The story behind New Equations and its co-founders, Alan Sheets and Barbara Tovey, is a study in openness and curiosity, as well as some moments of pure magic. The process is multi-faceted and complex. Although this history is brief, and does not present all pieces of the puzzle, it still provides a useful overview and context for those who are curious about New Equations.
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You can click on the individual links below to read the History chapter by chapter, or scroll down to read it straight through on this page.
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1. Study of the Enneagram – Is there a way to be positive?
2. Meetings with Remarkable Men – Is movement a clue?
3. The Chakras – Any relationship?
4. Type-Specific Study Groups – Are people really that different?
5. Expressions of Strength – What can be seen in a face?
6. World Religions – What makes them different?
7. New Equations – How do you talk about a body-based system?
8. Ancient Egypt – Is this a discovery or rediscovery? What is so special about ‘nine’?
9. The Parliament of World Religions – Do you need to go halfway around the world?
10. The Movement Centers – Why do we all move so differently?
11. Tao Te Ching – What is the significance of 81 chapters?
12. Body Resonant Music – At what frequencies does the body resonate?
13. Egypt Training – What more can Egypt tell us?
14. 2010 – Is it possible to awaken all nine?
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The story begins back in 1986, when Alan serendipitously came across a sheet of paper about a psychological behavior model called the enneagram that listed nine types of people. The paper contained a one or two sentence description of each type from which Alan concluded he was type number 5. However, because what he read appeared incomplete, and it did not help him determine other people’s types, he threw it away.
1. Study of the Enneagram – Is there a way to be positive?
In 1990, the year they were married, Alan and Barbara read The Enneagram written by Helen Palmer. Alan realized that this was related to what he had seen in brief some four years earlier. Thanks to the author’s presentation of the energetic nature of the nine types, Alan and Barbara were able to pull out their underlying essence and the enneagram system began to make sense to them. (See footnote for enneagram definition.)
They noticed that the book featured negative aspects of personality called ‘fixations’. So, they set to work to create a new enneagram model with a positive perspective. They focused only on what made a person feel happy and the ways in which they said they brought love to the world.
With this new energetic understanding of the types Alan and Barbara began to type people by interviewing them and observing how they responded to questions. For each person the questions were spontaneously determined depending on how the individual responded.
With a previous background in scientific research, Alan wanted to bring rigor and robustness to their new enneagram model. They organized a study group in the summer of 1993 that was open to the community and comprised of friends, and friends of friends. All participants were typed using their new model. From the study groups they gathered more information about how each type viewed reality. Alan and Barbara focused on the words they spoke and the energy they brought to these words. Their long-term goal was to find a way for people to get along better. It was not long before they realized that this system had a possible application to the world at large.
At this time Alan and Barbara owned a physical therapy clinic where they specialized in movement and neuromuscular reeducation, as well as soft tissue and joint mobilization. They successfully treated people with serious physical problems and injuries who other therapists and doctors were unable to help. They used therapy modalities that did not apply any force, such as Aston Kinetics, the Feldenkrais Method, and biofeedback.
As we shall soon see, their interest in the physical body, how it moves, and the practice of not using force, proved to be vital to the development of New Equations.
The first piece of a puzzle had fallen into place.
2. Meetings with Remarkable Men – Is movement a clue?
The study group was popular and still going strong in September of 1994. Alan and Barbara were gathering more and more useful information about the nine types. People were able to use their insights to help make sense out of their lives, and Alan and Barbara were able to communicate better with their clients at work, as well.
They delved deeper into the history and origins of the enneagram. While attending the 1st International Enneagram Association conference held on the Stanford University campus, Alan and Barbara saw a movie entitled Meetings With Remarkable Men, about the life of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. G. I. Gurdjieff is believed to be the person who introduced the enneagram to the West. Toward the end of the movie there are several captivating dance and movement sequences that were choreographed by G. I. Gurdjieff and said to be associated with the enneagram.
