Each one explains the other to you, and you end up as the judge.
Relationship Mastery · Facilitation as a life skill
Become the facilitator of your own relationships.
A seven-day residential immersion for anyone who wants to practise relational mastery. Come on your own or with a partner, whether you are single or in a relationship. You learn alongside coaches and therapists, bringing these skills into your own life: listening through disagreement, sharing what you need, and finding your way back to connection.
Led by Christian Pankhurst with Stephanie Fabela and Sumir Brown, supported by experienced Heart iQ facilitators
7–14 February 2027 · New Eden, the Netherlands2–8 August 2027 · The Hideaway, ColoradoApplication onlyFrom €2,500 / $2,995 early bird · All-inclusive
Two doors. One room.
How are you coming?
01I’m coming for professional trainingFor coaches, therapists, counsellors and facilitators learning to guide couples through rupture and repair towards secure connection.02I’m coming to master my own relationshipsFor anyone who wants to practise relational mastery in their own life. Come on your own or with a partner, and bring the learning into your friendships, family and intimate relationships.
7Days in residence
Training and practice
Training and practice
4Areas of practice
For your relationships
For your relationships
6Relational capacities
To practise together
To practise together
Application
onlyEvery place reviewed
Personally by our team
onlyEvery place reviewed
Personally by our team
Sound familiar?
The hardest thing to holdis what moves between two people.
One of them says they feel alone. The other hears that they have failed. Before you have said a word, the old argument has started again, and each of them is quietly waiting for you to agree with them.
Whether you work with individuals, couples or groups, facilitating intimacy asks something specific of you: holding two nervous systems at once, translating between them, and leaving them with something they can use at home on a hard evening.
You never say it out loud, and both of them feel it anyway.
One "because" and the apology becomes another dig.
"I love you" does not reach someone who has just said "I don't feel important".
It worked in the room, and a week later they are back in the old pattern.
“What was wounded in relationship needs relationship to heal.”Christian Pankhurst
The skills a good couples coach uses are the skills a relationship needs from the two people in it. Most of us were never taught them. We learned to protect ourselves instead, and the protection worked, until it began to cost us the closeness we wanted most.
In this immersion you learn facilitation as a life skill, in a room where coaches and therapists are learning the same approaches for their work.
Then you take it home, into your partnership, your family and your friendships.
Every good relationship needs
each person in it to become a facilitator.
Someone who can notice a defence rising, stay curious about a partner’s experience and help a difficult conversation find its way towards repair.
You learn these skills alongside the professionals in the room and use them in your own life. You can listen to someone deeply and still see things differently. You can take responsibility for your reaction without dismissing your need.
What you learn to facilitate
- Attunement. Feeling what is moving in the other person, and letting them know you feel it.
- Regulation and co-regulation. Settling your own nervous system, and helping each other settle when the charge rises.
- Navigating the charged moment. Knowing how to move when a conversation turns, before it becomes the old loop.
- Sharing. Saying the real thing, in a way it can be received.
- Rupture and repair. Coming back after things break, and owning your part so the other can let it in.
- Feeling what your couple bubble needs. Sense what is happening between you before choosing whether to repair, nourish or expand. Repair attends to a break in connection. Nourishment helps you settle together where you are, without pushing or stretching. When you are both regulated and ready to meet an edge, you can explore new ranges together.
There is another way
What if you could hold your own relationships the way a master facilitator holds a room?
The Relationship Mastery Immersion is seven days in the Heart iQ Method applied to intimacy. The room is a facilitator training, so you learn the deeper layers the way professionals do: tracking what is moving between two people, guiding ownership that can be received, working with polarity through the body, and staying with the charged moment until it turns. You practise it on yourself and with others, with a partner if you bring one, and you see what a circle of people doing this work makes possible.
“We now have something new that we both can practice together to support our relationship intimacy. This is priceless!!”Krzysztof · Relationship training participant
A short film
Eye to Eye: what opens when couples do this work together.
A twelve-minute documentary about couples doing Heart iQ relationship work on the mat, inside a circle, and what changed for them when they went home.
Filmed at an earlier Heart iQ couples retreat in the Netherlands. The immersion is a longer training that people join on their own or with a partner, and the film shows the kind of work you will be part of.
Training and transformation
Inside the
immersion week.
This is a working laboratory. You learn each practice by living it, in pairs, in small circles and in the whole room, and by watching Christian work with the real relationships that arrive. You leave knowing it in your body as well as in your notes.
