The Holistic Enneagram
Love and Relationships in three centers (body, heart and mind): A workshop with Peter O'Hanrahan
An engaging, fun, and moving experience that will help you become more caring, graceful and effective in all your relationships.
What do we mean when we say we love someone? Like the words spirit or soul, love has many meanings. Is it a feeling in the heart? Is it taking action on behalf of another? Is it a need for secure attachment? Is it a product of our biochemistry? Perhaps all of these. Mr. Gurdjieff spoke of love being expressed from each of three centers – in very different ways:
- With the body center – instinctual love, taking action of behalf of the other.
- With the heart center – emotional love, empathy and compassion, devotion.
- With the head center – seeing the other without bias or projection and knowing their true potential.
Now, with the benefit of the enneagram of personality types, we can discover how our type structure affects the way we express love and care from our body, heart, and mind. And how our type patterns and defenses get in the way.
In this workshop we will explore how we can develop each of our centers, and our capacity to love, by understanding the strengths and limitations of our type structure. How is friendship different from intimacy? How do we experience the attraction and pitfalls of romantic love?
About the Enneagram
The Enneagram is a powerful method to understand ourselves and the people in our lives. Since being developed as a psychological system in California in the 1970’s, it’s now used by people all over the world to create better relationships at home and at work. This system of nine personality types is used in families, organizations, therapy, counseling and coaching work to develop emotional intelligence and more effective communication.
No one can be reduced to a number and each person has a unique essential self. But personality comes with patterns – patterns of mind, heart and body – which create both strengths and challenges in our relationships. The enneagram provides specific ways to have more successful relationships with different kinds of people – what we need to know, and what we need to do, to open our hearts and respond with more insight and empathy.
In this weekend workshop we will explore
- How love is expressed in three centers: body, heart and mind.
- The nine communication styles – not only what we say but how we say it with our body language and emotional tone.
- How to respond to the underlying concerns and issues of each personality type.
- The importance of vulnerability and how our personality defenses get in the way.
- How to manage our internal state and reduce reactivity with awareness and breath.
The format
The format will include presentations, panel interviews with participants, small group work and guided exercises.