There was general speculation by those who studied the enneagram that it might have come from the Sufi tradition, and movement plays an important role in Sufi culture. Alan and Barbara wondered if they might be able to identify additional physical expressions of the enneagram, which up to that time they understood was an exclusively psychological model. They wanted to explore this possibility so Alan called Kathleen Speeth, the person who presented the movie and whose parents had also lived with G. I. Gurdjieff. He asked if she would teach them the dances. She declined, so they had to find another way to answer their question.
Alan received a black belt in Aikido in 1978, a martial art that is unique because it teaches people to interact with no force. At the next study group he and Barbara showed the dance sequences from the movie. Watching again, Alan was inspired to try a simple martial arts warm-up exercise with participants. He asked volunteers to walk toward him while he placed a hand on their chest and resisted their movement forward. The results were surprising.
Only one woman was able to respond like a martial artist because she was the only person who had previous martial art training. Everyone else tried to do the exercise by moving in ways that were very strange to Alan. His attention was drawn to one woman in particular as she tried to use the lower part of her body: her hips had come so far forward of her upper body that it looked like she might fall over backward. As he tried to make sense out of what he was seeing, it was almost like a video game began playing in his head – lots of different circuits were lighting up. He realized that people who they had classified as the same type were moving in a similar unusual way. He quickly compared his observation with everything else he knew, and thought that if it held up, this was something important about humanity that people did not yet know. There appeared to be a one-to-one correlation between the way people had been typed and the way they moved their bodies. Nothing Alan had ever heard, seen, or read, suggested people were physically different in this way.
Three weeks later at their next study group, Alan tried a different variation of this Aikido exercise. As the group watched, Alan met Barbara hand to hand and slowly began pushing. Her job was to resist the push without pushing back. Alan slowly pushed harder and harder, always making sure Barbara could handle the pressure. After a couple of minutes, he was pushing with most of his strength when suddenly everything shifted. He felt an energetic pulse emanate from Barbara’s body and it hit his body with so much intensity that he was thrown back over ten feet. It created a very pleasant feeling that reminded him of magical throws he experienced in Aikido when he had been thrown by someone without being touched. Seeing Alan’s body fly backwards shocked everyone in the room. Alan was able to reproduce this throw with Barbara and with other people who tried it.
For three months Alan continued to experiment with anyone willing to participate; and Barbara, with a new baby in her arms, watched and reported the physical responses she observed. They found that by using variations of this exercise they were able to bring to a participant’s body a unique strength, beauty and physicality that was undeniable. Nine postures of strength began to emerge based on how people needed to position themselves in order to find a comfortable way to be strong. They saw that each type could be clearly correlated to a defined posture of strength.
They also began to isolate specific locations in the body where energy felt particularly strong. For example, the energy for type 5 seemed to come through the top of the head; type 6 seemed to come from the chest; and type 4 from the abdomen, and so on.
These discoveries marked a major breakthrough. They illuminated a whole new direction for research and study group exploration.
By December of 1994 all nine postures of strength had been discovered and Alan and Barbara realized they had developed a new way of typing that was based on a physical process. Only the body’s physical response needed to be considered to identify a person’s type — the interview process was no longer necessary. When Alan and Barbara body-typed people whom they had previously typed using their interview method, both approaches almost always produced the same result.
They looked for but were unable to find any other system that recognized the physical differences in humans that they had discovered. Although they could not yet explain their findings, these caused them to make a significant change in direction. Their focus shifted to the physical body.
They began working with a wider range of individuals and in May of 1995 they named their work The Enneagram of the Body. That month they also began teaching workshops for their local community and published their first article in the August issue of the Enneagram Monthly.
The frame of the jigsaw puzzle was established.
3. The Chakras – Any relationship?
Alan and Barbara were asked by students several times if their work was related to the chakra system identified in the Hindu religion. At the time, they knew almost nothing about chakras, and for this reason they had not considered them in their research. Also there were nine types in their system and only seven major chakras, creating an inconsistency.
In the Fall of 1995, while in the pleasant reverie of cranial bodywork, a correlation crystallized for Barbara. Even without knowledge about the chakras or where they were located, she realized that the chakras and the energetically strong regions of the body they were identifying did indeed correlate. She rushed home to research the chakras.
