled out.

And it was a big hit.

Not because she did anything wrong. But because it mirrored something important: the way I had been leading.

My lack of grounded planning. My tendency to create fast, then hope the team will pull off miracles. My habit of saying yes, then expecting other people to absorb the consequence.

It wasn’t sustainable.

And here’s what I decided:

I’m not going to replace her quickly just to keep the old machine running.

Because something is dying.

And I don’t want to rebuild the same old thing.

I also realized something else: We can’t just hire “skill.”

Heart iQ isn’t that kind of business.

The people holding key roles need to be part of the culture, the community, the devotion. Not just contractors executing tasks.

So I held the gap.

And the gap has been hard. But it’s also been part of the necessary transition.

The Ekstasis Vision (and the Courage to Cancel)

Around this same time, another desire emerged: to speak again to large audiences.

To return to the energy of the Heart Summits of 2012 and 2013.

I found myself drawn to a stunning ballroom at the Van der Valk near Schiphol Airport, an event space that could host 900 people.

I signed the contract. Paid the deposit. Put a vision into the world: October 2026.

The event name: Ekstasis.

I didn’t fully know what it was yet. But I felt the call.

And then… reality arrived.

In the last months of the year, I realized: that decision was premature.

It was the same pattern: excitement without infrastructure.

So with a heavy heart, and also with clear integrity, I canceled it.

I asked for and received the deposit refund.

Ekstasis will come. But not before the foundations are strong. Not before the community is alive enough that it happens with ease… not push.

And that cancellation, painful as it was, became a symbolic act:

I am choosing a new way.

Bournemouth: Friendship, Family, and the Financial Wake-Up Call

After the Sexual Shadow Work retreat in August, my partner and I went to the UK for a month.

Bournemouth became a kind of nest.

I reconnected deeply with Steph and Dan. We bonded. We laughed. We started building something again.

I spent time in Devon with my parents, walking the coastline, remembering where I come from.

And also… the financial wake-up call began.

New Eden was struggling.

Staff burnout. Cash flow instability. More cancellations. Competition rising. And I could feel the truth: my eye wasn’t on that ball.

This was one of the hardest parts of the year: realizing the cost of trying to run two very different businesses without proper support.

Heart iQ needs vision, culture, content, facilitation, community, product design. New Eden needs operational rigor, staffing stability, financial management, customer service excellence.

And I am not an operational general manager type.

I can lead in the field. I can lead in vision. I can lead in transmission. But the day-to-day operational precision needed for New Eden is not my natural strength.

So Bournemouth became both nourishing… and sobering.

Healing in Tribe in October: Deep Medicine, and a Line in the Sand

And then came the second Healing in Tribe retreat in October.

It was enormous medicine. Deep. Beautiful. Hard. Gnarly.

And the truth is: my normal facilitation style wasn’t available to me.

I was being asked to surrender in a new way. To let the field boil. To allow chaos. To navigate ruptures and repairs, not just with participants, but within team dynamics too.

It was one of those retreats where you can’t pretend.

And out of it came a realization that shook me:

I don’t want to keep offering deep dive retreats publicly as stand-alone experiences.

The work is getting deeper. The collective pain is growing. The transformation is more intense.

So I began redesigning the whole model.

Fuerteventura: Differentiation, Sobriety, and the Return of My Body

After Healing in Tribe, my partner and I needed to leave.

Not as an escape… but as a reorientation.

Being at New Eden had become intense in a way I couldn’t ignore.

I began to see a relational dynamic I hadn’t fully named before: enmeshment.

My work and my home life had blended. My personal nervous system and the field of Heart iQ had merged. Living and working in the temple had amplified it.

And I was receiving feedback that it wasn’t healthy, for me, or for the people coming into the work.

So we went to Fuerteventura for a month in November and early December.

And something incredible happened there:

I felt sober.

Not “I stopped drinking” sober. But unplugged sober.

It was like stepping out of amplified fields allowed my system to come down from an altered state I didn’t realize I was living inside.

My body responded. My breath returned. My clarity returned.

And in that space, I discovered a new practice: fasting.

36 hours once a week. Three days once a month.

My Oura ring showed it clearly: my body rests and recovers deeply when fasting.

And I felt something awaken: a deeper commitment to cleansing, simplification, and nervous system repair.

Fuerteventura also confronted me with a question I can’t avoid anymore:

New Eden.

Is it my North Star? Or is it part of what’s weighing me down?

And I felt the truth: at this ten-year mark, I must decide… or at least stop pretending I don’t have choices.

New Eden at Ten Years: A Doorway and an Open Declaration

On January 7th, New Eden turns ten years old.

Ten years since I moved in with my team in January 2016. Ten years of sacrifice, devotion, money, energy, and stewardship.

And I can honestly say: this place has shaped me.

When I’m away, it’s easier to consider selling. When I’m here, my heart opens and I remember how special it is.

And right now, I’m living in a paradox:

Both timelines are true.

One timeline is me committing more deeply, proper staffing, strong leadership, real resourcing, to make New Eden thrive as a home for Heart iQ and beyond.

Another timeline is releasing it, selling the land and buildings, letting it be held by someone else who can make it their life’s work.

And there are hybrid possibilities too: selling part of my shares to someone operationally gifted, someone who wants skin in the game, someone who can lead the day-to-day in a way I’m not designed for.

