I’ve been talking about AI a lot more lately and maybe that’s weird because I’m a holistic health coach who uses Human Design to help you figure out how to regulate your nervous system so you can learn how to reduce chronic pain and fatigue. I got it all into one (run on) sentence but it does sound like a lot of pillars already. But AI is here now too.

Here’s the throughline:

• AI has been monumental in helping me reduce mental overload, to the point where my nervous capacity has absolutely leveled up

• Women need to be part of the AI conversation before it gets (completely) built without us

• AI is an accessibility tool that quite literally allows some people to fulfill their purpose in life

Women Need AI

So mental load. The menty L, if you will. Women (mothers in particular) know this. It doesn’t matter how much help you’ve got. It doesn’t matter how next era feminist your husband is. I say that because I know it’s true. Everything going on in your life as well as the lives of everyone you are caring for (and to a certain extent, married to) lives in your head, rent free. Full stop.

No matter what kind of delegating you are able to do with all of the things, you are the one who is doing the delegating and you are the one who needs to keep track of whether it’s working. I don’t have to explain this. You know what I mean. Inside the brain of one person lives the lives of several.

It’s fucking exhausting.

Culture took a weird turn when they “gave” women the right to work. If we look back 75 years or so, the 9-5 was predicated on the idea that men would have a wife at home taking care of the house and family. It worked out quite nicely because men could focus on their work, so it made sense to ask them to put in 40 hours. And if their work got more complicated as they rose up the corporate ladder, they’d get a secretary to take care of all their administrative bullshit. A lot of support was in place (incidentally, and not entirely unrelated with respect to the last section below, this is also probably why they used to think people “grew out” of ADHD. Girls were never diagnosed to begin with and boys grew up to be men who handed over the entirety of their executive functioning suite to the women in their lives).

Then women started fighting for workplace equality. They entered the workforce. But only on the promise that they would continue to take care of everything at home, because who else was going to do it? There was no infrastructure in place to allow for anything else. Women were mocked for wanting to “have it all”, as if it was actually selfish of women to want to be able to work and have a family. The very idea that anyone other than the mother wouldn’t be responsible for everything home and family wasn’t even considered. In 1983, “Mr. Mom” was released, a comedy premised on the absurd idea of a dad staying home to take care of his kids rather than the mom. Hilarity ensued. “3 Men and a Baby” came out in 1987, a little bit more creative with the number of dads involved but definitely also relied quite a bit on the “men have no idea how to do this” troupe to bring the laughs.

Culturally, we’ve only just reached the point where SAHD’s are culturally acceptable in the last 20 years, maybe (and it’s definitely still not common).

So it’s not surprising that even now, when we say everything is 50/50, or split in whatever actually fair way it shakes out in any given household, the mental load is still very much felt by one party.

Up until pretty recently, there wasn’t much we could actually do about it. Shift as much as we can to the other party. Outsource and delegate as much as possible. Grow old waiting for culture to change. Grow old waiting for our brains to change, because I’d argue on some level women are holding tight to the mental load because we’re sure no one else can do it as well as us. Maybe I could encourage us all to go through years of therapy to unpack that (not a bad idea), but I want to focus on what we can do now to make tangible changes.

Because now. We can change everything. I’m not kidding. We could probably take over the goddamn world if we could stop doing two things: worrying about our weight and holding the mental load.

Over the last few months, I have become absolutely enamored with AI. But it was only when I started on agentic AI that I realized this is actually life changing. The idea is simple: you give AI your menty L, one menty tab at a time. Little by little, your brain starts to clear up. I can feel it happening in real time. I can literally feel my thoughts leave my brain. (Which doesn’t sound good out of context, but feels like an absolute fucking relief).

When most people (who aren’t heavy AI users) think of AI, they probably think of generative AI. Asking questions or giving prompts and getting a result or answer. Agentic AI is so much more. Agentic AI is when you tell it do stuff for you, without you needing to prompt it every time. This is where we win all our money back. Recurring tasks to review emails, admin prep for client sessions, schedule your notes and article restacks. But as cool as all this shit is, it doesn’t compare to the most underrated aspect of what AI can do now: hold it all for you. All the things you want to come back to but can’t deal with right this minute, you can give it to Claude or Chat. Ask it to save it for later, remind you at a certain time, add it as a task to your task management platform at a later date, or just remember it until called upon. You can literally give AI the thought you’re afraid you’re going to forget, and then you can forget it. If you have experience trying to keep everything top of mind all at once just so that you won’t forget it, you can imagine how impactful this could be.

To be clear, this isn’t a magic cure or the end of the conversation as far as nervous system regulation. No amount of stress reduction is going to do the trick if you aren’t properly restoring it on the other end. Nervous system regulation is really about building capacity for and resilience to stress, which is done by both stress reduction and true restoration. (Figuring out what your body needs for real restoration is why Human Design is so useful.)

But stress reduction is still a big part of it and mental load is a pretty universal stressor (yes, even for men, even if not as pronounced). It’s really not good for anyone. Any amount that you can reduce it will be beneficial.

So while we wait for true gender equality (lol), let’s practice some real self-care: make shit easier for yourself.

AI Needs Women

The other reason I’m so passionate about women using AI is not proximally related to nervous system regulation. But you could certainly argue that the more fucked over women get by society, the worse our stress gets. (And I do argue that.)

Women aren’t using AI as much as men. I don’t know of the exact numbers, but early data on this suggests women use generative AI about 22% less than men. I haven’t found the data (if any) on the breakdown on agentic AI but I would guess the gap is even wider there. Women are more likely to site privacy and/or environmental concerns. I’m not going to harp on these too much because that’s not really what this article is about. Privacy concerns are valid but I think there’s a certain amount of risk that’s worth taking, with the right guardrails up. My POV. Risk tolerance is uniquely personal though so it’s not something I’m going to try to argue.

But the individualization of responsibility for systemic environmental problems is just a fallacy, and it’s been played out before. It’s harkening back to “recycle, reduce, reuse” (and “close the loop” all the readers of a certain age just sang to themselves), a misguided campaign that treated recycling and not wasting electricity as the primary solutions to saving the planet while ignoring the actual sources of the problem. Because it is a powerful distraction, it is the very type of policy that allows corporations to get away with what they’re doing. If we stopped framing it this way, we might be able to get some actual change, like other countries are moving to. AI companies need to get their shit together and figure out how to do things differently. But the users aren’t the problem nor should they be held responsible.

In the meantime, women are getting left out of the whole conversation. This is a huge problem.

AI is taking in everything we’re giving it and the people giving it everything are mostly men. Which means that AI is naturally learning how men think and less like how women think. This has repurcussions in every aspect of life. Like how AI is learning how to reject women’s resumes without knowing the gender of the applicant based on biases it is learning. (I know there are more examples, but I wanted to get this article out, so I’ll come back and edit them in when I find them. If you have any, please leave them in the comments!)