Alan and Barbara were able to quickly confirm the overlap between the location of the seven major chakras and the places where energy was strongest for seven of the nine types. They initially believed that the energy centers for the two remaining types, 3 and 9, were associated with the 4th chakra located in the center of the sternum. In March of 1998 they discovered that there were, in fact, two additional major chakras. They pinpointed their locations: the energy center for type 3 was located at the top of the sternum and the energy center for type 9 was found to be in the back between the shoulder blades.
They read that it is commonly believed that the seven major chakras function in a hierarchical manner, with increasing importance the higher up in the body the chakra is positioned; in other words, the energy of the chakra at the top of the head is revered and the energy of the one located at the base of the spine is often considered less important. However, Alan and Barbara had not experienced a hierarchy of any kind in their discoveries.
Their research brought to light many chakra practices and attributes that did not match up with their personal experience. So, while there appeared to be some minimal similarity between their experience and what they had read about the chakras, their conclusion was that they had discovered information not yet known about the chakra system and that they were engaging with these energies in new ways.
The chakra system had unexpectedly found a place in the puzzle.
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4. Type-Specific Study Groups – Are people really that different?
In September of 1997 Alan and Barbara began to hold study groups for each type. There were between three and eight people in each group. Their goal was to explore what happened when people of the same type got together and talked about what was important to them.
When participants first arrived, everyone socialized in typical ways. Alan and Barbara observed no unexpected behavior. After about fifteen minutes, however, a transformation occurred. Bodies relaxed into a different mode. In spite of the fact that most of the participants were meeting each other for the first time, they became so in synch that they frequently finished each others sentences. They understood one another because their body language, experience of reality, and energy were the same.
Barbara and Alan found it challenging to communicate with people in a group whose types were different than their own because a cohesive connection had occurred that did not include them. Frequently, their questions were met with dead silence and blank stares. People in a group would shift into a deeper experience of their own type and from this place questions from a person who was a different type did not make sense. So, Alan and Barbara had to use their knowledge of what the had learned about the types to reframe their questions.
Partners of participants who came to watch were astonished. They said they had never seen or heard their partner act in the way they observed in the study group. Because their types were not the same, they had trouble understanding the conversations.
Alan and Barbara saw that people were more different from each other than they had realized, and they concluded that people rarely get the chance to express their true nature or develop their differences.
Another surprising puzzle piece fell into place.
5. Expressions of Strength – What can be seen in a face?
From childhood through her early twenties, Barbara was a sketch artist and spent much of her time drawing faces and figures. She loved to capture the essence of a person in the way their hand was positioned or the way energy came through their eyes. So whenever she watched Alan work, she was fascinated because a student’s face would change and shift from an ordinary expression to an extraordinary one that showed great depth and beauty, and yet was predictable according to type.
One day in February of 1998, as Alan and Barbara were discussing a typing from that evening’s study group, she commented on the facial expression and that she had not seen what she expected in the participant’s face. Stunned, Alan’s eyes locked on her and he intently asked, “What expression?” Barbara explained she was referring to the expression that goes with each posture of strength . Alan replied, “I didn’t know there were expressions! Why didn’t you tell me?” She answered that she thought they were “obvious”. What followed were many hours traveling back and forth from the library down the street, sorting through books and thousands of photographs until they found a few examples of all nine facial expressions of strength (1,2,3,4, 5,6, 7, 8, 9) that they could use as teaching tools.
Barbara designed nine 20 x 40 inch display boards and posted the images. While assembling these boards, she unexpectedly became aware that intensity was increasing in the room. She stopped working and looked up to see if she could tell what was going on, and then emotion began to overwhelm her. Feeling excited but cold and shaky, the intensity continued to increase as she taped pictures on the last few boards. She placed the completed boards in order 1 – 9; they circled half of their small living room. As she looked into the eyes of the people in the pictures, a power that felt alive came through them, connected with her and time collapsed. Barbara needed to sit down as energy from the universe flooded into the room. Ancient memories seemed to tug at her and she felt that there was something important to remember.
