Enneagram "Integration" simplified
Taking a closer look..
I decided to simplify it and create a clearer schematic.
If you would like to join a free seminar about this on Saturday 30 May 2026 at SAST 16:00 click on the button below to diarise it.
Free of charge, all welcome!
To start with: The Basic definition in Neuroscience
In a nutshell, according to Dr. Daniel Siegel, psychological and psycho-spiritual integration can be understood as the process of achieving wellbeing, healing and psycho-spiritual growth through the ongoing process of differentiation and linking.
Differentiation allows you to recognize and honor specific aspects of your experience, such as your bodily sensations, your personal memories, or your unique relationships, real-time. From an Enneagram perspective, this could be Head thoughts and quality of awareness, Heart impressions and Gut sensations, for example.
Linking occurs when you then link all of the distinct parts or your experience that you have noticed into a coherent real-time sense of your embodied holistic being. You link them together as an organism, a spiritual being and a living adult, experiencing them all as part of a functional whole, or what ACT therapy calls an “existential gestalt”.
Research shows that by connecting everything from your internal physical states and emotional history to your social connections, and even your sense of place in the world, you move toward a state of well-being where you can meet life with more clarity, flexibility, energy and stability.
Integration also means building greater and greater inner capacity for real-time differentiation and linking.
As we integrate more and more often, our capacity for ongoing real-time Integration grows.
The Enneagram View
The Enneagram tells us that Integration happens through what it calls “the Cultivation of the Inner Observer”. This is a vast and subtle topic.1
Below is a schematic view of of what the journey of Integration looks like, and results in, here from an Enneagram perspective. The underlying diagram is drawn from Naranjo’s work and supplemented with a few of my notes.
It is an “upward” journey from Ego to Essence, Vice to Virtue, and Fixations to Holy Ideas.
Take another look at the schematic..
It’s a lot to take in, I know. Without talking through all of the Enneagram details and the very many dimensions of the Enneagram involved, and how it plays out in our Types, let’s look at one example on Integration, just to get the picture.
Let’s apply the concept of Integration as differentiation and linking to the instincts, to get an idea of what Integration means in this one area of the human experience, according to the Enneagram:
In the image above it is immediately noticeable that one of the areas of Integration, as we move “up” from Ego to Essence, occurs is in the Enneagram Instincts. The red circle at the bottom symbolises non-integrated Instincts. The red circle at the top is when they are integrated.
Differentiating the Instincts
As we heal and grow, our awareness of our instincts becomes more differentiated.
I like to think of differentiation as an increase in the refinement and subtlety of our awareness of all that is arising to us and within us in the present moment.
We feel our instincts as forces driving our feelings, thoughts and actions. We notice the urgency of our organic impulses and drives. We notice our fears as they arise in our gut and the constrictions of our chest. We notice areas of preoccupation and our zones of neglect.
Integrating the Instincts
As we integrate we are able to notice and manage our compulsions from the position of the Inner Observer. Note: this is not the Superego or metacognition.
We notice and explore what is arising, here and now, with compassion and curiosity. We are an Inner Home to ourself and all our experience. All of it.
As we integrate, our instinctual drives become more connected with our context in the moment, preventing the most fixated or distorted instinct from stealing the show - usually in the form of a protective Inner Part taking centre stage. Our Type-specific defensive strategy.
What other forms of Integration are in the Enneagram, apart from the Instincts?
Other forms of Enneagram integration include Integration between the three centres of Intelligence (Head, Heart, Body), the Wings, the Lines and Arrows, and the Triads (Harmonics, etc). The Enneagram also guides us towards an ultimate Integration of the gifts, strengths, Essence Qualities, Virtues and Holy Ideas of all Nine Types!
“Domains of Integration” in Neuroscience
Integration changes the structure and functioning of our brain, our sense of inner organisation, and our way of living in our own body minute to minute.
Dr. Daniel Siegel identifies nine domains of Integration. This is a nice substantive interview you can watch. Watch at around minute 54 to hear about the nine domains.
As we mature psycho-spiritually we begin to experience the ultimate Integration, what he (neuroscientist and Enneagram teacher Dr. Daniel Siegel) calls “Transpirational Integration”.
Join me in exploring
If you are getting ‘curiouser and curiouser’ and would like to come to a Community of Practice learning gathering where I explain Integration for Enneagram beginners and make it really accessible and practical for you and your clients, please sign up here:
In this upcoming Community of Practice session I will be linking the Enneagram teachings to the Neurobiology of Emotions and the game-changing developmental trauma research that has led to the de-centering of cognitive and traditional talk therapy approaches to facilitating integration. Spiritual traditions, unsurprisingly as ever, talked about this long ago. We will touch on these too.
You can watch recordings, download slides and diarise future sessions HERE. Visit my Learnworld for resources, downloadable slides, and to access recording of past sessions. This session’s recording will be posted there too, if you are unable to join us.
Love,
Ingrid
P.S. Don’t miss out on upcoming courses!
Chat about them by booking a 30 min Course Chemistry session.
1. The Enneagram for Helping Professionals and Coaches
2. The Enneagram in Team Effectiveness Work
I look forward to connecting and exploring whether either of these are a good fit for you, based on where you are on your Enneagram professional development journey.
Daily prayer:
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“I am grateful for this new day.
I embrace impermanence.
I cultivate compassion for myself and others.
I walk the path of Wisdom.
I am at peace with myself.”
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ppp.s I don’t use AI so sorry if I missed some typos.
My Supervisor warned me, as I was researching The Cultivation of the Inner Observer for my Doctoral dissertation, “This is a written document, not your spiritual journey. If you do not submit this year you will not be allowed to register again.” After five years I had still barely scratched the surface.
Thanks for this Ingrid, I love the visual and the important reminder that the system is intended for integration not just identification. Sharing your work. I am so grateful to be connected to you and all your work (going to the next level with the Enneagram).