The work
Four bodies of relational practice.
Christian teaches each body of work from whatever is alive in the room, so you see it meet real relationships rather than a script, with time to study it closely and ask your questions.
01
Recognising defence and finding your way back to curiosity
Understanding Your Triggers
A silence, a disagreement or an unanswered request can suddenly feel much bigger than the moment itself. You learn to notice when an earlier hurt is shaping what you believe is happening now, and to distinguish that from ordinary upset about something that genuinely needs attention.
You practise recognising your own signs of activation, slowing the urgency to react and making room for another perspective. You do not have to uncover a childhood memory or explain every feeling. You begin with what you can notice in your body and the choices available to you now.
- Attuning to what is moving beneath the words
- Following the thread from complaint to longing
- Regulating yourself when the charge rises, and helping each other settle
- Hearing the person you love without defending
- Knowing when a reaction belongs to now and when it belongs to the past
02
Sharing the real thing
The Language of the Heart
When we communicate the real thing instead of the right thing, we end up communicating our authentic essence and heart.
A relationship needs a handful of practices two people can reach for on a hard evening. You learn relationship tracking, acknowledgement, sharing disappointments and unmet needs, and sharing uncontained truth, and practise each one until it is yours.
Then you learn to guide them, so that on the evening it matters, one of you can lead the other through it.
- Relationship tracking, and the difference “a part of me feels” makes
- Acknowledgement that owns what does not work, without story or blame
- Turning a complaint into a disappointment, and a disappointment into a need
- Uncontained truth, and the agreements that make it safe
- Leading the person you love through a practice when it matters
03
Experiencing a different response to a familiar hurt
Finding Your Way Through Repair
When something hurts, understanding why may not be enough. You practise asking for what was missing and noticing what helps you receive it. A partner listens without arguing with your experience. Your no is respected. You can be upset and still remain in connection.
Heart iQ calls this a corrective experience: a familiar situation meets a response you can feel as different. You give that experience time to land and practise recognising the support and choices becoming available within you. Repair also includes clearer boundaries; it does not ask you to excuse harmful behaviour.
- Owning your defences without collapse or shame
- Repair after rupture, and how to come back sooner
- The small shift from blocking love to receiving it
- Letting a different response register in your body
- Keeping clear boundaries while opening to connection
04
Being held by a tribe
The Relationship in the Circle
Nearly all of what you think is an issue is not actually an issue with the couple, it’s an issue with a lack of tribe.
Most of us try to work out our relationships alone, behind a closed door. In the circle you are witnessed by people doing the same work, and you see your own patterns reflected in theirs. Couples who work in a held group so often say afterwards that they could never have done it alone, and that the support of everybody was critical.
The group offers a place to experience being heard and supported while you find more of your own voice. You learn to receive that support without making another person responsible for resolving every feeling, and to carry what you discover into your relationships at home.
- Being witnessed without being judged
- Seeing your own patterns in the room
- Receiving support from the men and women in the circle
- Bringing a relationship onto the mat, if you choose to
- Building the friendships and tribe a relationship needs
The container
Where you will practise.
You are in a facilitator training, alongside coaches and therapists learning the same approaches for their work. You learn with them, and you practise in every kind of space the week offers.
With a Partner
If you come together, you can do the practices as a couple, with guidance close by, so what you learn is already part of your relationship when you go home.
In Pairs and Small Circles
Most practices happen in pairs and small circles, so you learn each one by doing it, with people who are learning the same thing.
On the Mat
Some relationships are worked with in the centre of the circle while everyone holds. You learn a great deal by witnessing, and you only step onto the mat if you choose to.
The Village
The support a relationship needs beyond the two people in it: brother and sister friendships, and people around you who are fans of your relationship. You learn how to build it at home.
“The healthiest relationships are relationships that open and receive
support from tribe and from brothers and sisters.”Christian Pankhurst, Founder of Heart iQ
A day in the immersion
The rhythm of
the week.
The days follow a titrated arc. They open into depth and then settle into integration, rather than escalating without rest.
Morning Small sharing circles and open space, practised each day at increasing depthMidday The large field with Christian: transmission, and relational work shown liveAfternoon Practice in pairs and small circles, alongside couples work shown and studied closelyEvening Integration and rest, so the day has room to land
This is the usual arc, not a rigid timetable. The sequence can shift in response to what is alive in the room, while preserving enough time for practice, completion and integration.