A more colorful piece had been added to the picture.
In December of 1998 Alan and Barbara changed the name of their new paradigm from The Enneagram of the Body to New Equations to reflect the new relationships they were discovering.
6. World Religions – What makes them different?
In April of 1999 Alan’s interest was piqued when he heard a radio interview with Huston Smith, in which he discussed an updated edition of his book, The World’s Religions. Something about the information Huston Smith shared made Alan think there could be a link between religion and the nine energies. He bought the original edition, a fairly thorough secular analysis that succeeded in presenting the nine major world religions without judgment or ranking.
Once again Alan and Barbara delved into a new area of research. Neither had in-depth knowledge about any of the world’s religions. They studied the history of religions and found that the spiritual basis for each was very similar to what people of the various types reported was true about their own spirituality. When information was available about the individuals who inspired the development of a world religion (for example: Confucius, Buddha, Jesus) it was clear that they brought to people spiritual wisdom that matched what Alan and Barbara knew about the types. The religions appeared to correlate one-to-one with the nine types.
Within a few weeks Alan and Barbara met with Huston Smith at his home in Berkeley, California, to discuss his understanding of the various religions and share their findings. While he said he saw value in their discoveries, and that his experience of feeling the energy activated in his body felt right when Alan gave him the experience of his posture of strength, he declined their offer to do research together as he was involved in other projects and felt he was too old to take on something new.
Not only had Alan and Barbara discovered that there was a correlation between the nine energy centers and nine of the world’s major religions, this also brought clarity to the reason why these world religions are fundamentally different from one another. The foundation for each religion appears to be based on an essential but different aspect of human spirituality.
What had first begun as a psychological tool they were developing and then became a physical paradigm, now had a significant spiritual basis. Alan and Barbara had not anticipated this. Their unrelenting curiosity and investigation had uncovered something much bigger than they had ever imagined: a new understanding of the basis for human spirituality. This was a rather large puzzle piece.
7. New Equations – How do you talk about a body-based system?
Alan and Barbara realized that the physical expression of the nine energy centers was the foundation for the enneagram. The enneagram had lost this physical component and had become a group of various psychological models, instead. They still considered the enneagram a powerful tool, but saw it was limited because it did not include its physical origins.
So, in August of 1999, in order to more accurately include the spiritual nature of their work, they replaced the term type with soultype and began calling the physical typing process soultyping. They debated about adding the word ‘soul’ because it means such different things to different people. Yet, the spiritual purity of the soultyping process made them realize that although they were doing a physical practice, there was a force greater than the physicality of the body at work. ‘Soul’ seemed an appropriate term because it describes the eternal and spiritual part of a human being. The body-based system discovered by Alan and Barbara had now provided a key to unlocking the spiritual nature of humanity.
8. Ancient Egypt – Is this a discovery or rediscovery? What is so special about ‘nine’?
Alan and Barbara thought they had perhaps discovered something new . . . or had they rediscovered it?
A television special called The Mystery of the Sphinx inspired Barbara to purchase John Anthony West’s book, Serpent in the Sky. Upon reading the book she noticed surprising parallels between descriptions of the function of the numbers 1 through 9 as understood by the Ancient Egyptians, and what she and Alan had learned about the nine soultypes. Further, John Anthony West referenced intriguing research carried out by R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz at the Luxor Temple (referred to by the Ancient Egyptians as the Southern Sanctuary).
In the Summer of 1999 R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz’ book outlining his research, The Temple of Man, was translated into English from its original French allowing Alan and Barbara to more deeply delve into the Egyptian mysteries. They learned more about how human spirituality is expressed in the physical world.
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz proved to be an illuminating expert because he had spent fifteen years in Egypt studying the Luxor Temple, which he referred to as The Temple of Man because its architectural layout correlated with the structure of the human body. Not only had he taken meticulous measurements, he had achieved something which is rare in historians – he related to Ancient Egypt as if he himself were an Ancient Egyptian, rather than through the lens of someone living in the modern world. The result was a much deeper understanding that avoided comparison and judgment. He documented a spiritual way of being that introduced a broader perspective on spirituality.
