Demystifying Human Design

Welcome. My name is Courtney Addy. I am the founder of a coaching firm called The Beacon Collective. And today we're going to talk about demystifying human design. And one of the things that I want to share with all of you as you get to know me better is that one of the headlines I love when I think about human design is it's not mystical, it's mechanical. What I'll say is that for me, spirituality is just an experiment in energy we cannot see. See or understand yet. And that's the mindset that I step into when I explore and experiment with Human Design. Um, so here we go. So what's in store for today? A little bit about me and my Human Design origin story, the basics of the body graph, so how the mechanics of our energy work within this blueprint that we all uniquely have, um, how to enter the experiment of your own Human Design. It's really complex and really simple all at the same time. Where to go to learn more. And for those of you who don't know me, I'm Courtney. I spent decades in corporate America, and when I wrapped up my corporate career, I embarked on becoming an executive coach. And it is such a gift to be able to serve other executives and other founders in this capacity. And I have built my practice with an awful lot of intention. I spent 20 years at a company known very much for its leadership development curriculum and process. And yet, when I became a coach and went looking for the modalities and the tools that I I wanted to use, I really spent a lot of time looking for them. You'll see here that the Beacon Collective, numbers I'm very, very proud of, 92% of our business is actually referral-based. That's a great number. But what I want is not for those who know me or know someone who knows me to be the only people who have the opportunity to work with me. So we're experimenting a little bit more with human design and a variety of other things. Another number I'm really proud of is most of our clients stay with us for multiple We have an average tenure of 1.7 years and growing. And then the other items that you're going to see here are all around the integrity and the authenticity that I choose to bring to this practice. Being an executive doesn't necessarily make you a great executive coach. There's a very different skill set associated with that. You go from being paid to make decisions to being in service to other people and their decision-making process. My organization is accredited by the International Coaching Federation. We are also accredited accredited as a teaching organization with the International Human Design School. And I am personally a board-certified holistic health professional. You can see our clients come from many companies that you may recognize. All have been exposed to Human Design in the process of the experiment. And what I'd say is that you can take it or leave it. By understanding, um, the energetic blueprints of my clients, I have the ability to ask questions that are going to resonate and drive the deepest level of integration. So here we go, a little bit about my journey. If you know me, you'll know that I've been for many, many, many years a self-awareness junkie. If there has been a quiz or a psychometric assessment, I have taken it. Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, numerology, astrology, you name it. But what I found is that those are very hard things to integrate. Once you're aware of what those labels or what those strengths look like, or even some of those challenges, It's very hard to take that and put that into your daily life in terms of how you're navigating. I'm super curious. I'm also really skeptical. It's a big deal for me today to be talking to all of you about Human Design. I'd say I sort of sat on it for a long time and whispered about it. And the more and more I began to use it in the practice at the Beacon Collective, the more it was very clear to me that it was a game changer and a very important modality. So here we are today. When I first found out about Human Design, there was a woman who introduced it in a group of people who were in career transition, and I immediately gravitated towards it. Tons of curiosity. I signed up and I paid her $500 to actually Google my profile in front of me on a, on a Zoom. And so if anything today, I can prevent you from spending money on that $500 expense. You'll get a little bit more of where to go for help and where to begin your Human Design journey. After I had that experience, I was still hooked and went in search of finding a teacher. I looked at a bunch of different people who were teaching the Human Design system and eventually chose to work with the— because it is the source of the original Human Design materials. A lot of other people have updated and migrated the teachings over time. And for me, I really wanted to begin embarking and studying it from the original source. So that's where I landed and began 3 years of study. And that's an ongoing study for me. It takes 7 years to actually become a professional-level analyst of the Human Design system. And as I began to understand how my mechanics worked, magical things began to happen. And you'll see when we get into this a little bit deeper, close to 90% of us on this little blue and green ball, 8 to 9 billion of us humans, are designed to wait. And what I've realized is waiting is actually the hardest part of my design, being patient, no instant gratification. But when you realize and you wait from a sense of higher resonance or vibrational frequency, you're able to attract the things that you're looking to intentionally bring into your life. And it's a really special experience. Experiment. From there, I began to reflect on not only what my design was, but how I began to interact or electromagnetically plug into other people, right, individuals, my husband, my children, and how I was designed to work. Moving from a large corporation to being a solopreneur is a very, very different sort of energetic environment. And come to find out, after 20 years in corporate, I was never designed to work in