Posted on August 3rd, 2014 by micka002
The past three years I’ve been associated with the Deep Coaching Institute. First as a student, then as a mentor, and this past year as faculty-in-training. I always thought that I was learning to coach using the Enneagram. Learning to coach deeply with my clients. But just recently I realized that what I’ve really been
Posted on July 11th, 2014 by micka002
Today I discovered the source of pain that I’ve been living with for the past week. Tooth pain. I learned that I have a tooth with a very long and windy root with an abscess lingering at the very end. The pain will be rectified with a root canal. And this gave me pause to
Posted on July 8th, 2014 by micka002
Do we ever fully appreciate what our parents give us? It took my father’s death to reveal the many gifts and blessings he bestowed on me. Til his death, I had been oblivious to them. But since his death, my father has been with me more than when he was alive. The force of his
Posted on July 8th, 2014 by micka002
Why is it so hard to resist the temptation to pick scabs? Now that my surgical staples are gone, my incision lines are scabby. And oh, it’s so hard to let them be, heal on their own, and not think I can somehow rush the healing process. Are scabs a reminder of things we don’t
Posted on July 5th, 2014 by micka002
Not only does love crack us open to the unknowingness of life. But similarly the prospect of death offers us the same gift. What is death other than an opening to the unknown? To what we can’t imagine? As I prepared for brain surgery, I fell into the gentle awareness of not knowing what’s next.
Posted on May 27th, 2014 by micka002
Sometimes when I don’t give my cat Charlie what he thinks he needs in terms of companionship/recognition, independence/autonomy, or safety/security, he snarls at me. He meows repeatedly and loudly, he rubs against my legs, he whines and demands. And although I occasionally find it annoying or bothersome, for the most part I usually find his
Posted on August 12th, 2012 by micka002
At the recent International Enneagram (IEA) Conference in Long Beach, CA, I attended a session offered by Roxanne Howe Murphy and Diana Redmond entitled “Deepen Your Living: Using Paradox and Counterpoint to Occupy Your Soul”. It impacted me in ways I still don’t fully understand and it inspired me to re-examine a topic that I’ve
Posted on June 28th, 2012 by micka002
In my last blog, I mentioned the challenge of recognizing our Enneagram-based default patterns/habits that get us into and keep us stuck in conflict. But we also have natural gifts and abilities that help us stay out of conflict or resolve conflict in a constructive, collaborative, creative and compassionate way. So what are the ‘natural’
Posted on May 21st, 2012 by micka002
Before going further, I want to address an important concern. When I say that good-bad dichotomies are seldom accurate when working with conflict and that everyone is a victim and everyone is a perpetrator (see my previous Complexity of Conflict blog) , some people rightly point out that when an established “right” has been violated,
Posted on May 1st, 2012 by micka002
As noted in a recent Mpls Star Tribune article about peacekeeping in South Sudan – http://www.startribune.com/local/144731315.html – conflict is complex. And as noted by Tiffany Easthorn, Nonviolent Peaceforce’s (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org) country director for South Sudan, ” When it comes to understanding conflict, a good-bad dichotomy is seldom accurate… People in conflict shift positions all the time.