I came across Human Design about 6 or 7 years ago — a chance remark from a friend piqued my curiosity and my life was transformed from the moment I read about my “energy type.” It’s been a powerful, life-changing, life-affirming, awakening process ever since.
If I had only had this information earlier, it would have saved me literally years of therapy trying to figure out and fix what was “wrong” with me. Turns out there is nothing “wrong” with me. I definitely had (still have, will always have…) issues to deal with. But I had wrestled all my life with the feeling that I was fundamentally flawed, that I was fatally different from everyone else (I remember making a list when I was in first grade trying to explain that to myself: I was left-handed, I was a Canadian in the US, I had a strange birthmark on my leg….nothing seemed to explain it.)
When I read about my design, even at the most general level, I finally had words that articulated my experience. The relief I felt was so powerful that it took months just to let that sink in, to re-calibrate all of my experiences through this new, clearer lens. Wow. I’m not the mistake I had always thought myself to be — and had spent my life trying to make up for being.
Human Design is an integration of the chakra system, astrology, the I-Ching, the Kabbalah, and quantum physics. It takes your birth time, location, and date — both the moment of birth and about 6 weeks prior to that — and shows you how you got wired for this life time.
It’s both incredibly complex, which gives it stunning specificity, and elegantly simple. It’s an energetic experience. When I talk to people about their design, when I read about my own, there is an energetic resonance that happens. You can feel it. It feels “right,” and your system responds to that. “Aaaah. So that’s what that is.”
All those little quirky things, all those things that you do, those little preferences, those things you tend to focus on, those things that come easily to you that you don’t understand why others can’t get it…those are the gifts you’ve been given to be uniquely, gloriously you. Specifically you.
Your Human Design gives you reason to trust your Self. It validates your experience. It doesn’t tell you who you have to be — you still have free will, and you get to experiment to your heart’s content. But you get to do it with something specific to measure against — how does it feel to do it this way versus that way? Which way feels better to you? Which way works better in the long run?
It helps explain why you haven’t been successful, why you feel like shit sometimes, why you’re exhausted or frustrated or angry or bitter. It gives you a way back to yourself, and exactly why it will feel better to do it that way. When you have had a lifetime of being conditioned to be how others are and think you should be (because it worked for them — best of intentions, no blame here), it’s very helpful to have something to point to that says, “You can trust this.” You can feel the truth of it. And then you get to experiment.
In working with my clients, I find it extremely helpful to have their design. It helps me support them being themselves in a way that is specific to them. One person may need to trust their first instinct and not second-guess themselves, the next person may need to make note of that first instinct, but wait a while before acting on it. One person may wonder, “why does my life seem so incredibly chaotic?” while another wonders, “why does everyone have all these high expectations of me?”
Your design can help explain all these things, as well as what your specific gifts are, what your specific challenges are likely to be, and how you can navigate those successfully and use them to your advantage. It can articulate what your role in this life is, how you are happiest making decisions, what your super-powers are, the healthiest digestive process for your body, the environment your body feels most relaxed in….on and on.
I incorporate Human Design into my work with clients, and I also give stand-alone readings and will be teaching classes on it in the near future. I invite you to discover what is “right” with you, and what has been right all along. Save yourself — and your kids, family, friends — years of trying to fix what has never been broken to begin with.
Hugs, Martha
