You know the scene. Someone at dinner says "I'm a 4, that's why I'm so intense." Someone else responds "well, I'm a 7, I need variety." There are laughs, nods of recognition, memes circulating on Instagram with descriptions that read like sophisticated horoscopes. And that's fine. Something in those descriptions resonates, something in the test makes you feel seen for the first time.
But if that's all you know of the Enneagram, you've barely seen the door. Behind it lies a system of self-knowledge with over a thousand years of depth, roots in contemplative traditions that used it not to classify people but to liberate them, and therapeutic applications that modern psychology is only beginning to tap into.
At Dynamis, the Enneagram is not an add-on. It is the backbone of all our integrative work. And in this article, I want to show you why: what exists beneath the test, how it functions as a map for healing, and what happens when it stops being theory and becomes lived experience.
The Enneagram that doesn't fit in a meme
The popularization of the Enneagram on social media did something valuable: it put it on the radar of millions. But it also did something problematic: it reduced it. It turned it into a classification system, into labels people use to explain (and sometimes justify) their behavior. "I'm an 8, that's why I'm so direct." But being direct isn't your type. It's a symptom of something much deeper that the type illuminates if you give it the chance.
The roots of the Enneagram reach into traditions of wisdom that used it as a tool for inner work, not self-categorization. The Sufi tradition associates it with the study of the nafs, the conditioned ego, the automatic patterns that govern us without our knowing. The Desert Fathers of early Christianity, particularly Evagrius Ponticus in the fourth century, described a system of nine "logismoi" (patterns of passionate thought) that contemplatives needed to recognize in order to transcend.
The modern articulation: The Enneagram as we know it today was systematized by the Bolivian Óscar Ichazo in the 1960s and developed clinically by Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo was no improvised mystic: he was a trained psychiatrist, studied Gestalt with Fritz Perls, researched at UC Berkeley's IRESM, and was a direct student of Ichazo. What he did was integrate the Enneagram map with personality psychology, instinct theory, and bodywork (Naranjo, 1994). He gave the Enneagram a clinical framework without stripping its contemplative depth.
The Enneagram, in its deeper version, doesn't classify people. It illuminates the unconscious patterns each type uses to protect itself from suffering. Each type is a survival strategy you learned in childhood, one that served you then and has now become a prison. The map doesn't tell you who you are. It shows you the mechanism that prevents you from being it fully.
In the Sufi tradition, the Enneagram is not a system for knowing "what kind of person I am." It is a mirror for seeing the structure of conditioning that separates me from my essence. It doesn't describe who you are. It describes what you built to survive. And that, precisely, is what can be released.
Nine ways of avoiding pain (and an invitation to stop)
The therapeutic heart of the Enneagram isn't in the type descriptions. It's in an uncomfortable question: what is your particular way of avoiding pain?
The nine types organize around three centers of intelligence. The instinctive center (types 8, 9, and 1) processes experience through the body and action; when disconnected, it generates anger. The emotional center (types 2, 3, and 4) processes through feeling and image; when disconnected, it generates shame. The mental center (types 5, 6, and 7) processes through thought and anticipation; when disconnected, it generates fear. Three centers. Three ways of being in the world. Three ways of getting lost.
Within each center, each type develops a dominant passion (what Naranjo called the emotional engine of the type), a cognitive fixation (the particular way it distorts reality to fit its strategy), and a preferred defense mechanism. I'm not going to describe all nine types here; the entire internet does that. What I want to show you is why this matters clinically.
Imagine two people arriving at a retreat with the same symptom: deep exhaustion. One is a type 3: she exhausted herself building an image of success, doing, producing, proving her worth through achievement, until her body said enough. The other is a type 5: he exhausted himself protecting himself from the world, withdrawing, accumulating knowledge as a barrier against others' emotional demands, until the isolation became heavier than the connection he was avoiding. Same symptom. Opposite root. If you apply the same treatment to both, you fail them both.
This is why the Enneagram at Dynamis is not an "extra." It is the compass that orients the entire therapeutic process, from the first session in the Healing Studio to ceremonial work in La Maloca. We don't treat symptoms; we work with the character structure that produces them. And the Enneagram is the most precise map we know for seeing that structure clearly.
The Enneagram in the body: when the map becomes experience
This is where most approaches to the Enneagram fall short. Knowing your type intellectually is valuable, but it's not enough for something to change. The real leap happens when you stop thinking the Enneagram and start feeling it.
Each type lives in the body in a specific way. This is not metaphor: these are patterns of muscular tension, habitual postures, zones of respiratory blockage, ways of occupying space. Type 1 tends to clench the jaw and rigidify the back. Type 2 extends the chest and opens the arms. Type 5 contracts inward, protecting the solar plexus. These are not clichés; they are somatic patterns that body therapists recognize and that have a serious clinical genealogy.
The body-character connection: Wilhelm Reich, Freud's dissident student, was the first to describe "character armor": the idea that personality patterns inscribe themselves in the body as chronic muscular tensions that block emotional flow (Reich, 1945). Naranjo explicitly integrated this line of work with the Enneagram, proposing that each type has not only a psychological pattern but a corresponding somatic one (Naranjo, 1994). Contemporary research in somatics and affective neuroscience confirms that emotions and personality patterns have consistent, measurable bodily correlates.
