The Enneagram of Personality, by its very design, so competently holds the reality that personality health lives on a continuum from lightly held “style” to the grips of a “disorder.”  This real quality of personality has been the focus of much research in personality science over the last twenty years, and is made most obvious in Enneagram scholarship in Don Riso’s original observations on the Enneagram Levels of Development.  

Unfortunately, some of the models out there for the Enneagram of Personality can sabotage our work with other people and ourselves, as those models tend to only reinforce the most visibly difficult parts of Oneness, Twoness, Threeness, etc.    Admirably, Enneagram students and teachers often try to counter-balance this narrowness by adding notes on the higher aspects of the Types, the Holy Ideas (the higher Head aspects of Type) and the Virtues (the higher Heart aspects of Type).  However, Riso and Hudson’s Levels of Development for the Nine Types is a model that addresses the need for a more accurate “map” of growth within each Type structure on the Enneagram.    

Instead of simply teaching us to identify Type by the florid symptoms of the personality style when it’s running the show and steeped in defeating patterns, Levels of Development work allows Enneagram students to taste and familiarize themselves with the shadings between Healthy, Average, and Unhealthy  functioning in each Enneagram personality Type.  

The best way to get familiar with the Levels of Development is to start to identify what it feels like to shift up and down our own personality health continuum.   It is especially important to be able to notice the more powerful downward shifts we all experience at times that take us from Healthy to Average, where Riso and Hudson would say we experience our “Wake Up Call” for our Type, or from Average to Unhealthy , where they would note we experience the “Red Flag Fear” for our Type.    Both the Wake Up Call and the Red Flag Fear are important invitations back up the Levels into Health that all of us can become familiar with and learn to respond to on an experiential plane.

For further learning on the Enneagram Levels of Development, check out the following Enneagram Institute courses:

The Levels of Development Workshop

The Enneagram Institute Professional Training Part 1

FIRST TIME ON THE WEST COAST!

The Three Instincts (Subtypes) Workshop:

Using the Enneagram to Create Balance in your Life and Harmony in your Relationships

September 19-21, 2008     Mercy Center, Burlingame, California

 Our instinctual nature, while extremely powerful in our decision-making processes, lifestyle choices, and orientation to day-to-day reality, is often given little emphasis in many spiritual paths, and the Instincts are often treated as an inherent problem-a distortion to be eliminated. This is understandable since this part of our nature is usually little interested in our spiritual or psychological development. Yet, without a clear and viable relationship with this aspect of our souls, it is extremely difficult to maintain an integrated approach to our path.

The Enneagram deals very directly with this aspect of the Self through teachings about the Three Instincts-Self-Preservation, Sexual (Attraction), and Social (Adaptation). Seminal ideas about the three Instincts go back at least as far as Gurdjieff’s teachings about the Centers and have equivalents in other spiritual traditions. In recent years, many Enneagram students have discovered the explanatory power of seeing how their instinctual bias operates in combination with their dominant Enneagram type. Learning how their type plays itself out through one of these Instincts can be as exciting as when we first learn about the Enneagram.

In this workshop, you can expect to:

• Clarify and deepen your understanding of the Instincts, seeing them at work in your personal experience.
• Examine how our particular instinctual “stack”-the way we prioritize our basic human needs and values-is the pattern that most keeps us locked in the repetitive habits of our personality.
  (One of the quickest ways to unlock the Passion and Fixation of our type is to understand and work on the imbalance in our Instincts.)
• Recognize the way you give energy to certain needs while neglecting others, bringing balance and helping you integrate the deeper experiences of Essence and Being that you may have had.
  (Without such Inner Work, even profound experiences of Spirit and Oneness cannot affect our lives the way they could. )
• Hear personal teaching, participate in experiential dyads and triads, meditation, movement work, and music to help you recognize the ways that these patterns express themselves.
  (All inside a relaxed and conversational approach, with an emphasis on the development of our capacity to remain in Presence.)
• Explore concrete ways in which to bring greater balance in our approach to our instinctual life.

Hours : Friday, 7-10 pm; Saturday, 9 am-6 pm; Sunday, 9 am-5 pm

Workshop Price: $295.00                             Early-bird price (before August 1st, 2008): $275
Bring-a-friend price:  $270 per person when two or more register at the same time.

Click HERE to register

NOTES:

1) CEU’s: This course meets the requirements for 15 hours of Continuing Education Credit for MFT’s and LCSW’s as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

2)  Cancellation policy:   In the event you need to cancel, a $35.00 fee will be deducted from your refund up to 60 days before the  1st day of the workshop.  From 8-59 days  before the 1st day of the workshop, 50% of the full payment will be refunded.  There will be no refunds within 1 week of the workshop.

 (The Enneagram Institute Relationships Workshop)

October 17-19,  2008

Mercy Center, Burlingame, CA. (near SFO airport)

A life without relationships… it’s impossible. Relationships are core to our existence, and have an enormous impact on our identity, health, self-worth, success in the world, and even our survival. They can be rewarding and intriguing, as well as baffling and sometimes painful. How we interact with others provides a key to our psychological and spiritual development.

The Enneagram offers a profound and immensely practical way to understand and shift your relationships with others. In this workshop, we will address how core thinking and emotional dynamics operate between different Enneagram types, explore effective methods you can use to communicate with people of each type, and learn how the three Instinctual Variants (Subtypes) affect primary motivations in your relationships. You will gain new perspectives on yourself and others, and gain valuable insights to having healthier relationships.

Notes:

CEU’s: This course meets the requirements for 15 hours of Continuing Education Credit for MFT’s and LCSW’s as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Provider Name: Roxanne Howe-Murphy, Ed.D. Provider number: PCE2759

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR The Enneagram and Relationships Workshop

Workshop Price: $327.00  (includes 2 onsite lunches)

Early bird rate through August 31: $297.00

Special rate of $297.00 per person when two or more register at the same time.