A Conversation with Andrea Isaacs

Andrea Isaacs, former Chicago dance company leader, guides students to express personality characteristics in movement as they consider the Enneagram's nine point code of personality characteristics. Powerful and transformative, the practice can regenerate neuron pathways to different points of view - so that one can choose to react more appropriately to challenging situations.

The Monthly Aspectarian: Andrea, you've taken the Enneagram in a different direction. We want to talk a little bit about the Enneagram itself, but what have you done with it?

Andrea Isaacs: I was a dancer for 25 years and my work with the Enneagram came from my background in modern dance. As a matter of fact, I had a dance company in Chicago for a good part of that time, Moving Images. The kind of choreography I most liked to do was dances that captured something about the human spirit, emotions or life.

What I found in working with my dancers was that I couldn't ask them to move like they were angry or happy because it started to look like they were miming or something! So I started to work with my dancers to regenerate the emotions I wanted to have expressed. I found that if you translate an emotion into pure movement -- for instance, if I want you to move like you're angry, I would ask you to move with a lot of force, very fast through space, and very direct -- you would start to move as if you were angry. You would start to look like you were angry, and the feeling of anger would start to arise. And the same thing with caring or nurturing . . . I would have you move softly and maybe indirectly through space, and more slowly. You would start to feel a gentleness inside. It would look very peaceful and it would be very peaceful to watch you.

When I came across the Enneagram and started reading about the different emotional traits that the different types tend to exhibit or the different kinds of behaviors they would have -- whether it would be, say, the courage and competence of the Eight or the nurturing of the Two or the analytical quality of bravery and so on, it seemed that those qualities could also be translated into movements. I wanted to define movements in the Enneagram work that was out there, because it just made so much sense to me that it would be there. There's a school of Gurdjieff work that uses movement, but it's movement more around the Enneagram rather than really exploring the individual points. I started to apply the same thing I had done with my dance company to the different Enneagram personality types, and I found that by using the same process, we could really get a feeling of what it's like to be each one of the types.

TMA: What was your source material for your Enneagram work?

AI: Initially, my background was reading. I've read quite a few of the books out there -- a lot by Don Riso and Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo, and I'm familiar now with the work of Oscar Ichazo, Hurley-Dobson and quite a few other people that have written. And then I did some workshops and trainings and became certified by Don Riso and Russ Hudson. You have to do something like a major presentation as a part of the certification procedure . . . so as my project, I had this idea stewing about working with movement and the Enneagram types -- so for my project, I started to put that together. They liked it so much that they later invited me to teach with them in their training program.

TMA: For people who aren't familiar with the Enneagram, why don't you just briefly run through the points.

AI: Well ennea- is Greek for "nine," and -gram, of course, would be a diagram. The name itself refers to the symbol, a nine-pointed star placed on a circle. The symbol has been around for thousands of years.

TMA: It's my understanding that nobody really knows where it came from.

AI: Well, the source is becoming a little more clear now, especially with the Enneagram Monthly [see biography] doing the interviews with Oscar Ichazo, the first one that actually applied personality traits to each of those points. The movements as used in the Gurdjieff school went around the points, as if there's an Enneagram on the floor. Students moved around the circle and Gurdjieff called people different kinds of idiots. He didn't have nine idiots, he had like twenty-two idiots. So he wasn't really using it as a personality system at all. It was Oscar Ichazo who started to combine the Enneagram with the Kabbalah and other mystic sources and then for the first time, he applied the personality types to each one of the nine points around the circle.

TMA: The church had it way before Gurdjieff, yes?

AI: But it wasn't a personality system. It didn't really become associated with personality until Oscar, and he started that probably in the '50s or '60s. He started his school in the late '60s in Chile. Oscar eventually taught this man, Claudio Naranjo, and then Claudio came to the States and taught here. Someone who came to one of Claudio's early lectures was a Jesuit, and he's the one who passed his notes around the Jesuit community.

TMA: As publisher of the Enneagram Monthly, you know that there's been a lot of controversy -- and even that there were Enneagram wars for a while.

