What on earth is Human Design? (Hint: it’s a lot crazier than you could even imagine)
By: Jeni Gage
Tags: Self-awareness, Astrology, Human Design, Body Positive, Consciousness

Human Design has been around since the late 80s but has exploded onto the wellness scene over the last few years

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Let’s start from the top, where did this come from?

The short answer — a man in a mid-life crisis channeled the entire system in 8 days in the 80s.

YES.

Human Design, like pretty much everything we file under mystic or new age or as religious beliefs has an insane origin story. Alan Krakower was in Ibiza in 1987 and had a mystical experience where he channeled into the Human Design System. He then changed his name to Ra Uru Hu and taught Human Design for the rest of his life until his death in 2011.

The guiding principle hinges on the idea that as humans (as a species) are evolving, the body now holds more intelligence than the mind.

If we believe in evolution — this actually makes sense as humans evolve just like any other life form, right?

We used to be cave people at one point and now we’re here. Human Design says as humans evolve as a species we’re moving away from a place of mind-based authority to body-based authority and that right now we’re in the midst of this upgrade. This shift started in the late 1700s and we’re closing out this transition in 2027.

Whether you are on board with this guiding premise or not, understanding your design can help you live a more chill life.

Have you ever read or listened to Alan Watts?

Human Design is basically living an Alan Watts quote.

Human Design is considered an experiment. You learn about these things and then YOU go out into the world and test them. Maybe you’ll see something completely different. Maybe you’ll choose to continue living the way you are currently living.

The beauty is in claiming your own authority through raising your own awareness and testing that awareness to figure out YOUR OWN TRUTH.

Why do we want to do this?

If we can learn to trust our own authority (learning to exist in the body) then we can learn to enjoy the ride.

Whether or not you believe you are in control or not, there are a lot of things we all agree we can’t control. Learning about your own design means understanding that we’re all different and meant to operate differently. You can think of the Bodygraph (the chart we read in Human Design) as a map. It’s your own personal map that can help you navigate life in this body.

This is why Human Design is referred to as the science of differentiation.

At its core Human Design is here to separate out your Self from your Not-Self. It’s a tool to strip away all the beliefs and messaging and programming, so you can understand what is your authentic nature versus what’s not you (the concept of the Not-Self, or literally not yourself)

When we are in the Not-Self we are living with chronic confusion, worry, doubt, mental anguish and more. These internal pressures are signs the body is sending us to get into our natural alignment. Similar to pain, your body is talking to you and saying, “HEY, SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE!”

When you can see who you authentically are, you can embrace your individual differences and be an empowered individual. In Human Design, Ra frequently talks homogenization — the pressure we all feel to all be the same. Human Design is a tool meant to actively fight this.

As physical manifestations of our DNA — being different is key to our survival. It’s why we’re so attracted to the things we are not and it’s also why homogenization — that the invisible pressures from society force us all in one lane, continue to be pervasive. We need to be different, but we’ve been conditioned to believe there’s only one way to survive.

Human Design helps peel back the veil of conditioning and helps us remember that really we are here to lean into what makes us different.

When we’re in our natural state, life force flows through us, animating us. We are in a state of surrender.

Surrendering your worry and doubt and trusting your body’s natural responses bring you into your own personal alignment.

Step one is learning how your aura works.

When you hear or see people talking about their energy type — they are actually talking about their aura. There are 4 types of auras for humans. The Generator aura, The Manifestor aura, The Projector aura, and the Reflector aura.

The Generator aura holds Generators and Manifesting-Generators — so most people have this aura type, it’s about 70% of the earth’s population. The Generator pulls life in — they have life force energy that runs through them, they can use this life force and are meant to use it to do the things that they love! Generators are our builders in this life.

The Manifestor aura is a more rare type — around 8% of the population are Manifestors. Manifestors have a dense and repelling aura. They are meant to push forward into new territory and that repelling aura keeps people from getting in their way. Manifestors are our trailblazers, striking out on new paths, bringing forward motion for humanity.

The Projector aura is the newest aura type — showing up in the late 1700s to guide the transition we’re currently experiencing. The Projector aura is penetrating and absorbing. It penetrates the aura of another to see, taste, and guide energy. Projectors are here to understand how to world works.

The Reflector aura is the rarest type at 1% of the population. The Reflector aura is like living inside a disco ball. The Reflector is protected inside their aura as they sample the energy around them. The samples they take are used to formulate wisdom as they travel through the world Reflectors are mirroring back the status of society to us. They are here as evaluators of the world.

Once we know how our own individual aura works, we are able to begin an unlearning process called deconditioning.

Think about deconditioning as the process of learning how your body is talking to you. Most of us are not taught to listen to ourselves or trust our bodies. When we honor our body and its messages, we are strengthening our connection to our own individual authority.

Deconditioning is not only about listening to our own authority and forging a relationship with our body but is simultaneously an ongoing process; where we begin to understand and spot conditioning and begin to scoop out the beliefs and messaging that aren’t helpful or relevant and begin living on our own terms.

This is where we experiment and question. This is where the work begins. This process of unlearning is continually unfolding if we’re growing and changing as we allow ourselves to find our full potential.

The wisdom in the Human Design community is it takes about 7 years to do this work of deconditioning and beginning to trust yourself and learn to release control from others to your own authority.

When we can accept and champion our natural state of being, we can release outside conditioning and begin living in our natural alignment, guided by our own authority.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

Radically living as ourselves can be lonely. Letting go of homogenizing beliefs can mean upsetting the people around you and unsubscribing to cultural norms. This is why a lot of people chose to live on the surface, doing the deep work to eradicate belief systems is not for the faint of heart.

Our history is filled with people who’ve been punished for fighting against norms, which is why we choose the safety of homogenization.

Going against the grain and against social norms is brave work. When you begin this in earnest, you’ll see this is why a lot of people choose to blend in (homogenize) and live in their Not-Self.

A reading or course will help you begin to tease out the subtleties and nuances in your chart.

Understanding your Human Design can be the beginning of your personal journey of living authentically as yourself. We’re all meant to be different. Are you ready to break out?