The less women use AI, the more it develops without the input of women. The question is not “do we use AI?” because AI is going to happen, with or without us. If it happens without us, we get left behind. If we’re part of the conversation, we get to help shape it.

AI as an Accessibility Tool and the Meaning of Life

This cannot be overstated: people with neurodivergences and disabilities really, really benefit from AI. It allows you to communicate with the world when communication was too difficult before. It allows you to complete administrative tasks that were too much of an obstacle without the requisite executive functioning skills. For people whose brain feels foggy, chaotic, messy, disorganized, or overstimulated, AI can be the key to getting the thoughts out of their brain and onto the path of something that they can share with others, whether that’s through writing or creating, or in any other setting where they were struggling before. As a neurodivergent woman with chronic health issues, this is absolutely true for me. I know what falling apart feels like. I know what can’t get out of bed for months feels like. AI helps me do what I love without burning myself into the ground or making terrible errors due to an almost concerning level of forgetfulness. From a nervous system perspective, this is so much more than reducing the stress of all those obstacles. Accessibility means being able to find meaning and fulfill your purpose in life. I don’t think I need to convince you that meaningful work is a worthwhile goal all on its own, but it’s also incredibly regulating to the nervous system. (Some reading suggestions: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl; The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal)

Once we accept and classify AI as an accessibility tool we can move past the “should we allow AI” discourse and solidly into the “how do we do AI” conversation. If manufacturing glasses killed a baby dolphin every time a pair of glasses got made, we would not stop making glasses. We would very quickly figure out how to make them without killing baby dolphins. I don’t know how to make them stop killing baby dolphins, but compounding systemic disadvantages by refusing to use AI isn’t the answer.

**

So, I wrote an article about how I use AI to regulate my nervous system that reads more like why women should be using AI. Low key sorry if that seems like a tricky move but I stand by it because it’s the same thing. Women need to be doing AI because their bodies demand it.

But in case you were looking for some more concrete examples on what I actually do with AI that helps me unburden all my bullshit, I’ll get into those in part 2 (using regular people language, which will also demonstrate how easy it actually is). For the time being, I just want you to take in how important this moment in time is. It’s a precipice.

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A little about me….

I’m Niki, a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer.

I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie.

Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Lately I’m also writing about AI a lot. It’s turned into a real nervous system tool for reducing mental load, and I think women should be fluent in it before it gets built without us.

Looking for more support?

• Book a human design foundation session

• Join my fall waitlist if you’re interested in my 6 month 1:1 container

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

*****
Disclaimer: The content in this article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical concerns or before making changes to your health, diet, medications, or treatment plan.

AI Statement: I fucking love AI. I’m very open about it. However, I refuse to participate in AI detector bullshit. AI detectors reproduce racial bias by disproportionately misclassifying the writing of people of color and multilingual writers as non-human. Requiring people to prove or justify how they write also unfairly targets disabled and neurodivergent people who may rely on AI as an essential accessibility tool. I refuse to participate in a practice that reinforces racism, punishes disability, and treats access needs as evidence of wrongdoing. I will not be justifying my use of AI nor attempting to downplay it.

Please judge my work (and all work) by how it makes you feel. Do not outsource your decision-making power to a machine.

Let me say right out the gate: I am obsessed with AI and use it everyday, but (at this time), I do not use it to write my articles. (I use it for a lot of related tasks in my “content engine” and I’m happy to share what those are in another article).

But I wanted to front load my positioning here. Rather than trying to figure out where to fit AI into my life, I think about the flip-side. What do I not want to use AI for? My actual voice and my presence. In other words, my unique POV and my relationships. My creativity and my connection. These are my “Human Pillars”.

Other than my Human Pillars, everything else is fair game. (And right now I have Claude and ChatGPT working together to create my entire OS. It is exciting.)

Like I said, I don’t use it to write my articles but I made a point to say “at this time”. Because I don’t see a problem with AI writing articles - if AI can actually get the hang of your voice. I’ve certainly experimented myself, but found the results wanting. But a lot of creators say they’ve nailed it - “you just have to train it.” I’m not convinced, but I’m not not convinced.

So I’ve been “quietly” training AI to learn my voice in the background of everything I do for months. From what I can tell it has amassed a whole slew of “don’ts” (e.g., do not use the word “quietly” under any circumstances) and it knows I like an occasional f bomb (but it kind of throws it out at the wrong time, like a kid who doesn’t quite know the appropriate use of a swear word yet). But even beyond these stylistic conventions, it doesn’t know how to hit the way I like to hit. It can analyze my writing but it doesn’t know how to do it the way I do it. So we’re not there yet. But I’m willing to be convinced and I don’t see the problem if it is indeed your voice and your thoughts.

So I’m not against the idea.

What I am against is slop. And guess what? People can write slop too. I’ve read plenty of shitty articles long before ChatGPT came online.

Which is exactly my point - we don’t need a scanner to tell us if it’s good writing or not. You can tell for yourself if an article is garbage, regardless of whether it was written by man or machine.

Instead, it’s going to be used for virtue signaling and witch trials.

Virtue signaling is a problem because, I’m sorry - what’s the virtue here? Again, if you figured out how to get AI to say exactly what you wanted it to say, IDGAF who typed it out. Not using AI is not a virtue. The virtue is expressing the unique thoughts that are in your brain. Which doesn’t preclude assistance.

And the witch trials will be sinister.

It’s like a polygraph - can’t be used in court because it’s junk science but they’re still used by law enforcement to form opinions about people. (Side bar: never agree to a polygraph, no matter what they say)*. We know these things are inaccurate. There will be so many people that get accused of using AI that didn’t. It has a bias in particular against people of color and non-native speakers.

It’s bad enough that this is going to ruin the reputation and maybe careers of creators that get caught in the cross-fires. There’s also the chilling effect this may have on people who decide writing isn’t worth it given the judgmental landscape.

And then consider the creators with neurodivergencies and disabilities who are able to produce work and express their voice thanks to AI. Think about someone who has never been able to sit down and type something but now they can voice to text brain dump everything and get an article out of it that they can share with the world. Even if you tell it to use all of your words, it still has to string sentences together to form something cohesive. It’s going to be their own voice but it will have “quietly” given it enough of an AI signature to get flagged..

But the most chilling thing about this development for me is the idea of relying on AI to tell you if a piece of writing is worth reading.

This is exactly what AI cannot do.

You cannot outsource your judgment, your perspective, your critical thinking skills, your intuition, about a piece of writing. You cannot outsource the way a piece of writing moves you.