a big company. My energy is actually really designed to work solo, alone in its own space, or in small groups, which has, as an entrepreneur, led me to make a lot of decisions about where I take the company and who I work with and how I design the practice going forward. A lot of what I do is one-on-one basis as a practitioner and is in small groups as a retreat leader. And so that has been my gateway to abundance. And lastly, one of the things that I struggled with originally was coming to this sort of realization that I'm a coach, and I've also come to the realization that I'm also a teacher. And so here we are. And again, I say take anything that resonates with you and please leave behind the rest. So quick poll, how many of you already know your design? You're not brand new, you've already tinkered a little bit, you've gone out there. If you want to go ahead and just drop that in the chat for us. That will be great. We're going to go ahead and begin the process. Human Design, more than anything else, is at service of making decisions, saying the right yes and the right no based on alignment. Alignment is a word that becomes really overused, but when you understand it in the context of the Human Design system, it becomes a really, really beautiful tool to recognize how and when you are in or out of alignment. We actually make, as humans, 35,000— or research says that we make 35,000 decisions every day. Only 5% of them are from our conscious awareness. We make close to 200, um, decisions about food alone every day— hot, cold, tea, coffee, oat milk, almond milk. You know, a lot of us are just moving through that not from a level of conscious awareness, but basically from our subconscious and beginning to understand mental awareness versus body awareness and how to move that through the Human Design system is really, really powerful. We're going to jump into Human Design from the bodygraph. I want to ground you in what this funny-looking little map looks like. We each have one of these. It's called the bodygraph and it's signifies how our energy is designed to operate. And in this, you'll see those shapes starting with the head and moving all the way down to the root, the head and the root center. Each one of these 9 centers is the shapes, and you will see that there are 64 gates. Those are what those little numbers are. And then there are 32 channels. These are the lines that connect one gate to another. And so fundamentally, um, how you're designed to operate is based on the definition and the openness that you have in your unique Bodygraph. Your unique chart contains two sets of imprints. Human Design is based on the premise that there is a constant stream of subatomic particles called neutrinos that imprint the Bodygraph, providing definition. In 1987, when this was originally founded, no one knew that neutrinos had any mass. Mass at all. And as time goes on, they found that they did in fact have mass. We are hurtling, I think, scientifically now with the study of neutrinos and subatomic particles towards more and more understanding of the energy that we can't see on a daily basis. And so there's a little bit of trust or faith associated with jumping into this system. When we look at these two sets of imprints, Half of them are in red and half of them in black. And so the red lines, you can see this is my particular chart, the red lines will represent how your energy is in the body, the unconscious body, and how you're fundamentally designed. This is not necessarily going to be aware to you. Other people may see this in you, but you may not have self-awareness of it. You're still projecting this life force energy out into the world. So I like, like I said, somebody else may see it in you, but it's something that you may readily recognize in yourself. What you'll readily recognize is the black. This is where your conscious mind or your personality sits. This is who you think you are. How you are lit up in the bodygraph is, you know, what you think your personality is. And both of them combined together are called a quantum. Now, if you spend any time in astrology or other places, you'll know that you have a natal chart. Basically, your natal chart is based on the black, the imprints that happen when you're born. What I love about Human Design is the combination of the two of these things, which creates a whole level and layer of additional dimension. So what happens is those energetic imprints create definition and shape the consistent energy that you're projecting out into the world. This is how your life force energy is experienced by others around you. So these imprints come in and activate one of these little gates. If it connects to a gate on the other side, it'll form a channel. And when there's a channel present, what it will do is it will bring definition into these centers. This is actually my chart. I have this channel, the 18 and the 58. It creates what's called the Channel of Judgment, um, which was a whole awakening and understanding for me. Each element of the Human Design chart is projected out in either a signature or a self-frequency or a not-self-frequency. And when you begin to understand whether or not you're projecting out a signature level of energy or low level of energy, you begin to understand the mechanics of how you feel and how you're interacting with those around you. And so then, um, each one of these centers, depending on how they're defined or undefined, each have a role. You'll see if you've spent any time Uh, with the Hindu Brahman chakra system has 7 centers. Human Design is considered on its way to 9. And so you'll see some of them have split out here, but each one has a particular energetic hub. The head, whether it's defined or undefined, you have access or constant and steady energy to inspiration. But with that comes the mental pressure to answer all the questions and all the ideas that you have. The ajna is about thinking and conceptualizing and processing information. If it is defined, you have a steady access to the way that you think and conceptualize information in the world. My ajna is very open, and so I don't have a steady way of how I think about things or how I integrate things. It's always very, very fluid. The throat— if you can see here close enough, every channel, every sort of these lines, they are all going to the throat center. It has 12 gates, the more— the most of any center that is here. And all the energy is designed to get to the throat where we can express, communicate. They call this the center of manifestation. Um, the G center, this is where our love and our direction come from. We either have constant access to that or not constant access to who we are and where we're going and how we sort of step into our understanding of love. The heart, all about willpower. They also call this the ego. This is where our material value comes from and where we either have willpower or do not have a steady access to willpower. 