AI: Yes, this is true. But back a little bit about the Enneagram itself. Each personality type has strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the One can be called the perfectionist and is very detail oriented, very concerned with values, morals and ethics, higher principles. If a One is very healthy, they will exhibit that kind of behavior, and if things don't work out the way they're planned, they won't be really angry. When a One is less healthy -- and this is something that's really a contribution by Don Riso, who talks about the levels of health -- when a One is less healthy, they get more fixed into having to have things a certain way and can get really angry and more compulsive about it having be that way.

The Two would be the nurturer or the giver, and can give very unconditionally when he or she is healthy. When they get less healthy, when they're under a lot of stress, they would give in order to receive; they would manipulate you in order to prove to themselves that they're lovable.

TMA: Or sometimes feel ripped off?

AI: Yes, and used, because of how much they've done for you, and look how little you appreciate it.

The Three is a wonderful doer and motivator, can be called the performer or the motivator, and is success oriented. Can really see the goal, the outcome, and knows what has to be done in order to achieve it. When they're less healthy, they start to believe that they are their goal, and this image that they like to see themselves as, starts to become more important than who they are. So they become deceitful about who they are not just to others but to themselves.

TMA: The different people who represent the Enneagram have their own terms for the points.

AI: That's right, and there's been some controversy in terms of which are the best words. I like using them all because they help capture a different flavor of it.

TMA: Yes, I agree.

AI: The Four has names like "the tragical magic," or "the artist" or "the individualist" or just "the romantic." The Four certainly has a creative flair, can usually see the best and the worst of any situation, whether it's emotional or more detail oriented and practical. Can really see all sides of something. And there's a tremendous emotional depth there; they can really understand deep psychological issues. They really go for the creative solutions in problem solving. When they're less healthy, because they have this creative flair, they feel special . . . and they feel like they need to be treated as if they are special. They can also get caught in depression and the murk of emotions where it's really hard to get out and reach into the world again. It can be hard for a Four to engage in the world if they're not healthy.

And the Five -- sometimes called "the observer" or "the thinker" -- when they're healthy, Five has a wonderful conceptual orientation of the world. Five can really understand the concept behind ideas and likes to fully comprehend and master an area of knowledge. Sometimes Fives have mastered many areas of knowledge. They don't want to talk about something unless they've done thorough research. They'll have huge book collections that have every book about a certain subject or a certain few on many subjects. They feel insecure if they don't have that kind of comprehensive information. When they're less healthy, they tend to withdraw from the world and feel like they can't really engage until they fully understand something; they'll never fully understand it and therefore, they never engage. They can get caught in their own desire to fully understand.

The Six, when they're healthy, is sometimes called "the trooper" or "loyalist" and has a lot of commitment, whether it's to an organization, a system, people, a particular person, something or someone they can really commit their loyalty to -- that's very important to a Six. And they have funny authority issues because sometimes it's just as important for them to rebel against that authority. They're really interested in one side or the other, so a Six you can get double sided: either you're with me or against me. They can be great to have on your team because they're so loyal and such dedicated, hard workers. When they're less healthy, they get more caught up in choosing sides.

The Seven is sometimes called "the epicure" or "the enthusiast" and is the kind of person that likes adventure a lot, would know the best restaurants, would be very activity oriented, and would be so involved in all the options of life that they would have a great outlook in terms of all that life has to offer; they want a taste of all of it. It can be hard for them to settle into an idea or into something and really be with themselves if they're less healthy.

And the Eight, as you know, is the leader.

TMA: My personal favorite.

AI: The courageous leader who, when they're healthy, is magnanimous and really inspires people to move forward in a certain direction. Just as the name implies, Eight can really lead and move a whole group or idea forward. When the Eight is less healthy, the aggressive side of them can become more manipulative and aggressive.

TMA: Troublesome in lots of ways.

AI: Yes, sometimes an Eight doesn't realize they're coming off as aggressive because inside they feel so vulnerable. Some Eights have described themselves as being a Mack truck full of marshmallows because they're so afraid, in a way, of that vulnerability that they put up something that looks like steel armor -- but if you just touch it, it's nothing. So even though they may appear to be aggressive, there's a lot of vulnerability in an Eight.