So here is my energetic declaration, at the end of 2025:

I am open. I am listening. I am willing to be guided toward what is best for me, for New Eden, and for the land itself.

I am releasing the grip on one outcome.

And trusting that what is meant will find its way.

Coming Home: Christmas, Community, and a New Kind of Ending

When we returned from Fuerteventura, we came home to New Eden and had one of my favorite things:

A small Christmas gathering with long-term friends. Fifteen to eighteen of us over the solstice-to-Christmas window.

Music. Games. Potluck dinners. Fireplace cuddles. Walks. Rest.

A simple kind of intimacy that reminds me: this is what tribe can be.

And then, almost immediately, we transitioned into the final event of the year: the first Winter Intimacy Camp with Rachel Rickards.

Thirty of us. One circle each morning. Spaciousness. Co-creation. Winter fun. Contemplation.

It’s running through New Year and ends January 4th.

And honestly… it’s the perfect way to close 2025.

Not with intensity. But with warmth. Not with striving. But with presence.

The Reorientation: From Public Deep Dives to Long-Form Containers

In November and December, something crystallized.

I hired a business coach in the UK and joined their mastermind for next year. I began rebuilding our ethics, our values, and our infrastructure.

And I realized: 2026 will be the year of the new Heart iQ.

Not a rebrand. A rebuild.

A new model. A new rhythm. A new relationship between the work, the community, and my own life.

And the centerpiece of that is this:

We are moving away from public-facing deep dive retreats as the default.

Instead, we will be building year-long mentorship containers, what we are calling the Heart iQ Fellowship, for men, women, and couples.

Deep retreats will be either invite-only… or embedded within those longer containers, where there is integration before, during, and after.

Because I believe that’s where true growth happens: in ongoing relationship, community support, and sustained mentorship, rather than isolated peak experiences.

The Cooperative: A Community-Owned Heart iQ

And now the big one.

In early January, we are preparing to incorporate the Heart iQ Cooperative.

This is not just a legal structure.

It’s a declaration that Heart iQ is becoming a movement.

A community-owned ecosystem where certificate holders and members can participate in governance and ownership.

Heart iQ will not remain founder-owned by me alone.

This cooperative will become the vehicle through which community leadership can grow, and eventually, it will be the foundation that allows something like Ecstasis to become what it was always meant to be:

An annual assembly. A gathering of the global community. A celebration of a living movement.

But first: foundations.

2026: Slower, Truer, and More Rooted

Next year, we are going slow.

We’re focusing on one thing at a time.

We’ll create a beautiful sequence of free five-day challenges and intro experiences, so the work becomes more accessible.

We’ll run virtual retreats and online experiences, so people worldwide can touch the field without having to travel.

We’ll experiment with contribution-based pricing, because we want access and community to expand.

And personally, I’m committing to something I’ve never prioritized enough:

differentiation.

Clear boundaries. De-roling. Decoupling my personal life from my work.

Which means you may feel me become less available as a peer when I’m in my role. It may look colder at first.

But the truth is: it’s healthier. For me. For you. For the work.

I’m also choosing more stable nomadism.

In 2026, my partner and I will return to Fuerteventura, we loved it so much. We’ll spend about 90 days there between February and May as a base, then return to the Netherlands over the summer, and be in the U.S. for the second half of the year.

Still international. But less frantic.

More rooted.

Acknowledgements: The People Who Held the Year With Me

Before I close, I want to name and honor a few of the humans who made 2025 possible.

To the emerging foundation leadership team, Stephanie, Dan, Vanessa, Ruben, and Roel, thank you for devoting this year to seeding community leadership. Thank you for taking the first steps toward a future that is led by devotion, not hierarchy. Your commitment has mattered more than you know.

To Roel and Laura, I want to thank you specifically for your devotion to New Eden through difficult periods. And especially to Roel, thank you for being the Swiss Army knife of this entire ecosystem. Maintenance, operations, accounting, hosting, Heart iQ event management… and seven other roles I can’t even remember. You have steered the ship in ways that have kept the whole system afloat.

To Vanessa and Stephanie, thank you for helping me steer through the reorientation. For supporting me in vision, values, and strategy as we shape what Heart iQ becomes in 2026.

And a very personal thank you to Stephanie, since April, since we reconnected, it has felt like you’ve had my back. As a friend. As counsel. As a project manager. As a steady hand. When things were falling apart for me over the summer, you stepped in and brought leadership to the supervisors and structure to the whole program. Without you, it would not have become the successful training that it did.

And to Ruben, thank you for supporting the early steps of the cooperative and helping bring that vision into form.

I am deeply grateful for each of you.

Closing: A Death, a Birth, and a Return to the Tribe

As I write this, I’m ending the year in grief.

I feel like a part of me has died.

And I don’t yet know who is being born.

The “old Christian” is coming back, but not as a regression. More like a return to essence.

And in this unknown, I want to say this to you:

Thank you for staying.

Thank you for being part of this tribe, even when I went quiet.

Thank you for trusting the seasons.

Heart iQ is reorienting.

I am reorienting.

And 2026 will be a year of foundation, integrity, and the slow birth of something real.

If you’re still here… If you can feel the pulse of what’s coming… Then I can’t wait to walk into it with you.

With love, Christian