And you should not outsource your decision-making power to anyone. And that’s what this scan feature does.

Hyperbolic? Maybe. Call me Cassandra, I don’t care. This is bad, very bad. This is a bad use of AI. (My only hope is that it’s alarming enough that it immediately fails, and this article just looks silly in retrospect.)

Put another way: when a course of action is absolutely dripping with irony, that’s a good indicator to slow down and evaluate whether this actually makes sense.

Share

A little about me….

I’m Niki, a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer.

I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie.

Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Lately I’m also writing about AI a lot. It’s turned into a real nervous system tool for reducing mental load, and I think women should be fluent in it before it gets built without us.

Looking for more support?

• Book a human design foundation session

• Join my fall waitlist if you’re interested in my 6 month 1:1 container

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

*****
Disclaimer: The content in this article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical concerns or before making changes to your health, diet, medications, or treatment plan.

*Not legal advice

When my oldest was a baby I used to drop her off at the YMCA childcare while I tried to get in a little workout. (It was that desperate stage of motherhood when I would lose an arm to get 15 minutes to myself, but I spent whatever alone time I had trying to “get my body back.”) One of the staff was a sweet woman, older than me. One day when she handed R back to me, she said “she’s bossy”. And she laughed, like it was a cute, funny thing to say about a baby girl. Hahaha. I laughed along (because that’s what you do), but inside I bristled a little. Not just because she’s a baby and she doesn’t talk (because she certainly did communicate her needs quite well, so I couldn’t actually argue with the assessment). Because only girls get called bossy, like it’s a bad thing.

Both of our girls were Difficult Babies. Difficult Babies grow up to be children with Strong Personalities.

But Strong Personalities grow up to be adults with extraordinary strength, if only we do everything we can not to blow out their fire. It’s this fire that I’m aware of, that I keep in the back of my mind, when in the midst of the roller coaster of the Big Energy of my home. Sometimes I feel like I’m just along for the ride.

For someone as sensitive and easily overstimulated as me, it can be quite overwhelming. I haven’t quite figured out the balance between holding space for them and taking care of myself, but it’s daily work and it is my life’s work.

A lot of women I work with (scratch that, a lot of women I meet) (scratch that, a lot of women, period) are told, in some way or another, they’re too much.

Too talkative. Too emotional. Bossy.

At this moment in time, these women are waking up to themselves (whether through Human Design, or Astrology, or just introspection), and realizing they have so much more to offer than they gave themselves credit for. That their fire may have gotten blown out but once they reignite it the flame burns brighter than they could have imagined.

That was my story too, but flipped on its head. For one thing, I was an Easy Baby.

I was quiet. Too quiet.

They called it “selective mutism” which made it seem like I had a choice. It didn’t acknowledge the panic that was driving the silence.

Even when I thought I gave them what they wanted, and started talking (enough, at least, for there to not be officially anything “wrong” with me), it wasn’t good enough. For the rest of my life, I could feel the disappointment, the frustration, of every teacher, mentor, boss, from that moment whose expectations I didn’t live up to because I held my tongue and held back. I was Not Enough.

It never occurred to them - or me, at the time - that there wasn’t actually anything wrong with me.

In law school we had a 3rd year writing requirement. Basically a thesis writing project as a graduation requirement. It had to be very long (like 20-40 pages or something). I took zero pleasure in the experience. There were several classes and professors who could walk you through the project and I chose an Intellectual Property focused seminar with one of Berkeley’s prominent IP professors. It was as good a subject as any. Before I go on, don’t get me wrong: I actually enjoyed law school, much of the time. I liked the exam-based courses (which were the majority). I loved the mental journey of learning the case law and applying it to new hypotheticals. I enjoyed the process of learning to “think like a lawyer”.

But I never really found an area of law that captured my attention beyond the exam prep. For the most part, the courses I loved were taught by the most phenomenal teachers (RIP Prof. Swift). When I graduated, all I really knew was that I did not want to be a litigator because I did not want to be speaking in front of a courtroom. That’s not exactly following your sacral response, but that’s what I had.

So the IP track was as good as any when it came to my thesis project. We started out the semester brainstorming possible paper topics. This was a struggle for me. But it wasn’t just a struggle because coming up with ideas was a struggle (obvious now that I know about my undefined Crown center). The bigger struggle was dealing with Professor Menell’s reaction to my ambivalence.

I wasn’t excited and he wasn’t happy about it. To be clear: I was never rude or despondent. I was simply lackluster (I gather). Even when I did finally settle on an idea (a perfectly fine paper discussing the application of the legal concept of initial interest confusion in certain trademark cases), he made a comment that made an indelible impression on my brain about my “lack of passion”.

To be fair, I don’t think he had any intention of criticizing me. It was almost a jokey aside, maybe one he hoped would spur me into something. (Teachers don’t really appreciate the mark they make, for good or bad, even when the student is a grown ass adult).

I felt so inadequate. I wasn’t being judged on my intelligence or academic capabilities, or strategic thinking, or even creative abilities. I was, just as I had been a thousand times in a thousand different ways, being judged on my “size”. My visibility, or lack thereof. My desire, or lack thereof.

My passion, or lack thereof.

I just had no way, no clue, how to even begin to fix this.

How could I make myself more passionate about my work?

It was absolutely true, of course. I wasn’t excited about this paper. Ultimately, I didn’t mind the topic, so I think I did my best responding to the options I was presented with. But I think the concept was that by the time you hit your 3rd year of law school, something, some case or some question or some cause would have taken hold of you, gotten a grip on your heart and brain so feverishly that by the time you got to your thesis the paper practically wrote itself.

What I didn’t know about myself at the time (or rather, I knew about myself, but didn’t realize it wasn’t a design flaw), was that my passions would be found elsewhere, and I have zero ability to fake a modicum of enthusiasm. And that’s ok.

What’s more so, even when I am passionate about something, it’s quite possible for an outsider to miss it.

When my true inner circle started to snap into my life like little puzzle pieces, there was an inkling of insight that maybe I was meant to be this way because they were meant to be that way, but it wasn’t something I was cognizant of. But something about my energy drew in something different. What I like to call Big Energy.

The Too Much.

Because I was never accused of being Too Much. Rather, I am Too Quiet.

Not nearly, not nearly as much as when I was a child. The girl who was diagnosed with selective mutism when she was 5 has come a long way. I still hate making phone calls and I feel anxious in crowds of strangers. Public speaking is still a nightmare. But for the most part, I can and absolutely love to talk to people.

But I am reserved.

Looking at my design it’s no wonder. With 7 undefined centers (including an undefined throat ofc), I’m meant to absorb more than I’m meant to transmit.

Then you can look at my astrological birth chart.

