Anyone who has done any work with us around emotional health will likely be familiar with a number of key concepts we often return to – such as ‘above and below the line’, the ‘inner observer’ and ‘behavioural freedom’.

While all of these are foundational to emotional health, each is powerful in its own right. And even if you are highly familiar with them, they are all worth checking in with from time to time. After all, as you continue to improve your level of emotional health, your relationship to these concepts will likely shift.

One that certainly illustrates this point is the ‘three centres of intelligence’.

In our work, which draws on both ancient eastern philosophy and modern neuroscience, we distinguish three different ‘centres of intelligence’ each of us has access to: the ‘body centre’, the ‘heart centre’ and the ‘head centre’.

In summary:

  • When we engage the ‘body centre’, our ‘body thinking’ is based on what we sense and experience in the environment around us – what we often call ‘gut feel’. We also call this the ‘doing centre’.
  • When we engage the ‘heart centre’, our ‘heart thinking’ is based on what we are feeling through our connections with others. We also call this the ‘feeling centre’.
  • When we engage the ‘head centre’, our ‘head thinking’ is based on objectively connecting our perceptions, knowledge and reasoning. We also call this the ‘thinking centre’.

As we go about our work and confront various situations, especially as leaders, most of us tend to engage one of these centres over or before the others. That is, we feel most comfortable being guided by our ‘gut feel’ (body), our feelings (heart) or by drawing on our knowledge and reasoning (head).

This manifests in our behaviours and responses to situations, both of which also shift with our level of emotional health.

This document [PDF] summarises common responses associated with each of the three centres, both for those operating from an emotionally healthy above-the-line perspective and those operating below the line. You can use the document to identify which centre(s) might be strongest for you.

Which brings me back to why revisiting this, and related, concepts from time to time is a good idea.

As our emotional health improves, we are better able to ‘balance’ all three centres, reducing the relative impact that any one centre has on our thinking. At high levels of emotional health, the body, heart and head centres become closely integrated and we can achieve ‘whole body thinking’, or presence.

Checking in with your responses (such as via the above document) and assessing whether they are becoming less identifiable with a single centre can be one way of testing the growth of your emotional health.

Gayle

For a more complete discussion of the centres of intelligence, whole body thinking and emotional health, download this free sample from our book Working with Emotional Health and the Enneagram.

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash