Who am I?
What a powerful question. And, one that lives at the core of every conscious person I know. If you have been living in this question, or want to, one of the most powerful tools for self-understanding you can find is the Enneagram.
Since 2002 I have been using the Enneagram, a personality type system with deep roots in spirituality and psychology, in my coaching practice. The many teachings contained within this incredible meta-system are profoundly important to anyone seeking to understand themselves and others, and to de-mystify their relationships. This teaching does not show up in the traditional yoga lineages, or in almost any modern lineage of which I’m aware, so is an incredible complimentary teaching for all yogis.
The Enneagram is not only deep and useful, but also fascinating and fun!
Want to learn more? Check out Yoga Journal’s first article on the Enneagram, which clearly and succinctly describes the system. A companion article explains The Best Pose for Your Enneagram Number.
Getting Your Type Right
The Enneagram outlines nine distinct types:
Do one or more of these descriptive names sound like you?
If you want to unlock the deep wisdom of the Enneagram, the first step is getting your type right.
Click HERE to take our FREE 2-minute quiz so you can gain insights into your motivations that even your best friend might not know!
A Cautionary Tale
I was first introduced to the Enneagram in 2000, and was promptly mis-typed.
A therapist friend who was familiar with the Enneagram declared I was “such a Type 2.” He loaned me a book, and I read the chapter on the Enneagram Two Helper. It wasn’t a fit, so I didn’t go any further into the system. What a lost opportunity! Unfortunately my deepest motivations, and habitual patterns of thought, emotion and behavior, remained a mystery to me for several more years.
Two years later I participated in a rigorous training program for Integral Coaching that included work with the Enneagram. I was asked to read Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso & Hudson and speculate on my type. When I declared my type as the Enneagram Two Helper the panel of instructors looked surprised. “What led you to choose Type Two?” they asked, so I shared my story.
Their assessment was that I had an Enneagram Nine Peacemaker personality. They grounded this assessment with the fact that (i) I worked in the Conflict Resolution Department of a local University, (ii) previously I had been a professional saxophonist (so adept at non-verbal communication), and (iii) my energy was very calm, grounded and grounding.
They invited me to try on the Enneagram Nine Peacemaker. I did, and a whole world opened up for me!
A World Of Understanding
What opened first was a world of understanding myself, deeply and powerfully. The teachings of the Enneagram made it possible for me to recognize, for the first time, the degree to which I automatically defaulted to the typical patterns of my type.
I was quite pleased to read that, like most Enneagram Nine Peacemakers, I was thoughtful, easygoing, receptive, agreeable, patient, optimistic and cared deeply about others.
I was somewhat embarrassed to read about my tendencies towards selling myself out to keep the peace, short circuiting my discernment, struggling with knee jerk resistance, refusing to allow myself to be impacted by my experiences, stubbornness and passive aggression in my relationships, numbing out to avoid conflict, aversion to owning my anger… and more. That’s the beauty of the Enneagram… it’s shows you the good, the bad and the ugly of your personality patterns.
Once I overcame by knee jerk resistance to being impacted by this experience (ha!) I could finally see these previously invisible tendencies in my life. It was astonishing to observe how these patterns, both positive and negative, arose habitually – without any thought or effort. As I deepened into the teachings, I began to see how my personality was both helping and hurting me as I moved through life. Thankfully, over time, I became able to observe these patterns, interrupt them and choose to do something else in real time so that I could get different results and outcomes around my work, relationships, health and happiness.
Deeper Learning
Exploring the Enneagram led to many potent insights and useful learning.
- I gained an ability to accurately self-observe the patterns of my personality and make new choices in real time.
- I began to learn how to both understand and traverse the contours of my unique path of psycho-spiritual development. The Enneagram allowed me to understand “which way was up” in regards to my development, then customize my path of personal development to greater psychological health and maturity.
- I saw how my path to greater psychological health could be customized by using the Enneagram to best support my unique development.
- I learned how certain yoga teachings would reinforce my habitual personality patterns, and how I could to use yoga and other practices to create freedom from old patterns, and reinforce new ones.
- I gained incredibly useful understandings of others and relationships. This empowered me to begin to meet others exactly as they were, rather than projecting MY personality onto them and getting “upset they weren’t behaving properly.” I shifted from being in relationship with a projection of my personality, to truly being in relationship with the other person. Many of my relationships quickly improved from knowing my type and theirs.
- Finally, I began to see a vast array of applications for the Enneagram, including relationships, intimacy, divorce, conflict, leadership, management, teams, psychology/psychiatry, coaching and more. Applying the Enneagram in these domains requires accurate type identification.
My story illustrates just how important it is to get your type right so that powerful self-understanding can begin to unfold. It pains me to think that I lost two years of learning and growth by being mis-typed. During that time my ability to understand my self and those in my life continued to be constricted and inaccurate. What kinds of relationships was I incapable of building and enjoying?
I want you to get typed correctly. If you don’t, you will either stall out (as I did for two years), or worse, confuse yourself with incorrect guidance. Accessing all of the “good stuff” the Enneagram has to offer requires that you first determine your home base type.
What Our Enneagram for Yogi’s Quiz Accomplishes
If you took the quiz above, I suspect you are wondering if our free Enneagram for Yogis’s quiz led you to an accurate choice.
We designed this quiz to inspire folks to take a first step towards the Enneagram, and that’s all. While you may have in fact chosen your correct type, confirming this, or accurately determining your actual home base type, will take more engagement.
Where Do You Go From Here?
Are you curious to accurately determine your home base type?
If so, I invite you to book a private coaching session to get your type right.
Over the last 18 years I have developed a proven three-step process for helping coaching clients get their type right:
- You take three FREE tests – the Essential Enneagram, QUEST and Eclectic Energies.
- I triangulate the results of these tests to determine the top two to three candidates for your home base type.
- We hold a coaching session using a set of differentiating questions so you can get your type right.
At this point about 90% of clients settle on an Enneagram type and “try it on” for a while to see if it’s a good fit. For the rest, a bit more research is in order.
Are you interested in engaging with the Get Your Type Right typing process? Click HERE to step into this fun assessment process for a special price of only $149 (regularly priced at $199). Deep and useful understanding of self, others and your relationship awaits!