I’ve got my sun, rising, moon and Mercury all in Aquarius in my 1st house.

You can call it aloof and I’ll call it thoughtful. Either way, it’s the epitome of staying out of the limelight (all while sitting in the discomfort of the main character energy of the 1st house).

It’s the exact opposite of the center of attention, larger than life Leo vibes.

It’s the exact opposite, in fact, and therefore antidote and perfect match, to the Too Much energy.

Because it turns out, the Too Much feel something with me they don’t get with anyone else.

Acceptance. Not just in a non-judgmental, accept you for you way, though that’s there. Aquarians are notoriously non-judgmental.

Partly, it’s about being a damn good listener. I have gate 13 in my Unconscious Mercury so if you feel like spilling your guts to me, it’s for good reason. When I was in elementary school one of my friends (not a best friend, by any stretch of the imagination - we played together on the playground sometimes), pulled me aside and pointed out which girl she had a crush on. This was news to me and I don’t think anyone had this on their radar. I don’t know if I even said anything in response, I just listened. I don’t know if it was a secret but I got the sense it might be and I never said anything. I think it’s ok to talk about now since she is happily married. I didn’t fully appreciate the moment at the time. I think she wanted to tell someone who wouldn’t say anything, to her or anyone. I was a little kid - in the 90’s, mind you - and my friend was coming out to me.

But even beyond that, my energy gives you an almost tangible, physical sense of acceptance. Like being held.

There’s something about being in the energy of your energetic opposite - a sense of being fully free to be yourself because you sense without even realizing it that you’re the exact energy that the other person is craving.

I would never want to toot my horn about anything, but (ironically or fittingly), I can tell you this: whatever it is, how much you think it is, however much you’ve worn out and burned out everyone else in your path: not me. I can handle Too Much because I can literally accept your energy. Hold it. Without breaking down myself or throwing it back to you in response.

I know this because I know this, and I know now that it’s felt by others because I’ve been told enough times. I’ve always attracted the Big Energies. I even had a client tell me during a session that she has to filter people she lets in by making sure they’re not too “soft” for her. Which is hard because when you’re looking for support in the wellness or personal development space you are going to find a lot of gentle types. Gentle and caring and wanting to help people often all go hand in hand. But her concern was always that the people who seemed the most gentle would fall apart under her energy.

She said when she was younger she was conditioned to be quiet when she wanted to be loud. Which caused a lot of hurt she’s still unraveling. And she’s done making herself small.

But this begs the question (that was only really hinted at in our conversation), who are your people when you’re done making yourself small, but you still worry your energy is too much for some types of people?

It sounded like she looked for other Big Energies. And this is definitely a good thing, because finding like-minded people is really important for a certain type of support. I love my circle of HSPs and introverts because we offer each other a level of understanding that is needed. True understanding.

But you also need your complete opposite (or opposites) in your life. Your salve.

She told me I was quiet but I’m not soft. She knew, in her words, that I could “handle her”.

That moment was a lightbulb moment for me. Because the strength that it takes to be able to handle the Big Energy of the world should not be taken for granted. The strength it takes to raise my Strong Personality girls should not be taken for granted.

As much as being told I didn’t have enough passion for the work I was doing was devastating, being told I could handle someone else’s energy was so validating, so on point, that it was the healing I needed to that moment from 20 years ago. I was finally seen for who I am.

Because who I am, what I am passionate about, is being the person who is strong enough to carry the biggest, boldest, scariest, most unhinged.

Too much? Not for me. I can handle you.

Share

A little about me….

I’m Niki — a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer. I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I finally connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie. Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Looking for more support?

• Book a human design foundation session

• Join my fall waitlist if you’re interested in my 6 month 1:1 container

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

My Spleen is my best friend

My Spleen Center feels like the amalgamation of all of my closest friends combined. My ride or die. My help hide the body and ask questions later. My you got this girl.

I’ll stop right there and fully admit this probably sounds weird to anyone who knows a thing or two about HD. None of these are really typical Spleen traits. But with only two defined centers (Spleen and Sacral), it’s one of only two sources of steady energy that’s mine. Everything else is porous and transitory. Not like I’m nothing, but I know what I can rely on for the absolute truth, and it ain’t my G Center. What’s truly mine, that I can always draw upon at any given moment, is my sacral life-force energy and my intuition. Again, that’s not to say I’ve got nothing else. But when I’m feeling something coming through my G Center, or Ajna, etc., I need to run it through my Sacral and Spleen to fact check it.

So what I really mean is intuition is my best friend. Put it that way, it makes more sense.

What a healthy Spleen actually does

When a defined Spleen Center is in alignment, intuitive hits come fast and hard. You listen to them, stay safe, rinse and repeat. Because at its core, the Spleen is really about keeping you safe. And it’s intuition that does that, not your brain. You get a gut feeling about someone or something and you immediately reverse course. You find out later you just missed something bad happening by a hair. That’s a healthy Spleen.

A few things to unpack there. One is that we are often talking ourselves out of following our gut and bad things do happen. We don’t want to come off as rude so we answer the door and talk to the sketchy guy asking for a car battery jump, or we stay for the whole date, or get in the weird-feeling rideshare car, or walk to our car alone. Etc. etc. etc.

Fortunately for me, I don’t seem to carry the fear of rudeness gene.

The office lady

When I was 6 I was walking home from school (times were different in the late 1900’s) and as I was waiting to cross the street a pickup truck pulled up next to me. The driver rolled down the window and I recognized her. It was the fucking office lady. I didn’t know her name, but she had already been talking me up at school. She kept telling me about her pool and how fun it was to go swimming at her house.

I already had a bad feeling about this bitch.

So she rolled down the window and asked me if I was walking home. I nodded yes (I was pathologically shy, and I don’t use the term pathologically lightly. I was diagnosed the year before as selectively mute, but I had been recently traumatized into talking when I needed to, but that’s a story for another day).

Then she asked me if I wanted to come over. She brought up her fucking pool again. Apparently, she even had a swimsuit I could borrow.

I shook my head no.

She was relentless. She tried convincing me to come over and when that didn’t work she asked if I wanted a ride home.

I still get nauseous thinking about what could have happened if I got in that truck.

I just kept shaking my head no.

(In hindsight, I should have run right? I hate the idea that if she had tried to get out and physically put me in the truck, it might have worked. I’d like to think that if she stepped out of the car I would have run, but it’s a haunting question that doesn’t have an answer so ofc I need to let it go.)

What that day taught me

Listening to your gut keeps you alive. Keeps you safe. Which regulates your nervous system. This is what I mean by my Spleen is my best friend.

