Heart iQ Academy · Online Training
Circle Work Facilitator Training
Become the kind of facilitator the world needs next. Learn to lead deep, transformational group experiences that create breakthroughs one-on-one work cannot reach.
97 lessons · 23 modules · three parts · full recorded circles with commentary · certificate of completion
Includes two bonus courses free: As in Circle, As in Life ($297 value) and Heart iQ Foundations ($197 value).
“Healing happens in connection, not isolation. When we gather in tribe, we unlock a field of transformation that no one can access alone.”
Christian Pankhurst, founder of Heart iQ
You’ve touched transformation. Now learn to lead it.
You have felt the power of presence. You have witnessed breakthroughs. You know what it is like to hold space, and now you are ready to master it.
The Circle Work Facilitator Training teaches you how to create the kind of group spaces where transformation becomes inevitable. Where the field does the heavy lifting. Where people feel safer, go deeper, and experience healing they did not know was possible.
You will learn to tune into subtle energy, lead with your whole being, and hold a coherent field that invites truth, emotion, and emergence. This is where facilitation becomes art, and where you become the kind of leader who does more than guide.
Why this training, why now
Clients are craving more than insights
They want embodiment. Resonance. A place to feel seen, held, and changed. The world of coaching and facilitation is evolving, and deep down you know it.
Go beyond one-to-one work
You have likely felt it already: the limits of working only in one-on-one containers. There are places your clients cannot reach alone. Circle work unlocks a realm of transformation powered by the intelligence of the group field, where collective resonance creates breakthroughs no single session ever could.
Stand out in a crowded market
Coaching has exploded, and so has competition. Most practitioners are trained to guide individuals. Very few know how to hold a room. This training gives you a rare and potent skillset that positions you as a leader others remember, trust, and refer.
Multiply your impact and income
Group work is more powerful and more scalable. When you know how to hold deep, safe, amplified group spaces, you can serve more people, more deeply, without burning out. Whether you want to run circles, retreats, or a community, this training lays the foundation.
Step into what is next
There comes a point on every facilitator’s path where technique is not enough. You have done the trainings and read the books, and something in you is stirring: the knowing that your next chapter will come from transformation, from becoming someone who reads the room without words.
The method at the core
What is a Heart iQ Open S.P.A.C.E Circle?
An Open S.P.A.C.E Circle is a somatically anchored sharing space, one that invites truth to arise naturally from the body instead of the mind. It is undirected, unforced, and co-created moment by moment, based on what is alive in the field.
Unlike therapy or conventional coaching, open space is not about fixing or performing. It cultivates a group nervous system of presence, resonance, and coherence, so that when someone speaks, they are not just heard. They are felt.
This model is the root system of the entire training: everything you learn in the container, on the mat, and in the coaching method grows out of it.
Slowing Down
We create safety through tempo. When things slow, the body can speak and truth emerges gently.
Presence
We stay with what is, witnessing without rushing, fixing, or pulling attention. The ground of all facilitation.
Attunement
We listen with the whole nervous system, becoming available to feel and be felt, and to track impact.
Connection
We build a resonant field where people feel not only accepted but belonged, where your truth can touch others.
Embodiment
We let truth be shared through tone, breath, sensation, and posture, so what is felt becomes fully expressed.
The curriculum
One training, three arts
97 lessons across 23 modules, taught through teachings, live demos, real recorded circles with Christian's commentary, and client case studies broken down move by move.
Part One
The Container
The architecture that makes depth safe. You learn to open a circle, land every voice, set agreements that actually hold, and close in a way people carry home.
Introduction to Circle Work
The Tune In
four demo styles
The Classic Check-In
Alternative Check-Ins
incl. tactile and large-group
Making Agreements
The Agreement Tri-Factor
1, 3.5 and 7-day case studies
Spontaneous Response
Warm Up Exercises
Closure
Part Two
The Open Space
The craft of the mat. Present-moment facilitation, fire and nurture, expanding range, speaking the unspoken, and offering corrective experiences, with full recorded circles narrated so you watch every decision as it is made.
