Integrating Somatic Intelligence in Therapy

One of my favorite things about the Enneagram is its holistic capacity to bring balance and integration to our overall experience.  I’ve heard it described as a psycho-spiritual tool, one that provides benefits on a psychological and spiritual plane.  It definitely does this.  However, if we dismiss the rich insight the Enneagram provides to us on a somatic level, we are missing out on the gifts it can bring to our total embodiment day after day.  

You may have heard about the concept of three intelligence centers: body, heart, and mind, frequently taught in enneagram circles.  Basically, this proves that we are actually three-brained beings (heart, body, mind) instead of one-brained beings (mind), as has been elevated in our modern western world.  Emotional intelligence has made a big splash in the last 50 years or so, yet somatic intelligence has not been as accepted until now.  Thankfully, recent scientific studies are finally catching up to this wisdom of the Enneagram by proving we have neural cells not just in our brains, but in the lining of our stomachs and hearts.  Crazy, right?

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Terry Saracino, core faculty member of the Narrative Enneagram (and my teacher…pinch me!) to talk about the somatic approach unique to the Narrative Tradition.  Terry is lovely and brilliant and is as passionate today about this system as when she first learned about it in 1989.  

She describes this dynamic approach to understanding ourselves through the lens of the Enneagram, and really unpacks this often forgotten intelligence center of the body.  Interestingly, our bodies are always in the present moment.  Our hearts and minds can be all over the map, future-tripping and stuck in the past, but our bodies ground us in the present moment if we are willing to bring greater awareness to them.  Our bodies are the experiencer of our Enneagram type patterns of thought and emotion, so we must lean on them for greater insight and support in our day to day experience.  

Many of us are wildly disconnected from this somatic, or kinesthetic wisdom.  And one of the trillion things I love about the Enneagram is it’s all about bringing balance and openness where there is imbalance and contraction.   

When we do the work of the Enneagram, we discover our personality type and deeper character structure are held into place by our type’s emotional patterns, thought patterns, and somatic profile.  

I love getting to work with clients to bring awareness to this unique type-specific picture and begin to relax these often limiting patterns.  As we relax those conditioned patterns, we are able to open up to the true, or unconditioned self that has been buried under years of habit and automatic behaviors.  

I explain how this works in tandem with the Enneagram and other therapeutic tools in my upcoming webinar, The Experiential Enneagram: A Transformational Approach to Therapy and Coaching.  Join me on March 8th at 9:00 am CT.  You can register or learn more here.