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The Enneagram of Essence

The Enneagram of Essence

By Chelsea Forbrook

The Enneagram reminds us of what is GOOD about us, deep in our core. Our Essence is something pure, beautiful, and powerful that can never be taken from us, no matter what we’ve been through. It is our True Self, beneath all the layers of defenses, stories, and neurotic habits that we call personality. We all have a tendency to get lost in our personality and it creates stress for us and the people around us. But there is a way back home to our True Selves! This podcast explores the Epic Journey home to Essence for each of the 9 Enneagram types through personal stories. www.chelseaforbrook.com
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Contacting Joy and Pleasure in the Breath (Guided Meditation)

The Enneagram of EssenceJul 11, 2023

00:00
06:43
Contacting Joy and Pleasure in the Breath (Guided Meditation)

Contacting Joy and Pleasure in the Breath (Guided Meditation)

This short practice will help you contact the joy, ease and pleasure that is already here in the present moment. All we need is a slight shift in the focus of our attention.

Jul 11, 202306:43
Guided Centering Prayer (Meditation)

Guided Centering Prayer (Meditation)

This is a short introduction to the practice of Centering Prayer, which uses an anchoring word of your choice to bring you back to the present moment, and to surrender your ego's agenda over and over and learn to relax, center and let go.

Jul 11, 202308:06
Connecting with Awareness Itself (Guided Meditation)

Connecting with Awareness Itself (Guided Meditation)

So often when we meditate, we try so hard to be aware. In a sense, this is an attempt to DO the awareness. This guided meditation will help you connect with Awareness in an immediate sense, so that you are looking at the moment from the lens of Awareness itself, simply allowing it to happen. This meditation includes longer periods of silence so you can really settle in and experience the instructions being given. 

Mar 13, 202313:31
"The Rounds" (Guided Meditation)

"The Rounds" (Guided Meditation)

Sometimes our emotions or thoughts are too overwhelming and we need help slowing them down, self regulating, and coming back to reality. This simple meditation brings us into contact with neutral elements of the present moment so we can disengage from the swirl of thinking and feeling!

Jan 31, 202312:14
Opening and Aligning Your Three Centers (Meditation Practice)

Opening and Aligning Your Three Centers (Meditation Practice)

This guided meditation will help you tap into the gifts and intelligence of each of your Centers: Gut, Heart and Head. In addition to feeling the pure energy of each Center, we will practice aligning them by removing blockages, so that communication and energy can freely flow between the Centers. Practicing this daily can and will be life changing! 

Dec 13, 202218:23
LovingKindness (Metta) Meditation

LovingKindness (Metta) Meditation

This is a great meditation for opening your Heart Center. Practice giving and receiving kindness, spreading your well-wishes to everyone you encounter, including yourself. This form of meditation was initially taught by the Buddha. 

May 26, 202214:12
Welcoming Prayer (Guided Meditation)

Welcoming Prayer (Guided Meditation)

This 10 minute practice of allowing, acceptance, and non-resistance will help stop your battle with The Way Things Are. Shout out to Father Thomas Keating for developing this powerful method of consenting to Reality and Divine Will. 

Apr 21, 202210:12
Contacting the Inner Observer (guided meditation)

Contacting the Inner Observer (guided meditation)

An important development in our Inner Work journey is learning to contact the "Inner Observer" or "Inner Witness." This is the permanent, ever-present part of ourselves that is separate from our personality. The Inner Observer watches the activity of the personality (i.e. planning, fantasizing, remembering, feeling, thinking) without any judgement, and in a non-reactive way. When seeing ourselves from the interior space of Inner Witness, we have a profound experience and realization: I am not my thoughts! I am not even my personality! There's something more to me!

Mar 09, 202213:54
"Titration" Presence Practice

"Titration" Presence Practice

Use this short Titration exercise as a way to get grounded, centered, open and regulated. You will practice resourcing the grounding energies from the Earth and the expansive energies from the Heavens and bringing them into your body. (A different form of Titration is used in trauma therapy, and it has been adopted and adapted in spiritual circles. I learned this practice from my Enneagram teacher Anne Muree).

Feb 23, 202207:07
"That shirt is NOT salvation!" - Type 7 with Tyler Sit

"That shirt is NOT salvation!" - Type 7 with Tyler Sit

"As it turns out, buying that shirt is not salvation! It just feels like it is because I can convince myself of a lot of things! ...The gap between a stimulus and your reaction is your freedom. That's very counterintuitive for a Seven, because for a Seven, it's like, 'I'm free if I can have a stimulus and react right away. No impulse control - that's what freedom means!' But actually, in the contemplative life, freedom means that you're not allowing the stimulus to take control of your life, and you're adding in breath and pause to exercise true Holy Freedom."


Tyler Sit takes us on an energetic, insightful, and profound exploration into what doing emotional work means for Sevens by exploring their "emotional backlog," and what it means to slow down and truly connect with the vibrancy and richness of life. For more on Tyler, visit https://www.tylersit.com/

Dec 28, 202101:00:39
Go In & Down- Type 6 with Karen Carlsen

Go In & Down- Type 6 with Karen Carlsen

"Hearing that '6's are afraid of Being' resonated so deeply, because I thought of all my years of running, and being busy, and thinking about being present, but not being present. Now I have much more of a practice of going in and down first before I go up and out."

Karen takes us on a courageous journey through loss and grief, mistyping herself as an Enneagram Two, and finding her own voice and inner guidance and authority. 

