Sean Esbjorn-Hargens – Integrating Your Head, Heart and Hara

The number three is a sacred number in almost all spiritual traditions — ancient and modern, East and West. It’s also an important number in nature and natural systems…

In this opening week, you’ll begin your journey by exploring just how much of reality has this triadic structure. You’ll examine numerous sacred traditions that believe humans are comprised of three distinct “wisdom centers” — Head, Heart, and Hara.

In this class session, you’ll discover:

• Exactly what the 3 wisdom centers are — including the many names they go by, the important role they play in many traditions of human development and integration, and their deep roots that stretch back to ancient Shamanic culture and practices
• How these wisdom centers are related to our 3 souls, the 3 realms, and the 3 faces of the Divine
• Plato’s tripartite theory of soul and how this serves as the basis for Western philosophy and psychology
• How to experience and begin to listen to the unique language of all 3 centers
• A powerful wisdom inquiry practice to give voice to each wisdom center — and incorporate that wisdom into your daily decision-making process

One of the most powerful examples of systems built on the three wisdom center traditions is the Enneagram. This week, you’ll take a deep dive into the Enneagram’s ancient roots based on this sacred triadic structure.

You’ll explore how the three centers combine into nine unique combinations to form all of the personality types in the Enneagram system.

As you’ll discover, each personality is the result of a specific combination of a primary center, a secondary center, and a tertiary center. You’ll explore how the three wisdom centers form the basis of your personality and provide you with a unique path of transformation….

This week, you’ll:

• Learn how YOUR Enneagram personality type is the result of a unique combination of the 3 wisdom centers
• Explore how your path of integration involves working with the centers in a way that’s unique to you
• Discover the Law of Three and how it connects to the “3 brains,”the “3 paths,” and the “3 centers”
• Discover the unique contribution that the 3 paths of awakening provide — and how a “Fourth Way” integrates them into a new integral path
• Explore foundational Fourth Way exercises to activate and harmonize your three centers

For thousands of years, Daoists have mapped how nature and its encompassing cosmology is filled with the flow and exchange of energy, or Qi. They’ve identified three major energy centers — dantians — that occur in the body.

In this session, you’ll learn how the dantians can work in concert with what’s known as the Three Gates (also located in the body) to circulate energy throughout the body.

Sean will share how these three wisdom centers are a major component of YOUR subtle energetic body… and how they’re both similar to, and distinct from, the chakra system.

This week you’ll discover:

• How both the Daoist “energetic” cosmology and Chinese medicine operate using the 3 wisdom centers
• How the 3 dantians work with the 3 gates to create a subtle energy system in the human body
• How Qigong breathing exercises engage and energize each of the 3 centers in a unique way
• The role the 3 centers play in Taoist Internal Alchemy — and how they create a path to immortality
• The microcosmic orbit… used to link the 3 centers
• Invigorating Qigong breathing exercises to fill your 3 wisdom centers with clean, pure energy

During this session, you’ll explore how the three wisdom centers have a neurological and physical basis that can support you to be a more effective leader.

Leading-edge neuroscience reveals that people actually have three distinct neurological networks or brains — in your head, your heart, and your gut — all of which are designed to help you be adaptive to the complex physical, social, and psychological environments you live in.

Working with all three of these neurological brains gives you the tools to make better decisions in the moment.

In this module, you’ll discover:

• The links between each center… and your access to courage (the gut), compassion (the heart), and creativity (the head)
• How the 3 centers link to your physiology and nervous system
• The core functions of each “brain” — and how you can better leverage their unique role in your life
• The profound impact the 3 neurological brains have on the concept of your consciousness and path of transformation
• Multiple brain exercises to tap into and weave these functions together throughout your day-to-day life

In this session, you’ll explore Rudolf Steiner’s concept of “threefoldness” — a foundational system for understanding the cosmos.

Steiner showed how healthy societies, and integrated human beings, can balance and coordinate three distinct interdependent realms… and identified four distinct senses of perception associated with each of these three centers in the human body.

You’ll explore how the three wisdom centers are an organ of perception — which have their own unique modes of knowing — by engaging all 12 senses and how each one gives us new access to reality through their associated wisdom center.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover how the 3 centers link to Steiner’s view of our 3 souls
• Explore the 4 unique senses associated with each center
• Experience new modes of perception that these 12 senses provide
• Learn how the 3 centers are a foundational part of the Waldorf educational pedagogy
• Experience “12 senses exploratory exercises” to access a new reality

In this session you’ll explore the three cauldrons — or energy centers in your body — based on an ancient Irish mystical tradition…

Located near the naval (cauldron of warming), the center of the chest (cauldron of vocation) and in the head (cauldron of wisdom), these three cauldrons also link to the three realms of earth, sea, and sky — and to our three souls that allow us to walk through each of these realms.

You’ll discover how your three wisdom centers can be used to access other dimensions of reality — and to interact with the subtle beings (e.g., nature spirits and the Irish gods and goddesses) within those worlds.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover the role the 3 cauldrons of the Celtic tradition played in ancient Druidic training
• Explore how each cauldron is the basis for your 3 co-walkers — our surface walker who allows us to walk in the earth realm… our dream walker who allows us to enter the faery realm… and our star walker who allows us to walk in the celestial realm
• Discover how the 9 Celtic virtues relate to the cauldrons
• Learn how various pagan, wiccan, and faery traditions work with the 3 centers — and use practices based on the 3 cauldrons and their associated realms and co-walkers
• Participate in guided co-walker visualizations to connect to each cauldron and bring more poetic experience and expression into your life

This week Sean will share the path of Integral Yoga developed by Sri Aurobindo in India in the early 1900s — one of the most sophisticated systems for human development and spiritual transformation.

Foundational to his system is the recognition that human consciousness consists of three different levels or planes — the physical body… the vital domain of energy and emotions… and the mental sphere of thought.

The path of Integral Yoga aims at a complete transformation and integration of these three planes of being.

In this session, you’ll explore how the three wisdom centers serve you in the evolution of your own consciousness…

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover Sri Aurobindo’s 3 planes and how they form the foundation of human spirituality
• Explore how these 3 planes are linked to the evolution of consciousness and 9 stages of development
• Understand how Aurobindo’s 9 types of personality are similar and different from the Enneagram system
• Explore how the triple lower worlds of the 3 planes are reflected in the triple divine worlds of Sat-Chit-Ananda
• Experience the meditative practices from the Integral Yoga tradition to explore how the triple lower worlds (physical-vital-mental) connect to the triple divine worlds