The Mindful Enneagram:

The Basics

The Mindful Enneagram combines the power of Mindfulness with the Enneagram, a powerful map to understand and explore:

  • Nine archetypal forms of dukkha - unnecessary suffering

  • Freedom from each of the nine types of dukkha

  • Nine paths to freedom from dukkha and awakening to our deeper capacities


How do we actually use the Mindful Enneagram to do this?

Mindfulness Practice

What is mindfulness and how is it useful?

Mindfulness is our innate capacity to remember to return to the simple, yet powerful, immediacy of our present moment experience. By practicing mindfulness we discover we can actually choose to let go of unnecessary suffering - dukkha - caused by automatic thoughts, feelings, and sensations. We do this by learning to open our moment by moment awareness to the deeper intelligence of our senses, our deeper capacity for feeling and connection with others and with ourself, and our power of attention. As we develop this capacity for mindfulness we can see and respond wisely, moment by moment. We learn to no longer be caught mindlessly in automatic and often painful or senseless reactions based on our psychological conditioning.

How do you practice mindfulness?

The original Buddhist teachings emphasize three core Foundations - levels - of mindfulness practice:

  1. Mindfulness of the Body: relaxed, simple, direct contact with the immediacy of the body and senses.

  2. Mindfulness of Feeling: the immediate felt sense - with kindness and compassion - of either a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral response that arises from that contact.

  3. Mindfulness of Mind: alert, clear, direct seeing, moment by moment, our mind’s automatic reactions (thought patterns, emotional reactions, states of mind) as the sensations and feelings arise.

To work with these levels of mindfulness - either in meditation or in the everyday - we can begin to:

  1. Pause and Relax, if only for a moment, when we sense we are overwhelmed or emotionally triggered. We recognize this is an opportunity for mindfulness practice, so we can choose to respond, not just react.

  2. Open, with Kindness, to the sensation in the body or a difficult thought or emotion - tenderly allowing the feeling of any pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral response that is arising with thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

  3. Pay Attention, stay alert and observe what happens when we open in this way, and keep coming back to the immediate sensation and how we’re responding, moment by moment.

  4. Let Go - as best we can - of the urge to control or judge what we observe or the tendency to think about or analyze it or “do it right.”

The practice of mindfulness is a bit like being with a friend in need who just wants us to listen and empathize. We don’t immediately try to judge them or fix them. We give them our complete, loving attention first and stay open to seeing clearly what’s going on with them. It is the practice of learning to be friends with ourselves, open and curious in a kind, gentle, sincere, and clear way.

Mindfulness is also a practice of learning to balance, and to keep our balance as we maintain awareness, in the face of the ever-shifting content and immediate reactions of our bodies, emotions, and thoughts. Remember how it was when we learned to ride a bike or surf on a wave? We learn to maintain our balance on the bike or the wave and then stay with it. With mindfulness we learn to maintain our relaxed, alert, and kind presence with ourselves - no matter what arises.

How Does the Enneagram Help?

A Powerful Map of Nine Types of Dukkha and Paths to Freedom

The Enneagram is based on key insights into how humans think, feel, and react, and how this differs in nine particular ways that cause dukkha - unnecessary suffering. It describes nine core “webs” of dukkha in which each of us tends to get particularly caught. Each of the nine Enneagram types represents a characteristically painful blind spot, an unconscious and deeply conditioned way of thinking, feeling, and behaving - what psychologists might call a “core coping mechanism.” Because it starts in early childhood, our particular blind spot is especially difficult for us to see and become free of. It’s as if we’re lost in the wilderness. We sense we’re lost but we don’t know where we are or where we’re going or how to get there. That’s where using a map like the Enneagram can come in handy.

Like any excellent map the Enneagram marks the spot where the dukkha occurs. It also maps out how to find our way out of the wilderness of our particular form of dukkha. And it points to the particular destination, the deeper potential, of each type. The Enneagram powerfully describes nine ways each type of dukkha can transform and mature into our deepest capacities for intelligence, creativity, skillful action, and satisfying relationships.

