Centering Paths
Personalized growth plans computed from your unique profile — not generic advice.
Your Icosa profile is not just a portrait — it is a map. And maps have routes. The Centering Paths engine analyzes your unique geometry, selects the most effective strategy, routes through high-impact gateways, and manages risk at every step.
The Problem With Generic Advice
Most personality systems stop at description. They tell you what you are — your type, your traits, your tendencies — and leave the question of what to do about it to you, your therapist, or a self-help book that was written for everyone and therefore for no one.
The Icosa model does not stop at description. Once your 4x5 grid has been computed, the system knows your exact geometry: which Harmonies are centered, which are under or over, which Gateways are open or closed, which Traps are active, which Basins are holding your system in place. That geometry is not just a portrait. It is a map. And maps have routes.
Centering Paths are personalized growth plans computed from your specific profile. They analyze the structural dependencies between your grid positions, identify where movement would have the highest impact, sequence interventions to avoid destabilization, and predict how your Coherence score would change at each step. This is not “work on your weaknesses.” This is dependency-chain analysis with risk management built in.
How the Engine Thinks
The centering plan engine treats your 20-center grid as a dependency graph. Each Harmony is connected to its neighbors by structural relationships — Capacity-row dependencies (all five Harmonies in a row share a processing style) and Domain-column dependencies (all four Harmonies in a column share a life area). Gateways sit at high-connectivity positions where shifts cascade outward most powerfully. Traps create feedback loops that resist change. Basins create gravitational wells that hold multiple centers in coordinated dysfunction.
The engine does not simply rank your Harmonies from worst to best and say “start at the bottom.” It analyzes which centers are structurally prerequisite to moving others. If your Feeling Gateway (Bond x Emotional) is closed and three downstream Traps depend on that closure, the engine recognizes that opening Feeling first unlocks the possibility of breaking those Traps — which in turn releases the Basins they participate in, which frees the centers those Basins were holding.
This is dependency-chain analysis, not priority sorting. The order matters as much as the targets.
Gateway Healing Power and Plan Routing
Not all grid positions are equally powerful. The nine Gateways — Body, Grace, Choice, Voice, Belonging, Feeling, Discernment, Identity, Vitality — occupy structurally privileged positions in the 4x5 grid. Each has a ranked healing power score from 1.00 (Body, the highest) down to 0.55 (Voice, the lowest).
Healing power reflects how much system-wide change a Gateway produces when it shifts from closed to open. The Body Gateway (Open x Physical) has the highest healing power because it sits at the entry point of the Open-Focus-Bond-Move circuit in the most foundational Domain. Opening Body cascades outward along both the Capacity row and the Domain column, affecting more downstream positions than any other single intervention.
The engine routes centering plans through high-healing-power Gateways whenever structurally possible. A single Gateway opening can cascade into Trap breaks and Basin releases across the grid — producing more Coherence improvement per step than targeting non-Gateway positions directly.
When the Follow Resource strategy is selected, the engine routes the centering plan through whichever open or partially-open Gateways have the highest healing power. This produces the most system-wide Coherence improvement per step but may not address the user’s most subjectively distressing symptoms first. The trade-off between maximum structural efficiency and maximum symptomatic relief is one reason the engine offers multiple strategies.
The Computed strategy weighs healing power alongside other factors: how many Traps depend on each Gateway, how deep the active Basins are, whether the user’s behavioral signals suggest readiness for destabilization, and the estimated step count to reach a target Coherence band.
Seven Strategies
The engine can compute centering plans using seven different strategic approaches. Each reflects a different theory of change.
| Strategy | Logic | Best When |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom Up | Stabilize your foundation first — start with the most basic, under-functioning centers | Core capacities are suppressed; the system needs ground before it can build |
| Top Down | Leverage your strengths — start with your most centered areas and extend outward | Strong areas exist that can support growth in weaker ones |
| Middle Out | Work from your current position — start wherever the system has the most energy | No clear foundation or strength; the system needs to move from where it already is |
| Follow Resource | Route through available Gateways — use the highest-healing-power open Gateways | Multiple Gateways are accessible; the plan can piggyback on existing openings |
| Computed | Algorithm-selected optimal strategy based on your specific geometry | You want the system to decide the most efficient route |
| Crisis Stabilization | Auto-selected when the system detects crisis-level coherence — stabilize the most acute risks first | Coherence is critically low; safety and stabilization take priority over optimization |
| Maintenance | Consolidate existing gains — reinforce centered positions rather than pushing new frontiers | The system has achieved meaningful centering and needs to hold ground |
The Computed strategy is the default. It evaluates your grid geometry, identifies the dominant structural constraint (is it a foundation problem? a bottleneck problem? an inertia problem?), and selects the strategy most likely to produce the largest Coherence gain with the least destabilization risk. Crisis Stabilization is auto-selected when the system detects crisis-level coherence — it overrides user preference because safety takes priority.
