Heart iQ is my term for a group facilitation practice built around Circle Work. It focuses on how the energy of a collective field can support deeper healing and a felt experience of unity consciousness, rather than just an idea of it.
In a conversation with Igor for the Channel of Love Podcast, I talked about the path that led me to create Heart iQ and the experiences that unfold within it. For those unfamiliar with this work, Heart iQ is a practice, a way of working with Circle that supports deeper connection, healing and expansion than many people find possible on their own.
The Birth of Heart iQ: Turning Wounds into Wisdom
Like many of us, my childhood experiences shaped my ability to read energy and sense the emotional undercurrents in a room. Growing up in a household where my father’s temper was unpredictable, I developed an acute awareness of my surroundings as a survival mechanism. What started as a wound transformed into a gift, one that allowed me to deeply attune to the collective energy of a group and facilitate powerful healing spaces.
That sensitivity became one influence on my facilitation. I am interested in what people experience when a group offers careful attention and enough trust for more of them to be seen.
The Power of the Collective Field
I use the phrase amplified field to describe a felt quality of shared presence. It can bring both more connection and more intensity, which is why pacing and the ability to decline or stop remain important.
My approach often begins with what brings a person alive, rather than looking for a wound to process. Difficult feelings may still appear. The question is how to meet what is present with appropriate support.
Embodied Leadership: Beyond Techniques, Into Being
At the heart of Heart iQ is the concept of embodied leadership, where the focus is not just on learning techniques but on who we become as facilitators, leaders, and human beings. Leadership in this context is about resonance. It's about how much of ourselves we are willing to own and bring to the space.
This is why our facilitator training centres on deep personal work, shadow integration, and stepping into our full range of expression, alongside the practical skills. Technical proficiency on its own isn't enough to hold a room. I've found that facilitators need to have done their own inner work, faced their own shadows, and be able to hold space with presence, depth and authenticity themselves before they can support others to do it.
From Healing to Liberation
The work described here is about integration: finding a relationship with parts of ourselves that have been hidden or hard to accept, then carrying that learning into daily life.
This work extends beyond individuals to couples, communities and organisations. We believe in the power of tribe, in the necessity of collective witnessing, and in the beauty of being held by a village as we navigate our personal journeys.
A Golden Age of Consciousness
People often ask why this work matters now. I don't think anyone needs to do it, but there is a group of us who are hungry for something beyond survival, seeking expansion and consciousness for its own sake. We live in a fast-moving and often chaotic time, and it's my belief that out of that shadow we are collectively moving toward a more connected way of relating, loving and leading. Heart iQ is one attempt to give people a direct, embodied experience of that possibility.
For me, this work is a remembering, a way of coming home to who we already are, together.
Recording Notes: Conversation with Igor, Channel of Love Podcast
Origins
Christian describes training as a chiropractor for five years, graduating in 2002, then discovering Neale Donald Walsch's book Conversations with God. He recounts a self-funded tour speaking to Walsch's existing study groups across the United States, roughly fifty talks across thirty states over ninety days, which eventually led Walsch to invite him into a facilitator training and later mentor him directly. Christian says Heart iQ grew from wanting to give people a direct, embodied experience of the unity consciousness Walsch wrote about but did not offer a practical method for.
Shadow and Persona
He explains persona and shadow as two sides of the same childhood adaptation: qualities we exaggerate to gain connection and approval become the persona, which he names his own as "Glossy Pamphlet," while qualities that brought shame or rejection are exiled into the shadow. He is clear that a shadow is not necessarily something we are unaware of; it is something we know about but have not learned to access or express in everyday life.
The Mat, Catharsis and Calm
Christian describes the mat at the centre of a circle as a liberation space rather than a place to work directly on an issue. He says he does not aim for catharsis for its own sake, describing himself as more interested in reading the field and meeting whatever is actually alive for a person, whether that is intense emotional release or a need to be held and regulated.
On Religion and Necessity
Asked directly, Christian says he is not religious but describes an ongoing personal connection to what he calls the divine, found in the body, nature, sex and circle. He also states plainly that he does not think everyone needs to do this kind of inner work, describing it instead as something some people are drawn to once survival needs are met.
Persona and Shadow
Persona
The qualities we amplify and exaggerate because they bring connection, approval and validation.
Shadow
The qualities we exile and deny because they once brought shame, rejection or separation.
