Topics We Teach (to date)
INsights (Intro)
Defenses
Developing Your Inner Observer
Holy Experiences
Monthly TYPE Panels
Passions
Professional Growth Through the Enneagram
Relationships
Somatics
Spiritual Resistance
Subtypes and Instincts
Three-Centred Growth
(see below for more information on each workshop)
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INsights (Intro)
This introductory day will give participants the opportunity to consider and work with their own Enneagram type structure, its positive gifts and strengths and its problem areas. Understanding our type gives us a lens for self-reflection.
In relationships, work, family life it is so valuable for us to do this sacred work of self-awareness, so that we can be fully present to ourselves and others. The Enneagram also gives us valuable insights, so our relationships benefit from this awareness.
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Defenses
Why learn about this particular topic? Our defense mechanism is the “enforcer” keeping your type going on automatic, and off our screen of awareness. Explore the way you (unconsciously) protect yourself when you are triggered by fear or stress and create an idealized version of yourself to present to others.
When we learn about our defense mechanism and work with it, our type structure loosens, we have more choice and the true gifts of our type can be expressed more freely. In 9 different ways, we are invited to pay attention to something that is largely undercover and automatic.
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Developing Your Inner Observer
We need to intentionally develop our capacity to witness how our type is working in the day to day, if we want to change. Observing and then pausing are important parts or our being able to make different, less automatic choices, i.e., to be less type-bound. And in developing our Inner Observer, we are simultaneously deepening our receptivity to the subtle intelligence of our Centres.
During this day, participants will have the opportunity to practice working with their Inner Observer, both strengthening it and working through some of the subtle obstacles we have to noticing ourselves in this way.
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Holy Experiences
Opening to the Holy Experience of Each Type – When we learn about the Enneagram, we are invited to observe how our type functions in the day to day, often in predictable, overused and limiting ways. As we grow, we move beyond these limits. At our core lies the essence of who we really are, our True Nature, the Divine alive in us. While we have all aspects of the Divine within us, each type opens most fully to one experience of the Divine.
As we face our deepest fears arising from the false perception that we are separate from God, from Source, from the Creator, we can begin to sense into the deepest spiritual experience of our type. We can begin to live the aspect of the Divine most available to us as one of our most profound gifts. We will explore each type’s Holy Experience in this workshop, with an emphasis on how to open to expressing our divine gifts.
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Monthly TYPE Panels
Type panels are 2 hour sessions where we spend the evening focused on one type, hearing about the experiences of that type through a panel of 3-5 people. There will be a brief didactic introduction. Then we will invite panelists to speak about how the type is alive in them in the moment, given what they have heard or what they have come with to the evening. When possible, we will explore panelist’s experiences more deeply through somatic work. There will be time for conversation and for questions from the group about the type.
The theme for the 9 panel nights for 2019-2020 will be The Enneagram and Relationships. We will be asking our panelists, “What are the strengths of your type in relationships?” “What are the challenges – for you and for others?” We will learn through the Narrative Enneagram and will welcome questions from those who attend in person and by Zoom.
– the Narrative Enneagram panels make the Enneagram come to life!
– deeper insights into yourself and others than you will ever get from reading a book.
– experience somatic work – work in the body that brings lasting healing and change!
Check our calendar to see which type panels are being held and when.
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Passions of the Enneagram
Each Enneagram type has a specific “passion” or emotion that shapes how it expresses itself when we are stressed and tighten against life. The passion of our type automatically and rigidly governs our response to the situation at hand, more than we could ever imagine. Becoming aware of how this happens and working to slow down and relax the automatic-ness helps us access the virtue of our type more easily. Gradually we can grow into the gift of our type, the part of God, the Divine that we have the freedom to live out of.
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Professional Growth through the Enneagram
Have the opportunity to explore how your type structure is showing up in your life and your work. Notice how your type might be blocking insights into your clients, as well as how their type may be blocking their personal progress. You will be given the opportunity to learn in community, through panels, the Narrative approach, to learning from people as they explore their type’s impact on their lives. As an incredibly accurate map, the Enneagram helps you see yourself in action, gives language for largely unconscious patterns of reactivity. With commitment and discipline the Enneagram and workshops like this support your growth and help deepen your receptivity.
Relationships
We will look more closely at how the structure and patterns of our type show up in our habits of thought, in our automatic emotional responses and in our bodies. Specifically, we will also look at how these affect our relationships and how we can come to see people as they truly are. Please come with an awareness of your type structure. Also bring your wonderings about how your structure shows up in relationships.
If there is a challenging relationship in your life, and you know the type of the person you are trying to relate to, there will be some opportunities to do something called guided interactions – a deeply held interaction between you and a person of that type. These have proven to be very effective for understanding what goes on in the relationship.
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Somatics
The day involves working with the often overlooked and neglected information our body offers us for our healing and growth. By bringing our attention to our bodies and what they know, we are able to make more conscious and constructive choices in our day to day lives, less contracted within the lens of our Enneagram Type.
In these days, we will be encouraged to notice how our body is, where we hold tension or tightening, and in doing the counter-intuitive move of going towards it, giving it space, sometimes letting it speak, we learn about ourselves.
Please note: We limit the attendance at this workshop to 10, so that everyone has an opportunity to do some somatic work.
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Spiritual Resistance
Our Enneagram type structure forms in response to a perceived disconnection from the larger spiritual reality, to God, to help us avoid what we fear it means – that we are on our own, that we are bad, that we are unlovable and so on. And then, because it has become how we cope, our structure resists loosening; it resists opening to the larger spiritual reality, to God.
As we become aware of our Type’s responses, working with much love and grace, our structure can begin to soften. With this comes an opening inside to something beyond ourselves, to God, to the larger spiritual reality. We open to experiencing the majesty, the immensity, the totality of love, mercy and compassion of the Divine Mystery, of God’s presence in our lives.
In this workshop, working with panels, we will consider how we shy away from the depth of experience open to us through the Mystery, through God and at how to begin to soften our resistance.
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Subtypes and Instincts
There really are 27 types! This workshop will help you discover which of the 27 you are. We have 3 instinctual drives: self-preservation, one to one, social; but one of them preoccupies our life, both our thoughts and our behaviour. It is through this one predominant instinctual drive that we most see our Enneagram type show up. Knowing about this can only help us growth in loosening our automatic responses and our habitual ways of being. In this workshop we will become familiar with which one of the three is our leading instinct, learn about how our type shows up and experience ways to loosen its grip.
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Three-Centred Growth
Knowing the Enneagram, even knowing it well, doesn’t necessarily means that we change. Changing is a process and we need more than knowledge to engage in it. 3 Centered Growth is one key. Our ego, our personality, forms most strongly around our lead centre of intelligence (heart, head, body.) When our “type” is running us, our lead centre is not able to flow freely, and our other centres are suppressed by its dominance. To grow, we need to be able to access the intelligences of the other centres. This may be a pre-requisite to any growth at all.