70% of the population has an open heart or ego center, which means that we don't have consistent access to willpower. You know, we're coming up on year-end where a lot of people are looking at their New Year's resolutions from last year and moving into January. And when you look at humans as beings that don't necessarily have a lot of access to consistent willpower, it's really interesting to look at some of those types of activities with curiosity and not with judgment. The sacral center, 70% of the population have a defined sacral center, pure life force energy and response. For the 30% that don't, they can become very overwhelmed trying to move at the pace that everyone else is and really need to figure out what rest looks like for them. They can't keep up with, with all of the sacral beings that are, that are buzzing around. The spleen, this is about intuition, health, and survival instincts, one of the oldest of the three awareness centers that sit within the Human Design system. Lastly, the solar plexus, this is one of the newest awareness centers. This is all about emotions and emotional intelligence and getting clarity over time. Lastly, the root This is all about the stress and the drive and the pressure to move and grow that so many of us have either consistent access to or inconsistent access to. I spend a lot of time just grounding you into the centers because one of the things after understanding your strategy type and authority is understanding how your centers light up and what the impact of having a defined or an undefined center can have on you and those around you and how those around you have impact on you. If you never get anything else out of this process, understanding your type, your strategy, and authority is the only thing you really need to integrate and understand. Your type is your core energetic role, how your aura operates, and how you best engage with life and work, engage with others in your life, engage with the work that you choose to do. Not that you're conditioned to do, but that you are in the most alignment to do. Your strategy is the most efficient way for opportunities and people and decisions to come to you with the least amount of resistance, to really be in alignment with what you say yes to and no to from a very embodied place. Your authority is your internal decision-making system, how your body discerns what's correct for it, not your mind. Your mind is not here to make decisions. It's really based on your authority, which will come from the combination of or elements of the defined centers that you have in your body graph. And talk more about that. So if you are new to Human Design, this is a very easy, uh, overview chart. There's 5 different types. They're called Manifestors, Generators, Manifesting Generators, Projectors, and Reflectors. And what you see in those various different colors or all how their aura works. Manifestors have a very tight and concentrated aura. Um, generators and manifesting generators, making up close to 70% of the population— these are people who walk into the room and you can literally feel it, right? They're just reverberating this open, engaging, and enveloping aura. Um, projectors are meant to guide one person at a time. They're meant to impact and guide people one at a time. And reflectors have this that acts more as a mirror or a barometer on the environment that they're in. Reflectors are very rare. So manifestors can really initiate action. But if manifestors initiate something and start diving right into it with not informing the people that initiation is going to impact most, they will either get angry, or they'll make the people around them angry, really trying to figure out and understand what's going on. About 10% of the human population are manifestors and designed that way. And then we have our generators. Our generators are here to wait and be in response to life. Our manifesting generators have a little bit of manifestor and generator, but they are very much a generator, open and enveloping aura. They're here to wait to respond and then inform others of what their response to life is going to be. Projectors are here to be recognized and invited. The projectors, you know, they're these wonderful orchestrators who have this ability to guide the energy of the work. They're usually very good at operations, at organizing. They can always see what's broken, usually with a process or a system. And if they jump right in and start trying to fix it and taking that initiative, they will burn themselves right out. They have no sacral energy. And a lot of projectors that I work with, it's a matter of really figuring out how to get them the recognition that they deserve so that they can then use their energy in a way that is going to be beneficial not only for themselves but for the collective. And again, our reflectors are really right here to make a decision or wait for a lunar cycle, 28 days. And we're not going to get into all that right now, but if you are a reflector, I can spend more time talking to you about that specifically. I have a couple reflectors that I coach. And so then we move into authority. So first we know how to engage our energy, and