Inquire Within

- Elizabeth Marglin

CORAL BROWN, a yoga teacher and licensed mental-health counselor in Rhode Island, uses the word “co-dependent” to describe her previous romantic relationship, which lasted more than a decade. But at the time, she didn’t realize she was in such a pattern of over giving that she was losing herself. While her yoga practice helped shine a light on this tendency, Brown says studying the Enneagram—a four-decade-old personality-assessment system—also revealed that it was time to move on from the relationship. “The Enneagram enabled me to really see my core patterns,” says Brown, “ultimately helping me meet my needs in a healthier, more conscious way than ever before.”

The name Enneagram stems from the Greek words ennea, a prefix for “nine,” and gramma, meaning “to draw.” The system’s icon is a nine-pointed star, each point representing a distinct personality type. Most Enneagram experts agree we are all born with one dominant personality type (or number), which largely determines how we learn to adapt to our environment and the people in it. The Enneagram surfaced in the United States in the 197os, riding the tails of the human-potential movement (think therapy, encounter groups, and primal scream). Since then, therapists, spiritual teachers, coaches, and even businesses have used the Enneagram as a tool to stoke authenticity, expose core motivations, and ultimately reduce interpersonal conflict. How can a simple personality test do all this?