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Enneagram

The Enneagram System of Personality Types

The Enneagram is a powerful, dynamic system of nine personality types that combines traditional spiritual wisdom, modern psychology, and recent findings in neuroscience.  The system describes three centers of intelligence: head, heart and body that underlie nine fundamentally distinct patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. 

 

Each personality pattern depicts a character (ego) structure formed in childhood, that combines nature (innate) and nurture (conditioning) – i.e. neurobiology and environmental experience.  Underlying each of the nine patterns is a belief about what we need in life for survival and satisfaction.  This belief determines what individuals of each personality type pay attention to and how they direct their energy and behavior.

 

As sacred psychology, the Enneagram identifies that people have two important aspects – essence and personality.  Essence is the unique "essential self" that can't be limited to a category or number. Loss of contact with our essence commonly occurs when obscured by defensive strategies and habitual behaviors.  The wisdom of the Enneagram delineates specific type-based psychological/spiritual work that supports transformation to live more in accord with the expansive qualities of our awakened true nature – Spirit within.

Courage is at its deepest level of meaning the courage to face ourselves…  We might think that courage is fearless, but the truest form of courage is not the absence of fear but rather facing what we need to face even though we remain afraid.

- The Enneagram of  Passions and Virtues  by 
    SANDRA MAITRI

Coaching with the Enneagram

My coaching approach utilizes the Enneagram as a tool for deepening self-knowledge and personal development.  The aim is to bring light of awareness to my clients' hidden selves for these potential benefits:

 

  • Builds awareness of type-based patterns and automatic reactions. (e.g. fear, anger, shame; desires, beliefs, inner sense of self, etc.), which enables us to be more compassionate with ourselves and tolerant of others.

 

  • Identifies psychological and emotional defenses specific to our type and thereby opens a pathway for profound personal growth and healing.

 

  • Identifies type-based practices and actions to make possible more success in our relationships at home and at work.  We can become more flexible and skillful with the people in our lives.

 

  • Clarifies our innate strengths and unique gifts, and reveals a map that highlights the pathway towards fully realizing our gifts, as well as genuine psychological/spiritual fulfillment.

 

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