Alan and Barbara found information that showed how number and spirituality function hand in hand, explaining a numbering system that might seem mysterious. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz in The Temple of Man, p. 506, described it this way:
The universe is nothing but number, because number is,
in its neutrality, the definition of the function of activity.
The Ancient Egyptians:
- used the numbers 1 – 9 to represent nine fundamental forces of nature (Neters).
- defined the whole as The Nine.
- used hieroglyphs for The Nine that showed nine flags blowing in the wind; in other words, forces that cannot be seen but that have an effect on the physical world.
- believed The Nine belonged together and were not intended to function separately.
The Ancient Egyptians represented the source of creation with the number 1. They believed the source of creation would now and forever be indemonstrable, indivisible, unimaginable and universal. They used an image of the Eye of Horus as a way to convey the relationship between humanity and the source of creation. The Eye of Horus was a figure that was composed of the hieroglyphs for the following six fractions: ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64. When you add these fractions, the sum is 63/64ths. The fraction 63/64 served a symbolic purpose. This fraction is just short of 1 and shows that people can approach but never know the source of creation.
9. The Parliament of World Religions – Do you need to go halfway around the world?
Only Alan knew how to push on someone so that their body became stronger than their muscular strength. No one else, not even Barbara, knew how to use their body in a way that enhanced the spiritual energy coming through another person’s body. This was true until December 1999.
After Alan and Barbara became aware of the correlation between the world’s religions and the soultypes, a new opportunity opened up. While introducing their work to the staff at the San Francisco office for the United Religions Initiative in August 1999, they were told about the upcoming Parliament of World’s Religions that was to be held in Cape Town, South Africa. They were encouraged to make a presentation, even though their application would be submitted after the deadline. Their proposal was accepted and by October they had received enough donations that they were able to travel halfway around the globe to present their work.
In addition to a New Equations workshop, Alan and Barbara also set up a booth where they offered soultyping. They soultyped people from all over the world. Immersion in this community was a rich and exhilarating experience.
Then magic happened. A woman who said she was a radio personality from Australia breezed into the room where Alan and Barbara were working with many others who were manning their booths, as well. She announced to Barbara that as she was walking down the hallway outside the exhibit room she was unexpectedly directed by (other dimensional) guides to come into the room and give Barbara a message. With sweeping gestures of her arm she included all of the nine posters of facial expressions of strength (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) that were displayed on the wall. She declared that she did not know who Barbara was, what all these photos were for, or what the work was all about, but said she was compelled to come in. She said she knew that what she was doing might seem strange, so she apologized for the surprise, and asked Barbara if she still wanted to hear what she had to say.
She told Barbara that she was psychic and that she was in communication with guides she called the Prophets. She said, “They are here, and they want you to know how very important this is”, and she motioned to everything in the booth. She told Barbara that what she and Alan were bringing to humanity was essential to the welfare of humanity. She said there was another message she did not understand, but that she would pass on. She said, “They know not what they do.” Barbara looked up and saw light streaming into the room, bathing everyone in all of the booths with compassion and love.
Barbara had been trying, like many people, to figure out why there was so much violence, fear and evil in the world. She had had many experiences with both human and non-humans who had tried to control and manipulate her. She had fought diligently to protect herself from being controlled and manipulated. When she got this message, in an instant it became abundantly clear to her that instead of struggling, moving toward the light was the only way to deal with dark forces. And she realized that an essential part of that process was forgiveness of others because they really do not know what they do.
When Alan and Barbara returned from South Africa they discovered that Barbara knew how to soultype.
Another piece dropped into the jigsaw.
10. The Movement Centers – Why do we all move so differently?
As an Aston Kinetics practitioner, Barbara was trained to be attentive to the ways in which people move. She watched body movement for many hours a week and had years of experience. In order to evaluate and treat complex physical injuries and retrain dysfunctional movement patterns for clients who came to their physical therapy clinic, she needed to reassess every client’s movement pattern at least four or more times per treatment.