Dec 21, 202154:58
"Wait, what's next?"- Type 5 with Ben Linzmeier

"Wait, what's next?"- Type 5 with Ben Linzmeier

"I had an experience where my thinking stopped, utterly and completely and pretty suddenly. My instant reaction was, "Wait what's the next thought?" and there was no next coming. So that resulted in this terror, but then I would have this realization of, "Oh, this is what it is, without content." And I would feel blissed out...Since then, I have no conscious fear of death. It just opened deeper and deeper levels of Reality without any content at all."

Dec 13, 202101:01:12
Garbage Man of the Soul - Type 4 with Jenny Campbell

Garbage Man of the Soul - Type 4 with Jenny Campbell

"The one thing that makes everybody else want to hide, makes me want to come out. It's like being Called to be a garbage man. Nobody wants to do this job, but I love it!" 

Jenny takes us on a journey to the true opening of the Heart through recognizing its layers, and to contact genuine grief in a cleansing way. She explores body shame, the non-linear path of spiritual development, and the traps of feeling misunderstood and fatigued. Check out Jenny's workshops at www.enneawake.com

Dec 05, 202154:52
The Inevitable Breakdown- Type 3 with Emi

The Inevitable Breakdown- Type 3 with Emi

"I had one more work trip to complete for the year to "feel successful," like I had achieved enough. And I came to in a hospital bed with tubes hooked up to me and I couldn't breathe. And I thought, "This is it...wow, this is not how I want to leave the earth. I'm not ready!" 

Emi tells her story of adapting between two worlds as a daughter of immigrants, the Enneagram cultural overlays of the US and Japan that influenced her personality, how overwork almost killed her, and how she recovered and learned to listen to her body's loving messages through her Zen practice, self care, and finding a supportive partner and community. 

Nov 15, 202156:33
7 Minute Presence Practice (Meditation)

7 Minute Presence Practice (Meditation)

Here's a quick little guided centering exercise you can use whenever you need to check in with yourself and slow down. This practice helps contact our three Centers: body, heart and head in way that is honest, real, and compassionate. Enjoy!

Nov 01, 202110:01
"Selfless" is some Horse Sh*t!- Type 2 with Lynn O'Brien

"Selfless" is some Horse Sh*t!- Type 2 with Lynn O'Brien

"Who wants to be selfless? Without a SELF?? Absolutely not!...but for a long time, that's what felt like being spiritual and loving was supposed to be." 

Lynn shares her journey with learning to set boundaries, asking for help, receiving, and feeling and loving her own darkness. 

Oct 25, 202156:05
Doomed Missions - Type 1 with Chelsea Forbrook

Doomed Missions - Type 1 with Chelsea Forbrook

TRIGGER WARNING: this episode mentions alcoholism and suicide.

"I was like, 'There's a hurting, lost soul! I can help that one!' And so off I went on lots of doomed missions, because they weren't asking to change, and they weren't willing to change. And so all my efforts in helping were lost. It was such a waste of my life energy." 

In this episode, Chelsea shares her journey from perfectionism towards accepting life's mess just as it is. Life's lessons taught her to let go of opinions through culture shock, to name her repressed feelings with the support of beloved community, and to focus on saving the only one she could: herself.

Oct 18, 202158:17
"Anger? What's that?"- Type 9 with Curtis Wilson

"Anger? What's that?"- Type 9 with Curtis Wilson

"There was one in me that felt that it wasn't really worth the energy. Like, if I had a choice, why would I get angry?....When I do actually express anger I feel a lightness afterwards that I wasn't previously aware I could feel."

Curtis takes us on a journey through his experience with "The Work" (Gurdjieff's esoteric teachings- he's the guy who brought the Enneagram to the modern world!), his evolving relationship with anger and time, re-membering himself through radical embodiment, and questions about the Enneagram and childhood. 

Oct 11, 202101:06:42
The Godzilla Suit - Type 8 with Phil GebbenGreen

The Godzilla Suit - Type 8 with Phil GebbenGreen

"As a kid, I would pretend to be Godzilla. I would literally think of myself as covered in green scales, being this monster who could stomp and blow fire at anything that threatened me. I can do a lot of affecting, but I am not affected. I am armored against the world."

Phil walks us through his journey from self protection to a place of connection through vulnerability, learning to listen to his heart, and finding interior freedom. 

Oct 01, 202101:00:13
The Essence of Type 7 with Joe Davis
Jul 09, 202156:43
The Essence of Type 6 with Ben Campbell
Jul 02, 202149:11
The Essence of Type 5 with Kathleen Grittner

The Essence of Type 5 with Kathleen Grittner

Kathleen is an artist, spiritual seeker, and retreat facilitator. She shares her journey through the depths of her mind, her conflicts with religion, how art and science compliment each other, and how curiosity leads to kindness. She is a wonderful testament of how the mind is an essential (though often neglected) part of spiritual growth. 

Jun 28, 202101:04:58
The Essence of Type 4 with Andrea Sorum
Jun 22, 202101:05:40
The Essence of Type 3 with Janet Hagberg
Jun 16, 202148:48
The Essence of Type 2 with Anne Mureé
Jun 10, 202101:05:08
The Essence of Type 1 with John Koon
Jun 02, 202101:03:01
The Essence of Type 9 with C.John Hildebrand

The Essence of Type 9 with C.John Hildebrand

C. John helps us understand the inner workings of the Enneagram 9 personality. He is a hospital chaplain, spiritual director, and activist who approaches life through a stance of ease, connection and Being. Enjoy!

May 27, 202156:13
The Essence of Type 8 with Chelsea MacMillan
May 20, 202159:58