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may/june 2017yogajournal.com.auIn an ideal world, we’d always think and act from a place of wisdom and oneness.
But in the real world, ingrained patterns and personality traits can get in the way.
Enter the Enneagram, a personality assessment that can help you see what’s keeping
m realising your most authentic, highest self. Here’s how to use it,
along with your yoga practice, to change course.
CORAL BROWN, a yoga teacher and
licensed mental-health counsellor
in Rhode Island, uses the word
‘co-dependent’ to describe her previous
romantic relationship, which lasted
more than a decade. But at the time, she
didn’t realise she was in such a pattern
of over-giving that she was losing
herself. While her yoga practice helped
shine a light on this tendency, Brown
says studying the Enneagram – a four-
decade-old personality-assessment
system – also revealed that it was time
to move on from the relationship. “The
Enneagram enabled me to really see my
core patterns,” says Brown, “ultimately
helping me meet my needs in a healthier,
more conscious way than ever
before.”
STORY BY ELIZABETH MARGLIN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF NELSONThe name Enneagram stems from
the Greek words ennea, a prefix for
‘nine’, and gramma, meaning ‘to draw’.
The system’s icon is a nine-pointed star,
each point representing a distinct
personality type. Most Enneagram
experts agree we are all born with one
dominant personality type (or number),
which largely determines how we learn
to adapt to our environment and the
people in it. The Enneagram surfaced in
the United States in the 197os, riding the
tails of the human-potential movement
(think therapy, encounter groups and
primal scream). Since then, therapists,
spiritual teachers, coaches, and even
businesses have used the Enneagram as
a tool to stoke authenticity, expose core
motivations, and ultimately reduce
interpersonal conflict. How can a simple
personality test do all this?
“There’s resistance to change within
all of us, and the Enneagram
describes what that resistance is
about for each of us,” says
Peter O’Hanrahan, a leading
international Enneagram
teacher and trainer. “As a
result, this system gives you
very clear information aboutwhat you need to work on.” To wit,
when Brown learned more about her
Enneagram number – a Two – she was
better able to see her core pattern of
giving to others to feel good about
herself, and that realisation gave her a
choice: do something about her blind
spots, or ignore them. She chose to act.
“I left my partner, and I found more of
my own identity in my yoga teaching,”
says Brown. “I was more aligned with
my truer purpose and nature.”
Susan Piver, author of the
meditation primer, Start Here Now,
and a meditation teacher who leads
retreats on the Enneagram, says the
kind of alignment Brown experienced
is what yoga is about at its core. “The
Enneagram will tell us what we cannot
see about ourselves – our ways of being
that stem from our most wounded
selves, which create confusion as a
result,” says Piver. And if you’re willing
to look at these wounds, which are
almost always rooted in unexamined
pain, you can start to chart a new, more
authentic course forward, she says. “At a
certain point – especially if you’re on a
spiritual path – you have to do this,”
Piver says. Read on to find out how.