The Enneagram of the Body

An Interview with Alan Sheets

by Jerome Freedman, Ph. D.

©Alan Sheets & Barbara Tovey 1995

REPRINTED FROM THE ENNEAGRAM MONTHLY AUGUST - NOVEMBER 1995

PART I

THE ENNEAGRAM OF THE BODY: A PHYSICAL PHENOMENA

We have discovered a very interesting physical phenomena associated with the enneagram. We have observed that there are nine different and unique postural/energetic configurations which the human body will assume when physically challenged to become energetically strong. For three of them, energy emanates from the abdomen; for another three from the sternum, and energy emanates for three from the head region. These energetically activated regions allow each of us to take in or sense additional information above and beyond the normal five senses. What we have hypothesized is that this may be the basis for the enneagram and that it may go a long way to explain the differences that we observe in the nine types.

In the process of discovering this phenomena we learned how to enhance this energetic process so that it could be observed in a person's body by the way they responded to the facilitator when they achieved a position of increased strength and a feeling of well-being.

This posture is achieved by conducting the following procedure. First the person stands in front of the facilitator with one foot behind the other in a martial arts stance, with the back foot at right angles to the front. This is done because it is a strong position and because the position of the legs is not relevant to the final posture. Then the person is asked to meet the facilitator's hands, palm to palm, with three instructions:

1. Make yourself strong.

2. Don't push back when I push on your hands.

3. Don't do anything that hurts.

Then, using gentle pushes, the facilitator helps guide the person into a posture/energetic configuration that feels effortless to the individual, no matter how hard the facilitator pushes. At that point they will have assumed one of nine distinct postures that shows their enneagram point.

HISTORY

ALAN: I first began teaching classes in the summer of '93 at which time Barbara and I started to explore in a more thorough way the positive aspects of each of the numbers. That led me to consider how people see themselves rather than how others see them. After exploring this for a while I realized that each of the numbers seemed to have a talent that was unique to that point. This could only be possible if each number had a bigger picture or in some way had more information about their area of expertise than the other numbers. So I realized each number gathers different data and therefore looks at the world differently.

At the First International Enneagram Conference, we got a clue about enneagram movements that proved very valuable. We went to Kathleen Speeth's talk where she showed us a clip of the movie, "Meetings with Remarkable Men." We rented the movie when we got back home and started watching the enneagram dance scenes over and over again. We were trying to figure out how to incorporate movement into the enneagram, because it was an aspect that was not addressed in the panels or in the books. As we were playing around with movement one night in one of our enneagram classes, we observed that people moved and responded differently to the same energetic Aikido exercise and that it seemed to relate to their point.. This was when we began exploring the energetic postures of each of the numbers.

Barbara Tovey: I remember the first time I experienced the 8 energetic posture. It was a surprise for all of us. Alan was pushing on my hands when all of a sudden he had been thrown several feet away. I had no idea what had happened, it being such a new experience, and it felt effortless, which was the most confusing thing. Everyone in the room said, "Wow!". Alan would push on my hands until he could feel energy coming out of me and at that point he would frequently be pushed away by it's force. I remember those first few times it felt spectacular. Initially it was really unusual, but it very quickly became part of me.

AS: As we continued to develop this work, I noticed that people frequently weren't in their strongest place, but that after assuming their enneagram posture they would feel significantly stronger and would usually be quite surprised by how effortless it was to keep me from pushing them over. It wouldn't matter how big they were, how strong they were, how old they were, what sex they were, or what their level of physical conditioning was. They just became very strong. As long as I didn't do something to intimidate them, I was not able to push them over, and I am 6 feet 2 inches and weigh 200 pounds.

JF: The system you just described developed because of four things that I see. One, that you're a 5; and secondly, we know you flow from the martial arts; three, you have a physics background; and four, you are a Feldenkrais practitioner. These combine to give you an enhanced understanding of the balance of energy. I think that it takes all four of those elements to make the system come together.

AS: Right. Even though I think what I learned from my Aikido teacher, Robert Nadeau, was the most critical part. He taught us how to hold an energetic pose in our body so someone could actually see in our physicality what was going on energetically. Normally what happens energetically is so quick you can't see it. We learned where the enneagram energy came from and how to reinforce it because of my ability to hold an energetic pose. We were then able to study the energy patterns of people whose type was known to us until we had figured out all nine of them.

Finally we were able to address one of the questions we had been asking ourselves about the enneagram, which was, "Why does the enneagram seem to be true?...because there are lots of other systems out there that are every bit as complex but which don't seem to hold as much insight as the enneagram does."

