An interview with Grace Galliot from the Natural Health Clinic and Michelle Johansen from Female Potential on how to unlock potential with the Enneagram

https://femalepotential.co.uk/product/understanding-yourself-and-others-with-the-enneagram

Michelle:                          Today we are going to be looking at how we can use the Enneagram as a tool to unlock more of our potential. And this is something that I do in my work as a coach and trainer, so I've invited Grace Galliott from the Natural Health Clinic to come in today and interview me. Hello Grace. Thank you ever so much for coming along and interviewing me, I'm even sitting in the interviewee seat today.

Grace Galliott:                 Okay, so what is the Enneagram?

Michelle:                           Okay, so the Enneagram essentially Ennea means nine, gram is a diagram and it's a nine pointed figure inside a circle, which shows us the nine personality types that the psyche develops into. The Enneagram is really an ancient system, it's been around for supposedly thousands of years and was handed down as a verbal tradition. In the second half of the 20th century it moved, like all these things do, into the west coast of America. There it has been developed through modern depth psychology, into the personality system that it is today.

Grace Galliott:                 Cool. So how did you come across it?

Michelle:                           Yes, I think it's an interesting story. I came across it nearly 20 years ago when I met my now husband, in a pub in Guernsey called the Randy Paddle. (She's laughing.) We were introduced by a mutual friend. And you know, as most first dates go, we had lovely first evening together and a couple of days later I got my first ever parcel through the post from Amazon. It was a copy of the Riso-Hudson book “ The Wisdom of the Enneagram” with an invitation from my date to type myself. So it was like, "My goodness, this is the most unusual second date request that I've ever had!"

Grace Galliott:                 See if he liked you or not!

Michelle:                           But I always say I entered the relationship on false premises, because I mistyped myself. I just didn't know myself well enough. We had quite a whirlwind relationship and now I look back, it does seem rather mad, but within six months we had bought a house together and moved in. And I really hadn't spent much time with the guy at all. It was only then when I started living with this person, I realised he was such a polar opposite to me and it was like, "Oh my God, what have I done?" I remember sitting out in the garden thinking so I got the Enneagram book out again. And it was then that I realized that my manic workaholic “get everything done” kind of personality was diametrically different to his, “enjoy my life, sleep-in in the morning” type of personality.

Michelle:                           And I got it, in that moment, that mine wasn't right and his wasn't wrong. And it really opened up something in terms of our relationship. And I still say today, and I say it to his face, "You know, I don't think we'd be married without the Enneagram."

Grace Galliott:                  Yeah, definitely. So how do you use the Enneagram in your business?

Michelle:                           In my business ... So that was 20 years ago, I was still working in the finance industry. 12 years ago I joined my husband in his business and I work as a coach. What I learned through doing the professional training with the Enneagram Institute back in 2007, was that our ego drivers, (which is what essentially these nine personality types are), start adopting coping strategies quite early on in life. So if we find that achieving is what gets us attention, then we continue achieving, we continue achieving, we continue achieving, and we get very narrow in our outlook.

Michelle:                           So as a coach, if somebody comes to me and says, "You know, I'm doing all this and I'm doing all that and I just need a bit of help to do even more." The Enneagram helps them to see that if they carry on doing, what actually will happen is they will drive themselves into oblivion. So the Enneagram is a tool that I use to help people to understand who they are and who's driving the car. Because most of the time we're on autopilot. We don't stop and think, "Why do I want to achieve?" We just want to achieve. So it's a methodology for helping people to reflect, "Actually, who am I? Why do I want this and is this actually what I want?"

Grace Galliott:                  Yeah, absolutely. It most definitely helped me in the coaching that you've done with me, when we got to the Enneagram it certainly helped me figure things out and work out why I behave in certain ways. And once you can acknowledge that it's a really beautiful thing.

Michelle:                           Oh, it's good to hear.

Grace Galliott:                  So, where does the Enneagram come from?

Michelle:                           In truth, nobody really knows. I mean, I've sat in various halls with different world-leading teachers, all telling a slightly different version of the story. And it depends who it is, but it is roughly 2,000 plus years old. It's been handed down as a verbal tradition, and yes, it used to belong to religions. Whether that was a the Christian desert fathers or whether that was a Sufi mystery school. I've heard different stories, each claiming it as their own. But it was handed down as a verbal tradition and it was never supposed to be used outside of those circles apparently. And it was being taught in a particular mystery school in what I think is now Iran.

Michelle:                            Two of the people who studied at the school took it in two different directions, one to South America and one to Europe. The guy that went to South America started writing it down and started working with his own theories, and then he brought it, or rather one of his students did, to the west coast of America. When he got there, he started to teach a group of people. The teachers I've worked with, are those direct students. So I have been taught by Riso-Hudson and also Sandra Maitri and A.H. Almaas, who are all world leaders in the Enneagram.

Grace Galliott:                  Cool. So your amazing course that I have done, I can highly recommend it. Can you summarize what's in it?

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