Module 2 Online
The Defense System and How to Be With It
May 28–30, 2027 | Live Online
Led by Somatic Enneagram Founder Marion Gilbert
Spanish Translation Available
What happens inside you when something feels threatening, challenging, uncertain, or overwhelming? Often, the body responds before the thinking mind has had time to understand what is happening.
Muscles contract. Breathing changes. Attention narrows. Energy mobilizes—or suddenly disappears. We may feel an impulse to push back, get away, become still, withdraw, regain control, or protect ourselves in another familiar way.
These responses are not mistakes. Our defense systems developed for a reason. They are part of the body's natural intelligence and its capacity to protect us. But when our defenses operate automatically, they can also reinforce the familiar patterns of our Enneagram type and limit the choices available to us.
Somatic Enneagram Module 2 invites us to become curious about these responses rather than trying to eliminate them. Led by Somatic Enneagram founder Marion Gilbert, this three-day online training explores how the defense system is experienced through the body and how greater somatic awareness can help us recognize activation before we are completely swept into familiar reactions.
For this offering of Module 2, Spanish translation will be available throughout the training, creating an opportunity for English- and Spanish-speaking participants to engage this work together.
Online Module Daily Schedule:
Friday, May 28, 2027
Start Time: 7:00 am Pacific Time (US)
End Time: 2:00 pm Pacific Time (US)
Saturday, May 29, 2027
Start Time: 8:00 am Pacific Time (US)
End Time: 2:00 pm Pacific Time (US)
Sunday, May 30, 2027
Start Time: 8:00 am Pacific Time (US)
End Time: 2:00 pm Pacific Time (US)
Module 2 Online
$595 USD (Early Bird Rate)
Full rate ($695) begins on April 19
Learn to recognize what happens in the body when your defense system activates. Somatic Enneagram Module 2 explores fight, flight, freeze, and the embodied patterns of reactivity—offering practical tools for meeting these responses with greater awareness, compassion, and choice.
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What You Will Experience
Throughout Module 2, Heather will guide you through teaching, experiential exercises, somatic awareness practices, reflection, and inquiry focused on the body's defense system.
You will explore how defensive patterns show up not only through thoughts and emotions, but through physical sensation, contraction, posture, breath, movement, impulse, and shifts in attention.
Together, we will slow down the experience of reactivity so that you can begin recognizing what happens in the body when the defense system becomes activated.
You will explore the somatic responses associated with fight, flight, and freeze, developing greater awareness of how these natural protective mechanisms operate and how they may interact with the habitual patterns of Enneagram type.
Rather than approaching defenses as something to defeat, fix, or remove, the Somatic Enneagram offers another possibility: learning how to remain present with the body's protective intelligence with curiosity and compassion.
For those who accompany others—as coaches, spiritual directors, therapists, Enneagram teachers, or helping professionals—Module 2 also offers a deeper understanding of what may be happening somatically when another person's defense system becomes activated.
What You Will Gain
Module 2 will help you develop practical tools for recognizing and working with defensive responses at the level of the body.
Through the experience, you will have the opportunity to:
Recognize the physical experience of being triggered.
Learn to identify contractions, sensations, impulses, and other embodied signals that may indicate your defense system has become activated.
Understand fight, flight, and freeze somatically.
Explore these responses as lived experiences in the body rather than simply psychological concepts.
Engage your defenses with greater compassion.
Instead of judging or trying to eliminate defensive reactions, practice meeting them as protective responses that carry information and intelligence.
Create more space around automatic reactions.
Develop greater capacity to remain present when activated, opening the possibility of responding rather than simply reacting.
Integrate mind, body, and emotion.
Deepen your ability to recognize how thoughts, feelings, sensations, and impulses interact when the defense system is engaged.
Support meaningful and lasting transformation.
Learn practices that allow defensive responses to be experienced and reconciled rather than simply managed or suppressed.
About Your Guide(s)
Marion Gilbert is the founder of the Somatic Enneagram and an internationally recognized Enneagram teacher whose work has helped bring embodied awareness into the heart of Enneagram practice.
Drawing from decades of experience in somatic awareness, trauma-informed practice, and the Enneagram, Marion developed the Somatic Enneagram as a way of working directly with the patterns of type as they are experienced through sensation, reactivity, and the intelligence of the body.
Her teaching invites students beyond simply understanding personality and toward the direct experience of their patterns in the present moment. Through compassionate inquiry and embodied presence, Marion helps participants develop greater capacity for choice, resilience, freedom, and access to the deeper qualities of Essence.