I think the enneagram is true because it identifies nine different and unique ways that people's bodies interface with the world. Our experiences and feelings are filtered through and colored by our particular style of interfacing. We suspect that this is what leads to the mental and emotional states that we normally associate with the enneagram.

And, so, to refine that one step further...everybody agrees that we have five normal senses: sight, taste, smell, touch and hearing. What I think the enneagram describes is yet another sense for taking in the environment. This sense happens to be divided into nine different styles and we are each born with one of them. Our specific style of sensing allows us to take in something that the other eight don't seem to have direct access to. I'll use the example of the 5. The 5 has this tremendous skill of being able to distill, from a vast amount of information, an understandable map or construct of whatever they are working on. This means the 5 must be able to access data that has not been filtered by social convention and then be able to process it in a way that allows them to prioritize it. No other number seems to have access to unfiltered data.

JF: Why don't you give me a verbal description of the physical postures that people get into. You can do it in some natural order for you.

AS: Well, I'll do it in the groups of three because I think that makes the most sense.

There are three numbers associated with each of three centers which I have called abdomen (people to people interactions), sternum (process of living), and brain (processing living) centers. In each triad there is an energetically receptive number, an energetically neutral number, which is both receptive and pro-active, and an energetically pro-active number.

The three abdominal numbers are 8, 4, and 2. Since the energy for these three numbers comes from the abdomen, people of these types have a more earthy, visceral feel to them. They also deal directly with real time human interactions so they react most quickly to what other people are doing. They have the following functions: establishing who is safe to be with (type 8); emotional connection (type 4), and communication (type 2).

The 4 is the energetically receptive number and specializes in making a connection with people which allows feelings and emotions to be exchanged. The physical posture shows it in the sense that the 4 tends to move the physically closest to me during the process, sometimes almost touching. Their arms are usually fairly bent at the elbow, with their hands resting against the upper chest. The energy connection is through the lower abdomen. The pelvis is shifted forward in relation to the ribcage. They drop their head into a relaxed, resting position with their eyes either closed or unfocused once they get strongly into their number.

The 2 is a number which is both receptive and pro-active. 2's sense what is going on with another person in the moment. This could be loosely translated to mean that they can almost tell what the other person is thinking or about to think. They take in this information with their upper abdomen and then they focus it with their eyes. So the upper abdomen is receptive and the eyes are pro-active. The eyes can either draw you in or keep you out depending on what the 2 wants to do. It's a very powerful sort of thing and it's probably the most blatantly obvious trait that relates to the enneagram because everybody notices eyes.

The head is positioned so they can look me directly in the eyes. The arms are usually bent at the elbow. But what's most characteristic of the 2 are the eyes. The eyes...the 2 always focuses on my eyes as they get into their number and their eyes become more open, more intense and brighten.

JF: So, essentially, they push with their eyes. Right?

AS: Yes. There are only three numbers that need to use their eyes to achieve their enneagram posture, one from each group.

The 8 is the pro-active abdominal number and their posture involves their arms being completely straight, but their strength comes from their very alive lower abdomen which actively keeps me at arms length. Their posture doesn't have to be completely upright but it frequently is. As the eyes of the 2 keep me away, the lower abdomen of the 8 actually keeps me away, and there's no way in the world that they're going to let me get in closer than arms length, unless I do something to intimidate them or break their strength. The 8's eyes will be open, but they do not focus on my eyes.

This leads me to a critically important point. I think you can overwhelm someone when you intimidate them. If I do something with my body language or my words that all of a sudden makes someone feel weak, then I have a chance of overpowering them. This is not a competition. So, it's critically important that I never to do anything to lessen their strength as I do this procedure.

On the other hand, I can guide them into a strength that's only as strong as I am. In other words, I can only make them as clear as I am clear. And so the important thing is to get clearer and clearer about each of the points and how they express themselves through the body. It takes some training to actually be able to do this effectively, even though with knowing almost nothing you can get some results, because it's so powerful.

Let's go to 6, 3 and 9 next. The energy for these three numbers comes from the upper torso, specifically the region between the collar bone and the base of the sternum, and is intimately associated with the sternum of the ribcage.

Let's start with the 6. This is the number that is both energetically receptive and pro-active at the same time. The 6's posture and all the postures of this group tend to be the most vertical because they're putting their chest to the world. And the 6's posture of strength is one of neither any constrictions nor of any openings in the ribcage region. The arms are usually bent at the elbow. The arms are always positioned in such a way that both elbows and both hands are shoulder width apart. They're very good at picking up the flow of my energy on the fly and turning it around; and so that's the receptive and pro-active aspect...you see it all in one. This is one of the reasons that I work with a 6 the way I do by actively moving toward them so they can pick up my energy and then push me back with it. I don't do that with any of the other numbers.

