Past Programs: Classes

A sample of classes offered by Enneagram Portland, LLC

Monthly Intensives on the Nine Types

Will Hornyak performed at the monthly programs in 2006 program.

This is our most popular program, sometimes bringing out over forty people who find the Enneagram to be one of the most transformative tools for personal growth.  It is the core student community meeting time, with a participatory experience for every type each term.  This year we will explore how energies of the connecting points (sometimes call stress and security/relaxation points) provide each of us with tools and experiences for growth.  When we are doing well and when we are under stress, we may have access to the gifts and challenges of both our connecting points, often showing us our growing edge.  We’ll hear from participants themselves (a three-points panel) on how they experience and access these other points energies.  Meditations, teaching, live panel dialogue, questions and discussion.  All points participate in each session.

In one of the 2006 programs, professional storyteller Will Hornyak offered us another kind of narrative and oral tradition, specifically on Enneagram type and development.

“Storyteller par excellence! Takes listeners across a spiritual threshold…” The Oregonian newspaper.

Storyteller Will Hornyak draws from myths, legends, fables and folktales from many oral traditions around the world to educate, entertain and inspire. He has performed and offered workshops for the United States Forest Service, the Oregon Department of Human Resources, the Washington State Employers Council and at numerous schools, churches, saloons and worse.  Will teaches storytelling at Portland State University and Marylhurst University and performs throughout the United States.  For more information, please visit: his website.

If you focus on people’s foibles and not their qualities, you will find it difficult to find a single good person in the whole world.  There is no one who does not have shortcomings.  It is the human condition.   ~Lao Tzu

Focus of Panel Discussion	Additional Dialogue Participants
Type 8 Protector	Relating to Types 2 Giver and 5 Observer
Type 9 Mediator	Relating to Types 3 Performer and 6 Loyal Skeptic
Type 1 Perfectionist	Relating to Types 4 Romantic and 7 Epicure
Type 2 Giver	Relating to Types 8 Protector and 4 Romantic
Type 3 Performer	Relating to Types 9 Mediator and 6 Loyal Skeptic
Type 4 Romantic	Relating to Types 1 Perfectionist and 2 Giver
Type 5 Observer	Relating to Types 8 Protector and 7 Epicure
Type 6 Loyal Skeptic	Relating to Types 9 Mediator and 3 Performer
Type 7 Epicure	Relating to Types 1 Perfectionist and 5 Observer

Nine Months on the Subtypes: Exploring Our Core Instinctual Preferences for Self-Preservation, One-to-One Relating, and Survival in Social Systems

October 2009- June 2010  (2nd Monday nights)  7:15 to 9:15 pm
at Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union  1825 SW Broadway, 2nd Floor Browsing Lounge Room #238

After seven years, this core meeting time was the most popular program for the continuing student community.  It often drew over fifty Enneagram enthusiasts together at a time, for a dynamic evening that produces deeper understanding and greater compassion for the ways of others.

What was different about this year’s focus?
This advanced course examines each person’s individual preference for an instinctual strategy through which our enneatype’s energy is frequently channeled. One of these subtype strategies is well-developed, another seems to be neutral, and the third is often a shadowy realm that we avoid because it can make us feel unskilled or adolescent.   These survival strategies include a preference for either:

• self and material preservation,
• one-to-one relating,
• or navigating successfully through social systems.

In the world of nature, these preferences can be seen through a variety of basic survival strategies:

• Nesting, hunting, gathering and storing food, finding safe and secure places to sleep and stay warm.
• Mating rituals, attracting an other, bonding, choosing a companion for a season/life, showing your strength in competition.
• Navigating through pecking orders, recognition of who is alpha, influencing a tribe or a flock to migrate.

Frequently students of the Enneagram find that subtype preferences are more key to self discovery and better relationships than enneatypes alone!  This is frequently reported by couples where the partners are of different subtype.

Dale Rhodes will teach his perspectives on the Enneagram Subtypes/Instincts gained from his formal training with various Enneagram teachers through the years.  Teachings, small group exercises, videos and slides, and of course panels of people who share the same subtypes and types will be some of our methods of exploration.  As a volunteer naturalist, Dale is also interested in incorporating knowledge from the natural world, so he is co-facilitating some of the evenings with Naturalist Bonnie Shoffner.  Bonnie works full time for Metro Parks and Greenspaces and volunteers tirelessly worldwide for wildlife conservation and restoration.  She is an energized recruit to the Enneagram system and has extensive professional experience interpreting the natural world for a wide variety of students.  Bonnie will present examples of the instinctual preferences/subtypes from the world of nature.  We are also joined by transpersonal consultant Liz Bothwell, who will facilitate an educational and experiential evening on the Enneagram and Neuroscience.

This year is sure to be a rich experience in understanding our differences as human animals with distinct preferences for survival strategies and personality styles.  Please join us and bring a friend or friends with you!  Early registration is highly recommended.

November, December and January Sessions with professional wildlife specialist Bonnie L. Shoffner

I enjoy sharing my love of nature with others, especially children. I am a bird nerd and have a great love of wildlife and their habitats.  I am living my dream by restoring habitat, rehabilitating wildlife, and teaching environmental education to inspire people to have a personal relationship with nature and to become stewards.   I have been a wildlife rehabilitator for 15 years working with birds of prey and mammals and other native animals at the Audubon Wildlife Care Center in Portland. My local work includes working for the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Department with the endangered pygmy rabbit and volunteering at the Oregon Zoo.  I have done wildlife monitoring for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Metro Parks with birds, squirrels, frogs, and turtles.   I have been working with children in environmental education and in volunteer management for 10 years. I am a nationally certified interpretive guide, currently working with Metro Parks doing restoration with volunteer groups in our regional natural areas and parks. I enjoy storytelling as a way to learn and teach.

My international wildlife work includes working with drill monkeys, chimpanzees, and African Gray parrots in Nigeria, West Africa. I have also worked in Costa Rica with the endangered scarlet macaw and great green macaw parrots, wild native cats, 4 types of native long tailed monkeys, sloths, and sea turtles.

My past work included environmental cleanup work in Chicago and Denver and medical work with people in Ohio, Chicago, and Portland. I have worked locally with Metro, the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, the Columbia Slough Watershed Council, SOLV, and Ride Connection. I have been active in a stream group, Friends of Beaverton Creek, for 14 years. I have served on several nonprofit boards including Audubon Society of Portland, The Wetlands Conservancy, the Columbia Slough Watershed Council, and the Rock Creek Watershed Partners.