The conversation circles the wound
You can name what is happening, but insight does not create the lived experience the body is waiting for.
September 11 to 13, 2026 · Live online
What Only a
Group Can Heal
A three-day live virtual retreat for coaches, therapists, healers and facilitators. Christian takes you inside real footage of Circle Work, pausing it to show you what he is tracking and why, so you can feel how a group reaches what one-to-one cannot.
Hosted live throughout by Christian Pankhurst, founder of Heart iQ
Register Now3 live daysHosted live throughout by Christian
4 PM to 10 PM CEST10 AM to 4 PM ET · 7 AM to 1 PM PT
Real training footageCase studies paused and taught live
One seat covers twoYou and a learning partner at home
At the heart of Circle Work
There is a need so deep that many of us have forgotten its name: tribe.
We can go deeper together than we can on our own. In a circle, what one person has the courage to touch can open something in everyone. A group can offer corrective experiences that reach places one-to-one work cannot always touch.
Circle Work is Heart iQ's embodied way of facilitating that shared encounter. It teaches you to read the field: the shared energy moving between people, including what is being felt, avoided or quietly asked for before anybody has found the words.
Sound familiar?
Your work is asking for a larger room.
The field contracts
You can feel the room tighten, or something unspoken sitting between people, and you do not yet have a way to read what is happening and guide the room back into aliveness.
You carry too much
You work harder than the people you are guiding because nobody taught you how responsibility can be shared by a field.
You know there is more
Your present range limits how far you can accompany someone. You want a deeper embodied capacity, not another technique to perform.
Your reach is capped by the format
You can only take on as many people as there are hours in your week, and the ones who need this work most are often the ones who cannot afford your one-to-one rate.
Trusted by practitioners
A method respected by people who train facilitators.
“Many facilitators rely on personal charisma and intuition. Christian has gone significantly further, turning what is often viewed as intuitive into a repeatable method that others can learn and apply.”
John ThompsonCo-Founder, Transformational Connection · Master NARM Facilitator
“Christian is part of a very small group at the very top of the profession. I would place him in the top one percent of practitioners in trauma-informed group facilitation.”
Catherine HaleFounder, Culture of Care Certified Trauma-Informed Training
“I've been a therapist for 30 years and if others like me want to shed the therapist paradigm and move into real heart-centred, transformative work, this is the place to be.”
Joyce LynnHeart iQ graduate, 2013
Why a group changes what is possible
Insight explains the wound. Relationship gives it somewhere new to move.
Much of what hurt us happened in the presence of other people. A room where nobody noticed what was happening. A family where the truth was not welcome, or a group we were pushed out of and never quite let back into.
For many people, that kind of wound does not fully resolve in a conversation between two people, however skilled that conversation is. It needs more than one pair of eyes. It needs to be witnessed by a room that stays and does not look away, and that does not need you to be any different than you are.
Something else becomes available in a room like that. When people feel safe together, the separation between them softens and the group begins to function as a single nervous system. Whatever one person liberates moves through everyone present, which is why witnessing a process in circle so often opens something in the witness too.
A well-held group gives the longing for tribe somewhere to land, and it lands as an actual experience in the body, with real people, while it is happening, rather than as one more idea about belonging.
“Corrective experience is sometimes an opportunity to bring attunement back when it should have been there many, many years ago, but now we have an opportunity to bring it in the now.”
The facilitator is part of the field
A note from Christian
“For years I had a bias I could not see. I was very good at helping people release what had been held in. I was much less able to help them receive what had been absent.
That was not a gap in the method. It was my own block shaping the room. I could guide people towards the kind of movement I understood, while quietly missing the doorway I had not yet entered myself.
Your blind spots become your circle's blind spots. That is why this work is never only professional training.”
Christian Pankhurst
Why we work with the body
Understanding a pattern has never stopped anyone repeating it.
