| Elizabeth
Ravitz Wagele is the author and cartoonist of three Enneagram books: co-author
of "The Enneagram Made Easy" and "Are You My Type, Am I Yours?"
and author of "The Enneagram of Parenting," all published by
HarperCollins. Elizabeth is a frequent contributor to "The Enneagram
Monthly" and advises parents on Clarence Thompson's Enneagram
web site. She has also written movie reviews, most notably "The
Heart in Winter" ("Un Coeur en Hiver"), and a series of 9 vignettes
with noted mystery writer Jaqueline Girdner on the Enneagram
and the shadow ("Dial E for Murder"). In the summer of 1999
she presented a workshop on childhood, creativity, and humor
at the North American Enneagram Conference in Toronto. In one
of her first Enneagram speaking engagements Elizabeth took part
in a panel at the First International Enneagram Conference in
Palo Alto on the how the Myers-Briggs personality system (MBTI)
relates to the Enneagram. Her performance of a sonata movement
from her work, "The Beethoven Enneagram," can be heard in the
movie, "The Theory of the Leisure Class."
After
under-graduate and graduate school in music composition at the
University of California in Berkeley, Elizabeth performed and
taught children and adults piano lessons for many years in the
San Fransicso Bay Area. Even though she is a 5-Observer Enneagram
type, she enjoys playing requests, "Name That Tune", and improvising
at parties. She claims that this is much easier for her than
making small talk . Playing in a jazz trio helped put her through
college.
Elizabeth
lives with her husband, Gus, in their Berkeley house where they
raised their four children. She enjoys her garden in which she
specializes in roses and plants that attract butterflies. She
took up writing and cartooning around 12 years ago when she
teamed up with Renee Baron to write "The Enneagram Made Easy." An adult piano student had asked her to recommend a beginning
Enneagram book for an 18 year old niece. There wasn't one. In
planning the book, Elizabeth thought drawing would help explain
the complex Enneagram system and humor would help make it down
to earth and accessible.
Their
second book, "Are You My Type, Am I Yours?" includes every Enneagram
type in relationship with every other type, Enneagram subtypes,
and research comparing the Enneagram to the MBTI (Myers-Briggs)
types, and a section on types that look alike.
Elizabeth
drew on her own childhood and her experience as the mother of
two sons and two daughters in creating "The Enneagram of Parenting." Her primary goals were to enable readers to EXPERIENCE the nine
different worlds of children through drawings and cartoons and
to help adults understand what various kinds of children need
from them. She gives parents and teachers practical advice depending
on the child's behavior style. There's a section on parents'
types, too, and information on how parents and teachers interact
with children depending on their types. This book is required
reading for teachers by many school principals and is used by
students themselves for self-understanding and enjoyment.
Elizabeth
performed her "Beethoven Enneagram" to a full house in Berkeley,
California, at the 2nd International Enneagram Conference in
Baltimore in 1997, and at the closing ceremony of the North
American Enneagram Conference in Denver in 1998. She recalls
the year spent developing this presentation as especially enjoyable.
Beethoven's highly spiritual music has one of the greatest ranges
of feelings of all the composers. Elizabeth has found examples
in his piano sonatas that describe each type, plus examples
she uses in helping the types grow. See the "Appearances" page on this web site for her other musical performances.
Elizabeth's book, “The Happy Introvert - a Wild and Crazy Guide to Celebrating Your True Self” was published in 2006, followed by the first Enneagram book for children, “Finding the Birthday Cake – Helping Children Raise Their Self-Esteem” in 2007.
Elizabeth gave a workshop at the IEA Conference in Chicago in August, 2006 on teaching children the Enneagram and played her improvised 9 piano variations on a nursery rhyme at the welcoming reception.
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