Three Centers of Intelligence

The Enneagram is based on the recognition that human beings don’t just have one brain - one center of intelligence - but three, all of which are vital to our well-being and for responding in an intelligent and caring way to whatever situations arise in our lives. The importance of awakening the deeper potential of all three centers of intelligence in a balanced way has been described or hinted at in many of the world’s deeper spiritual traditions. 

This is also now confirmed by modern psychology and brain research and increasingly emphasized in education, leadership, and the workplace.  Gone are the days when we defined “intelligence” as just “IQ” - the capacity for abstract reasoning.  Emotional intelligence - our capacity to recognize and work effectively with emotions and relationships - is now also recognized and highly valued.  We know, too, that our bodies, senses, and instincts have their own kind of deep intelligence that we share with all living breathing beings.  Who can deny the need to know and have a healthy relationship with our bodies and instincts?

The Need for Balance of Thinking, Feeling, and Instinct

The Enneagram traces the nine forms of dukkha to a near universal tendency, from infancy, to develop and lean much more heavily on one center of intelligence, while minimizing the use and maturation of the other two.  We all know someone who tends to overthink things or someone who is particularly dominated by their emotions or their bodily impulses.  This happens at such an early age we don’t even know we’ve done this. We’re just forming our personalities and desperately, unconsciously, “doing what works.” We eagerly grasp for what we’re naturally good at or inclined towards in order to deal with the overwhelming need to survive and adapt to our environment and please those around us on whom we depend.

George Gurdjieff, who introduced the Enneagram to the West, taught his students how to awaken, balance, and live from the higher capacities of all three centers.  He recognized - and the Enneagram powerfully describes - how fully awakening and balancing the three centers opens us to a whole new level of capacity to think, feel, and behave. 


The three core practices of mindfulness of body, feeling, and mind are precisely focused on just this.  The Enneagram provides the map, and the rich set of tools of mindfulness provides the means, to see where we’re lost in the wilderness of our particular form of dukkha and the way forward out of the wilderness to our destination, our full human potential, unlimited by unnecessary suffering.

Why Are There Nine Types of Unnecessary Suffering?

Why does the Enneagram point to nine types of dukkha - not just the three types based on overdependence on the centers?

In addition to overdependence, we also have a natural tendency - also from a very early age -  to respond to stress and threats in the environment (especially the perceived competing needs of those around us). This happens in one of three very different ways. Psychologist Karen Horney described these three types:

  • We move against others (or some external threat) - we tend to be assertive - to “fight” (as in the fight/flight/freeze reaction)

  • We move away from others - we tend to withdraw - to “flee” or hide like a turtle in its shell

  • Or we move toward others - we tend to comply - to “freeze” (or “fawn”) by projecting an image of cooperation with whatever we perceive to be threatening or competing.

3 Center-based Types

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3 Threat-based Types

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9 Enneagram Types

The Buddhist tradition presents a similar set of three personality types for how we respond to our environment. These are based on what the Buddha called the three “toxins” that lie at the root of dukkha: greed, aversion, and delusion.  “Greed” types - like Horney’s assertive types - “go for all the gusto they can,” as they say in the old beer commercial.  “Aversive” types - like Horney’s withdrawn types - reflexively avoid conflict and difficulty.  “Deluded” types - like Horney’s compliant types - are so wrapped up in projecting a false image of compliance with others that they live in a cloud of delusion. They come to identify with this false image so much that they are out of touch with their own deeper sense of who they are and what they really need and even the nature of the “threat” itself.

The nine types of the Enneagram are at the intersection of both of these sets of three crucial fundamental tendencies that mold our personalities from our infancy. The three types based on one of three dominant centers multiplied by the three threat-based types equals the nine Enneagram types. 