You can see your pattern completely, describe it accurately, trace it back to where it started, and still find yourself doing it the moment someone comes too close. Insight lands in the mind. The pattern lives somewhere else, in the throat that tightens, the chest that braces, the breath that goes shallow before you have consciously registered anything at all.
Circle Work is not a talking method. We work with what is actually moving in the body, in the moment it moves, because that is where old material is held and where it can change most directly.
This is slower and more precise than it sounds. A small amount of the real thing, felt in the body and met by a room that does not flinch, can reach somewhere accurate explanation has never touched.
Learn the language as you learn the work
You do not need to know these terms before you arrive.
They are not passwords for belonging. They are names for things you may already sense in a room. Christian introduces each one through real footage, then shows you what it means in practice.
The field
The shared relational energy, information and wisdom moving between people and through a group. It can open, tighten, fragment or settle, and it often tells you more than the words being spoken.
Present-moment tracking
Following what is happening now, in the body, the relationship and the room, rather than staying only with the story about what happened before.
S.P.A.C.E.
Five embodied qualities a facilitator practises holding: slowing down, presence, attunement, connection and embodiment.
Titration
Working with only as much intensity as a person and the room can absorb while staying connected.
The headline
A simple phrase that names the central truth or theme moving through a person's process, so the room can stay with what matters most.
Containment and release
Knowing when an impulse needs support to stay held, and when it is ready to be expressed and completed safely.
Loving command
A clear direction offered with care. It gives the room enough structure without controlling the person or manufacturing an outcome.
The mat
The centre of the circle where a person's process can be met by the facilitator and witnessed by the group.
A corrective experience
A new lived experience in the place an old expectation once took over, such as being met where you expected abandonment, rejection or shame.
The three-day journey
Three days inside the work itself.
Each day opens with a guided practice you can follow from home, on your own or with a learning partner. Christian then brings in selected footage from a real facilitator training, pauses it, and teaches from the choices you can watch him making, including the ones he decided against. Questions move in both directions all day.
Present-Moment Facilitation
Study the two muscles at the heart of Circle Work: staying with the person who is sharing while reading the group as one living nervous system.
- Content and present-moment tracking. Follow both what a person is sharing and what is happening in their body as they share it.
- S.P.A.C.E. The five embodied qualities a facilitator brings into the room: slowing down, presencing, attunement, connection and embodiment.
- Titration. Work at a pace a person can actually absorb, so depth never comes at the cost of contact.
- Finding the headline. Help someone name what they are really with in one clear sentence, without the story attached.
Speak the Unspoken
See how a facilitator gives intensity a safe direction, so anger, anguish and words that were never spoken can move without overwhelming the person or the room.
- Preparing the ground. Read whether someone has the capacity for intensity before you invite it.
- Containment, release and loving command. Know when to hold something in, when to let it move, and how to give a clear direction with love in it.
- Inviting fire onto the mat. Give anger a safe direction so it moves as liberation rather than performance.
- Completing the round. Speak what was never said, and bring the process to a real close.
Receive a Corrective Experience
Enter the quieter side of the work: nurture, receptivity and the new relational imprint that becomes possible when an old need is finally met with attunement.
- The two wounds. Why what was done to us and what was missing leave different marks, and why each needs a different meeting.
- Opening to receive. Learn to take in nourishment without manufacturing a feeling.
- The needs menu. Practise asking for what you need, and see how consent and choice are held in the room.
- The field as medicine. Watch how one person's corrective experience moves through everyone present.
“We are all receiving the medicine if we're present.”
The footage
Real people, real processes, and the parts that do not go smoothly.
Across three days you will watch actual sessions from a Circle Work Facilitator Training, paused and unpacked as they unfold. Among them:
A woman whose fawn response leaves her uncontained for sixty seconds, and what she says after the room stays with her.
A woman choosing to explore her erotic range while holding both the fear and the part of her that wants to enter it.
A man discovering that he needs holding too, and why two people support one when the body needs enough contact to let go.
A woman who was underfed as an infant, held by the circle as she receives something that was absent and her body begins to unwind.