TMA: They can also, I think, sometimes be unaware that they're being perceived as aggressive. They're just being themselves.

AI: That's right. And last but not least, the Nine can be called "the generalist" or "the peacemaker." The peacemaker, of course, is someone who can see both sides to every argument and is really good at bringing peace to situations, at calming people's nerves, at bringing in just a real gentle, calming influence. But also, when Nine is less healthy, because they really like the peacefulness, they may avoid issues and confrontation and not deal with things that need to be dealt with. What they need more is that peacefulness -- or at least the illusion of it -- and the idea of confrontation can be very scary;

TMA: Do you have a set of questions that people can ask to type themselves?

AI: No, I don't. What I have found through the EnneaMotion work is that sometimes when people do their own type, they have very extreme reactions: they either really get in there and it's the easiest type for them to do . . . and if they didn't know their type before, they may come to a realization by doing this work. Other people, when they do their own type, find it harder to really get in there, especially at the unhealthy levels. It's almost as if it's harder to see, it's harder to let themselves experience it. That's a signal, too.

TMA: Yes, while I was reading Helen Palmer's book, I tried to deny my Eight-ness -- but the more I read the descriptions, I thought, Well yeah, okay.

AI: There's a whole process, certainly, in coming across your type. I think that more and more people are not typing others. They're letting it be a process and a journey for each individual, because you can go through changes. I've seen people go through three, four, five different types. Not that the first ones were wrong, because we actually do have all nine types in us. But different types may come to the surface for different reasons, for different events, at different points in our lives.

TMA: How do you apply movements to the types?

AI: Well, the first thing I do is introduce basic movement vocabulary. I don't like using the word "dance" because a lot of people are intimidated by that, but I take basic movement vocabulary. First, just walk and stop. Run and freeze. Move sideways and backwards and forward. Move circularly -- in circles, in wavy, curly lines. Move in zigzag lines . . . so they get the sense of moving directly through space, indirectly through space. Because if you were to think of, say, how an Eight would move versus how a Nine would move, as an Eight you would be very direct in your movement in space. The Nine would be probably very indirect in the physical movement. So just physically, those two concepts are important.

We would put those movements in our arms, how our arms would move, and we put it in our body moving through space, and we put it our legs, in different body parts. We would explore through movement different movement qualities such as pounding, floating, gliding, wrapping, oscillating, bubbling and so on, and this would be like a foundation. You can't build a house without a foundation, and the same thing applies to any emotion. We really need the foundation to go ahead into the types.

After we've done that, we come back together and talk about -- we sit with one of the types. Say the Two, for example. We take the descriptions of the healthy Two . . . I draw upon some of Don Riso's work, the way he describes the types of different levels of health. We would look first at the healthy Two who is nurturing and caring, and we try to translate those emotional words into pure movement words. See, the more you can get into pure movement, the easier it is to move. So, we make a list of a lot of movement words that apply to the healthy Two, and then pick out a favorite one -- like say, for example, after we do a whole list of the words for the Two, we might pick "caring embrace." What's good about that is that the embrace is a gesture that's easy to do; you don't have anything of emotion hooked up with doing a gesture. It's not like saying, Well, act like you're a caring person. It's a simple gesture.

TMA: At this point, do the people know their type? Or some do and some are discovering them?

AI: In most of my workshops, everybody knows their type. The Enneagram isn't that widely known, so for someone to take a workshop on EnneaMotion, which is even less widely known than the Enneagram, people would be inclined to have taken Enneagram work before.

I've done some introductory workshops where there may be one or two people who aren't familiar with it, but usually when people come to my workshop, they've gone to a training or workshop or they've read quite a bit.

If I were to ask you to move like an Eight, Guy, or for me to move like a Four -- people get so invested in who they are and what they think of themselves, that to disassociate it from anything personal is a real hard thing to do. A more pure movement makes it much less threatening.