Of course, there are many factors that can strongly affect how one’s type might manifest, including gender, culture, and other norms, family and genetic history, economic circumstances, and so on.  One of the most important additional factors is the proclivity - independent of one’s type - for one of the three core sets of instinctual needs:

  1. Basic self-preservation

  2. Sexuality and, more broadly, recognition

  3. Social integration, relationship, and inclusion.

Understanding one’s particular instinctive orientation - self-preservation, sexual, or social - is as important as understanding one’s type, and it’s not infrequent for people to be mis-typed, because their instinctual orientation is not taken into account.  See the Enneagram page here for more detail on instinctual orientation.

How to Use the Mindful Enneagram

The Enneagram shows how we lean unconsciously on one center of intelligence, like someone always trying to use the same tool, the one they happen to know well, no matter the job.  And it shows how we tend to use that one center in a particular way in reacting to others or to difficulty. 

But the Enneagram also shows us the path forward to escape these nine types of unnecessary suffering and the overly narrow and ultimately counterproductive habits of our deeply conditioned centers that cause it.  

Balancing the Three Centers

The path forward begins with awakening and balancing all three centers of intelligence. For each type, all three centers - even the dominant one - are out of whack in a particular way. The Buddha talked of the path to liberation from dukkha as the Middle Way, the way of balance. Think of our three centers like they’re our internal family. A healthy family requires the mother, the father, and the children - all three - to develop and maintain a loving, respectful, and flexible balance in meeting their individual and mutual needs. Likewise, the key to our own personal happiness and fulfillment depends upon our having a healthy balance among our inner family members: our head, heart, and body. The Enneagram maps out the nine particular ways that the three centers are out of balance. And it maps the particular path of development, specific to each type, to awaken and balance all three centers, so our “inner family” can live and work together in mutual harmony. Then the practices of the three core Foundations of Mindfulness help us awaken the deeper capacities of each center in specific ways based on the particular imbalance of each type. As each center fully awakens they naturally begin to assume their proper roles in balance with each other.

We’ve already explored how each of the types has a dominant center: the one we lean on and over-develop, starting almost from birth.  One of the other centers then tends to react to the dominant center, and the third center functions mostly unconsciously; it is the least developed and tends to be so repressed it operates almost completely outside our direct awareness.  The dominant and reactive centers are locked in a dualistic relationship until the third center can awaken enough to become a reconciling force to balance out that dualistic struggle.  Although the full intelligence and capabilities of the reactive and repressed centers tend to be much less developed, even the dominant center cannot fully flower to its highest capacities until the other two are fully developed as well.  It is constantly working like an overloaded machine; when it isn’t simply in denial of the value of the other two kinds of intelligence, it will try to compensate for the weakness of the other two centers, trying to do their work and always failing.

Opening and awakening to the third, repressed, center is particularly important. It is a hidden key that unlocks the door out of the particular prison cell of dukkha of each type.  That vital - yet initially invisible - third center is determined by whether your type is assertive, withdrawn, or compliant. 

Assertive Types

For the assertive types, it’s the heart center that tends to be mostly unconscious or hidden and unavailable in its higher capacity for emotionally intelligent response.  This is the “greed” type in Buddhist typology that “moves against” the external threat or competition. The more undeveloped assertive types can be quite aggressive or manipulative - whether physically (with body type Eight), intellectually (head type Seven), or competitively (heart type Three).  They often suffer from a lack of awareness of their own feelings and of heartfelt connection with the others they are “moving against.” Their form of dukkha is to rarely succeed or feel fulfilled in the realm of fulfilling relationships, where sensitivity to feeling is vital. 

The path to freedom from this form of dukkha begins with awakening and developing the heart center, and discovering how to balance its intelligence with the particular configuration of the other two.  As Assertive types begin to discover and open to their emotional intelligence, the deeper intelligence of their relatively undeveloped reactive center, as well as the more underdeveloped capacities of the dominant center, begin to also emerge and mature.  They then are no longer locked in their reactive dualistic dance.  All three centers can blossom fully and in a healthy ongoing relationship of balance and mutual support.

