Anodea Judith – The Character Type Training

Module 1: The Challenges of Growing Up
How Do We Shape Ourselves?

Children develop important tasks as they grow up, like sitting up, walking, and talking, as well as defending themselves, forming relationships, and learning the rules. When difficulties and challenges happen, as they inevitably do, a child can only respond from the skills that they have at the time. Defenses that might have worked to mitigate our pain as a child can become hard-wired into the nervous system, working against us when we’re older by manifesting as body armor, inappropriate defensive behaviors, and dysfunctional strategies.

In this module, you’ll:

• Gain an overview of how character structure is formed
• Understand the needs of important stages of development through childhood and what happens when those needs are not met
• Gain an understanding of our life force as “charge” and how we shape it into different patterns
• Examine how our psychological defenses form body armor that keeps us from experiencing the intimacy we long for
• Understand the basic schema of the five character types — and how you can be more than one type
• Look into developmental trauma, and how it’s a new understanding in trauma healing
• Understand the difference between being “in pattern” and your vital essence

Module 2: Living in Your Head
The Creative Structure

Wounding at the first stage of life, when you’re just coming into the world, leaves a lasting mark on your entire foundation. The primary task of embodiment requires safety, consistency, and a life-giving supply of your survival needs. Without this ground to grow from, a person is rootless, living in their head more than their body, with one step in the physical world, and the other in the spiritual world.

In this module, you’ll:

• View the natural gifts of a person who has this pattern as intelligent, creative, and spiritual
• Be given a simple exercise to expand bodily contraction and make more room for yourself
• Understand anxiety as compressed charge, or life force
• DIscover how grounding can get you out of your head and into your body
• Explore how to transform the power of fear into heightened aliveness
• Practice a simple exercise for opening the leg channels for greater security, confidence, and aliveness
• Understand how to recognize when you’re in pattern and what to do about it

Module 3: Giving It All Away for Love
The Lover Structure

Are you a person who tends to flourish in love, yet give everything away to the point of depleting yourself? Then you may exhibit the Oral pattern. This structure comes from the stage of late infancy when a child looks to others to fulfill their emotional needs and may end up always looking outside themselves. Discover how to become aware of your own needs and find balance with others’ needs, building up your inner energy body.

In this module, you’ll:

• Identify the gifts of this structure, represented by loving, generous and kind people who care about others
• Realize how denying your own needs makes you more attuned to the needs of others, and how that depletes you over time
• Understand that a past sense of deprivation can lead to indulgence, weight gain, and substance abuse
• Find out how to avoid over-commitment and the exhaustion that results
• Explore why Oral patterns tend to have chronic illnesses
• Examine how filling up your energy body combats your depletion and makes you naturally self-sufficient
• Understand how to recognize when you’re in pattern and what to do about it

Module 4: Steady & Loyal to a Fault
The Endurer Structure

This structure is also called the Masochist, because people who inhabit it often find ego strength through the ability to endure suffering, as a martyr would. Wounded at the early stages of the third chakra, when a child is finding power and autonomy, this pattern results from the thwarting of that power. Without a way to say no and exert the will, the Endurer can only put up with situations, not change them. The result is resignation and even depression.

In this module, you’ll:

• Identify the gifts of this pattern as being loyal and steadfast, grounded and practical
• Explore ways to address the self-criticism and self-sabotage that are part of this pattern
• Discover how “outer compliance and inner defiance” are like driving with your brakes on, making everything harder than it needs to be
• Find out how to work with your resistance and allow it to move out of your way
• Examine how to expand your options when making difficult decisions, instead of feeling stuck with little or no choice
• Understand how to recognize when you’re in pattern and what to do about it

Module 5: Power at Any Cost
The Challenger Structure

Sometimes called the Betrayed Child, this structure is determined to come out on top, maintain power, and win at any cost. People who inhabit this structure are charming, seductive, powerful instigators of new ideas, and natural leaders. But their shadow is dominance and manipulation, which leaves them alone in the world with few allies on their side.

In this module, you’ll:

• Identify the gifts of this pattern as natural leadership and the ability to handle power and responsibility
• Discover how early betrayal creates a determination to maintain power — and what the cost of that is
• Explore how to soften your stance toward others and develop more empathy
• Discover the advantages and disadvantages of being highly charged
• Move from power to love, for greater intimacy and trust
• Understand how to recognize when you’re in pattern and what to do about it

Module 6: Perfection Over Authenticity
The Achiever Structure

Children raised with conditional love tend to shape themselves to outside expectations and lose touch with their true self. Outwardly, this makes for attractive, successful achievers who follow the rules, keep things clean and tidy, and perform well for others. But this compulsion toward perfection has its cost, especially when it’s most successful.

In this module, you’ll:

• Value the gifts of this pattern, as represented by model citizens and high achievers
• Discover the underlying needs behind performance and perfection
• Explore how to color outside the lines, for more freedom and fun in life
• Soften rigidity in your body for greater relaxation and pleasure
• Enhance your ability to feel and express your emotions
• Understand how to recognize when you’re in pattern and what to do about it

Module 7: Who Are We Really?
Combinations, Compensations & Complex Characters in Relationship

Once we’ve learned about each structure in detail, you’ll have likely typecast yourself as exhibiting one or more of these primary patterns. In reality, we all have bits and pieces of all of them, occurring as underlays or compensations. When you put this knowledge together with your understanding of others whom you relate to, this journey becomes even more exciting. The point, however, is to get out of pattern and move toward essence, so we can live as who we really are.

In this module, you’ll:

• Look at how all the patterns go together — and how you can be more than one type
• Discover the differences between underlays and compensations, which are evidence of the influence of primary and secondary patterns
• Look at how the various patterns behave in relationship to each other — and which patterns are most compatible with yours
• Examine how to best relate to someone depending on the pattern they exhibit
• Find out how to listen for the essence beneath the pattern in yourself and others
• Explore how to work with these patterns in children — and how to avoid the wounding that creates them

From Pattern to Presence
Audio Dialogue With Anodea Judith and Steven Kessler

We are all “run” by personality patterns we adopted during childhood. Yours have probably been running most of your life. Join Anodea and psychotherapist and author Steven Kessler as he shares his unique look at what these patterns are and how you can break their hold, regain control of your life, and move from limiting patterns to greater presence.

Steven Kessler, MFT has been a licensed psychotherapist for almost 30 years, studying many different healing modalities and maps of personality, including Character Structure, the Enneagram, NLP, energy work, Thought Field Therapy, and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), as well as spending 16 years in the Diamond Heart meditation school. For over 10 years, he has been a student of Lynda Caesara, studying Character Structure, the direct perception of energy, and shamanism in the lineage of Grandfather Two Bears and the Southern Seers tradition. He is the author of the book, The 5 Personality Patterns. Since 1984, Steven has taught hundreds of groups and workshops in the U.S. and internationally, helping men and women heal their wounds and grow into their full adult selves.

Charge! The Inner Psychology of Your Life Force
PowerPoint Presentation From Anodea Judith

In this pictorial narrated slide show, Anodea Judith outlines the basics principles for understanding “charge.” What is it? How do we use it? How do we charge and discharge? What is the comfort zone? What are the chakras? Discover all this and more in this visually entertaining presentation.

Charge Exercises
Video Teaching From Anodea Judith

Watch as Anodea Judith takes you on a visually demonstrative journey through the chakras. Move from the bottom up through each of the seven chakras, discovering useful exercises you can do anywhere to balance and tune into each one. Break through blocks, open and expand your body, charge and discharge energy, and discover wellness.