You are in a facilitator training, learning facilitation as a life skill. Every exercise remains optional, and the group is held by a trained team so you can go as deep as you choose.
Application only
Serious work asks
for the right room.
The Relationship Mastery Immersion is held by application.Every place is reviewed personally, whether you come to practise or to train.
This is for you if
- You want to master the deeper layers of relating, in your partnership, family and friendships
- You want the skills a great facilitator has, for your own life
- You are happy to learn in a room where coaches and therapists are training too
- You are single, coming without your partner, or attending together. All are welcome
- You can be in residence for the full seven days, at New Eden in February or in Colorado in August
This may not be the right fit if
- You are in acute crisis and need therapy rather than a training right now
- You would rather understand relationships than practise them
- You would like a gentler first step. Love, Relationships & You is that step
Applying does not commit you to book.
Stories from the Field: Coco
Hear Coco share her experience of Relationship Mastery
Meet Christian
Christian Pankhurst
Before I could train others to facilitate intimacy, I had to learn to stay open inside it myself.
I’m Christian Pankhurst, founder of Heart iQ and author of Insights to Intimacy: Why Relationships Fail & How to Make Them Work, and I will be leading this immersion.
I trained first in the sciences, graduating as a chiropractor in 2002, and then as a facilitator in Neale Donald Walsch’s Leadership Education Program, where I was mentored as his protégé. In 2009 I was awarded the title of Britain’s Next Top Coach, winning a national competition with votes from 92 countries. In 2011 I opened the Heart iQ Academy, and I have led hundreds of retreats and trainings since 2002, with people travelling from more than thirty countries to be in the room.
Through direct observation of thousands of group interactions at my deep dive relationship retreats, I began to see the hidden patterns of connection and conflict that show up in every kind of relationship, and translated them into a practical, embodied language that anyone can learn. In 2016 we bought New Eden, our own retreat centre on its own land in the Frisian countryside, and it is where the February edition is held.
Relationship Mastery is where I hand you the part of this work that sits closest to my own life: how two people find their way back to each other, and how each of them learns to hold that journey.
I look forward to meeting you in the work.
“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 WalschNew York Times best-selling author of Conversations with God
Academy Director and senior faculty
Stephanie Fabela
Stephanie will teach alongside Christian throughout the immersion. She co-taught the original Relationship Mastery training with him, and her voice runs all through its recordings: co-coaching couples, walking the room during practices, and adding the distinction that makes a process land.
She reads what is moving underneath a room, and finds the direction and the charge that is asking to be met. Her particular art as a teacher is translating what she senses into something another facilitator can see, practise and eventually hold for themselves.
Faculty
Sumir Brown
Sumir has been immersed in Heart iQ since 2014. She helped build New Eden, co-created the Heart iQ Academy 90-Day Challenge with Christian, and has spent years co-facilitating the men’s and women’s work.
Her own thread lives deeply in the feminine, and she created Feminine Rising as a place for women to access this work through embodied experience. In the immersion she brings a fierce, tender quality of holding, so when the work deepens nobody is left alone inside it.
Never held alone
How this work is held.
Christian, Stephanie and Sumir lead this immersion with a carefully selected team of experienced Heart iQ facilitators and trainers.
The team is chosen for depth in the Heart iQ method and particular experience with intimacy, polarity and relational repair. In the full room and in smaller groups they guide the work alongside the three faculty, so the space can travel into real depth while staying safe, and your own growth is held by more than one pair of eyes.
Stories from the Field: Geoff
Hear Geoff share his experience
Stories from the field
People who came to this work and were changed by it
Some of them now hold it for others.
“This training is heart-centered, heart-led and heart-opening. You will laugh. You will cry. But most of all you will deepen in an experience of what it is to truly feel loved and to love others authentically from your innermost heart.”
Priya MahtaniGraduated in 2014
“I really think this program is amazing. How you have laid it out is so clear, what works and what doesn’t work to create deeper intimacy.”
DanielRelationship training participant
“The practice of embodiment and live demos together with a well balanced amount of lecture was a profound combination. I enjoyed it very much!”
MarcBristol, England
Respected by peers
What leaders in the field say about Christian’s work.
“When I launched the Field Facilitator Training, I knew I wanted Christian as one of our lead faculty. His sessions were consistently among the most highly rated and impactful parts of the course, and many participants described his workshops as life-changing.”
