Who: I work with 9 Lifeenergies, AS in Norway and Body of 9, Inc., in Montana.
What: We help people to move forward in their lives by guiding them to harness their passion. This allows them to live into and fulfill their dreams. It is a process of personal transformation facilitated by personally practiced embodied consciousness. We show people how to discover and access the gifts inherent in their animating life energy. Then we provide the structure needed to sustain the personal growth and transformation process.
Discover your essence. Access the intelligence of your heart. Strengthen your ability to rely on your heart’s wisdom. Become your higher self.
Why: By nurturing your innate nature you can actively impact your body and your life in positive ways. The practices allow for a greater ease in connection with others. This is especially true today, as social media and increasing access to video-screen-displays can degrade one’s confidence in connecting and conversing in-person with others.
These two organizations are focused on conscious embodiment and provide numerous practices that enhance intuition, authenticity, relational capacity and ease of accessing peak performance. 9 Life Energies offers individual, group and residential opportunities for those who desire inside-out changes in their life. Body of 9 offer workshops, speaking and live or online identification events.
How: There are nine life energies, that is, there are nine different forms of life animating energy that is evident in human beings. Everyone has one of the nine energy forms animating their body. Without our animating life energy, we would be dead. As long as we are alive, our bodies hold our life energy.
The nine life energies generate nine physiologically distinct body forms in humans. The form we possess is discernible in our posture, facial expressions, arm, hand, and whole body movements, as well as in the sound of our voices, the way we speak and the way we related to others. Each of the nine life energies supports a set of innate strengths and gifts that move us towards our life purpose.
P. D. Ouspensky wrote about this essential core energy in his book, The Fourth Way. Here is an excerpt from the book published in 1957:
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Essence is what is born in you, personality is what you acquire. Essence is your own, personality is not your own. All man’s inner life, all his perceptions and reactions are divided into those two parts. There are certain things which are born with you, such as certain physical features, state of health, certain kinds of predispositions, inclinations, tendencies and so on. They belong to essence. Personality is what you acquire in the course of your life: views, opinions, words. It is easier to understand the difference between essence and personality if you find some examples. Although the two are always mixed in life, it is easier to distinguish personality and essence in other people than in oneself, because personality changes very often with the change of conditions, but essence remains the same. This division is very important to understand, because many things that we speak about in man refer to essence, while others refer to personality.
Q. If essence is what we are born with, can it be added to? Can it increase?
A. Yes, but it can be done only if personality becomes educated and ceases to press upon essence. Personality is too heavy, too strong; it surrounds essence like a shell, so nothing can reach it directly, everything has to pass through personality. Essence cannot grow in these conditions, but if personality becomes more transparent, impressions and external influences will penetrate through it and reach essence, and then essence will begin to grow.
Q. So a strong personality prevents impressions from reaching one’s essence?
A. Yes, but what does a strong personality mean? It means a strong influence of what is not your own, of what you have acquired—other people’s words, other people’s views and theories. They can form such a thick crust round essence that nothing can penetrate it to reach you, to reach what you are.
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More on How: It takes study and regular practice to be able to discern which life energy another person possesses. The younger the student of 9 Life energies is the easier it is to learn and discern the differences in life energy in other people. Maybe this is because younger people have spent less time occupied by internal self-talk, thoughts and judgments.
Every human has the capacity to emulate each of the nine life energies. We are born with one of them dominant in our body. That is the one that animates and shapes our body as we age. It has been observed that identical twins look more and more different as they age. Their distinctly different life energy is the sculptor that makes the differences more and more easily discernible in identical twins as they age. Identical twins always have different life energies.
There are nine physical areas in the body associated with one of the nine life energies. With training and practice anyone can learn to embody the other non-dominant life energies in their body by focusing and practicing engaging the different areas of the body. Once some one has accomplished and practiced activating all nine life energies, it becomes significantly easier to discern the different life energy in those around us. Through the nine embodiment practices one can begin to create and feel the energetic resonance in another. Personal growth work is necessary along the journey of mastering activation of the other eight life energies. Certain patterns of behavior, traumatic experiences and negative attitudes appear in the process that require release, healing and resolution in order to begin to perceive the essence of another’s life energy.
I first learned about my life energy at the Coaches Training Institute’s leadership training program and went on to train for thirteen years with Alan Sheets and his wife Barbara Tovey who discovered these traits in human beings in collaborative study of the enneagram. They originally called the understanding, the Enneagram of the Body, and later New Equations® and the process of identification of a person’s essence was called Soultyping™. I continued my study and training, and now partner with Susan Bennett Fisher and her husband Martin Fisher, whose research added to the knowledge developed by New Equations®. Initially the Fishers called their version of this knowledge, 9 Energies®™ and now call it, the Body of 9®™. Susan and Martin have written the two books in English about the nine life energies. She refers to them as the nine Natural Numbers. Susan and Martin have worked for over twenty years studying, exploring and advanced the understanding of the nine physiological types of humans.
Morten Nygard has also written three books in Norwegian about the nine life. He trained with both Susan and I at at the New Equations’ School with Sheets and Tovey. In addition to facilitating international retreats with Morten, he and I are collaborating on revising a translation of his second book, 9LIVSENERGIER – NI NOKLER TIL ET RIKERE LIV (9 Life Energies – Nine Keys To A Richer Life) and training manual for 9 Lifeenergies students.
I consult and teach with both organizations and use this understanding in the process of coaching and counseling with my clients. It allows me to create rapport more quickly, to better understand the clients perspective and how to help them become the best versions of themselves.
Check out 9Lifeenergies.com or Bodyof9.com.