Balancing Your Centers of Intelligence, feat. Beatrice Chestnut [S02-044]
One of the elements about the Enneagram that makes it different than other typologies is the principles behind working with Centers of Intelligence. The three centers of intelligence are the head, heart, and body. Each Enneagram type uses all three centers but approaches the world from one center more than the other two. Where people often get in trouble is when they over-privilege or overuse one of those centers or even perhaps put down other centers, acting out of balance rather than consciously drawing on all three centers, especially in terms of how they work best and in the right situations, using the right center and the right function for the right purposes.
Today, Enneagram expert Beatrice Chestnut and I introduce the Centers of Intelligence and talk about ways we can learn to bring them into balance.
Beatrice has taught at Northwestern University and was trained in group facilitation at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. She served as President of the International Enneagram Association from 2006-2007 and teaches workshops on the Enneagram internationally, focusing on using it as a tool for leadership development and personal transformation.
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“Balancing the centers of intelligence means self-observing to the point where you can see that, “You know what? I’m really overusing one center and not using the other two as much as I could so that I’m a little bit ... I’m out of balance in terms of the way I’m experiencing the world. I’m experiencing too much through one channel and not enough through the other two channels that I have access to.””