Present Moment Facilitation
Inviting Fire onto the Mat
Opening to Receive
incl. a full Claim Circle
Expanding Your Range
incl. a full recorded circle
Speaking the Unspoken
Going Beyond the Mask
Offering Corrective Experiences
incl. a full debrief circle
Multi-Round Liberation Circle
incl. a full Liberation Circle
Part Three
The Coaching Method
The Heart iQ coaching method underneath it all: the four pillars of clarity, tracked through real client case studies with demo, debrief, analysis, and coaching tips on every one.
The Coaching Method: Introduction
Pillar 1: What’s Moving in the Now
5 case studies
Pillar 2: What You Really Want
3 case studies
Physicalization
Pillar 3: What You Need From Others
5 case studies
Pillar 4: Resistance & Range
blocks and clear claims
Watch the method live
You don’t just study circles. You sit inside them.
Woven through the training are full, unedited Heart iQ circles: a Claim Circle, a Multi-Round Liberation Circle, an Expanding Range circle, and a Healing in Tribe debrief. Each one comes in two versions, the original circle and a commentary cut where Christian narrates the small decisions of facilitation as they happen.
In Part Three, every pillar of the coaching method is taught through real client case studies, organised in tabs: the demo, the debrief, the analysis, and the coaching tips. You watch the work, then you watch it again knowing why every move was made.
- Four full recorded circles with facilitator commentary
- Eighteen client case studies across the four pillars
- Demos and setups for every check-in, warm up, and agreement
What you’ll be learning and practicing
Create and maintain somatic safety and co-regulation in a group setting
Hold space for truth-telling without fixing, teaching, or collapsing into emotion
Track subtle cues and amplify what is alive in the room, without taking over
Invite depth, authenticity, and connection in a way that feels gentle, clean, and clear
Help participants share from their bodies, and be witnessed in wholeness
Reflect and mirror with precision and care, so others feel seen, felt, and met
Slow down the field with attuned leadership, bringing safety and coherence
Guide a group to speak into what is unspoken, through presence rather than confrontation
“This young man, Christian Pankhurst, knows how to articulate these messages as well as, if not better than I can. He is a profound source of wisdom and depth.”
Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God
Be inspired
What others have experienced
I’ve been a therapist for 30 years and if others like me want to shed the therapist paradigm and move into real heart centered, transformative work, THIS IS THE PLACE TO BE!
Since using Heart iQ with my clients, I’m having amazing results. It’s changing peoples lives! They’re sharing, expressing, and feeling without holding back.
It has made such a HUGE difference in myself and my abilities to be present with clients. It has TRANSFORMED MY COACHING!
I can’t see how I could do the work in my community helping and mentoring young men, giving them a sense of purpose and belonging, without using the Heart iQ model.
Is this training for you?
It is not for everyone. It is for those ready to step into their leadership edge and learn to hold the kind of space that transforms lives, including your own.
This is for you if…
- You feel a call to lead, even if you are just starting out
- You have done personal growth work and are ready to share it
- You want to facilitate safe, deep group experiences
- You value presence, resonance, and emotional authenticity
- You are willing to be seen, stretched, and supported
This is not for you if…
- You are seeking a passive or purely theoretical experience
- You resist being vulnerable or doing your own inner work
- You are looking for a rigid method or step-by-step script
- You are not open to feedback or co-creative learning
- You believe leadership is about control, not connection
A certificate that verifies itself
Complete every lesson and your Certificate of Completion is issued automatically, delivered as a PDF and backed by a public verification link you can share anywhere.
Witnessed, not alone
Every lesson carries a reflections space shared with fellow facilitators, including years of reflections from the practitioners who walked this training before you.
Notes worth keeping
Every lesson ships with session notes rebuilt from the transcripts: key points, practice guides, and the exact language of the method, ready to reread the night before you facilitate.
Your guide
Meet Christian
Christian Pankhurst is the founder of Heart iQ, a trauma-informed, body-based approach to healing and group facilitation. His own path began in a childhood marked by intensity and unsafety, and the years of anxiety and disconnection that followed became the ground this method grew from.
He has spent the last 20 years refining Heart iQ and training facilitators across the globe, with over 400 practitioners certified in more than 50 countries. This training distils that body of work into the clearest teaching of the method he has ever recorded.