At an integrative retreat, the Enneagram isn't "studied." It's felt. During conscious breathing, the patterns of the type emerge as tensions that resist releasing or as emotions that finally find their way out. In bodywork, the type's armor becomes tangible: you can feel where your fear lives, where your anger is stored, where your sadness hides. And in ceremony, when the usual defenses relax, what lies beneath the pattern, your essence, has space to appear.
Knowing yourself is not reading about yourself. It's feeling what was always there and you never dared to look at. The Enneagram of books informs you. The lived Enneagram transforms you.
Nine pillars, one sacred space
At the heart of Dynamis there is a space that materializes everything this article describes. La Maloca, our ceremonial space, is built with 9 wooden pillars, each representing an Enneagram type. This is not decoration or ornamental symbolism. It is architecture with intention.
When you enter La Maloca, you enter the map literally. You sit among the pillars. The circular space surrounds you with the geometry of the Enneagram made structure, made wood, made place. You can sit beside the pillar of your type and ask yourself what holds you and what traps you. You can move toward another pillar and explore what your type avoids. The space itself becomes a tool for the work.
In the ceremonial context, this structure takes on an additional dimension. Plant medicines, within the Dynamis framework, don't operate randomly. The Enneagram provides context and direction for what emerges in ceremony. If you know your pattern, you can work with what appears more consciously, more deeply, more integratively. Ceremony without a map can be powerful. Ceremony with a map can be transformative.
La Maloca is, as far as we know, the only ceremonial space in the world designed as a three-dimensional Enneagram. It is the materialization of the principle that guides all our work: self-knowledge is not only mental. It is spatial, bodily, ceremonial. It happens when understanding leaves the head and settles into direct experience.
What knowing yourself is really for
The Enneagram is not for "knowing your type." It's for seeing the mechanism operating beneath your automatic behavior and, from there, having the possibility of choosing something different.
Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, said that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our freedom. The Enneagram widens that space. It shows you the automatic pattern that normally governs you so that, the next time it activates, you can notice it instead of blindly obeying it. It doesn't eliminate the pattern. It gives you awareness of it. And that awareness is the first step of any genuine transformation.
Knowing you're a "type 6" doesn't heal you. Understanding how your type 6 built an entire life around fear, and feeling it in the tension of your shoulders, and finding in ceremony the courage that was always underneath the fear, that does. The difference between the Instagram Enneagram and the Dynamis Enneagram is the difference between entertainment and transformation.
If all you know of the Enneagram are the memes and the test, you've barely seen the door. Behind it lies a map of extraordinary depth that connects modern psychology with contemplative wisdom, body with mind, self-knowledge with healing. You don't need to be an expert to walk through that door. You only need genuine curiosity and the willingness to see yourself without filters.
The Enneagram won't tell you who you are. It will show you what's preventing you from being it. And that, if you're willing to look, is where everything begins.
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Frequently asked questions
Does the Enneagram have a scientific basis?
The Enneagram as a system has roots in millennial contemplative traditions and was clinically articulated by Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean psychiatrist trained in Gestalt and a researcher at Berkeley. While it doesn't have the same volume of controlled studies as tools like the Big Five, its therapeutic application is supported by decades of clinical practice and a growing body of research. What distinguishes it from other systems is precisely its capacity to integrate the psychological dimension with the contemplative and the somatic.
Can I take the Enneagram test online at Dynamis?
Yes. We offer a comprehensive 144-question test designed to give you a first approximation of your type. You can take it at dynamiscr.com/enneagram. It's important to remember that no test replaces the deep self-observation work the Enneagram requires to be truly useful, but it's an excellent starting point.
What's the difference between the Enneagram and other systems like the MBTI?
The MBTI (Myers-Briggs) describes cognitive preferences: how you process information and make decisions. It's useful but operates on the surface of personality. The Enneagram goes deeper: it describes the unconscious motivation, the emotional passion driving behavior, and the survival strategy you learned in childhood. Additionally, the Enneagram includes a contemplative and transformational dimension that the MBTI lacks: it doesn't just describe how you are, but points to the specific growth path for your type.
Do I need to know my type before arriving at a retreat?
It's not necessary, though it can enrich the experience. If you arrive without knowing your type, the retreat process itself, with its depth psychology sessions, bodywork, and ceremonial practice, will help you discover it experientially, which is the most authentic way to know it. If you already know your type, the retreat will take you far beyond the description into the embodied experience of your pattern.
Is the Enneagram religious or spiritual?
The Enneagram has roots in wisdom traditions (Sufism, contemplative Christianity) but is not a religious system and doesn't require spiritual beliefs to be useful. In its modern therapeutic application, it is a personality psychology tool with a contemplative dimension. At Dynamis, we use it as a map for self-knowledge within a professional psychological framework. You can benefit from it whether you're a believer, agnostic, or atheist.
References:
Naranjo, C. (1994). Character and Neurosis: An Integrative View. Nevada City, CA: Gateways/IDHHB.
Reich, W. (1945). Character Analysis (3rd ed.). New York: Orgone Institute Press.