But the other strategies are not inferior — they reflect genuinely different therapeutic philosophies. A clinician who practices from a somatic foundation might prefer Bottom Up. A strengths-based practitioner might prefer Top Down. A client who needs to feel movement before committing to a structured plan might benefit from Middle Out. The engine supports all seven because personality growth is not one-size-fits-all, even when the underlying geometry is precise.
Two Views of the Same Plan
The same centering plan is rendered in two ways depending on who is reading it.
Client Compass
The Client Compass is the individual-facing view. It shows your next step clearly: which Harmony to focus on, why it matters for your specific situation, and what centering that Harmony would look like in practice. Technical detail is replaced by plain-language guidance. Dependency chains are simplified to “do this first, then this, then this.” The predicted Coherence trajectory is presented as a progress arc rather than a numerical table.
The Compass answers the question every person asks after seeing their profile: What do I do now? It provides a concrete, personalized answer grounded in your data, not a generic suggestion that could apply to anyone.
Clinician Map
The Clinician Map is the professional view. It exposes the full dependency graph: every center in the plan, every structural prerequisite, every alternative route if the primary path is blocked. Risk flags are visible. Clinical annotations describe each step in professional vocabulary. Gateway healing power rankings inform intervention selection. The predicted Coherence trajectory is displayed as a step-by-step numerical projection.
The Map gives clinicians what they need to integrate the centering plan into a treatment protocol. A therapist can see that Step 3 involves opening the Choice Gateway (Focus x Mental), that this step carries moderate destabilization risk because it may temporarily increase Fixating behavior, and that the plan recommends completing Step 2 (stabilizing Presence) first to provide a grounding anchor.
Step Simulation
Before committing to a centering plan, you can see what each step would do. The simulation engine models the effect of centering a specific Harmony on the rest of the grid, computing the predicted state changes, Trap activations or deactivations, Basin shifts, and Coherence movement.
This is a forward projection, not a guarantee. Personality systems are complex and non-linear. But the simulation provides an informed estimate: “Centering these three Gateways could move your Coherence from 52 to 71” is a structurally grounded prediction based on how your specific geometry responds to those specific changes.
The simulation also surfaces counter-intuitive risks. Centering one Harmony sometimes temporarily destabilizes a neighboring one. If your Focus is Under across the entire row and you begin centering Presence (Focus x Physical), the sudden increase in Physical attention can temporarily amplify Dissociating in the Emotional column — you become more aware of your body but briefly less aware of your feelings, because the Focus resource is being redirected. The simulation flags this so you are prepared for it rather than alarmed by it.
Risk Categories in Centering Plans
The engine flags three categories of risk during plan computation, each visible in the Clinician Map and translated into plain language in the Client Compass.
Destabilization risk: Centering one Harmony may temporarily push a neighboring Harmony further from center. This is usually transient (the system rebalances once the new center stabilizes) but can be distressing if unexpected. The plan annotates which steps carry this risk and why. In the Client Compass, this appears as “This step might feel uncomfortable for a few days before it settles.”
Trap reinforcement risk: Some centering sequences can temporarily strengthen an active Trap before breaking it. This happens when a plan partially addresses a Trap’s maintaining conditions without fully disrupting them — the Trap tightens its grip before letting go. The engine flags steps where this pattern is likely, so clinicians can prepare their clients for a period of intensification before relief.
Basin escape risk: Moving out of a Basin requires overcoming coordinated inertia across multiple centers. The plan may recommend rapid sequential movement through several centers rather than slow incremental change at one, because partial Basin exit can trigger the system to snap back to the attractor state. Plans flag when aggressive pacing is recommended and when slow-and-steady is safer.
Not a Replacement for Therapy
Centering Paths are a computational tool, not a clinical intervention. They identify structurally optimal routes through your personality geometry and predict the effects of change. They do not provide therapy, they do not diagnose, and they do not claim to know what your experience of growth will feel like from the inside.
For individuals, the Client Compass is a self-guided orientation tool — a way to understand where your system most wants to move and what kind of movement would have the most impact. For clinicians, the Clinician Map is a treatment-planning aid — a way to see the structural terrain before choosing an intervention.
The geometry is precise. The human experience of traversing that geometry is not computable. Centering Paths give you the map. You still walk the path yourself.
Availability
Centering Paths require a Consumer Premium subscription or higher. Clinician Maps are available at the Clinician Starter tier and above. The centering plan computation is part of the core profile pipeline and runs in the same sub-millisecond window as all other profile metrics. No additional waiting. No separate request. Your plan is ready when your profile is ready.
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