Course Overview

Helen Palmer, for those who may not know her, is one of the world’s leading teachers and bestselling authors of the Narrative Enneagram tradition—an extraordinary teaching method that offers a unique and personally transformative experience of the Enneagram. By listening to representatives of each Enneagram type share their personal stories and reveal their particular inner worlds and realities, you can discover how to recognize personality differences from direct experience, rather than simply learning about the Enneagram from a particular “authority.”

In Patterns of Being, Helen and fellow teachers Leslie Hershberger, Terry Saracino, and Renée Rosario explore the Narrative Enneagram tradition through the lens of the integral model. The Narrative Tradition promotes an open exploration of each personality type. In Helen’s view, there is no better way to explore, learn and teach than through this interactive method of panel interviews. Through a sophisticated inquiry method, the Narrative Tradition demonstrates the types, their struggles, dilemmas, strengths and separate paths of development. The types continuously teach us about themselves at ever deepening levels of awareness, and we learn from exploring with them.

What Makes Patterns of Being Unique:

The Integral Worldview helps us identify gaps in our understanding of self, others, and the cosmos. Some people “privilege” individual, subjective awareness without recognizing the power of social groups in influencing someone’s reality. Another might “privilege” rational scientific brain studies without recognizing the power of one’s subjective awareness in mental, emotional and spiritual health. Others may be so focused on their subjective realities that they fail to create systems that might carry a quality body of work forward (consider teachings that have been lost because someone never wrote them down, passed them to others or used the medium – books, TV, the Internet – of their era to share their insights.)

People learning the Enneagram often reduce the Enneagram to a description in a book. If we are to carry the Enneagram forward in an integrative fashion, we must invite people into their own interiors so they develop competent observational skills and we must invite them into experiences of hearing from other people who occupy other types.

The Narrative Tradition is so effective in teaching the Enneagram because it has a rather strong leg in three of the Four Quadrants. (Remember, the quadrants are important because they point us toward what is missing in using this tool in our lives).

– We rely on exemplars on a panel sharing their perspective of their unique inner experiences, which engenders greater understanding, awareness, and compassion for themselves and people in their lives. (WE)
– We teach self-observation skills that identify the cognitive/emotional habits of the type and the somatic response in the body. (I)
– We encourage conscious conduct in which people are invited toward a different way of behaving. We recognize that shifts can happen by simply attending to the body with more consciousness. (IT)

Helen Palmer has been unique in bringing forth states of consciousness as crucial in her Enneagram teaching. As a teacher of intuition (which recognizes reality without the distortion of type), Helen recognized type-related obstacles and openings to direct spiritual experience and access to higher states of consciousness. Her Inner Observer teaching cultivates witnessing consciousness, which is a tier that can move us towards “causal” or unitive consciousness.

The Narrative Enneagram also recognizes the power of the collective field of WE in developing psycho-spiritual maturity. Something often happens to the subtle energetics of a room when we are watching a panel. There is an opening in the “field” in which people expand their field of awareness and the field of compassion. This expansion challenges and loosens tightly held worldviews, which engenders a growing capacity to evolve to different stages of behavioral, cognitive and emotional development.

About Patterns Of Relating Program:

Grounded in real-life stories and personal narratives, this program reveals many of the most central dynamics operating beneath the surface of our relationships, shedding some much-needed light on the mysterious alchemy of “we”.

You will learn through the personal stories of the participants how these patterns show up in real life interactions, and how studying the Narrative Method of the Enneagram can help you develop healthy responses to the even the toughest relational situations in your life. It helps you and your loved ones to simply see more of each other, to bring more of yourself to your relationships, and to ultimately close the imaginary gaps that keep you separate from those around you.

About Helen Palmer

Helen Palmer is the co-founder of the Enneagram Professional Training Program (EPTP) along with David Daniels, MD. A teacher of psychology and intuition, Helen has been committed to bridging personal and spiritual realities for 30 years.

Helen has authored five highly acclaimed books in the field of human consciousness. The Enneagram and The Enneagram in Love and Work are perennial international bestsellers, now in 26 languages. Helen was featured in the PBS documentary, Breaking Out of the Box: Discovering the Enneagram. She has co-taught the Enneagram Professional Training Program with David Daniels since 1988. For her distance learning programs, visit www.enneagram.com.

Helen has made many original contributions toward understanding how meditation and awareness training relate to the nine psychological types. She has developed and teaches an in-depth psychological-spiritual curriculum for type and spiritual freedom. She presents classes around the world that focus on key topics of psychological and spiritual integration. Some of the themes include type and false identity, projection, presence and self-forgetting, virtues of the heart, intuition and retrieving the Holy Ideas.

Course Curriculum

Frequently Asked Questions