A Heart iQ Village is a way I describe bringing relational practice into community life. The central question is how people learn to live together, alongside the practical work of finding a place.
The place and the culture
So much of the conversation around intentional community focuses on what I call the hardware. Finding a house, or a group of houses, or a piece of land to live off-grid on. The practical, logistical side of things. That matters, but it isn't the whole picture. What Heart iQ offers is closer to the software, the operating system that actually allows a group of people to attune to each other, communicate honestly, resolve conflict and function as a collective rather than a scattered set of individuals.
For a long time now our culture has trained us to be I-focused rather than we-focused. Tribal and community living isn't new to us as a species. It's something that lived in us for a very long time before it fell away, which means it isn't gone, it's dormant. Reawakening it takes some training and a different imprint than most of us grew up with.
Support beyond the partnership
I am interested in the needs a wider community can help meet. A partner can be a source of intimacy without carrying every need for friendship, belonging and shared responsibility. In my experience, spending time in a supportive group can reveal a form of connection that is different from being with one other person.
I describe three dimensions: our relationship with ourselves, our intimate relationships, and a wider sense of community. Friendships and peer groups can give people somewhere to bring experiences that do not need to live entirely inside the partnership.
Sharing responsibility
The nuclear household can leave one or two adults holding a great deal alone. In the village I imagine, people would share more of that work, including supporting children and making room for elders to contribute. This is a vision of community, rather than a fixed prescription for how every family should live.
I sometimes use the analogy of a phone. The hardware is the physical device, the screen, the chip, the storage. But the software, the operating system, is what actually lets you do anything meaningful with it. Heart iQ is the software layer for community: the way circle is held, the way conflict gets worked with, the culture and meaning that runs underneath the physical living arrangement. Without it, a shared house is just an empty shell.
Beginning on a smaller scale
I see this as something we're still testing and learning from, not a fixed formula. At our retreat centre, New Eden in the Netherlands, we've had the chance to turn the whole venue into a temporary village, giving people a taste of what this could feel like and training facilitators who want to bring these skills into communities elsewhere. Typically it starts small: a weekly circle with neighbours, then a men's or women's group connected to that circle, and for some groups it eventually grows into moving onto land together, living more sustainably, or even building a shared cooperative business so the community can sustain itself.
This isn't for everyone. Some people are genuinely wired to thrive as lone wolves, dipping into community now and again while being happy in their own space most of the time. But there's a growing number of people who feel a kind of tribal remembrance, a sense that something isn't quite right until a collective need is met, not just an individual or relational one.
Continuing after a retreat
After years of running events and retreats, I've noticed a pattern. People arrive, open up, build resonance with others, and leave feeling lit up. Then they go back to an unchanged environment and, over time, slide back into old patterns and old loneliness. The retreat reveals a possibility, but it can't fully translate into daily life if the surrounding environment hasn't changed. That's part of why I've become more interested in helping people build ongoing, lived community rather than only offering peak experiences.
Whatever is ahead, whether it's financial or environmental strain, I think we're better placed to meet it together than alone. Even without any crisis on the horizon, I'd still ask whether there's a better way to live than the isolated version many of us have settled into.
Hardware and software of community
Hardware
The physical infrastructure of community life: houses, land, off-grid systems and logistics.
Software
The relational and cultural layer Christian calls Heart iQ: attunement, communication, conflict resolution and shared culture that let people actually live well together.