I’m not going to sugar coat it: this event was Trauma with a capital T. It left scars that I’m still working through. It caused a level of hypervigilance re: potential abduction scenarios that borderlines paranoid, and I carried that with me from that day forward to raising two girls that I pray never come close to that kind of danger. The fact that I can talk about it now though demonstrates a pretty decent amount of healing around it. I hate that I never told anyone about it then because she got to just keep on being a predator for god knows how long. But I’d like to think she got her karma eventually, either in this life or what followed.

And I also take comfort in what I learned about myself that day. Even before that bitch entered my life I was scared of pretty much everyone I came into contact with. I was already hypervigilant. My nervous system was already pretty dysregulated.

But that day, I was tested. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but actually facing a potentially life or death decision (or maybe just “innocent or subjected to abuse” decision - who knows, right?!), I chose correctly. I had a gut reaction, and I followed it. Although I didn’t identify it as a Spleen Center moment at the time (obvs), that moment gave me a sort of confidence in myself when it comes to survival and intuition. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’m going to make it out alive (if I have any say in the matter). That confidence has always been a rock for me.

The Channel of Power

Turns out, not only was it a defined Spleen at play, but it was Gate 57 (the literal Gate of Intuition, where the other gates in the Spleen are about specific situations, 57 is just a general inner knowing) coupled with Gate 34 of the Sacral, the Gate of Power. It is an inner strength, the power to move mountains to take care of yourself, survive, or just do what you want. Together they make the Channel of Power, which is the intuitive power to survive. It’s also known as the “Apocalypse Channel,” meaning when shit hits the fan, this channel is the one that’s still standing by the end of the movie.

Maybe because it’s only one of two channels in my entire chart, with the other one also being a Spleen-Sacral (27-50), I was not at all surprised to find out about this one. I’ve felt it, the whole time, on a visceral level. This is always something I can draw on and feel pretty confident about.

So how was I such a mess?

Here’s the part that confused me for years.

I have intuition for days. Two defined centers, and both of them feed straight into my gut. And I still spent three decades with a nervous system in shambles.

If intuition is the most powerful regulation tool we’ve got (and I will die on that hill), how does someone this intuitive end up this dysregulated?

The first answer is the obvious one. Following your intuition is hard. Especially when you’re a child and you’re forced to do things that don’t feel right for you all day long. And when your nervous system is already dysregulated, it gets even harder to actually hear your intuition, because the stress signals are so much louder.

It didn’t help that the rest of my chart is stacked toward dysregulation to begin with. An undefined Root, an undefined Solar Plexus, an undefined Ajna (I’ve broken all of those down in the earlier parts of this series). Oh, and trauma.

But that’s not the whole answer.

Every gate of intuition is also a gate of fear

All of the gates of the Spleen are gates of intuition. But they’re also all gates of fear. Each one carries a shadow side that you might find yourself wallowing in if you’re out of alignment with the gate. The fear is always the intuition kind of flipped on its head.

Take Gate 28, the Gate of the Game Player. I have this gate in my Unconscious Sun, so it’s actually part of my whole purpose in life. Gate 28 is all about intuitive timing. It’s a gift of knowing the exact right time to do something, and it’s a gift for knowing exactly where you are in time. I mean that in both a literal sense (like knowing it’s 2:32 before you look at the clock) and also in an esoteric sense, having a deep connection with the wheel of fortune (if that doesn’t sound fucking weird to you, you might have Gate 28 somewhere on your chart). It’s known as a risk taker, but to Gate 28 it doesn’t actually feel like risk: it knows the exact moment to jump out of the train, so it’s not really a risk. (Please don’t actually try that one, even if it’s in your Conscious Sun).There’s another component to this Gate related to time but more like the consequence of understanding the limitations of time: it comes with the deep seated need to squeeze the most out of everything. Out of life as a whole and out of every minute of everyday. In alignment, it connects deeply with having a sense of purpose. This can go sideways a lot of different ways: becoming obsessed with productivity to the point of burnout (oopsies), becoming a risk-taking adrenaline junkie (in a bad way) to “make the most out of life.”

Gate 28’s biggest Fear is the fear of death.

And man did she hit the nail on the head with that one.

My discomfort with death is, honestly, absurd. There are literally certain songs I can’t listen to (usually country) because they involve stories about someone dying that hit too close to home for me. When the girls joke about their death in a very silly way (as kids do, apparently), I will actually start crying. Whenever anyone is more than 15 minutes late to come home or come over, my very first thought is that they’re dead.

What I finally understand

Here’s what took me years to see.

The Spleen doesn’t hand you intuition and fear as two separate things. It’s one signal. Fear is just the intuition flipped, pointed at everything instead of the one thing that actually matters.

A healthy Spleen says no to the truck. A dysregulated one says no to the truck, and the country song, and the 15 minutes someone is late, and the thought of my kids growing up and leaving and dying someday.

Same gift. Same wiring. Just turned all the way up with nothing to filter it.

So when I say my Spleen is my best friend, that’s only half true. It’s also the source of my oldest fear. I don’t get one without the other. Nobody does.

Which is why “just trust your intuition” was never enough for me, and probably isn’t enough for you either. You can’t hear a quiet gut feeling over a nervous system screaming that everything is a threat.

That’s the actual work. Not getting rid of the fear (not happening, and I’ve made my peace with that). Getting regulated enough that the intuition can be louder than the fear. Regulated enough to tell the difference between a real hit and an old alarm.

That’s the whole point of this series. Human Design didn’t fix my nervous system. It showed me what I was working with, so I could stop treating my own wiring like a malfunction.

My fear of death isn’t a bug. It’s the shadow of the exact gift that got me home safe when I was six.

I’d rather understand that than spend another 30 years trying to fix it.

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A little about me….

I’m Niki — a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer. I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I finally connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie. Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Looking for more support?

• Book a human design foundation session

• Join my fall waitlist if you’re interested in my 6 month 1:1 container

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

The goal is not to avoid stress at all costs. Some amount of stress is actually a good thing because it “exercises” the nervous system, which helps build resilience. The goal is also not to be in the parasympathetic state all the time, for the same reason. The nervous system is meant to move from state to state depending on the circumstance. The health of the nervous system is really determined by how quickly it can bounce back to baseline after a stressful event. Your heart variability rate, or HRV, is a fairly good proxy for measuring this (think of it like a BMI score - it doesn’t tell the whole story and there are extenuating circumstances but generally speaking, getting it into a “healthy” range is correlative of a healthy resilience). The Oura ring gives you your HRV along with your “Readiness” score which comprises some mathematic calculation of your HRV, sleep scores, and activity levels. I really don’t know what the calculation is, but if they’re accurate, the Readiness score is literally your true measure of resilience. Because the Readiness score is a measure of how ready you are for shit to hit the fan. The higher the score, the better you’ll able to face illness, injury, or some massive stressful event. In other words, resilience.