Rachel RickardsFounder, The Field Facilitator Training · Co-Founder, Embodied Intimacy
“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, trained 1,500+ facilitators across 25 countries
“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, and I am not aware of anyone else who combines his level of scale, structure, and impact.”
Catherine HaleFounder, Culture of Care Certified Trauma-Informed Training
“Much of what I teach today emerged from what I learned from Christian’s work. His ability to read a room and guide large groups through profound emotional processes, with safety and clarity, is truly exceptional. He is one of the few facilitators I trust unequivocally.”
Suzanne BeukemaFeminine Leadership Mentor · Founder, Unshakable Feminine Leadership
Stories from the Field: Suzanne Beukema
Hear Suzanne share her experience
February · The Netherlands
New Eden.
The February edition is held at New Eden, a private retreat centre in the Frisian countryside in the north of the Netherlands, created specifically for immersive group work.
We chose it because it can hold stillness and intensity for a whole week without interruption. You are not navigating a hotel or a public venue with the world carrying on outside the door.
For seven nights in the heart of winter, this is home, and everything about the place is arranged around the work.
August · Colorado
The Hideaway.
The August edition is held at The Hideaway, a residential retreat venue in Colorado Springs. The whole group lives on site for the week, so sessions, meals, rest and the conversations between them all belong to the work.
Shared rooms hold two to five single beds, and you share with others of the same gender. A private room gives you a room to yourself.
If you would like to meet the work first, Love, Relationships & You runs at Casa Sagrada in Colorado from 29 July to 1 August 2027, just before the immersion. It is booked separately.
Dates and investment
Choose your immersion.
The same seven-day training runs twice, in the Netherlands and in Colorado. Each cohort is held by application, and each room is kept small on purpose.
The Netherlands
7–14 February 2027
New Eden · 7 nights, residential
Shared ensuite room€2,995€2,500
Private ensuite room€3,395€2,900
Early bird until 30 November 2026, save €495. From 1 December: €2,995 shared, €3,395 private.
Per person, training, accommodation and every meal included. A 20% deposit of €500 secures a shared room.
Apply for FebruaryColorado, USA
2–8 August 2027
The Hideaway, Colorado Springs · 6 nights, residential
Shared room$3,500$2,995
Private room$4,000$3,495
Early bird until 2 June 2027, save $505. From 3 June: $3,500 shared, $4,000 private.
Per person, training, accommodation and every meal included. A 20% deposit of $599 secures a shared room. Shared rooms hold two to five single beds, same gender.
Apply for AugustSeven days of training with Christian, Stephanie, Sumir and the teamAccommodation and every meal for the weekLive demonstration and study of the facilitationDaily small sharing circles alongside the full group
1Apply
Tell us about your experience and why you feel called.
2Acceptance
We review whether this is the right room for you.
3Choose
If accepted, you decide whether you want to book.
4Book
A 20% deposit secures your place.
Applying does not commit you to book.
The application process
Allow around 20 to 30 minutes. Once you enter your name and email, your progress saves automatically.
The application asks about your experience, current support, emotional readiness and relevant personal history. If you are not a practitioner, simply say so where it asks about professional experience. These questions help the team assess whether this is the right room and understand what support may be needed. Every exercise during the immersion remains optional.
Read how Heart iQ handles personal information.Applications stay open until the room is full. Places are offered in the order they are accepted, and private rooms tend to go first.
If you are accepted and choose to book
You can pay in full at any point before the immersion begins. If you would rather spread the cost, a 20% deposit secures your place and the balance is due thirty days before your immersion starts.
Your deposit commits you to the full fee. More than 90 days before the start, a cancellation is refunded in full less a 10% administrative fee; between 90 and 60 days, 50% of what you have paid is refunded; within 60 days the fee is non-refundable, though at our discretion we may offer a transferable credit valid for twelve months.
New to this work?
Start with Love, Relationships and You.
Love, Relationships & You is Heart iQ’s three-day live training in heart intelligent relating. You sit in it as a full participant: doing the practices, feeling the field, and watching Christian work with the real relationships in the room.
It is a separate event with its own booking, and it is not part of the immersion ticket. If you have not experienced Heart iQ’s relational work live before, it is the natural place to meet it first.
Explore Love, Relationships and YouQuestions before you apply
What you need to know.