None of it is a highlight reel. Some of it does not go the way anybody expected, which is exactly why it is worth studying.
“There is a big difference between attunement and love. Most of us were loved, but not every one of us was attuned to.”
How each day flows
Two 2.5-hour sessions and a full hour off screen.
Times below are Amsterdam time (CEST). Each main session includes a short off-screen reset, so the work is paced in a way people can absorb.
4:00 to 6:30 PMPractice and Case Study
Begin with a guided practice, then join Christian for the first hosted teaching sequence and a short off-screen reset.
6:30 to 7:30 PMOff-Screen Meal Break
A full hour away from the screen to eat, move about and come back to yourself.
7:30 to 10:00 PMCase Study and Integration
Continue the live teaching arc with questions, optional invitations, a short reset and time to gather what remains alive.
London: 3:00 to 9:00 PM (BST)New York: 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (ET)Los Angeles: 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM (PT)
You decide how you participate.
There are no breakout rooms or participant hot seats, your camera is always optional, and every practice remains an invitation.
A live case-study room
Watch the work, then unpack it live with Christian.
This is not a library of recordings left for you to interpret alone. Christian hosts the room throughout, teaches between clips, and responds to what the room brings, so the footage becomes a shared study of the craft rather than something you decode by yourself.
01
Arrive through embodiment. Each day opens with a guided embodiment that you can follow from home.
02
Enter a real training room. Watch selected sessions from a facilitator training while Christian frames each sequence.
03
Pause and unpack. He explains what he was tracking and why a choice mattered, including what he deliberately left alone.
04
Dialogue and practise. Ask questions as the work unfolds, answer Christian's questions, and follow guided practices live on your own or with a partner at home.
Your live retreat companion
Your retreat livesinside the Heart iQ app.
The Heart iQ app gives you one clear place for your retreat access, temporary replays and the wider Academy pathway. Use the app on iPhone or Android, or sign in through your web browser.
- Your private retreat access in one place
- Temporary replays for seven days
- Programme updates and future event dates
- The same account across app and web
Who this room is for
For experienced practitioners.
For serious newcomers.
This is for you if
- You coach, heal, teach, facilitate or lead groups in any setting.
- You want to move beyond explanation into embodied encounter.
- You want to understand group dynamics without losing intimacy or care.
- You are willing to let the work move you, not only study it.
This is not the right fit if
- You want a quick certificate after three online days.
- You are looking for scripts that remove the need for attunement.
- You want to facilitate depth without entering your own process.
- You need personal crisis support rather than professional training.
A working life you can sustain
Reach more people without adding more one-to-one hours.
Learning to work with groups changes the shape of your working life. You can support more people in the same hours, and you can offer a way in for the people who could never meet a one-to-one rate. Nobody can honestly promise a particular income, and this page will not. What group work does is remove the ceiling that private sessions place on how many people a practitioner's gift can reach.
It also lets you spend more of your working life creating the conditions for real contact. You get to watch people meet one another and help a room discover what no individual could reach alone.
Your facilitator
Christian Pankhurst
Christian founded Heart iQ after years of studying what allows people to become more truthful and more free in relationship. Since 2002 he has led hundreds of retreats and trained practitioners and group facilitators around the world.
He trained first in Human Sciences and Chiropractic, then in Neale Donald Walsch's Leadership Education Program, where he was mentored as Neale's protégé. Around twenty-five years ago he began developing the structured, embodied approach to relational group facilitation that became Heart iQ.
People have travelled from more than thirty countries to experience the work. In 2016, Christian and the Heart iQ community established New Eden in the Netherlands, a residential centre created specifically for immersive group work and facilitator training.
His gift is not simply taking a process deep. It is making the invisible dynamics in a room visible, then teaching practitioners how to respond without replacing attunement with technique.
“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
September 11 to 13 · Live online
Register for the live virtual retreat.