Withdrawn Types

For withdrawn types, the body center is repressed.  This is the “aversive” type in Buddhist typology who “moves away from” the threat or competition. The more undeveloped withdrawn types tend to be detached and isolated, with either a rich but dry inward world populated by ideas and imagination (head type Five), poignantly felt feelings of isolation (heart type Four), or grasping for inner comfort and for a resigned outward harmony (body type Nine).  They tend to suffer from a chronic lack of awareness of their body and instinctive intelligence.  I remember once trying to introduce a brilliant type Five friend (the withdrawn head type) to the first Foundation of mindfulness practice: simple direct awareness of body sensation.  She eventually told me, in frustration, “Look, I simply don’t have any sensation to be aware of!” 

In “moving away” from others or any external threat or perceived competition with others they also withdraw from their sense of their own body and their innate instinctual intelligence that is most immediately in contact with their external environment.  The path to freedom thus begins with awakening that direct contact with their senses and instincts.  It is through the awakening of their instinctive sense that their other two centers - the head and heart - can let go of their unending, and unsatisfying, duel to the death.  All three can then find a healthy balanced harmony that is mutually supportive. 

Compliant Types

For the compliant types the head center is repressed, the “deluded” type as described in the Buddhist typology. The most undeveloped compliant types are completely identified with projecting their particular image of compliance. Either they are deeply identified with being the “helper” (heart type Two), or complying with someone or something they hope to be the external authority (head type Six) , or they instinctively obey the dictates of their “inner judge,” their internalized, unconscious, projected inner parent (body type One). So the clarity of a more developed thinking center is largely unavailable in helping them see and meet their own deeper needs for development, happiness, and fulfillment. 

Think of the child that constantly seeks positive attention and affection from their parent, always doing the right thing, or the teacher’s pet, the guru follower, or the friend or lover faithful to the end. The repressed head center mainly plays continuous automatic narratives that reinforce the image of compliance.  The essence of this form of dukkha is that the compliant type can never live up to the compliant image they try to project, because it is an image, not an expression of who they really are. 

The dominant center - whether heart or body - also is in service to this image of compliance, with the other, reactive, center following (and sometimes resisting) its lead.  Compliant types can seem as educated and conventionally intelligent as any other type, but this is usually not applied to meeting their own deeper needs.  All three centers - dominant, reactive, and repressed - are mainly focused on the ultimately unsatisfying (and often near impossible) task of maintaining the image of compliance. 

The path of liberation from this kind of dukkha begins with awakening the deeper capacities of the head center, developing and applying the power of clear objective seeing, attention, and reason to satisfying their true needs, rather than the mind playing constantly like a broken record.  Once their intellect is awakened to the reality of this situation, and can objectively see and apply reason untainted by this delusion around image, then the dominant and reactive centers can also take their proper places as equally well developed partners in their “internal family.”

Awakening Each Type through the 3 Core Foundations of Mindfulness

In order to awaken, develop, and balance all three centers, it is important for all nine types to work with all three core Foundations of Mindfulness - of body, feeling, and mind.  Regardless of which center is dominant, reactive, or repressed, all three must be awakened to their full capacity in a particular way based on type. First Foundation practice - mindful direct contact with the body and senses - awakens the body center’s deeper capacity for sensate aliveness and instinctual “knowing.” Second Foundation practice - mindfulness, with kindness, of the immediate felt sense of the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral response to sensations, emotions, and thoughts - awakens the feeling center’s emotional intelligence and manifestation of the higher emotions. Third Foundation practice - mindfulness of the conditioned patterns of the mind - awakens the power of attention, clear comprehension, and deeper wisdom and insight.

Because each Enneagram type suffers from a particular form of imbalance of the centers (and other factors mentioned above, including instinct), the particular approach to working with the three Foundations will be different for each type. Rob’s book The Mindful Enneagram (and his 10 week online course) provides specific suggestions on working with the Foundations of Mindfulness based on the particular imbalance of centers of each type.  However, finding and refining the right kind of practice is ultimately different for each individual and is a long-term journey of discovery and refinement.