On a daily basis she watched clients walk, turn, move from sitting to standing, and lift objects, etc. Professional dancers showed her the dance steps that were not working for them; golfers swung their clubs, bicyclists rode their bikes, swimmers showed her their strokes and people demonstrated their running styles. Her hands-on experience led to her ability to identify movement deviations and variations. She knew that even a slight change in a pattern could mean the difference between pain and no pain.
By November of 2002 Barbara had spent seven years teaching New Equations programs. Watching thousands of people in movement during these programs resulted in a new revelation. She realized that not only were people strongest in one of the nine postures, they also appeared to initiate movement from the location where their energy was strongest. They even exaggerated movement at these locations when they wanted to express themselves with more emphasis.
This insight made it easier to soultype. Alan and Barbara became increasingly facile at discovering a person’s type without a personal meeting. There were times when it was as easy to see which energy center a person was using as it was to see the color of their hair.
11. Tao Te Ching – What is the significance of 81 chapters?
In January of 2003, while investigating the 2,500 year old Taoist classic the Tao Te Ching in preparation for a workshop for Soultype 9 (Taoism is the religion that emerged from Soultype 9 wisdom), Alan noticed that the first chapter seemed to be communicating the essence of Soultype 1. He then read the second chapter, found it to be energetically different from the first and communicating the essence of Soultype 2. He then turned to the end of the book and saw that there were 81 chapters. 81 is 9 squared. This seemed much more than a coincidence.
He wondered, could the Tao Te Ching contain messages for all soultypes, nine chapters dedicated to each one? It became clear as he and Barbara researched and compared translations that chapter 1 was about Soultype 1, chapter 2 was about Soultype 2, and so on. Chapter 10 addressed Soultype 1 again, and the sequence continued right through to 81.
This was an exciting development because up until this point in time, except for the connection to Ancient Egypt and the nine Neters, Alan and Barbara had been unable to find evidence that anyone else knew about the nine soultypes. This lack of evidence was surprising to them because the existence of the soultypes was so easily demonstrated. The Tao Te Ching seemed to definitively show that others had also known about the existence of the soultypes and their role in humanity’s spiritual nature.
Alan and Barbara immediately acquired many translations of the text and read through them to see if the Tao Te Ching consistently conveyed the soultype wisdom and, if so, they wanted to find the best translation. After much study, they determined that while it did seem clear that the Tao Te Ching was written about the nine soultypes, more information about their wisdom might be revealed if the Tao Te Ching were to be translated by someone who knew the subject well. So, feeling as though they were on a treasure hunt, they undertook the task of translating the Tao Te Ching in hopes of bringing even more wisdom to light.
Entitled The Way of the Action of the Soul, they describe their translation as a guide to a spiritual way of life that includes all nine spiritual energies. The lessons are as applicable today as they were 2,500 years ago.
12. Body Resonant Music – At what frequencies does the body resonate?
In the summer of 2007, a chance comment made to Alan and Barbara during a retreat in the Grand Canyon where they were teaching prompted a meeting with Wes Bateman. Barbara looked into the work that Wes Bateman was doing and found that he had discovered nine frequencies that he believed had the potential to be particularly helpful to humanity. She wondered if there could be a connection with the nine energy centers. She immediately followed up.
Wes Bateman had experimented with three of the nine frequencies by working with friends who used them to compose music. People who listened to this music reported that it was particularly soothing. Wes Bateman also observed that if music in these frequencies was played in the vicinity of plants it would help them grow and thrive, even in the extreme desert environment where he lived. Alan, Barbara, and two of their students went to a recording studio to compose music and experiment with the frequencies. Based on sensations in their bodies, Alan and Barbara experienced a one-to-one correlation between the frequencies and the nine energy centers.
They continued to listen to music played in the new frequencies and regularly played it for the New Equations Professional Training Program students. Music played where the note A was set to 440 cycles per second (which is today’s standard setting) did not resonate well with the body compared to when the pitch was adjusted to each of the nine frequencies Wes Bateman had discovered. Then, the music seemed to directly affect the body in a way that felt and sounded much better.