In case these numbers all just sound super abstract to your actual life, let’s bring it back to chronic illness. Resilience is the metric that will tell me if I’m closing in on a flare, or already there. My Readiness score is directly correlative to the level of pain and fatigue I’m going to be feeling.

Can you see why I track this number so closely?

Take all of this with a huge grain of salt. Personally, I’m a data person and I find the scores motivating. When I got the ring a few years ago, that was the thing that finally got me to get better sleep. Getting to see in real time what made the numbers go up and what made them decline was powerful. But I’m also a fan of throwing your scale away if it causes mental anguish. If the number on the scale is going to ruin your day, it is not something you need in your life. Same with wearables like this. I’ve found the Oura ring to be encouraging because when you do have a bad day it’s like “we all have bad days, can you try to take a nap today?”. But if it’s going to cause stress to see those numbers, then it’s obviously counterproductive.

My favorite restored causer

What helps is that I look at all of this like an experiment. Since I’m here to gather the info and relay it back to you, I never feel bad about myself if I have a bad streak of numbers. If it’s not obvious, in the world we live in shit hits the fan all the time, and readiness can decline if you’re not taking care of yourself. But it’s even better when I get to tell you when it I get some good numbers, and why.

Because it wasn’t because I’ve been doing a bunch of meditation, I’ll tell you that. The biggest needle mover that I’ve seen is when I’m having a good conversation. Like, not just with loved ones, but with potentially anyone.

It’s one thing to know that loneliness is more harmful to health than cigarettes, but it’s on a whole new level to see for yourself what a quality connection can do.

I don’t just mean a fun girls’ night out or purely social lunch with your best friend.

I mean your friend who is also a business coach hosts a webinar to workshop business strategy.

A session with a client that is an absolute joy to work with.

My literal DENTIST appointment with a new holistic dentist who really took the time to listen. (Y’all, I used to have to take a Valium before every appointment.)

I even have a Restored moment during a BBL facial, which, if you don’t know, is a laser treatment that ages your skin backwards (and helps prevent skin cancer, so it’s not just a vanity exercise in case you were wondering) but it is painful. But you know what? The esthetician is fun to talk to. (The best ones are).

For an introvert (INTJ, if you’re into MBTI) and an HSP with 7 undefined centers, people-ing seems like the least likely activity to be restorative for me.

It’s possible that my 4/6 profile has something to do with it. 4’s are the people for whom relationships make their world go round. But I think of it in the sense of value and investment. Not that other people don’t value their relationships, please don’t get it twisted. But for 4’s, they owe everything (or at least the best things) to their relationships, and they know it (whether consciously or unconsciously). That job they love, that speaking opportunity, that person they’re married to - for a 4, it all got dropped in their lap by a friend of a friend of a friend. Their inner circle is their lifeblood. And they treat their relationships like plants (or rather, like someone who has plants but knows how to keep them alive would treat plants). They intentionally nurture them so that they (the relationships) grow (again, whether it’s conscious or unconscious). (All that and we get the terms “The Networker” or “The Opportunist” thrown at us as archetype descriptors, which is a really gross way to describe a really sincere quality, IMHO).

All that to say, maybe the 4 line in me puts such importance on these moments that it would be naturally restorative. But I don’t really think that’s it. It goes deeper than that. It speaks to a biological need that everyone is born with.

Everyone craves connection. Everyone needs connection.

Connection makes us feel safe.

Safety is a regulated nervous system.

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A little about me….

I’m Niki — a holistic health and Human Design coach. Recovering lawyer turned SAHM turned health obsessed turned questioning midlifer. I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I finally connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. I realized the stress about the cookie was worse than the cookie. Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Looking for more support?

• Book a human design foundation session

• Join my fall waitlist if you’re interested in my 6 month 1:1 container

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

The irony of course is that my work literally revolves around encouraging women to listen to their bodies.

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I’ve been working on a series around using Human Design for nervous system regulation, with the ultimate message being that intuition is your most powerful nervous system regulation tool. (And a regulated nervous system is necessary for intuition to work. It’s a little circular, but everything is. That’s why healing is spiralic.)

But what is also necessary for intuition to work: listening to it.

And what is intuition? It’s a knowing that comes from a sensation in your body.

But you’re not going to hear the knowing if you routinely ignore your body. So when they say “get back into your body” or “listen to your body”, this is why. It tunes you into what your body is actually saying and it builds self-trust.

Sitting there shivering but ignoring it harkened me back to a tarot reading I got done a few weeks ago. (This was the same reading where she suggested I might want to get into Human Design, not knowing it was already pretty central to my work.)

She told me I needed to “get back into my body”. I almost had to roll my eyes because I’ve heard that one. So. many. times. It was truly a facepalm moment because on the one hand, I know this! Tell me something I don’t know! On the other hand, when you get the same advice over and over again, there’s usually a reason for that.

I’m an Aquarius sun, moon, and rising (and Mercury, to boot). Spacey is an understatement. Most of the time I just feel like a floating ball of thoughts. What’s a body?

On top of that, a dysregulated nervous system from the day I was born (or before) and a “fairly traumatic childhood” as one therapist called it, and I’ve been very successful at mentally going elsewhere. And TBH I wouldn’t want to change that quality about myself. My conscious sun gate in Human Design is Gate 41, which is all about co-creation through imagination. Visualizing the future’s potential and bringing it to form through the power of fantasy. Essentially: manifestation. I’ve literally daydreamed scenes into existence. Daydreaming got me through the hardest times and it literally changed my life. And since it’s in my conscious sun it’s pretty important to my life’s purpose.

But none of that means I get a pass on listening to my body.

When the Body Carries Chronic Pain

She also said I needed to “work more with the moon” which, again, was definitely advice I’ve gotten more. After all, it’s not lost on me that my North Node is in Cancer in my 6th house of health and service. The 6th house is there to show us how your work and health are connected. Your North Node is where you’re going in this life. And Cancer is, well you know Cancer. With the moon being the ruler of Cancer, as well as the representation of the body, it was a glaring reminder that, again, my body is important here.

Despite my misgivings with one of the only two water signs in my entire chart, my life path feels pretty aligned given the fact that I I’ve chosen to help people with their health, after a long battle with my own health. And this part of my chart has had a bit of a boost the past year since Jupiter and Cancer are having a moment. (Funny, Jupiter is my only other water sign in Scorpio in my 10th house. Almost like I’m here to do feelings, which makes me very uncomfortable. But at least Scorpio’s here to do some work with all those feelings).

