If you’ve ever wondered What is the simple explanation of Human Design?, then you’re in the right place. This no-frills introduction to Human Design will guide you through 5 key concepts (like energy type, strategy, authority) to get you started right away. But first, what is it? Chetan Parkyn, a leading practitioner for more than 23 years, describes Human Design as a system for self-knowledge that shows you:
“… where you have been out of sync and where you have been misunderstood. It gives you the means to let go of old “conditioning”, and acquaints you with the person you were born to be. When we begin to live according to our own truth, […] it becomes easier to accomplish our desired outcomes.”
In my personal journey with Human Design, I’ve found it to be a powerful tool for self-discovery and personal growth. I’ve shared a part of my practical experiment in this article, which I wrote while I was pregnant. Since then, I’ve experienced a significant shift in how I relate to myself and others, meeting life with less resistance and greater ease.
Table of Contents
I have written this introduction to Human Design following Polly Clover’s course: How to Write an SEO-Friendly Blog: A Start-to-Finish Roadmap. That is my affiliate link: if you click the link and purchase the course, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
An Introduction to Human Design in 5 Points: Type, Strategy, Authority, Energy Centers, Profile.
Before diving into the key aspects, I want to answer two common questions: How does Human Design Work? How is my Human Design determined?
Human Design is a system that utilizes your birth information (exact location, date, and time of birth) to create a design chart, known as a bodygraph. A bodygraph can be considered a comprehensive genetic blueprint that sheds light on the essence of your being and your unique energetic composition since birth.
Once you access your Human Design chart, you’re presented with a concrete map of your nature and practical tools to make decisions that feel correct to you – instead of ones that you should make, ought to make, or would be appropriate to make. You can consider it Your User Manual.
The information in your Bodygraph is intended to be processed and applied to your daily life, enabling you to make decisions from this authentic perspective and ultimately help you reconnect with your unique nature.
Rather than asking you to believe anything on faith, Human Design presents itself as an experiment—inviting you to test its insights in your own life and observe the results.
The most essential elements that make up your blueprint, which I cover in this article, are:
- Aura/Energy Type
- Strategy
- Authority
- Energy centers
- Profile
To discover your bodygraph, you don’t take a Human Design test (although it could make sense, considering you take one to determine your Enneagram or whether you’re an introvert). Instead, you generate a free chart by inputting your birth data. Here are my suggested websites:
💡Generate your free chart and follow along to start learning about your Human Design.
💡However, if you’re ready for an in-depth analysis of your Human Design, especially for a highly sensitive person, you can book my foundational Human Design reading here.
1) Aura Type (or Energy Type).
Each energy type (or aura type) describes your aura, and your aura is the way you were born to use your energy, exchange it with others, and optimally interact with the world.
Type embodies the very essence of The Human Design System. It’s the basis for the most practical, empowering and transformative information – your Strategy and Authority. Type is about your body, your genetics and your aura. It’s how you harmonize with the world around you and align with your true nature. Strategy & Authority helps you operate most efficiently.
Embracing your aura type allows you to start embodying your design, moving in the world with less resistance and more ease. So, what are the five types of Human Design explained? Here’s a list of the types, from most to least common. In the next section on strategy, you will learn more about each of them.
Generator & Manifesting Generator: you’re in alignment when you feel satisfaction; you’re out of alignment when you feel frustration.
Projector: you’re in alignment when you feel success; you’re out of alignment when you feel bitterness.Manifestor: you’re in alignment when you feel peace; you’re out of alignment when you feel anger.
Reflector: you’re in alignment when you feel surprise; you’re out of alignment when you feel disappointment.What is your Human Design type? In case you don’t know yet, it is typically the first property you find when you generate a chart.
2) Strategy.
Now that this introduction to Human Design is covering strategy, we can expand on each aura type. Strategy is the specific way you move and operate in the world based on your type, its aura, and energy.
Generator – Your strategy is to wait to respond. Given your almost endless life force, your strategy is to wait for a yes or no from the sacral before responding to whatever comes into your aura. You’re not here to initiate: generators magnetize people and opportunities into their aura field, so your most important job is to be able to say yes only to the things that truly light you up.
Manifesting generator – Your strategy is to wait to respond, like a generator. However, once you’ve responded and it is a sound yes, you’re ready to initiate your next endeavour. You’re here to say yes to whatever lights you up, allowing yourself the ‘luxury’ to pivot whenever you want.
Projector – Your strategy is to wait for the invitation. As non-energy beings with a natural talent for guiding and tweaking, your precious energy is best spent whenever you receive a clear invitation to share your wisdom, offer a contribution, and guide the other person to a better outcome. Only through an invitation can you see how effortlessly your magic works.
Manifestor – Your strategy is to inform. You are the only type in Human Design that is designed to initiate. However, whenever you get an urge to start something, you should muster all your strength to inform others before taking action. You don’t do this to get their approval but to ensure a smoother process (with as few misunderstandings as possible).
Reflector – The only other non-energy being with zero defined centers. Your strategy is the same as your authority: wait for a lunar cycle (about 28 days) before making a big decision. For any smaller decisions, relying on your body’s wisdom is enough.
3) Authority.
Authority is the way you naturally make your best decisions – from the most harmless and mundane to the most relevant. There are seven authorities in Human Design, and each of them relies on the body, its inner guidance system, and wisdom.
“It’s the mechanism within you that knows what’s correct for you, the part of you that can guide your decisions in alignment with your true nature. It’s not about the mind, not about logic or reasoning”. Jovian Archive
Bonus: If you take nothing else from this introduction to Human Design, please start your experiment with energy type, strategy, and authority. They represent powerful tools for understanding your unique way of operating in the world and for making decisions that are in alignment with who you came here to be.