The 3 is the pro-active number of this triad. The 3's energy is extremely focused and this is illustrated by their posture. The energy comes from the area of the ribcage with an emphasis on the area of the sternum. There are two things that are characteristic of this number. In addition to the upright posture that I mentioned, their arms are fairly straight and their hands are together, touching, as if they are focusing on something at arms length in front of their body. It's almost as though the chest muscles constrict the ribcage so as to focus all of the body's resources out to that point at arms length in front them. Secondly, the 3 engages me with their eyes. The head is positioned to look me directly in the eyes and they usually have a congenial kind of smile. So there's something very neutral and very pleasing about their eyes and their face as they focus on me. They get weaker if they look away from me, and they get weaker if their arms aren't out in front of them with the hands together.

The 9, which is receptive, also has an erect posture. 9's don't need to look at you at all. The eyes may be closed, and the face is very relaxed. They assume one of the most uniquely different postures in the sense that as they move into their strength you can actually see the ribcage opening up by the sternum coming forward. Not only does the ribcage open up and the chest widen, but the arms are bent at the elbow and are behind the shoulder mid-line, with the shoulder blades almost touching, and the hands are positioned out to the side the body. The posture doesn't seem to make good mechanical sense, but it seems universally true among 9's and makes them very strong. Because of their receptivity, 9's and 4's enjoy being in their position of strength so much that they frequently don't want to stop.

1, 7 and 5 are all numbers which I think are associated with the functioning of the brain. So, 1, 7 and 5 utilize different parts of the brain, and I say that because of the direction from which the energy appears to be coming. Let's do this in reverse order of the way the arrows point.

The 1 is the combination receptive and pro-active number of this triad. They take in the energy with their eyes and project it out again from the bottom of their chin. The arms can be straight or relatively close in, but usually are somewhere in the middle. Since the energy is received by the eyes, the eyes are important for 1's. They need to look at you to be strong. The positioning of the head is also critically important. A slight adjustment of a few millimeters will make an enormous difference in their strength. It is a position where the chin is noticeably forward and lifted, with the head tilted back at the base of the skull. The face has a kind of a passive neutrality about it. Sometimes they smile. It's a smile that comes from a kind of knowingness. 1's access a kind of information that most of the rest of us just don't get. My surmise is that they are gathering information from the old, instinctual part of the brain. For all three of the brain numbers, the head position is the most important thing about the posture.

7 is the pro-active number and is the number which is associated with the new part of the brain, the cerebral cortex. The 7's posture is one in which the forehead points in the general direction of whatever they're interested in, and the energy comes from the center of the forehead. We have often found the image of a unicorn useful in stimulating the 7's energy flow. The head is a little forward of the trunk, and is tilted slightly downward. A slight adjustment of their head changes their strength enormously. What they do with their arms doesn't seem to be particularly important, but the arms are usually bent at the elbow. 7's are always searching for information. They gather and correlate and try to understand information in such a way that they are able to solve whatever problem they may be working on.

The 5, the receptive number of this triad, has, like the 9, one of the more unusually interesting postures. The energy for the 5 comes out the top of the head. They are at their strongest when that particular flow is pointing directly at their focus, in this case me, which means that their face is approximately horizontal to the ground, and the back is straight with the bending coming from the hips. The arm position for the 5 is not critical.

A CALL FOR SYNTHESIS

While developing the Enneagram of the Body we had the opportunity to type well over two hundred people. Some of them were new to the enneagram but many were already students of it at various levels of understanding. What we discovered was that all of these enneagram students unquestionably assumed one of the Enneagram of the Body postures but it did not always agree with the type that they themselves or somebody else had assigned to them.

This leads to a very interesting question. Is the Enneagram of the Body sufficiently fundamental that it can definitively type or are the other methods of typing more accurate? If the Enneagram of the Body is not definitive, what do the distinct postures that we have correlated with each of the numbers really mean? We very much want to answer these questions and would invite anybody who wants to work on the question of finding a definitive typology to contact us so we can devise some experiments to try to address these very important Enneagram concerns.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jerome Freedman, Ph. D., Certified Teacher of the Enneagram in the Oral Tradition with Helen Palmer, practices in Marin County, California. In addition to enneagram work, mind stories, and Buddhist meditation, he is a highly trained and experienced computer consultant with many clients in Fortune 500 companies. Questions and comments are welcome.