"Tom's adroit integration of NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis has been invaluable to my own understanding and application of the Enneagram. As has been my past experience and is true once again, Tom's knowledge, skill and manner added new dimensions to a richly complex subject. Anyone who has the opportunity to work with Tom, either one-on-one or in a workshop format will be greatly enriched by the experience. I cannot recommend him highly enough." 
- Ed Morler, MBA, Ph.D., Executive/Organizational Consultant/Trainer/Coach

"This was a rich, informative and enjoyable program. I can find uses for the tools in all aspects of my life." -Wayne Gerber, consultant

"Tom's indepth knowledge, presence, timing, grace and humor are magical to experience. What a gift." - Susan Nordyke, instructor, Vocational Counseling

"I really appreciated learning about the 'resources' of each wing and thinking about sensory modalities in terms of each point. I also appreciated seeing NLP in context."
-Patrick J. Wardell, Social Worker/Educator

"People gather. Tom talks. Things happen. At first it's hard to see the relationship between the talk and the happenings, but by the fifth day, it is clear that this talk is eclectically informed and idiosyncratically brilliant, thus producing unexpected changes in people open to change." - Mary Nelson, Spiritual Director

"This workshop is a must for anyone who wants to combine their knowledge and experience of NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis with the Enneagram." -Julian Wick, Pastor/Professional Court Mediator

"A very powerful learning experience. Deep process and content, delivered on target with humor." -Bill Faust, Organizational Development and creativity consultant

"As a long-time practicioner of the Enneagram and a relatively new NLP student, I found that the opportunity to work with both disciplines in a relaxed spacious format was invaluable. Tom Condon provides a valuable service to all students of human effectiveness." - Courtney Behm, Management Advisor and Personal Coach

"Tom Condon is a gifted teacher, perceptive and intuitive as he worked with each of us. His kindness, tact, and compassion were evident throughout the weekend, which built trust and rapport. It was a joy to watch him work with others and be a recipient of his insights and help." - Beverly Sorensen, Enneagram Teacher

"An invaluable clinical perspective from someone who knows the Enneagram cold. Tom is a teacher's teacher." - Rita Heller M.S.W.

"The workshop was dynamite! Tom's skill combined with his caring and humor makes his workshops easy to recommend to anyone who wants to change and grow." - Hal Harber, Retired Banker

"A wonderfully integrated workshop that combines both theory and practice while exploring the virtues and vices of Enneagram personality types. This is a 'must do' workshop for anyone interested in becoming a better person." -Karin Leperi, Federal Executive

"'The Changeworks' was the best name Tom Condon could have given his company! The Enneagram, and particularly Tom's interpretation, is one of the greatest personal growth tools I've come across. I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in change." - Mair MacKinnon, Alternative Health Practitioner

"As always, Tom made it a safe place for deep and compassionate self-examination, as well as occasional raucous laughter. I find his insights illuminating and very convincing. Both his involvement in personal process work, and the detachment he brings to Enneagram diagnostics, are invaluable."      - Jane Kimbrough, Actress/Writer

"Tom has a creative and fresh take on the Enneagram. Highly original yet complementary with other teachers' outlooks and theories on the Enneagram. Really stimulated my mind a lot!"  - Sue Ann McKean, Aikido teacher

"Tom has a lively intelligence, a sly wit, a subversive sense of humor, and an actor's sense of timing. I'm so thoroughly entertained that the valuable lessons learned seem almost beside the point."  -Sandee Renault, Family Planning Pracititioner

"I found Tom's knowledge and experience, as well as mellow approach, a great combination.  These two days have been a wonderful introduction to a fascinating system."    - Cheri Young, Health Care Administrator
 

"This really helped put my NLP skills into context. The workshop gave me a much better model for integrating specific NLP techniques for each personality style. The interviews and demonstrations were particularly useful!"   - Robert Roundtree, M.D.