then we know how to say yes or no to what it is that we want to initiate or what it is that we're responding to— responding to life or responding to the recognition and invitation that's in front of us. And these are the top 3 So what's so interesting about this, I began, you know, I grew up in GE. And so Jack Welch, who was there while I was there for a very short time, early, early in my career, I'm dating myself, wrote a book called Straight from the Gut. And I was working on writing something about intuition and gut intuition. And I began to realize that sacral authority, which is gut intuition, I happen to have sacral authority as a manifesting generator. Really, only 35% of the population have that. And I began to spend and get more and more fascinated by how people are really designed to make decisions. And so 50% of the population is not made to make a decision in real time. They're not meant to be spontaneous. They're here to play hard to get. In fact, the longer they wait, the more clarity that they get. So if you have emotional authority, this is authority of your feelings, there's no truth in the now. You are the absolute opposite of somebody who has splenic authority, who boom, knows in the moment. The people that I work with that have splenic authority usually know what their nos are immediately. They have a harder time finding their yeses. In corporate America, we sometimes get criticized or judged if we can't be decisive, right? So I will coach people to figure out how to know this about themselves and figure figure out how to buy themselves a little bit more time, right? How do they say, is it okay if I wait until tomorrow morning and get back to you on that, or next week? Informing that you're going to take some time to make your decision and come back. Because what will happen is, if you're making a decision from a place of spontaneity, right, that immediate emotional reaction which is at a high or a low point, like a hell yes or oh hell no, No, right? What's going to happen is the likelihood that you're going to wind up doing something or saying yes to something that's really a no for you is probably really high. People with emotional authority buy themselves a little bit more time, and sometimes that emotional authority can take days. Sometimes it takes years. If you're thinking about a career transition, or if you're thinking about moving into another role, or moving locations, or buying a different house, Sometimes this can take an awful long time, which is why I love coaching. Taking the advice from other people about what you should or should not do is just access to judgment. Really tapping into your emotional authority and how you get clarity is a very, very powerful thing. Sacral authority— again, we're going to layer in some communications from an executive standpoint. These people are meant to be asked yes or no questions. In fact, it is best if they use their guttural response and they don't use words. By the time the response gets to the mind and comes out of the throat, it can get all jumbled up, right? And so these are people who I can actually do sacral interviews with a topic that we want to go through and ask them not to use words but to use their sacral response. Yes is No is— and I need more time to think about it. And so it's a really, really powerful full-bodied response to life that around 35% of the population are designed to make decisions by. And lastly, there's overall 7 authorities, but the last one I talked about a little bit is the splenic authority. It comes in pulses. They know in the moment. These people have the most instinctive instinctual authority of any type in Human Design, and it takes an awful lot to surrender and trust that. And usually they know in the moment, they know if it's a yes or a no. They usually know if it's a no because their survival instinct is usually more honed than the rest of us. But if they don't trust that in the moment and, and they wait, they usually don't have the ability to make the decision more than once. And, um, the clarity can fade over time. So that's just a little bit about the key components of strategy, type, and authority. This is a message from, or a quote from, the man who downloaded or first discovered the Human Design system. The mind is never the authority. It takes a great deal of courage to be able not to embrace your authority, but to live into it. And this is what I love about the experimental nature of Human Design. When you bring it into your conscious awareness about how you engage your energy and how you make decisions. Um, one of the things that I find so fascinating, especially as a coach who spent an awful lot of time with emotional intelligence— what I'm seeing right now is this really beautiful shift from emotional intelligence to energy intelligence in a really embodied way. This is where, if you're overwhelmed so far, begins to get simpler again. The signature energy or emotion for manifestors is a sense of peace, like really embodied peace. And when they're not in that energy, they feel really angry, or they're angering other people. They have anger coming towards them. Generators— ooh, sweet satisfaction, right? It's, it's funny, both my children are generators, and before I even knew that, like around the house, you know, they were just being like, ooh, this is satisfying, this is so satisfying. My son is a sacral generator, and he beeps around the house, making noises all the time. They'll ask him if he wants pizza for dinner. Mm-hmm. Right. You'll hear him actually make sounds and make noises. And so as a parent to say, use your words, would be not appropriate for a generator who has a sacral response. I want him to use his sounds in order to respond to life. So deep sense of satisfaction. And when they're not, oof, super frustrated. Manifesting generators add the dimension of both peace and satisfaction and frustration and anger. You can see how 70% of the population, if they are saying yes to a no, that's an awful lot of frustration. I like to ask that question in my coaching