“Being identified with one’s automatic way of living is the easiest and most natural thing in life.  We are heavily conditioned to think that how we do life is life itself.  Below are three examples of how different people who identified with an automatic way of living could do life.

a)  If I am so used to thinking about other people and what they need, and wondering about how they will solve their problems, it would seem to make no sense to approach life in any other way.  I have no idea what people mean when they say ’take care of yourself.’

b) If I am so used to setting goals for myself, and doing whatever I have to do to reach those goals in a way superior to anyone else’s, the possibility of approaching life differently isn’t even a matter of choice, because no other options are visible to me.

c) If I spend most of my efforts in reserving my seemingly limited energy in order to think things through, to analyze all the ideas that I have about these things, and to make a plan for how i could use these ideas, it would not occur to me to use another approach.”

(If one of the above resonate with you, you may have stumbled upon a dominant Enneagram pattern.  If none of them particularly make that much sense to you, then you probably use or have used a different “how” in life.)

Deep Coaching uses the Enneagram to see through the outer ‘noise’ and recognize core  internal patterns that consistently recreate old stories about ‘who I am’  and shape how I ‘do life.’   When we begin to learn about our usual set of strategies for getting our needs met, meeting challenges, and coping with stressors, we see that these strategies take up the vast majority of life, leaving little room for a fresh or creative response.

Learning to unhook from these typically hidden patterns provides a powerful key to becoming free from unnecessary constrains and to become free to choose new possibilities from an expanded sense of self.  Seldom are we able to unhook from our patterns by ourselves, because they feel like ‘who we are,’ and they are not open to questionning.  That’s why Enneagram-trained coaches can deliver such powerful coaching.

Thus, there are two concepts at the core of deep coaching.  The first core concept revolves unhooking from a strong identification with the small self.   The second core concept of deep coaching is that of interdependence and interconnectedness.  When we are wrapped in the inner world of our Enneagram type, we feel separate. This sense of separateness is consciously and unconsciously experienced at many levels.  The more deeply we come to understand ourselves, the more likely we are to perceive others more accurately.  With the depth of self-awareness, we naturally begin to recognize our impact on all that is around us, and the environment’s impact on us.  We come to a more direct experience of the inherent interconnectedness of all of life.

To feel separate is an illusion of the small self.

Deep coaching, then is an approach founded on transformational adult psychological, spiritual and ecological development.”

Excerpt from Roxanne Howe-Murphy, Ed.D. Deep Coaching:  Using the Enneagram as a catalyst for profound change, p. 13-14 (Enneagram Press, 2007).

In a future writing, I will explore the relationship of Deep Coaching through the Enneagram with the “deep” movement that is transforming our entire culture.

Blessings, Roxanne

Roxanne Howe-Murphy, Ed.D. is the principal of LifeWise Learning Institute and the Director of the Enneagram Institute of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Her book, Deep Coaching:  Using the Enneagram as a catalyst for profound change is available at online book sellers.  For comments that readers have made about this book, go to www.deepcoachingbook.com.