The Enneagram Study Group
Beginning January 8th, 2026
A 12-week guided experience in rewiring the mind, heart, and body.
Each Thursday (beginning January 8th, 2026) from 6:30p - 8p CT
Cost: $200 / month (assessment via Integrative 9 is included, plus a 30-minute debrief with Aliceanne)
Click the “I’m interested” button below to send us an email letting us know if you’re interested, or to ask questions.
The 12 Week Curriculum
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Week 1: The Brain on Autopilot - The Neuroscience of Thoughts and Feelings
Focus: How your brain creates the personality you call “me.”
- Developmental psych: How early survival strategies wire neural circuits
- Mirror neurons, default mode network, amygdala hijack and more!
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Week 2: The Enneagram Framework – Core Wound to Worldview
Focus: The architecture of ego.
- Core fear, desire, wound
- Focus of attention, self-talk, blind spots
- Defense mechanisms intro (repression, reaction formation, projection)
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Weeks 3–5: Deep Dive into All 9 Types
(3 weeks, 3 types each)
Focus: “I contain multitudes” – how every type lives in you.
Lens: Which parts of me are over-developed? Under-developed?
Defense spotlight: Each type’s favorite ego trick (e.g., Type 1 = reaction formation, Type 4 = introjection)
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Week 6: Centers of Expression – Gut, Heart, Head
Focus: Where your intelligence lives (and where it’s blocked).
Triad structure: Instinctive, Feeling, Thinking
Over/Under-use of centers → imbalance
Neuroscience tie-in: Vagus nerve (gut), heart coherence, prefrontal cortex
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Week 7: Psychological Defenses – The Ego’s Smoke & Mirrors
Focus: Naming the tricks that keep the pattern alive + learning the practices to shift them
9 core defenses (one per type) + how they show up somatically, emotionally, and cognitively
Defense → Vice → Core Fear loop
Neuroscience link: Defenses = old neural programs; how do we “rewire” our programs?
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Week 8: Navigating Conflict with Presence
Focus: Turn reactivity into response.
Conflict styles by triad (Gut = confrontation, Heart = harmony, Head = withdrawal)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques for the Inner Critic
Non-Violent Communication for the Outer Dance with others
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Week 9: From Personality to Presence – The Great Unraveling
Focus: Ego taking a back seat and shifting to capital “S” Self.
Body: Defense → Numbness → Grounded body
Heart: Self-image → Authenticity
Mind: Mental chatter → Quiet mind
Practices: Elevated emotion as portal to presence; finding quiet and stillness
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Weeks 10–11: Holy Ideas – When Vice Becomes Vision
Focus: The spiritual flip (scientist’s lens included).
Overview from Facets of Unity: Explore A.H. Almaas's view of the nine Holy Ideas as interconnected facets of objective reality—enlightened perceptions free from ego delusions, revealing unity and trust
Vice-to-Virtue Shift: Map each type's passion (e.g., resentment for 1, envy for 4) to its Holy Idea counterpart, showing how fixations dissolve into gifts like serenity or equanimity when basic trust restores unfiltered perception.
Basic Trust Foundation: Delve into how losing these ideas creates distortions; reclaim them through inquiry, fostering mirror-like awareness of Being.
Scientist’s Lens: Skeptical of “holy”? Treat each Idea as a testable counter-bias to ego patterns: contact the 'opposite' (e.g., wholeness vs. judgment), log rumination drops and presence spikes. Data over dogma.
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Week 12: Integration & Your 90-Day Map
Focus: Bring it home.
Review your report’s growth indicators (strain, lines of release)
Design personal integration plan:
- 1 defense to watch
- 1 underused center to strengthen
- 1 Holy Idea to live intoClosing circle: Share one shift you’ll carry forward
How The Enneagram is different from other personality frameworks
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator aims to classify individuals into 16 personality types based on traits like extraversion and intuition. While research supports the validity of these traits for some purposes, the MBTI lacks a comprehensive model to guide personal growth over time. The MBTI, with its emphasis on observable traits, often falls short in capturing the subtleties and complexities inherent in human personality and motivation.
Surface personality traits, not the driving motivation
Doesn't offer a framework for personal growth
Doesn't indicate blind spots, biases and habits
Strengths Finder
The Strengths Finder Test identifies individuals' strongest talents and skills from a list of 34 strengths. By highlighting areas of greatest competence, this tool can assist career and personal development. However, the Strengths Finder adopts an imbalanced approach in focusing solely on strengths rather than personality as a whole. The model lacks a conceptual framework to indicate how strengths interrelate or evolve. Useful as a starting point, the Strengths Finder requires supplementation.
Focuses only on strengths, ignoring weaknesses, and areas for growth
It lacks an understanding of how strengths interact dynamically across situations and relationships
Big Five Factors Test
The Big Five model proposes personality can be captured by five broad traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Research supports the validity of these traits in providing a high-level sense of characteristics. However, the Big Five lacks nuance due to emphasis on just five traits. It does not sufficiently explain the deeper drivers underlying behaviour or take a dynamic view of personality change. While useful, additional tools are needed to supplement the Big Five's limited scope
Focuses on traits or behaviours, not why you do what you do
It does not provide insight into the deeper motivations, fears, behaviours, and coping mechanisms