practice. I'll ask, you know, based on their energetic type, is there something really frustrating you right now? Or is there something that is making you angry? Just as a way to look into their decision-making process. Projectors, ooh, sweet success. And not success the way that society has defined success, but a lot of projectors really need to take the time to look at their core values, to look at the type of work that they are doing, and define success for them on a very individualized and personal basis. And when they jump in and they say yes to a no, or they begin initiating, you can see that they get bitter and they feel resentful. Nobody's recognizing them. They're doing all this work. They're spending all of this time and they really resent the fact that they care so much and can see so much about what can be improved. I have a hack for projectors, a way of testing for recognition. So if you're in a meeting and there's something that's really bothering you, you can say, well, Bob, here's what I see is going on. 'If you like, I can help you fix that. Is that something you'd be interested in?' And if that isn't recognized or if it's not invited, you wait, and Bob may come around and, and bring you into the conversation over time. But if it's not recognized or invited in the moment, the best thing that you can do is just let it go and let it be. Lastly, our Reflectors, they love to be surprised, but they can feel very disappointed. Now, all of these emotions are going to resonate with all of us because we all have the entirety of the chart. We all have these emotions. But where you see your not-self and your signature is really where you begin to understand how you can get off path. And so using that emotional resistance as a signpost is the easiest way to follow the breadcrumbs back to your decisions and understand how you engaged your energy. Did you do it correctly or incorrectly? Or did you say yes to a no? And so when you feel that sense of either bitterness or resentment, frustration or anger, it's an indicator that somewhere along the line, follow it back, really sort of think about what am I right now in my heart of hearts saying yes to that's really a no. And when you identify what that thing is, understanding whether or not you can modify it or anchor yourself in a deeper intention that allows you to live with it in a way or move through it in a way that gives you a greater sense of either satisfaction, peace, or success. Um, and that's as easy— that's Human Design. It's really as simple as it is. And if you just know those things and don't go any further, you'll be well on your way to really beginning to And this is just a little extra bonus information. So I like to say, know you first and know them next. One of the things about Human Design that's so powerful is once you understand your own bodygraph, you can begin to understand how you plug into other people in terms of those energetic centers. So this is my bodygraph combined with a business partner of mine. You can see we have constant energy across all of the 9 centers. And what that means when you combine two people together. And then what it means when you're energetically looking at what's called a penta. So pentas really look at family dynamics and they look at group dynamics in business. So if you're a founder, if you're in a small company, just understanding where you may have concentrations of energy and/or absences of energy that's important to have when you are running or operating a business. Or a family. Um, and just understanding those things can be pretty powerful and eye-opening. So how do you enter? First, you get your Human Design chart. I'm going to tell you where to get that in a moment for those of you that don't have it. You discover what your type, your strategy, and your personal authority are, and then you just look for resistance. Looking at what you're doing, who's around you, what you've said yes to, how you've engaged your energy, and you look for that resistance. You understand where you're feeling frustrated or angry or bitter, and you trace it back to how you engaged your energy and what you decided to say yes to or no to. And it's really as simple as that. You just follow the breadcrumbs back to your decisions. For more information, I'm giving you the sources that I use most. The Jovian Archive is the archive of all of the original source material and teachings from Ra Uru Hu. The Human International Human Design School sits on top of that, and so they teach based on all of that foundational information. If you're looking to get a copy of your Bodygraph, you can get one at the Jovian Archive, but you can also go and get a free user-friendly report from mybodygraph.com. I will say it's incredibly important for you to have your birth date, time, and location with a degree of accuracy. So if you're not familiar with the time, what could happen is some of those imprints that we talked about earlier may or may not be present. And so if you work with a professional analyst that has Maya Mechanics, a software tool, you will be able to understand and have an implication on a red, yellow, green in terms of the confidence around your worth time. You should be able to get to your strategy type and authority, but if you go much deeper into Human Design in terms of understanding, uh, your channels and a variety of other things, um, I encourage you to find somebody with the Maya Mechanic software. I have it. I could certainly look at that for you. And lastly, I like having an app on my phone. I use humandesignapp.com. It's a mobile-friendly way to look at your chart to look at somebody else's chart and just to begin to tune into the Human Design system. And lastly, if you're looking for support, find yourself a Living Your Design guide. They are somebody who has gone through all three of the foundational classes and is certified through the IHDS, or find yourself a professional analyst. So lastly, thank you for being here. It's really So delicious to share this. Human Design has had the most profound impact on my life.