Last December I finally had the joy to meet Robert Holdon and do his Happiness and the Enneagram workshop. I felt like a knew him already having got friends in common but was surprised by his sensitivity, authenticity, intuition and genuine curiosity and interest in what makes people tick.
I have been interested in the Enneagram, which according to Don Riso “a geometric figure that delineates the nine basic personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships.”, for several years. When I first read about my personality type I was shocked that anyone could write something about me and appeared to be more truthful than what I would say about myself! Since then I have used to enneagram as a tool to evolve and grow. Being an EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques)/ Tapping practitioner I was pleased to discover the book Enneagram Transformations which has a list of beliefs and affirmations for each of the personality types. Once your personality type has been identified you can use the statements in the book with EFT often identifying the core issues very quickly.
Part of the course was to identify your enneagram type. Three volunteers were asked to share the challenges and joys of their personality being at that point on the enneagram. When Robert asked for all the people who thought their personality was at point 1, only I put my hand up! There must have been at least 60 people there. Where were all the other number ones? One of the traits of people with personality at point One is the strive for perfection. So normally I would have expected there to be lots of Ones on a course which could be considered to be on personal development. Then I remembered that the course title was “Happiness” and the Enneagram. Ones generally don’t do happiness, at least the unhealthly Ones! Unhealthy is an enneagram term to describe a person who is exhibiting the more challenging aspects of her personality. Ones are more concerned with getting the job done well, getting it right (whatever “it” might be) and striving for perfection. There isn’t much time in a One’s life to worry about being happy, usually. So I felt quite proud of myself, being at point One, that I am embracing happiness!
During the course of the 3 day workshop, I mentioned to Robert how I loved combined these 2 modalities. He told me he had recently experienced EFT so I asked him about the possibility of demonstrating some EFT with the enneagram to the group. He liked the idea but instead of doing EFT with the enneagram, he suggested a short session on the concept of oneness, as in state of being unified or whole. Although this seemed like a challenge as I had never really focussed on oneness before, I thought it could be fun. That evening I reflected on what oneness meant to me and decided to use EFT Heart and Soul protocol followed by Ask and Receive and finishing off with saying Transform – a cue word invoking transformational instructions in the knowing field as developed by Peter Donn
Sylvia Hartman, creator of Heart and Soul EFT, employs the SUE (Subjective Units of Experience) scale which ranges from -10 to +10 which is used to rate the intensity of ones experience of the quality one is focusing on. In my case, it was oneness so at -10 I imagined that the experience would be one of total disconnection and separateness from other people. At 0 I thought that one would have an awareness of connection but yet separate and at +10 everyone is one. So at the workshop I got everyone to rate their experience of oneness on this scale and then we did some rounds of tapping followed by checking in and rating the experience of oneness again. At the end of the session, we got into groups to discuss the experience. The results were incredible. People seemed to have raised their state of being and were experiencing bliss, stillness and… oneness… and one person even compared being stoned – not sure if this is good or bad!
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