A list of the 7 authorities.
Emotional: You ride the emotional highs and lows until you reach clarity (or neutrality), and that’s the moment where you can make your big decision.
Sacral: You rely on your sacral center to tell you if it’s a Yes or No, moment to moment. Don’t let the mind taint the strength of your gut instincts.
Splenic: Your spleen will tell you instantly, quickly, and only once what you’re supposed to do. Learn to trust the speed of your decisions.
Ego: Your desires are your decision-making compass. Your biggest challenge is to rely on your desires (material ones included) in a world that often demonizes that aspect of yourself.
Self-projected: Your natural, strong, innate sense of direction (in life, love, space) will tell you what’s right or wrong for you. Speaking out loud to yourself or others will help you see if the decision resonates or not.
Sounding-board: You’re one of the rarest ones! With this authority, you make the most aligned decisions when you are in an aligned environment and whenever you share your mental process with others (even just the environment you’re in). You wait for any feedback, and feel it in your body to make the final decision.
Lunar: Your strategy and authority coincide. While you can rely on your body’s wisdom to make smaller decisions, you need to complete a whole lunar cycle to reach that much-needed clarity for a bigger one.
If you want to learn more, you can read my in-depth article on the seven authorities in Human Design
4) Energy Centers.
Human Design draws on the Indian chakra system and incorporates two additional energy centers. These nine centers “represent energetic hubs within the bodygraph” – Eden Carpenter.
- Root center: adrenaline, pressure, ambition, stress, wanting to be helpful.
- Solar plexus (emotional) center: emotions, moods, passion.
- Sacral center: life force, work force, sexuality, creativity
- Spleen center: intuition, fears, health, survival.
- Heart center: desires, consistency, determination, willpower.
- G-center: sense of identity, love, direction, environment.
- Throat center: your voice as a powerful means for manifestation and self-expression.
- Ajna center: opinions, beliefs, certainty.
- Crown/Head center: ideas, inspiration, connection to the Divine.
As you can see, each of the centers carries a specific type of energy and theme, in addition to being linked to physical body parts and their well-being. In any bodygraph, you can spot:
– White centers, or open: you don’t generate consistent energy in them, so you take it in from other people and often amplify it. For example, I have seven defined centers, while two of them are completely open. I know this, but I experience intense conditioning around them.
– Colored in, or defined: you will consistently generate that type of energy within your body. This is how you affect and energetically impact the people around you. Eden Carpenter: https://www.edencarpenter.com/blog/the-nine-centers.
– Mainly white with a few colored dots/numbers in them, or undefined: they are a lot like white centers, but they have some action going on. Reflectors only have open or undefined centers.
Bonus Tip
Even if it is just an introduction to Human Design, I feel it’s important to mention definition. If your centers are all connected by channels, then you are a single definition and you make decisions quickly. If they are split into two or four groups, then it means you need more time or certain conditions (for example, different types of people) to reach your final decisions: you need to get all your energy centers on board as if there were multiple voices within you. This information has been a game-changer for many, including myself!
5) Profile.
Profile is your role in life and with others. Learning about your Human Design profile will be a fun and validating experience when you start exploring Human Design. A profile is made up of two numbers, that is, lines. The first one describes how you see yourself, the second number how others see and perceive you. They have self-explanatory names:
1 – The Investigator
2 – The Hermit
3 – The Martyr
4 – The Opportunist
5 – The Heretic
6 – The Role Model
For example, your Human Design profile 1/4 is called: The Investigator Opportunist, combining the names of the two lines. Whereas, I am a 3/5: The Martyr Heretic. There is so much more that I could add about profiles, but this is just an introduction to Human Design, and I don’t want to overwhelm you!
Introduction To Human Design: FAQ’s
How was Human Design created?
It was created and developed by Alan Robert Krakower, who later adopted the pseudonym Ra Uru Hu. He received the transmissions from a voice in 1987 in Ibiza, and the mystical experience lasted eight days and nights. The transmissions formed the foundation of what is now known as the Human Design System, which he perfected over the course of the following twenty years or so.
Where did it come from?
Although Ra Uru Hu is the person who initiated the Human Design system, this transformative system integrates knowledge and elements from the I Ching, the Hindu Chakra system, the Tree of Life from Kabbalah, astrology, and modern sciences, including physics and genetics.
How can Human Design help you?
From the moment you were born, you’ve been inundated with “shoulds” – how you “should” think and feel, what you “should” believe, how you “should” act, what you “should” wear, eat, do for a living – the list goes on.
WTF Is Human Design?: An Introduction to Human Design and Deconditioning by Elli Richter and Helen Hall.
Using your exact birth information, the Human Design system provides an energetic blueprint that represents your unique composition and a roadmap to help you make better decisions in life. It helps shed light on:
– your gifts
– optimal decision-making process
– energy dynamics
– overall well-being
– relationships with other people
– best environment for you to thrive
– your most likely struggles.
Final Considerations For This Introduction to Human Design.
I hope you have found this introduction to Human Design practical for getting familiar with a system that is becoming increasingly popular each day. However, as with any system of self-knowledge, I always advise taking what resonates and leaving what doesn’t.
I would like to point out that this is the second article I have written following Polly Clover’s How to Write an SEO-Friendly Blog: A Start-to-Finish Roadmap. That is my affiliate link: if you click and purchase the course through it, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
To explore your Human Design and your unique blueprint — and, above all, view it through the lens of a highly sensitive person — book a foundational Human Design Reading with me.