"The workshop was very powerful for me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my primary relationship has taken on a whole new glow based on the things that I learned. I'm also finding it easier to express myself and have a clearer view of what I want."  - Patrick Callahan, Teacher

"This workshop was the most valuable I have attended both for my personal growth and my work as a therapist. Tom's style of working with us was intuitive, creative and playful. He worked skillfully and respectfully with each of us, taking nothing away but pointing the way to a greater range and freedom of choice." - Elizabeth Bean, Therapist

"Tom exhibits gentle yet firm skills in his therapeutic interventions.  Watching him work with the participants was inspiring and his humor is magnificent. I really enjoyed his style and my learning."  - Murray Spalding, Author, The Enneagram & NLP

"The combination of NLP, Ericksonian hypnosis and the Enneagram was well done and very helpful. I've been to many seminars - this ranks among the best."   - Dick McHugh, Co-Director, Sadhana Institute

"Condon interviews people, applies NLP techniques and behold: like a pattern under the heat of an iron, the Enneagram styles appear and you KNOW them in a way you'll never forget. Condon mixes 10 years of Enneagram familiarity, 14 years of NLP and hypnosis practice with what apparently is a genetic gift to make the Enneagram types vivid and real. And during it all he is extraordinarily helpful."       - The Enneagram Educator

"Thomas Condon presents a compelling and vivid description of each personality type.  With a respectful humor and a gentle, focused style, he inspires people to see that there are choices wherever there is increased awareness. I would recommend this workshop for those who feel ready for change."     - Jeanette Ezzo, Conflict Mediator

"One of the most profound learning experiences of my life. Very clear definitions, useful and clarifying examples and demonstrations of resourceful techniques. Tom is a kind, respectful and playful teacher."     - Mary Bast, Executive Coach

"I thought the workshop was excellent, informative and enjoyable.  A wonderful introduction to the Enneagram."  - Clare Crawford-Mason, Writer and Television Producer

"Seeing and listening to the different personality styles opened me to greater compassion, appreciation and acceptance of others - and of myself." - Donna Thome, Therapist & Seminar Leader

"Tom's easy manner encourages people to examine themselves in a supportive environment that allows them to touch sensitive areas."   - Susan Firestone, Artist

"The experience Tom Condon provides for you in Lifethemes expertly combines today's most sought after techniques for personal and professional growth. Don't miss this workshop!"      - Janet Burr, Author of Awaken Your Intuition

"For me, this experience has blended my knowledge of NLP and hypnosis and supplied the missing link - personality. I have gained many new ways to interact and help people. I would highly recommend this workshop!" 
- John Davidson, Academic Director, Suncoast School of Massage Therapy

Reviews of Lifethemes Workshops

From Connections

Tom Condon's Lifethemes Personal Change Weekend offered IEA/SoCal members and guests abundant new insights and techniques. A gifted therapist as well as a superb teacher, Tom began by pointing out that, while the Enneagram excels as a diagnostic system, its power can be greatly enhanced in therapy by combining with such technique-oriented approaches as Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Ericksonian hypnosis. In this way, people may be empowered to actually DO something about their Enneagram fixation.

For those in the audience who were relatively new to the system, Tom's clear descriptions of the common elements in the three "emotional trios that make up the Enneagram were especially helpful. In discussing each triad he went on to paint a vivid picture of each personality style.

Generous handouts offered further details for each style about characteristics of healthy and unhealthy individuals, common childhood patterns, sorting styles and filters, sensory strategies and submodalities, associations vs. dissociations, relationship to time, resources, and 
reference frame.

In one-on-one demonstration sessions with an Eight and a Seven, Tom displayed how a skillful therapist using NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis in an Enneagram context can generate insights that help clients move toward changes they desire but have so far been unable to actualize. These powerful demonstrations had many therapists in the audience on the edge of their chairs. The weekend also included several lively question-and-answer sessions on a variety of subjects.

On the final day of the workshop Tom offered specific NLP techniques that can help individuals access the high side of their home point, connecting points and wings, even in times of stress. He demonstrated how to use "anchoring to connect with high and low sides of one's Enneagram style, then mesh these two poles in a way that diminishes the power of the low-side tendency. Workshop attendees then participated in a two-person exercise designed not only to provide a personal experience of this technique but also to offer a way of repeating it at times when we have lost our connection with our best self.

The weekend was rich beyond even the high expectations many of us brought to it, and we are enormously grateful to Tom for broadening and deepening our understanding of the Enneagram." - Connections: The Newsletter of the Southern California International Enneagram Association

From Point Source

"For our inaugural meeting, Tom Condon made a thought-provoking presentation on he Enneagram and personal growh. This was the first time I had heard Tom, and I felt he gave the best short introduction on the Enneagram that I have ever heard.

"Tom opened his presentation by talking about the Enneagram as a tool for change. The Enneagram shows us, he said, how we get caught up in a subjective reality that is 1/9th of the truth. We each have a fixed point of view from which we look at life, a point of view that gives us a particular way to interpret events in our lives. The Enneagram shows how we are guarded, fixed, overprotected. It also shows us our talents and latent potentials that can be developed.

