With a baby boy due in March, I can feel my whole world, personally and professionally, rearranging itself around this new chapter. I'm beyond excited.
Anastasia and I have just been for our 20-week scan, and I'm so happy to tell you our baby is healthy. Everything looks amazing. I felt this rush of relief and excitement at crossing another threshold, and becoming a father feels a little more real every week.
I'm absolutely loving this time with Anastasia, the little bubble we're in as we move through these months together. We know everything changes in March, and right now it feels so precious that I want to taste every minute of it.
We're about to leave for the United States, and instead of flying we're taking the Queen Mary 2 from Southampton to New York. It's seven days across what looks like a fairly rough Atlantic, landing in time for Halloween weekend, and I love that we get to absorb the jet lag an hour at a time. From there we travel on to Colorado to be with our Heart iQ community.
There are two retreats waiting for us there. Before I tell you about those, I want to share what the last 18 days at New Eden showed me, including a question the students handed back to me on the final day that I didn't see coming.
Coming home after 18 days in circle
I'm in what I sometimes call satisfied exhaustion.
I've given a great deal, and I can feel that in my body. There is also a brightness here that I'm grateful for. In the past, a stretch of work like this might have left me completely wiped out. This time I paced myself better, received support from a beautiful team, and shared the facilitation with Stephanie Fabela, who's been part of this work with me since 2012 and knows the depth of this material as well as anyone.
We began with 45 people at Love, Relationships & You. Couples and single people came together to explore how we move from rupture towards repair, and how we communicate a complex inner world in a way another person can actually receive.
Many had been with me through the Heart iQ Challenge that began in April. Meeting them in person after those months together online was a delight. In person, the practices meet real life, where a difficult conversation is happening with somebody sitting in front of you and your nervous system has its own response.
How do you stay present when you feel defensive? How do you notice the story you are creating before you make it the whole truth about another person?
These are skills I love teaching. Alongside them, another part of the learning has become more important to me.
When a rupture can't be repaired
I used to measure something about my success, or my skill, by whether all the relationships in my life were good.
After a couple of decades in this work, I can see that shared reality between two people is never guaranteed. We can bring our best intentions and everything we have learnt, and still be unable to repair a relationship that matters deeply to us.
Even with the most profound skill and the best intentions, it still takes two to tango. Both people have to come to the table with an open heart and a willingness to notice where their own wounds are writing the story. It asks us to be in the question and not in the answer. And sometimes it simply needs time, which I don't get to control.
There can be a subtle expectation when we come to a workshop: if I learn enough, I'll finally be able to resolve the rupture with my children, my family, my partner or an ex. Learning these skills helps enormously, and still it can't give us control over another person's willingness.
I've had heartbreak in the last couple of years around people who were important to me and with whom I haven't been able to find that shared reality. Being good at repair hasn't made every repair possible.
I'm learning to let that be true without making it a verdict on my life or on the value of the work. There can still be connection and a full life alongside the relationships that remain unresolved.
We don't get to control everything and everyone that moves through our space.
What encounter work makes possible
After Love, Relationships & You, we moved straight into two weeks of the Healing in Tribe Facilitator Immersion, with 18 students.
This was the first time I had devoted two full weeks to teaching Heart iQ encounter work. We explored the two wounds this work meets most often: what happened to us that shouldn't have, and what should have happened and never did. In Heart iQ, the work that meets them is what we call Violation Encounters and Neglect Encounters.
An encounter can take hundreds of shapes. For example, it might be a conversation with somebody in the circle standing in for a parent or an ex-partner, or it might be a deeply embodied meeting with a younger part of ourselves that's been knocking on the door for years, saying it's time for a redo.
In this work, we explore what happens when that part of us can receive a different experience in relationship. Being met by a circle can offer support that was missing when the original experience happened. This is what I mean when I speak about a corrective experience.
Each of the 18 students had a hot seat. They stepped into the facilitator role with me beside them, and we facilitated the circle together.
I've been running hot-seat trainings since 2012, and fourteen years later one discovery still fascinates me. Whoever is in the hot seat, the circle begins to reflect their inner world back to them. The themes, the topics, the dynamics and even the emergent weirdness that shows up all seem to correlate with something in that facilitator's own life. The feedback afterwards can therefore move beyond what they did well or what they might do differently. We can also become curious about what the experience revealed in their own lives.
This is what I mean by as in circle, as in life, and after all these years it still surprises me every time.
