Here's an introduction from one of our Accelerated Awakening events where I share how healing in circle using Heart iQ can open your heart and loosen the resistance that keeps you stuck in your life.
A gentler relationship with effort
I often notice that the direction a retreat takes lines up with whatever is alive for me personally at the time. What was alive for me when I gave this talk was a longing to stop working so hard, and a wish to balance my inner masculine and feminine in a way that felt gentle on my nervous system rather than driven by push and adrenaline. That became the theme of the week: an effortless movement towards the next step, done together rather than alone.
Being, expressing and receiving
A lot of what we practice in Heart iQ circle work rests on two lines I come back to often. There is a vertical line, which is about being and doing, and about our capacity to give and receive love. And there is a horizontal line, which is about showing up for one another, being witnessed, and receiving what others have to offer. When we work with both together in a held field, something unlocks, and people often describe feeling more joy, connection and vitality than they expected.
Part of that vertical work is what I call tethering to consciousness. That means having an anchor to our sense of being, our light, so that when we feel disturbed we can find our way back to it, without losing our grounded, human connection to our bodies and to the earth. Both matter. If we only chase stillness we can drift into a kind of spiritual bypass. If we only stay in sensation without any witness, we can be knocked around by every emotion that passes through the room. So the practice is learning to hold your own centre even in the presence of someone who has lost theirs, without needing to control how they feel.
Working through expression
I use a kinked hose as an image for the experience of holding tension. In circle, movement, sound and music can offer ways to explore what is difficult to express. These are experiences to approach with support and choice, rather than a promise to resolve trauma quickly.
A personal influence on my facilitation
This is not about avoiding what is difficult. It is about making joy the doorway instead of the destination. When you move towards more openness and more joy, you inevitably meet the parts of yourself that are frightened to receive that much aliveness, the parts you have judged as messy or shameful. I know this from my own life. I grew up with a father who could not tolerate my emotion. When I cried he would try to shut me down, and I felt his love withdraw, and at times that withdrawal came with physical punishment. My nervous system learned early that showing emotion meant danger, so I left my body and became hyper alert to threat instead. Over time I have converted that particular wounding into my purpose, because the same sensitivity that once kept me watching for danger now helps me sense where people are in a room and support them there.
Witnessing and expression
The final piece I want to name is the masculine and feminine polarity we work with in circle, which has nothing to do with gender. The masculine is the part of us that witnesses, holds stillness and stays conscious of what is happening. The feminine is everything being witnessed: movement, emotion, expression, the body itself. In circle work, when someone moves onto the mat they are embodying feminine expression, and the rest of the group holds a masculine witness that allows their nervous system to open more fully than it might alone. Learning to move between witnessing and expressing, and eventually to hold both within yourself, is at the heart of finding this kind of balance.
Masculine and Feminine as Christian Describes Them in Circle Work
Masculine
The witnessing, still, conscious part of a person that holds space and observes without needing to control what is happening.
Feminine
Everything being witnessed, including movement, emotion, sensation and expression, regardless of a person's gender.