Tom concluded by demonstrating with a volunteer from the audience how he uses the Enneagram therapeutically. It was an excellent and well-received presentation and an auspicious inaugural event." - Point Source - The Newsletter of the Northern California International Enneagram Association

From The Enneagram Educator

"In a mountain resort just outside the small city of Bend, Oregon, Tom Condon puts on the workshop he calls Lifethemes. He combines the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and Ericksonian hypnosis, the vision of the Enneagram, and, apparently, a small helpful portion of magic. 

Each workshop session begins almost casually. Condon hands out several sheets on the Enneagram types he will discuss.  Beginning with sketchy cognitive detail, Condon starts to talk, simply and clearly. He uses a minimum of professional jargon. Without fanfare, the magic starts. 

He does not overwhelm, either with emotional intensity or technical detail.  He just describes the Enneagram type in deepening spirals. He seems to see with an inner eye and talks as though he were a psychic tour guide. He continues with the conscious layer, then adds metaphors, stories about people, movie references, jokes - as much right brain evocative material as is needed. 

Condon has a thorough grasp of the Enneagram and is a finely trained therapist, but his ability to evoke the experience of the type with image, metaphor and example is magic. If you've ever tried to figure out Enneagram types armed just with the cognitive information from books, you understand why this poetic layer is so important. 

The Enneagram is an inner map and a code that enhances and personalizes the NLP tools. NLP takes existing energies within the person and moves them around. If a person is brave on the ski slope, NLP can move that bravery to the dinner table conversation or a sales presentation. With the Enneagram, Condon was able to quickly and effectively learn where the real energies lay and where they need to move to.

Even those innocent of the sleight-of-mind techniques of NLP could see some of the practice: mirroring, hypnotic suggestions and reframing (calling an experience by a different name so as to see and feel it differently). Condon drew out the pattern and usually moved the person past some thickets one could tell they usually didn't negotiate well. The combination of the therapeutic practices of NLP and the Enneagram is powerful."

2) About Thomas Condon 

Thomas Condon is an internationally recognized Enneagram trainer and author. He has taught over 400 workshops in the United States, Germany, England, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy and France. The Director of the Changeworks in Bend, Oregon, he has been an adjunct faculty member of Antioch University and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a certified Master Practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming and had an NLP-based private practice for 11 years. Tom is the author of over 50 audiotapes,videotapes and books.

 About Tom's Work With the Enneagram

"As the Editor of the oldest and largest journal on the Enneagram, I overlook the entire field. I am approached constantly with writing on the subject. I sift through a lot of sand to find gold but I've always found the real stuff with Tom Condon. His material is original and practical; he writes clearly and vividly. There's no one doing the work he's doing; Tom is a major voice in the Enneagram community." - Editor, Enneagram Educator

"Thomas Condon has been studying and working with the Enneagram for 20 years and his depth of understanding is apparent. Through examples, stories and analogies he conveys a clear understanding of each personality type. His approach is fascinating, dynamic and richly observed." - Inner Quest Magazine

"Thomas Condon does a great job of filtering the Enneagram through NLP. You'll acquire some potent professional tools and learn about yourself first."  - Anchor Point

"Tom Condon enhances the Enneagram with techniques from NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis. The healing potential of the Enneagram unadorned is amazing; when it is set as the jewel in Condon's multi-faceted approach, we begin to see how much more is possible." - Courtney Behm, Nine Points, The Newsletter of the International Enneagram Association

About The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide

"A mine of real gold! What is beguiling about Condon's work, besides an uncommonly fine literary style, is the clarity with which he points out Enneagram styles that most students have trouble seeing."     - The National Catholic Reporter

"Condon utilizes movie characters to disclose the inner workings and psychodynamics of each style. This book is fun, well written and a great source of Enneagram instruction. The use of film is a powerful method for capturing the nuances and essence of every personality style."   - Enneagram Monthly
 

"Condon breaks new ground! If you watch the movies, or even just read their reviews, your Enneagram assessing skills will increase dramatically." - The Enneagram Educator

"A real find! Condon's movie guide provides not only a snappy introduction to the Enneagram's personality types, but write-ups of hundreds of movies, focusing on the main characters and their behaviors. A series of movies exhibiting one type will give the reader a great sense of both the basic issues and their variations for that type. Condon provides capsule reviews plus good viewing and study suggestions."  - Inner Journeys Book Review

"In becoming a psychotherapist it was always clear that reading great novels taught me more than any psychology course. Thomas Condon has taken film - the art form of our time - to show the mind heart and bodily experience of each Enneagram style. Truly a great book!"  - Margaret Frings Keyes Author, Emotions & The Enneagram

"Not since Helen Palmer broke the ice with her classic work The Enneagram has learning this fascinating system of personality types been so easy. Considered to be one of the oldest forms of psychological assessment, the Enneagram has remained elusive to many, but, thanks to Thomas Condon, here is a format (finally) that anyone can understand.