Alan and Barbara converted more and more music and witnessed a shift in body awareness by those who listened to it. The music played at these pitches helped stimulate the energy centers and begin the process of activating them so that the spiritual energies could begin to flow.
The movement centers, wisdom from the Tao Te Ching, and the body-resonant music, all added new dimensions to the jigsaw. Alan and Barbara looked forward to what would come next.
13. Egypt Training – What more can Egypt tell us?
In January of 2009 two groups of New Equations students led by Alan and Barbara traveled to Egypt with John Anthony West as their Egyptologist and guide. This period in New Equations’ development was another time of significant change. Above all else, it became clear to Alan and Barbara, from witnessing the relationships and types of connections their students made with each other, that just knowing one’s own soultype was invaluable but at the same time limiting. Alan and Barbara realized it was most important that people focus more attention on the other eight soultypes than they do on their own. They saw that to be complete as a human being, a person needed all nine energy centers activated. Once again, a new awareness changed the direction of New Equations.
Immersed in the energy of Egypt, what it means to live in relationship to the whole became more clear. It had always been a great mystery as to how the Egyptians were able to build such massive structures and create such outstanding art so long ago. After going to Egypt, it became apparent to Alan and Barbara that the Ancient Egyptians were able to do this because they could sometimes function from the place of the whole, instead of from a place of individuality. In other words, they had all nine energy centers active.
Alan and Barbara determined that when people have all nine activated they are able to take all people into account. Therefore, a community can work together in a way that doesn’t often happen in contemporary society. Most of the time in today’s world people are only able to function from the perspective of their own soultype, so they are missing 8/9ths of what is possible. The Ancient Egyptians were able to more effectively use what they had to create something of great and long lasting beauty. Although they did regress to their individual personas, as is evident by the wars and killing that were also prevalent, they were able to occasionally rise above that to create their monuments and artwork.
Alan and Barbara had always envisioned that a time would come when people would be able to draw on all nine energies – they saw this as humanity’s destiny – but they thought it would not come about for a very long time. However, their visit to the last known ancient civilization to use this knowledge revealed a secret, the essence of which was still palpable in the strong energy of this dusty region: that activating all nine energy centers in one’s body is a key to human spirituality and may be a way for people to find the connection and understanding that they crave.
Their magical journey to Egypt made possible the ability to teach others to awaken and activate all nine energy centers. Bringing the possibility of activating all nine energy centers to humanity became Alan and Barbara’s new focus. In September of 2009, soon after their return to the USA, several New Equations students demonstrated for the first time that they could self-activate the nine energies in their bodies.
The newest piece of the puzzle was in place.
14. 2010 – Is it possible to awaken all nine?
Since the Spring of 1995 Alan and Barbara have taught workshops in many places around the world. Each program, whether for the general public or for a business or corporation, was well received and gave people insight into themselves and their relationships. For as successful as they were, Alan and Barbara saw that to make all nine energy centers available to humanity, a new kind of workshop needed to be designed.
Awakening the Nine Within is this new workshop. Presented by New Equations Certified Teachers who have learned to activate all nine energy centers in their bodies, participants are introduced to the totality of humanity in a way that gives them a better opportunity to further develop their spiritual nature. New Equations teachers present humanity’s spiritual nature as the most important focus for a human being, and New Equations offers a way to learn to do this through body-based practices that develop one’s relationship with the nine energy centers. From this workshop a lifetime process is set in motion that includes an increasing ability to bring spiritual energy to the planet for the benefit of all life.
Awakening the Nine Within workshops are available in the USA, Europe and Japan.
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New Equations is organic.
It is always changing, growing, evolving.
If this were not so, it would not be New Equations.
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Footnote
1.The enneagram is a psychological model of fixations, i.e., nine personality issues that people need to work on. Your fixation identifies your enneagram type. There are many enneagram psychological models, and each has been developed by a different person. There is limited consistency between models because people are typed differently depending on whose model is used. The word enneagram comes from Greek and means nine sided figure.