What the circle showed me about fatherhood
Towards the end, some of the students turned that inquiry back towards Stephanie and me. If their sessions reflected their inner worlds, what had the whole retreat been showing us?
For me, fatherhood was right there.
We were meeting young parts and learning how to offer attunement where it'd been missing. That kept bringing me back to the balance between structure and freedom. Sometimes that meant holding the line, bringing my sword and offering the fatherly containment a young part needs before it can feel safe. At other moments it meant watching from a loving distance and letting attunement do its work.
I could also feel my own shadows being touched: the moments when neediness in others triggered me, and the part of me that resists asking for help and slips into hyper-independence.
There's a lot for me to learn there as I prepare to become a dad. How do I offer structure without losing warmth? How do I receive support rather than assume I should be able to hold everything myself?
There was also a rupture within the retreat that didn't fully resolve. I won't share the personal details, but the learning was relevant to all of us: a facilitator needs to be able to live with incomplete energies. We can't make every person or every relationship arrive where we would like them to.
That lesson connected with my own heartbreak, and I found another layer of settling with what I can't yet resolve.
Join us in Colorado this November
These are my final two retreats of 2026, both with Sumir Brown. If you've been following the work from the United States, or have recently found Heart iQ, I'd love to meet you there.
Love, Relationships & You, 5 to 8 November, takes place at Casa Sagrada in Loveland, Colorado. It's a beautifully renovated church, and we'll spend three and a half days on the practical skills of rupture and repair in circle. You don't need to be in a relationship to come, and if you come as a couple, your partner's tuition is included. The booking page has the accommodation and meal details.
Accelerated Awakening, 16 to 22 November, takes place at The Hideaway in Colorado. It's seven days of emergent circle work where we unpack the layers and see how far the rabbit hole goes, together in tribe. It's one of my favourite experiences to facilitate, and honestly, it's hard to describe the medicine journey we go on. It's magic.
Meet me in Colorado
Love, Relationships & You
- Nov 5 to 8, 2026Casa Sagrada, Colorado
Come single or with your partner to explore rupture and repair while staying connected through difficult conversations. With Christian Pankhurst and Sumir Brown.
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Accelerated Awakening
- Nov 16 to 22, 2026The Hideaway, Colorado
A longer residential immersion into emergent Heart iQ circle work, with Christian Pankhurst and Sumir Brown.
Explore this eventLooking towards December and February
There are also opportunities at New Eden with our wider community, alongside the next professional immersion I'll be teaching.
Brothers in Tribe: The Heart of Relationship, 3 to 6 December 2026, is a men's retreat led by Roel and Dan. It's open to men with or without previous Heart iQ experience.
Feminine Alchemy, 1 to 7 February 2027, is an all-women's residential retreat led by Sumir Brown.
Relationship Mastery Facilitator Immersion, 7 to 14 February 2027, is for those wanting to deepen their facilitation of intimacy and relational dynamics in circle. Stephanie, Sumir and I will be teaching together at New Eden.
And if the encounter work I've described here calls to you, the next Healing in Tribe Facilitator Immersion is planned for January 2028 at New Eden. I know that's a long way off. I don't run it often, and I've deliberately kept next year lighter with our son arriving.
Coming up at New Eden
Brothers in Tribe: The Heart of Relationship
- Dec 3 to 6, 2026New Eden, Netherlands
Four days of embodied relational practice and circle work for men, led by Roel and Dan. Explore honest expression, boundaries and staying in contact through difficulty. Open to men with or without previous Heart iQ experience.
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Feminine Alchemy
- Feb 1 to 7, 2027New Eden, Netherlands
A six-night all-women's residential retreat at New Eden in the Netherlands. A journey into the depth of your feminine essence, releasing what no longer serves, and remembering who you truly are.
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Relationship Mastery Facilitator Immersion
- Feb 7 to 14, 2027New Eden, Netherlands
A seven-day professional facilitator immersion in decoding defence and guiding couples from rupture through repair towards secure connection, opening on the Sunday evening. One of the Heart iQ Academy’s three facilitator immersions. Application required.
Explore this eventI'm deliberately keeping next year's calendar lighter as we prepare for the baby's arrival. Right now, I feel grateful for what we've just shared at New Eden and excited about the journey ahead with Anastasia.
I'll share more from the Atlantic as we make our way across.
Hugs, Christian
