The Heart iQ Academy
Circle Work Facilitator Training
Learn to facilitate a living group field. A staged path from online training to residential immersion to a supervised year of practice, from the school whose certified practitioners now work in more than twenty-five countries.
Heart iQ has trained circle work facilitators since the Academy opened in 2011. The path has three stages: the Facilitator Edition of Heart iQ Mastery, a 90-day online training from €997; Healing in Tribe, a 14-day residential immersion at New Eden in the Netherlands from €4,995; and the Fellowship, a year-long container of mentorship and supervised practice.
Certification is earned through Academy badges rather than attendance certificates, it is always opt-in, and every certified facilitator commits to the written supervision and accreditation framework. This page walks through the whole path: what the craft actually is, what each stage costs, how long it takes, and how to apply.
What does a circle facilitator actually do?
A circle facilitator holds the container in which a group of people becomes more than a collection of individuals. In Heart iQ we call what emerges the amplified field. When a whole circle rests its attention on one person, everything that person feels becomes clearer and easier to meet. Nervous systems entrain with systems that are a little more open, so the field itself does much of the lifting. We can feel more together than any of us can alone, and the facilitator’s craft is to make that safe.
In practice the job is concrete. You set a tone of grounded, loving presence. In a young circle you offer structure generously, then remove the scaffolding as the group learns to self-regulate, because the container is held through structure before it is held through trust. You interrupt over-talking and context-dumping with care, and coach a speaker back to what is moving in their body right now. When someone is ready to take space, you sense who carries the medicine the group is ready for, since the person in the centre often unlocks something for everyone witnessing.
None of this runs off a script. Circle work is a felt-sense art: decisions come from feeling the field and letting it feel you, from tracking whether it is opening or closing, so you can serve what it asks for next. If you want the participant’s view before the facilitator’s, our guide to circle work walks through what a session is like from the inside.
What makes Heart iQ facilitation different?
Most group-work trainings hand you a toolkit of exercises to run. Heart iQ trains you to partner with a field. You are taught to read resonance and dissonance, contraction and expansion, and to let the group’s own intelligence show you the next move. A rigid rule like “no stories in circle” can shut down the very share that would liberate someone; an attuned facilitator feels whether a story is unlocking energy or looping it, and responds to that rather than to the rulebook.
The second distinction is corrective experience. Trauma does not resolve by being endlessly talked about; it resolves in moments where the nervous system gets to complete what it could not complete back then. Heart iQ works with two wound categories: violation wounds, where something happened that should not have, and neglect wounds, where something that should have happened never did. A trained facilitator can create the missing imprint in the room, in real time, so that repair happens at the same level the wound was formed. That is a different skill from teaching content, and it is the centre of what the Healing in Tribe immersion teaches.
The craft also comes wrapped in accountability. Every Heart iQ facilitator commits to a written code of conduct and a named grievance process, with supervision requirements built into certification, all documented in our supervision and accreditation pathway. Depth without that structure is how this field gets a bad name. If the method itself is new to you, What is Heart iQ is the place to start.
What training paths exist?
The stages build on each other, though they are not a rigid ladder. Healing in Tribe, for example, asks for no particular certificate beforehand, only the call to this work and the willingness to be in your own process.
Stage one
Heart iQ Mastery, Facilitator Edition
90 days, online, in a cohort · From €997
The foundation. Ninety days of weekly practice across the personal, relational and circle dimensions of the work, deepening the embodied ground that real facilitation rests on. You learn the language the work is spoken in and build the capacity every later stage assumes. Enrolment includes a ticket to a live Love, Relationships & You retreat, so the training lands in the body, in a real room.
Stage two
Healing in Tribe, Facilitator Immersion
14 days residential at New Eden, by application · €4,995 shared / €5,555 single, all-inclusive
The residential training in the work that meets the wound directly: encounter work in its five forms, meeting unmet needs, Sacred Theatre and the Redo, and the four containers a facilitator learns to hold. A working laboratory where you experience every process yourself and watch it facilitated up close. Roughly half craft, half your own deep work. Next edition: 4 to 18 October 2026.
Stage three
The Heart iQ Fellowship
A full year, by application · Pricing on application
The ongoing container. A year of direct mentorship, regular community practice with your cohort, and the annual seven-day Mastery Retreat at the Sanctuary, with priority booking and reduced rates across all Heart iQ retreats. This is where facilitation stops being something you studied and becomes something you live inside, with supervision around you.
The residential stages happen at New Eden, our retreat centre on 50+ acres of forest and fields about 90 minutes from Amsterdam, purpose-built for immersive group work. Upcoming dates for everything are on the events calendar.
How long does certification take?
There is no fixed clock, and we would distrust a school that promised one. Mastery runs 90 days. Healing in Tribe is 14 days in residence, followed by an optional 12-week online practicum that earns the Healing in Tribe badge. Certification works by collecting Academy badges; when you have gathered them, you are a certified Heart iQ facilitator, accountable under the accreditation framework.
Realistically, someone moving with intention takes a year or more from first enrolment to certification, and the Fellowship exists precisely because the learning does not stop there. Certification is also entirely optional. Many therapists and coaches train for the depth it brings to the practice they already have and never seek the credential; others come to deepen their own ground and find it changes how they hold the people already in front of them.
What does it cost?
Healing in Tribe prices include every meal, all accommodation and taxes; a 25% deposit secures a seat and the balance is due by 3 September 2026. Participants may also attend the Love, Relationships & You retreat that runs just before it, 1 to 4 October, with tuition waived: you cover only food and accommodation for the extra nights. Mastery pricing includes lifetime access and a live retreat ticket. If any figure here has drifted, the booking page is authoritative.
Do I need a therapy background?
No. The Academy opened in 2011 after years of requests from coaches and therapists, and those professions are still strongly represented in every training room. Alongside them sit facilitators and circle leaders, committed practitioners who already hold circles and want to do it with real skill. What the training asks for is willingness to be in your own process, because roughly half of it is your own deep work. You cannot take a group anywhere you have not been willing to go yourself.
We are equally plain about who this is not for: anyone wanting a quick certificate to put on a website, anyone wanting the craft without the personal work, anyone looking for a purely online or intellectual training, and anyone in acute crisis who needs personal therapy right now rather than a professional training. Heart iQ itself is educational and experiential rather than clinical; facilitators do not diagnose or treat, and the training teaches you to know that line and refer beyond it.
How do I apply?
For the Facilitator Edition of Mastery, you enrol directly. It runs in cohorts with a short enrolment window before each start, so between windows the practical step is joining the waiting list on that page.
Healing in Tribe is held by application so the room stays right for the depth it works at. Read the full overview, then apply through the registration page; a 25% deposit secures your seat. The Fellowship begins with a conversation rather than a checkout, and questions about any stage reach a human at [email protected].
Begin the facilitator path
Start with the 90-day Facilitator Edition, or if you already hold space professionally and feel the call to work deeper than talk, apply for the Healing in Tribe immersion this October at New Eden.
New to the work? Read What is Heart iQ and our guide to circle work, or browse all upcoming dates on the events calendar.