So back to the healthy Two. If we add the adverb "caring" or the adjective "the caring embrace," and we move through space with caring, not necessarily embracing people, but embracing the space, gathering the space, repeating and exaggerating and doing variations to a caring embrace -- when you explore "caring embrace" through movement for five, ten, fifteen minutes or so, people will come up with many different ways of doing this. Again, it's not like hugging someone; it's the way you would wrap your arm even around yourself, or wrapping, gathering, embracing the air and the space. You could do it walking, you could do it standing still. You have many variations of this caring embrace, until finally you would have a shape that represents the look that you were just doing. A shape that represents your healthy Two. It's not like you're going to become a Two, but you would explore the quality of this caring, nurturing, giving, and then you would take on a shape that would look very caring. In doing that Two, that emotion would start to arise inside you. If you were in a situation where you needed to call upon your own nurturing quality, and if it were hard for you, you could take on that shape of your healthy Two, this caring, embraced shape, and you could elicit that quality. You could bring forth that Two-ness in you, whether or not you're a Two.

TMA: We know that affects go both ways, so motion could very well affect emotion and mental state. So what you're doing is teaching people how it feels to be the different points so they can utilize those in their lives?

AI: Yes. In fact, at the end of doing all nine types -- when we have a workshop that's long enough to do all nine -- we put together what I call a "movement mantra" which has nine stances. Each one represents the healthy aspect of the type. So if you went One, Two, Three, Four, Five, up to Nine, shape number one would be your healthy One, and then you'd do your healthy Two and so on through the ninth shape. If you were in a situation in which you as a Four, who maybe is not as confident in a situation like that as you as an Eight might be, the Four could take on the confident stance of the healthy Eight and feel the energy, the internal energy and validity that the Eight feels, and may have more confidence. Be able to move into a situation with that kind of strength and energy and be solid in where they stand.

TMA: So if the person who is not an Eight or a Nine were going into a confrontation, they could take on the qualities of an Eight or a Nine, to either confront or mediate.

AI: Exactly. Say, if your tendency is more to confront, and you really need to take on the aspect of mediating, which is not your primary way of behaving in the world, you can take on the Nine stance and maybe just sense it for a moment -- and then regenerate the neuron pathway of what that peacemaking quality is like to make you feel more open to all points of view.

TMA: This the essence of what you're doing?

AI: I would say there are a few things that can come out of this. The most important, one that's becoming more and more clear, is certainly this that we're talking about. If you need to draw upon the strengths of any of the types beside your own, something that does not come as naturally, you can access it by doing the movement meditation that we create in the workshop. That's certainly a big part of it.

The other thing that's interesting is we tend to be so attached to who we are to our egos. It's important in the process of personal growth to really let go of our ego, especially our fixations. In other words, why do I have to be so hooked into this emotional murk, or whatever. Many teachers say, Well, just observe it and let go; once you see it, you can just let go of it. It's not always that easy. Would that it were! That's a good step, but I think the movement work is less habitual. We don't have the kind of habits in that realm yet that we have in the way we interact in the world.

If in the movement work you're doing what the fixation would be, then you're doing the unhealthy Two. The healthy Two would be the caring embrace, the average Two -- we go through our descriptions and come up with movement words for the average Two . . . let's call that a "smothering hover." In the same person when they're unhealthy, let's translate those descriptions into movement words and call it "a clutching choke," choking themselves or choking others with this nurturing and this hovering quality. When you've done your fixation, to physically catch yourself choking yourself, the air, the space -- to catch yourself and notice that you're doing it, to feel what it's like in your muscles to do it, and then simply stop, let go and resolve yourself into a neutral standing position.

TMA: I like this. All too many modalities stay up in the mind.

AI: The Enneagram is often called a bridge between psychology and spirituality. I think to have that bridge, you need to do something that engages the body so that you combine the body, the mind and the spirit. EnneaMotion is an important aspect, I think, of being able to do that.

I think it's important for us to realize that we have all nine types in us, and that when we need to, the movement work enables you to draw upon any of the strengths of any of those types.

Andrea Isaacs leads workshops in which participants explore the inner feeling state of the Enneagram types, bypassing ego and tapping directly into the instinctive intelligence of the body. To subscribe to the Enneagram Monthly which Andrea Isaacs writes and edits, and for information about dates and locations of workshops, write to 117 Sweetmilk Creek Road, Troy, NY 12180; phone (518) 179-4444; fax (518) 279-3019.

Next Article