Across three live days, Christian teaches through selected Circle Work footage and guides practices that bring the material into your own experience.
- Guided practice each day, on your own or with a partner at home
- Case-study footage paused and unpacked with Christian
- Questions and dialogue throughout the live room
- One seat covers you and a learning partner at home
- Seven days of replays in your Heart iQ Hub after the final day
- Full refund before doors open, and through day one
Continue into Healing in Tribe.
The full amount you pay for this retreat is credited towards your tuition for the October 2026 immersion at New Eden. The credit applies to that immersion only.
Pay for a seatReserve My Place
Three-day virtual retreat
$197USD
Live-room capacity is limited so Christian can remain responsive throughout the retreat.
If you join day one and feel this room is not for you, tell us before day two begins and we will refund you in full.
The first Academy threshold
These three days teach you to see the field. The immersion is where you learn to hold it.
This virtual retreat stands on its own. It also opens a clear path through the Heart iQ Academy. Virtual retreats run regularly, and the complete Circle Work Facilitator Training home study remains available between live events. Healing in Tribe is a rare residential immersion held for no more than 25 people.
The next Healing in Tribe immersion runs at New Eden from October 4 to 18, 2026. After that, the next Netherlands and US editions are planned for 2028, with dates provisional until formally confirmed.
October 2026 is the fast lane. The immersion begins three weeks after this virtual retreat, so it is realistic only if you already have the dates free and can move quickly through application and acceptance.
If October is too soon, the door stays open. Join the 2028 waitlist and we will tell you when the Netherlands and US dates are confirmed.
Your retreat fee stays with you. The full amount you pay for these three days is credited towards your tuition for the October 2026 immersion. The credit is for that immersion only, so if you are waiting for a later edition it will not carry across.
Before you reserve
Questions about the live room.
What makes this a live retreat rather than a video course?
Christian hosts the Zoom room throughout all three days. He introduces each case-study sequence, teaches between clips, answers questions as they arise and holds the continuity of the day. The footage is part of a live teaching room, not a recording library left for you to interpret alone.
How will I participate during the retreat?
Christian will guide practices that you can follow on your own or with a learning partner at home. You can ask questions throughout, and Christian will also ask the room questions. There are no breakout rooms or participant hot seats, your camera is always optional, and every practice remains an invitation.
How is the training footage being handled?
The retreat is paid, private and password protected. Only case-study footage cleared for this use will be shown. That footage comes from the Circle Work Facilitator Training and remains available with lifetime access if you continue into the full training. Recordings of this live virtual retreat, including the Zoom room, are handled separately and removed seven days after the final day to protect everyone participating live.
What if I cannot attend every session live?
A temporary replay of the virtual retreat will be available in your Heart iQ Hub for seven days after the final day. It is then removed to protect the people who participated in the Zoom room. The underlying case-study footage is not lost. If you continue into the full Circle Work Facilitator Training, it forms part of the training library and you receive lifetime access. The live room is still the heart of this retreat because Christian’s teaching and responses are woven through each day.
Do I need previous Heart iQ experience?
No. The retreat is designed for experienced practitioners and serious newcomers who coach, heal, teach, facilitate or lead groups. It is not personal crisis support and it is not a quick certification.
Does this retreat certify me as a Heart iQ facilitator?
No. These three days let you study the method, experience its foundations and decide whether you want to go further. Healing in Tribe is the residential facilitator immersion where the craft is trained under supervision.
Does my $197 retreat fee count towards Healing in Tribe?
Yes, towards the October 2026 immersion at New Eden, October 4 to 18. The full amount you paid for this virtual retreat comes off your tuition for that immersion. The credit applies to that one only, so it does not carry over to a later edition.
Can I join with a learning partner?
Yes. One paid seat covers you and one learning partner joining from the same home. Both of you can follow the guided practices and watch the teaching together.
What is the refund policy?
You can receive a full refund any time before doors open on September 11. If you join day one and feel the room is not for you, tell us before day two begins and we will refund you in full.