This book emphasizes the illustration of the nine Enneagram types through observation by providing the personality types for almost one thousand movie characters. The Guide is an easy read and functions as an admission ticket to a realm in which we can gain a deeper understanding of movie characters and personality types.

This is a must-read for people who already know the Enneagram - it will help them to deepen their insights - and it is a great introduction for the newcomer. The actors and movies are clearly indexed so readers can easily find their favorite actors and delve deeply into the movie characters' psyches. There is no stuffy psychobabble, just clear descriptions about using our most celebrated medium - film - as a tool of psychological discovery. Get The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide and display it in your store. It will be a steady seller for a long time." 
- Reviewed by Mark Husson, Twelfth House Bookstore - New Age Retailer 

"Have you ever watched a movie and wondered, "Why did that character do that?" If you have, read The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide by Thomas Condon, the one and only book to review the movies and their characters in terms of the Enneagram, a popular psychological system of personality types. For example, Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally was a 6 with a 7 wing. Robert De Niro in Raging Bull was an 8.

With The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide you won't have to analyze your friends. Instead, you'll have thousands of characters at your disposal - and you can watch them behave over and over just by pressing "rewind." This is a wonderful book for learning and/or increasing your understanding of the Enneagram."         - Leading Edge Review

3) Stay home and go to an Enneagram workshop

The Changeworks now has a total of four edited Enneagram Workshops by Thomas Condon. All are available as CD sets: 
* Easy in Your Harness: the Enneagram, NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis
* The Enneagram Personal Change Workshop
* Enneagram Subtypes: the Subtle Drivers of Unconscious Behavior
* Stress/Security Points and Wings: the Enneagram's Hidden Resources

4) Tell Me a Story: Review of Tom Condon's "Therapeutic Metaphor and the Enneagram" CD Series
By Courtney Ann Behm, MA, MBA, in the Enneagram Monthly

Just when I think I could probably recite all the possible Enneagram topics, I get surprised.  It's a tribute to the complexity and the dynamism of the system, for sure, but there's also no question that some teachers and authors push the envelope further than others.  Tom Condon would be found on that particular list. His background in Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming gives him an unorthodox perspective on Enneagram personality styles which is woven through all the work he does. And in this CD set, Condon takes the integration a step further, blending the three disciplines into an organic, seamless whole.  Moving away from specific structural examinations of the Enneagram - i.e. Subtypes, Stress, Security, etc. - Condon goes directly to the core of the personality to explore the stories we tell ourselves and the impact they have on our life experience.

Our internal dialogue draws from an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of stories.  Some of them bear the geographic imprint of where we grew up.  Some derive from our parenting, our gender, our race, our creed, our color, our sexual preference, our friends.  We tell different stories depending on how old we are and what was happening when we were still learning how to walk.  Stories mirror our cultural, spiritual and societal expectations, assumptions and beliefs.  Other stories are woven into our personality structure, formed out of the imperatives of our particular style, reflections of our fall from the grace of essence into the noise and glare of human existence.

Sometimes, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, a story is just a story.  I can tell you about having a flat tire on Central Expressway in rush hour, and getting out of the car to push it off the highway.  I can include details about what I was wearing (silk dress, high heels), what the weather was like (very hot) and the impact of the incident on my immediate life (missed a meeting).  There might be other characters in the story: passing motorists, the tow-truck driver, the gas station owner, the client waiting with impatience and growing concern.  Just a story.  Perhaps told amusingly, perhaps told with matter of fact detail, but the simple recounting of an event. 