So my career feels incredibly aligned. Amazing. My personal journey in that realm has always felt a little more complicated, but that’s probably only because I’ve been making it complicated. With all my air signs (8 total) and undefined crown and head centers, I’ve been wanting to “figure out” how to take care of myself, and the answer is just listen to my fucking body. The she tells me work with the damn moon. I have MoonX app! Doesn’t that count? <again, facepalm>

It’s not just my birth chart and the trauma that shaped this. There was a moment in my journey where I believed that literally ignoring my body was the answer to fibromyalgia pain and fatigue. It wasn’t something I came up with, it was something I was taught. At a 3 week pain rehabilitation program at the Mayo Clinic. They had a lot of good things to say, a lot of things that I’ve incorporated into my personal and professional practices. I credit them with changing my life. Those three weeks were the moment when I went from nearly bedridden to climbing back up.

However. One of the lessons I learned was rather than wallowing in your pain (or other chronic symptom(s)), you should ignore it. At all costs. Don’t think about it and don’t talk about it. Bad day? Keep going, and never, under any circumstances, let anyone know about it. Does that sound right? Well, to my Aquarian brain, it sounded easy enough to try. I wanted it to be right because it sounded easier than dealing with shit.

Real talk: it worked, for a hot minute. I definitely had a good period of time where my symptoms were down and I felt better. But at some point, they got bad again, and I didn’t have the tools to deal with them. The answer was just stuffing down my feelings like they didn’t exist, and surprise surprise, that makes you feel like shit, eventually.

The reason they said ignore your symptoms is a actually good one: paying too much attention to your symptoms actually heightens them. It tells your central nervous system, this symptom is important! And your CNS goes, got it - more coming! And it gets worse, and you pay more attention, and on and on and on. This is 100% true and it is something I teach my clients as well. Thinking about it all day, complaining about, covering your body with braces and icy hot, taking Advil on a daily basis - all of those things are what they called “pain behaviors” and they will make it worse. There is a thin line between talking about your pain in order to process it and feel better from the relief of opening up about it, and getting into victim-mode. When you’re in a victim mentality, you’ve lost the entire game.

But/and: ignoring your body will never be the answer. Instead, the answer is acknowledging and accepting your body without letting the pain run the entire show. There is a place you can reach that mindfully acknowledges how your body feels in the moment and also doesn’t pass judgment on it. There is a way to accept how you feel rather than feel angry at your body or the world. The mindfulness and acceptance help you process your feelings without activating the nervous system, which actually help your body feel better over time.

But is that all easier said than done? Obvs. It comes and goes for me. Just because I’ve “figured out” the answers doesn’t mean I always embody them.

There are a lot of people talking about embodiment right now. TBH, it often sounds like gobbledegook for me. Because embodiment is. not. natural. to me. I have to work at it. The body keeps the score? Yes, I believe that - but only because I have the evidence of it, but because I can feel the connection. People talk about getting a really good fascia release massage and sobbing because it releases trapped emotions. I have no doubt that’s true and I have no doubt that this would not be my experience. Yes, I have emotions, lots of them, but I have no idea where they are most of the time.

I have to imagine that a lot of people teaching embodiment understand it on a visceral level because it is their unique gift. Which is exactly what they should be doing.

But/and, if the concept sounds like gobbledegook for you too, you’re in the right place. I know it’s really fucking important, and I can tell you why, but I’m still working out what it actually means.

But I know it starts with putting on a sweater when you’re cold.

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A little about me….

I’m Niki — lawyer turned SAHM turned burnout survivor turned nervous system nerd. I spent years being told my labs were “fine” while my body fell apart, until I finally connected the dots between stress, the nervous system, and physical symptoms. Human Design gave me the missing piece: a way to understand my own wiring instead of fighting it.

Looking for more support?

• My paid tier includes a personalized Human Design snapshot report with nervous system insights

• Throughline members also get an annual Human Design session with me

Subscribe now

The variables in Human Design are probably one of the most confusing aspects of reading your chart. They’re represented by the four arrows and accompanying numbers and colors in the little triangles and circles under the arrows. The traditional HD school of thought is that a person shouldn’t learn their variables until they’re really deep into understanding their chart, because learning your strategy and authority is so much more important. There is definitely some truth to this. If you can just nail your strategy and authority, the rest doesn’t really even matter. You’ll live out your design without even realizing. Human Design is not a necessity of life, if you’re already following your intuition.

But following your intuition can be difficult - for several reasons. It’s hard enough after years of conditioning it out of you. Being taught from a young age to ignore our gut and make decisions based on pro/con lists. Even if you’re aware of this and are now trying to course correct, however, following your intuition can feel impossible if your nervous system is dysregulated. If you’re in constant fight or flight, you’ve got a lot of unhelpful signals competing with your true inner knowing. And your body is just trying to triage the situation and get you to safety - it’s not really focusing on your ultimate path forward for your highest good.

That’s where variables can be incredibly helpful. Each one gives you a little slice as to how you interact with the world in some way, how your brain operates. They’re your cognitive architecture. It’s almost like right brain vs. left brain but expanded. Whether or not it was intended for this purpose, they give really good insight on what helps you individually regulate your nervous system.

Which is exactly why I think they’re a great tool to learn about early on.

The Variables

I’m going to talk about three of them in this article. There’s a bit more to it, with Digestion and Cognition really being part of what’s known as Determination, and then there are two more I didn’t talk about, but it’s too much for one article, and I really want to focus on the specific elements that are top of mind (for me, right now) when it comes to nervous system regulation.

Digestion

This is about, as you may have guessed, digestion of food - in part. But it’s also about digestion of information. On a broader level, it’s about how you process the intake of your environment.

My digestion type is High Sound. Some types relate to food in a more tangible way, but mine does not. At all. High Sound means I am picky AF about what I am listening to at all times. Which absolutely tracks. I have not been without a set of headphones or earbuds on my person since the early days of the MP3 player, and before that I had a pretty extensive CD collection. I listen to podcasts all the time, at certain times of the day. AM podcasts are usually in the personal development category, lunch podcasts are true crime. And don’t get me started on the music. I have extensive playlists for every occasion. Very rarely do I listen to music that I haven’t personally curated. And I make (or made, back in the day) incredibly good mixed CDs for my favorite people. I have zero musical talent but my appreciation of music is so keen I feel like I’ve learned another language.

So what does this have to do with the nervous system?

First of all, the wrong sounds fuck me up pretty bad. My 7 undefined centers have something to do with this too, of course. The more undefined centers you have, the more you’re taking in from others all day. People with a lot of openness in their chart usually already identified as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) before they’ve even seen their chart, including me. I’m easily overwhelmed and overstimulated by crowds, excessive visuals or bright colors, bright lights, too much touching, strong scents, and, of course, noise.