Included free when you enrol
Two complete courses come with you
A facilitator who has not sat in circle cannot hold one, and a facilitator without a daily practice runs dry. Both companion courses are included in full, so you train the leader and the human at the same time.
Bonus one
$297 valueAs in Circle, As in Life
The 30-day initiation into Heart iQ Circle Work, and the fastest way to feel the method from the inside. Thirty daily transmissions teach you to read a field, meet your own shadow, take space, and be witnessed. Everything you will later facilitate, you first experience in your own body.
- 30 daily video lessons with four recorded case-study circles
- 30 days with Z, the Heart iQ AI coach, plus a community space
- Weekly knowledge checks and its own certificate of completion
Bonus two
$197 valueHeart iQ Foundations
The practical companion that keeps your own practice alive while you train. Six modules move through the four core practices of the heart, tracking your inner world, meeting your defences, and expanding your emotional range, the exact skills your future participants will need from you.
- 48 lessons across 10 modules, from first principles
- The 4 core practices, tracking, and the S.T.U.A.R.T defence map
- Circle skills modules that mirror what you learn in Part One
Step into the facilitator’s seat
This training is the on-demand spine of our live facilitator programme, where it carries a value of €3,995 on its own. Enrol today and both companion courses come with it.
Circle Work Facilitator Training
$997
Lifetime access. One payment. Two bonus courses included.
- 97 video lessons across 23 modules, in three parts
- Full recorded circles with commentary, so you watch the method live
- Dozens of demos, setups, and debriefs for every circle element
- Session notes rebuilt from the transcripts on every lesson
- A certificate of completion when you finish the training
- Lifetime access, learn at your own pace
Included as bonuses
As in Circle, As in Life (30-day initiation)$297 value
Heart iQ Foundations (48-lesson companion)$197 value
Prefer to start smaller? Begin with As in Circle, As in Life on its own and this training is offered afterwards at the alumni price of $497. Either path arrives at the same place, and near the same total.
The path beyond
When you are ready to receive the work in person
This training gives you the complete method on demand. When you want to feel it in your body, in a room, in tribe, the live path continues at New Eden: the Healing in Tribe immersion, where facilitators train toward full certification, and Accelerated Awakening, the deepest circle work we offer.
Frequently asked questions
Is this training live or self-paced?
Fully self-paced, with lifetime access. Every lesson is on demand: the teachings, the demos, and the full recorded circles with commentary. You can move through the three parts in order, or go straight to what your next circle needs.
Do I need experience to start?
No. Part One assumes nothing and builds the container skills from the ground up. Many powerful facilitators started with zero background in group work. What they shared was a calling to create spaces where truth can be spoken. If that resonates, you are in the right place.
Is this a certification?
This is deep experiential education in the craft itself, and you receive a verified certificate of completion when you finish all lessons. Formal certification as a Heart iQ Facilitator runs through our live trainings and the Healing in Tribe immersion at New Eden. This training is the strongest possible preparation for that path.
How is this different from As in Circle, As in Life?
As in Circle, As in Life is the 30-day initiation: you learn to sit in circle, read the field, and take space. The Circle Work Facilitator Training is the professional sequel: you learn to build the container, hold the open space, and coach inside it. Enrol here and you receive As in Circle, As in Life free as a bonus, so the initiation and the training live side by side in your hub.
What if I already own As in Circle, As in Life or Foundations?
Then the alumni path is usually the better deal: inside your hub (and right after the As in Circle checkout) the Facilitator Training is offered at a reduced alumni price. Either route ends with all three courses in your hub for close to the same total.
How much time does it take?
There are 97 lessons across 23 modules. Most people take one module at a time, an evening each, and are facilitating their first simple circles while still in Part One. Lifetime access means there is no clock on it.
What if it is not for me?
You have a 14-day full-body yes guarantee. If the training is not the right fit, write to us within fourteen days of purchase for a full refund.
This isn’t just another training
If something in you feels the pull, a knowing, a quickening, a quiet yes, this is your invitation to follow it. You do not need to have it all figured out. You just need to begin.
Join the Circle Work Facilitator Training$997· lifetime access · 14-day guarantee