Unless, of course, this story is an example of what I consciously or unconsciously believe life to be like, or what I consciously or unconsciously believe to be my place in it. You wanna know what I believe?  Ask me to tell you the flat-tire story.  Depending on how I tell it, you may decide it proves that I believe nothing ever goes right for me, no matter how hard I try.  Or that people don't care enough to stop and help.  Or you might see how it reflects my pride in having the strength to push a car off the road in high heels and a silk dress.  Or my assumption that I am uniquely resourceful.  Or maybe it says that life is full of unexpected events, so it pays to be prepared for anything.  At this point, for good or ill, my story has become a metaphor for my life. A figure of speech I use to illustrate the similarity between having a flat tire on Central Expressway and how things actually are.  A statement that both reflects my world view and creates it.

In Condon's Therapeutic Metaphor workshop, from which this CD set was taken, participants were given many opportunities to explore the metaphors that formed the foundation for their "life scripts."  In a series of interactive group exercises, they defined the metaphors for the resourceful and less-resourceful experiences of being their particular type.  For example: from a One came a low-side metaphor of the courtroom, with an unforgiving judge and jury ready to pronounce sentence.  On the high side, was the story of life as a beautiful meadow, where everything grew according to its plan, and there were no mistakes to be made.  When she was questioned further, it became clear to the listeners that she did, in fact, hold herself accountable to the judgment of that courtroom, and that the meadow seemed like a dream of otherness rather than an experience to be lived.

As I was listening to all the different stories people were telling, and the pictures and phrases that comprised their individual metaphors, I started asking myself some of the same questions.  What are my metaphors?  And immediately I saw myself standing in the dark on the edge of the world, watching the busy, productive, happy, engaged lives in the lighted space before me and heard myself say, "Everybody but me."  Yikes!  That's a Four metaphor if I ever heard one.  I realized in an instant how this metaphor shapes my reality, and how many assumptions I make because at some level, in spite of all my hard work and progress, I still believe this is how it is. I'm the person who is never chosen for softball, who is idle while others work, who starves while others prosper, who dies alone while others are surrounded by loving family and friends.  And, right on the heels of this metaphor came its mirror image: "I'm the only oneŠ" who knows better, with the right approach, with good taste or talent or common sense.   It was more than a little horrifying.  It was like realizing you had just swallowed poison, feeling the inexorable progression of death creeping into every joint and limb.  My next thought was, "ANTIDOTE!!!" 

Fortunately for me, identification was not the last step in Condon's process.  The purpose of the workshop, after all, was to discover metaphor's incredible power to heal, and the group spent some time rewriting their own stories as a first step toward developing a new relationship with self and the world at large.  In small groups, participants took turns being guide and client with each other, crafting new language and new images that reflected more accurately their place in the world, and their possibility of redemption. And as they rewrote their internal dialogue, they found new pathways from their own version of the One's courtroom to the light and air of their higher state.  As I worked along with them, I found my own antidote: there was me, in the middle of the world, where the light was good and the air was clean and the colors were warm and there was more than enough work and life and joy to go around, saying, "We all."  A metaphor of connection and vitality to counteract the paralysis and depletion of "everybody but me."

There were many compelling stories told by the participants.  One in particular presented the dilemma of a man who had crafted a life in response to family stories that turned out to be untrue.  He was in the middle of reevaluating not only what he had been told, but the impact on his life of what he had told himself, and the decisions he had made, on the basis of a world view that was suddenly proved to be a fabrication.  His story became, for me, a metaphor for the human condition, as we are all effectively living out lives of response to stories we've been told that are, at best, only partially true, as they are all edited and distorted by unconscious assumptions.  Our challenge is to unravel the threads of narrative and separate out what will serve and support our ability to thrive.  The good news is that we can rewrite our stories - even after we have been listening to them for many, many years - with metaphors that will strengthen and sustain us.

One bonus of this CD series I must mention:  Condon is an excellent storyteller.  He uses stories to defuse our automatic reactions and create the space for insight and transformation.  He can make you laugh or make you cry, and at the end, you get it.  You see that little puzzle piece you've been looking for, you are able to laugh at yourself and at the world, and things fall into perspective.  One entire CD is devoted to the collection of stories of various kinds, and how to use them in a therapeutic context.  Condon offers up everything from jokes to Zen teaching stories to personal experiences to articles in the paper to workshop experiences to imaginative flights of fancy.  And he tells us how to remember them and use them, and where we can begin forming our own files of therapeutic metaphors.

All in all, this series was a Condon tour de force, with a potent combination of humor, irreverence, depth, simplicity, complexity, and participants who were remarkably honest, clear and fearless. I highly recommend this CD series as both a learning and a teaching tool.  Thanks, Tom!"