Human Design came into my life around 2010. I was introduced by someone at a Bikram yoga studio I was a part of (which is a whole other story in itself). This was also the same time Ayurveda came onto my radar. I was searching at the time. That was the reason I was even in a Bikram yoga studio, I was eager for the next level - of something, of everything. I was going through the roughest period of my life and was totally lost in who I was, and how I had become the person I was showing up as everyday. None of me made sense anymore. I was in a job that I couldn't settle in, in relationships that just wouldn't work, dealing with grief, health issues and I was exhausted, in the most unsatisfying way.
I was burnout, frustrated, unhappy and unfulfilled - and I had come to a point where telling myself ‘its only for a while and then it will get better’, just started to feel like wishful thinking. So I did what many of us do, and tried to force wellbeing on myself.
I had always lived a somewhat holistic, alternative, and spiritually curious life. More openly as a teenager, but always, at least on a private level. By that point in my life though, know-one around me knew that I meditated every morning, or was reading books like Ekhart Tolle's The Power of Now, or permanently carrying crystals under my clothes, sneaking off the yoga class.
I was a secret seeker. The wellness/spiritual/mindfulness world was not was it is today. So to save being more misunderstood I kept my interests to myself.
So, I let this woman (who's name and story I forget, but I think she was an astrologer who was studying Human Design) take me for a tea, and tell me all about my Human Design chart.
I remember it making sense and ringing true for me, but I also remember hearing some really triggering things. At that time HD was not all over social media (this was before IG) and there weren't tons of books and blogs about it, so I didn't get the chance to go any deeper, or to clarify the things I was being told. Ever the critical thinker (hello defined mind!), and not being able to really understand what it was and where it came from, I moved on and never thought much more about it.
Over the years that followed, still eternally searching, and dabbling in different teachings, as I balanced who I knew I was, with who I was presenting to the world… HD (and a few other things I now work with) kept circling into my orbit from time to time. So I would do the online charts, read a bit more, nod along and then realise I didn't have the time of energy to really get into it, and it would get lost in the abyss of my gmail account.
Finally in 2017 I was at a pinnacle crossroads in my life. This was it. I had sought enough, and was preparing to leave the career I had built and worked so hard for, the one that had taken much of my life, energy and identity throughout my 20's, and embark on something else. Something truer.
I was planning to do my YTT, study nutrition to support my health. I was going to start making clothes again, start my own brand. So I pulled on the things that had been hanging around on the outskirts of my mind. Human Design, Ayurveda, Astrology, Mindfulness … all the things that might help me make sense of the road ahead and hold me through it.
THIS is when Human Design started to make an impact. I was finishing out a work contract I was doing, that was due to end the following summer, so I had time to get my ducks in a row. I started to learn about myself properly through my HD and astro charts, through Ayurvedic consultations, and in creating rituals and routines for myself. I started having tarot readings, doing visualisations mediation. I increased my practices in all the things I was doing and slowly, I started to make sense again.
I felt myself coming home to the me I once knew.
I set new year intentions the following year, 2018. To do the trainings I needed, and to make a career change. One of those intentions was ‘focusing on my health’ which meant finally dealing with the ‘nothing to worry about’ lump in my breast that had been there since 2015.
I scheduled an appointment to hopefully get it removed, and within weeks, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. It had already spread to my bones and my liver, and in that instant my life expectancy became uncertain, and much shorter.
That day, Friday 13th April 2018, that finally diagnosis, my whole life changed for the worse, and the better. I lost everything I thought I knew and was stripped of all of my external world. All my superficial plans and goals were gone. It was devastating, but if was also a huge relief. I had a get out clause of the hamster wheel I had found myself on, an unplanned detour on the path I was walking.
What my diagnosis gifted me was an opportunity, an offer I couldn't refuse, to finally make it make sense. I had little to loose at that point, and a determination to spend what time I had left finally being happy and being myself. Living life on my terms an in a way that felt true to me, and being WELL.
I left my career and turned my attention full time to all the things I had planned. This is were my Human Design study started. It started with my trying to rediscover myself again, and in the process, as I did other peoples charts around me, finally make sense of them too. It became part of my full time, healing protocol, along side my mind and body healing and study, this started to uncover my soul.
I could no longer just ‘put it down’. As I learnt more through the teachings of the founder of HD, Ra Uru Hu, I became more and more fascinated and went deeper and deeper. Realising that all the other teachings I had dabbled with on my ‘seeking journey’, from the iChing, Kabbalah, the Hindu chakra system, astrology, where all weaved through this complex extraordinary system.
It felt like a homecoming. Not a trendy thing to turn into a business, or add to my IG bio, but a deep resounding guttural sigh of relief. It was only after years of study and embodiment of my own design, and observation of others, that I start to work with people at their request, sharing their charts with them. Helping people uncover parts of themselves, release the weight of the narrative about who they are, free themselves of the conditioning of the world around them, and feel more at ease in themselves, felt purposeful.
Human Design information is now so readily to you online, in books, all over instagram, and whilst this has it downfalls, it also means that you can learn a lot about yourself, for free, at your own pace. This to me, is the beauty of Human Design, and something else that has since become part of my practice, Gene Keys. Neither of these systems need to be rushed, and the benefits go way beyond helping your with your marketing plan.
For me, Human Design is a journey like no other. Not a 90 minute session, not a 4 week course, not a label to give yourself, but a practice. In the way your yoga, mediation, journalling practice is. It acts as the daily remembrance of who you are. A gentle reminder of how you can experiment with the life in front you, respond in different ways. It is like a comfort space where you are fully understood in your truest nature.
A place to come back to over and over again.
It doesn't take the hard work of life away, and there is no ‘getting it right’, or avoiding the inevitable of life. But it can support you in navigating your unique life path in a way that gives you the most ease.
The big goals, the illusive ‘alignment’, the high life, the fancy terminology, are all fine, but the reason I fell in love with this system, is because it helped me meet myself again, fall back in love with myself, and understand myself on every level, in the most grounded, and gentle way.
It wasn't big, and flashy, and full of full of fireworks….
it was a shoulder drop,
a sigh of relief,
a deep breath,
and confirmation that I was exactly who I knew I was all along…and that is just perfect.
Lea xxx