Where does this take place?+
There are two editions. In February it is held at New Eden, a private retreat centre in the Frisian countryside in the north of the Netherlands, built specifically for immersive group work. In August it is held at The Hideaway, a residential retreat venue in Colorado Springs. Both are fully residential, so for the week the venue is home.
Do I need to be a coach or therapist?+
No. The immersion is a facilitator training, and it is open to anyone who wants facilitation as a life skill. We believe every good relationship needs each person in it to become a facilitator: of attunement, of regulation and co-regulation, of sharing, and of rupture and repair. You learn the same skills as the practitioners in the room and use them in your own life.
Can I come on my own?+
Yes. You are welcome whether you are single, coming without your partner, or attending together. Your partner does not need to attend for you to benefit. You practise with other participants in pairs and small circles, and can bring what you learn into friendships, family relationships and intimate partnerships.
Can I come with my partner?+
Yes. Each of you applies in your own right, and you can do the practices together as well as with others. If one of you is here to train professionally and the other for your relationship, you share the same room and the same week.
How is this different from Love, Relationships & You?+
Love, Relationships & You is a three-day training in a larger room, and a lovely first meeting with this work. The immersion is seven days in residence with a smaller group, learning the facilitator’s skills in depth, with time to practise each one and live it for a week.
What is included in the price?+
Everything for the week: the full training with Christian, Stephanie, Sumir and the team, your accommodation and every meal. In the Netherlands a shared room is €2,500 and a private room €2,900, the early bird until 30 November 2026, then €2,995 and €3,395. In Colorado a shared room is $2,995 and a private room $3,495, the early bird until 2 June 2027, then $3,500 and $4,000.
What are the dates?+
The Netherlands: Sunday 7 to Sunday 14 February 2027 at New Eden, seven nights, opening on the Sunday evening and closing in the early afternoon of the following Sunday. Colorado: Monday 2 to Sunday 8 August 2027 at The Hideaway, six nights, arriving from 4pm with dinner and the opening session on the first evening. Both are fully residential.
Will I be asked to do anything I do not want to?+
No. Every exercise remains optional, and you only step onto the mat if you choose to. The team is there to help you find the depth that is right for you.
Is this couples therapy? Is it safe?+
No. It is a training in relational skills in which you also do your own deep work, held by a trained team in a carefully titrated container, with regulation and care built into every day. Learning to recognise triggers never means treating present-day harm as something you should tolerate. Clear boundaries and practical safety come first. It is not a substitute for personal or couples therapy. If you are in acute crisis right now, this is not the right time, and we will gladly point you towards more suitable support.
What does a day look like?+
Mornings open with small sharing circles and open space. Midday is the large group field with Christian: transmission, and relational work shown live. Afternoons are practice in pairs and small circles, alongside couples work demonstrated and studied closely. Evenings are for integration and rest. The arc is titrated, opening into depth and then settling, rather than escalating into the night.
Is the online training part of this?+
No. The Relationship Mastery online training is a separate, recorded home-study course with its own page. You can study it before or after the immersion, or on its own.
How do I secure my place?+
First, submit an application. If you are accepted, you choose whether to book. A 20% deposit secures your place, and the balance is due thirty days before we begin.
How do I get to the venue?+
Once your place is confirmed we send full travel directions for your edition: for New Eden, the nearest airports and stations and the best way to reach the Frisian countryside; for The Hideaway, the best way to reach Colorado Springs.
What is your cancellation policy?+
Both editions run for seven days, so they fall under our cancellation terms for events of seven days or longer. A 20% deposit secures your place, and the deposit commits you to the full fee. If you need to cancel, write to connect@heartiq.org, and your refund depends on timing: more than 90 days before the start, a full refund less a 10% administrative fee; between 90 and 60 days, 50% of what you have paid; within 60 days of the start, the fee is non-refundable, though at our discretion we may offer a transferable credit valid for twelve months.
The final invitation
Become the facilitator your relationships need.
This is a week in residence, in a small and committed room, learning the skills that bring two people back to each other and using them in your own life.
If you already understand your patterns and they still run, you know what this week is for.
You do not need to arrive certain, and you do not need to arrive as a couple. You need to be willing to step into the room, meet your own relational material, and let yourself be held while you practise something new.
Both circles are forming now, and each room is kept small on purpose. If something in you has already said yes, this is your invitation to follow it.
I look forward to meeting you in the work.
Begin the application