The High Sound digestion just adds another layer to that. Even if all other conditions are favorable I still might lose my shit if the sound is off in some way. If someone is watching a video on their phone (albeit quietly) on the couch while the TV is on I will lose my mind. Or multiple conversations at once in the same room? Might as well just punch me in the face. Someone talking with their mouth full? I’m going to go to the bathroom and puke now. Now look, there’s also a neurodivergence aspect to consider. It’s common for NDs to experience overwhelm with sound in particular in similar ways. To me, since I am neurodivegent, that’s just another explanation for the same thing. Maybe there’s a correlation to certain HD elements to ND people, maybe not.

But I choose to work with it through Human Design because the elements actually give you a blueprint for working with them.

Because just as bad sounds throw me off, good sounds bring me back. This looks like:

• Honoring my need for certain sounds for certain activities, including eating. If I want to eat in front of the TV, that’s totally ok for me. If a restaurant is too loud, it’s ok to leave.

• Listening to music I absolutely love for whatever I need it for: an emotional release, getting pumped up, relaxing, lifting my mood, whatever. I can’t explain how deeply music makes me feel. This is probably also my open solar plexus. But if it’s a good song and there is an emotional journey, I’m going on it.

  Or, if it’s just a really beautiful song, it will break my heart right open. It’s probably the same sensation that other people get when they’re in a beautiful spot in nature and it looks magnificent and they feel completely awestruck. I do really like nature but I think I’m missing something because I can feel what others feel. I don’t think nature sends me the way it sends others. Music sends me. So knowing that, I lean into it. A long walk set to my vacation playlist will do more for me than a meditation any day.

• Singing, loudly, in the car to my favorite music (usually only when I’m alone). Singing actually activates the vagus nerve so it is literally activating the parasympathetic nervous system, but layered with the sound of the music makes it even more effective for me.

• Wearing my earbuds when I’m at the airport so that I can control the sound coming in, even if I can’t control the rest of the environment.

I think a lot of these things will ring true for others even if High Sound isn’t their digestion type. This variable isn’t the only factor, after all. Or it may ring true but you have no idea what your digestion type is (but you should find out what it is).

Environment

This variable tells you exactly what kind of environment your need to thrive and feel calm. It’s literally what kind of environment is regulating for your nervous system.

The direction of this arrow tells you something before you even find out your specific environment type. In Human Design, generally speaking, the left-facing arrows indicate being active in some area while a right-facing arrow indicates receptivity or passivity. The left-facing arrow will participate in and structure whatever it is and the right-facing arrow will want to sit back and take it all in. For the environment, a left-facing arrow will want to anchor into the space and actually control it in some way, while the right-facing arrow wants to sit back and take it all in. Left feels best when they have a designated space - their own office, their favorite chair, or the same table at the coffee shop they go to everyday. The specific Environment type will inform more about what and where that space should be, but they like the structure and predictability and the feeling that some part of their environment “belongs” to them (whether or not it actually does). A right-facing arrow wants to people watch and observe others in the environment. They feel at ease when they have the freedom to move around and experience new locations.

My bottom left arrow faces left. Way before I knew about Human Design I would be very particular about my space. My office (whether that was at home or in a more corporate setting) has always had to feel like mine. And familiarity definitely breeds comfort. Knowing my design only confirmed it, but it gives me awareness around situations where I may not be as productive. It’s ok that I’m really picky about ad-hoc work spaces when I travel, and now I know how to make them work better for me. More on that in a minute, but speaking to this left arrow piece, I always travel with a meticulously curated set of products that I use to feel comfortable, familiar, and productive. I find someplace I can park myself for an entire day so that it feels like “my” space over time. On a day to day basis, having my own office that I set up exactly how I wanted it was so important. If office space was limited I would still need to set up a designated space somewhere - just floating around with my laptop all over the house would not work for me.

Just like with all the variables, you can get even more specific about your environment type. Mine is Internal Markets. Market environment types (whether internal or external) thrive in environments where something (whether it’s actually market goods and money, or more abstractly, ideas, conversations, energy, etc.) is being traded. There needs to be a sense of bustling energy and exchange. Internal Market types like people to come to their “market” and External Market types like to go to others’. Which completely tracks. I love hosting a party. I love showing visitors around town. I love taking people to my favorite place. I love being the one familiar with a space and bringing others into it.

Markets are a little different than some of the other environments in that there is not exactly a calm but more of an energization that comes with it. Each of the Environment types will land differently, but in a way that’s going to speak lovingly to your nervous system for you. Regulating the nervous system is not just about being calm. There are other emotional states that activate the parasympathetic (or rest and digest) state, such as joy, belonging, or inspired. In the case of Internal Markets, this feeling is stimulation and and excitement - in a good way. When you’re doing something that makes you come alive, that’s also good for the nervous system. Internal Markets people probably don’t feel a sense of calm when they’re in their ideal environment, but they do feel comfortable and at ease, alongside this happy little buzz of cognitive stimulation. And even though the feeling is a little different for each Environment, they will always make you feel safe. You may know what kinds of spaces you gravitate to but knowing your Environment shows you specifically why that is, which makes it easier to replicate it in different situations. Someone with a Mountains Environment, for example, might want to look for a home with a beautiful view. For Internal Markets, this can be difficult to fulfill on a day to day basis since I’m alone in my office much of the time, which is ok because it fulfills a lot of my other needs. (And maybe someday I’ll think about an office space outside the home). When I feel like I’m in need of a positive energy boost, I’ll sit outside on my porch where I can interact with the neighbors, or go to my favorite coffee shop.

Cognition

Cognition is the other variable I’ve worked with a lot. It speaks to your strongest sensory gift - Smell, Taste, Outer Vision, Inner Vision, Feeling, or Touch. It’s your “super sense”. Mine is Outer Vision. I was a little surprised by that TBH because I have the nose of a bloodhound but apparently my Outer Vision is stronger. It turns out that it doesn’t actually mean how well you smell or how good your eyesight is. Smell is more like a spidey-sense - knowing when things are off (though how things literally smell to you is part of it too - but not whether you have a strong nose, but rather understanding that you can really trust your nose). Outer Vision is about appearances and aesthetics. It means that your intuition can be relayed through your visual observation of your surroundings. A picture is truly worth a thousand words to Outer Vision. It also means that aesthetics are really fucking important to my internal world. For better or worse, I need to be surrounded by beauty to function best. Because what does intuition need to thrive? A regulated nervous system. The universe is literally asking me to curate an aesthetically pleasing life. I’ve always kind of operated this way without realizing it, but I felt a little guilty about it, like I was being shallow for how much it mattered to me.

As fate would have it, my husband (lawyer by day) is an impeccable interior decorator so our entire house is absolutely gorgeous (I feel pretty comfortable bragging about that since it wasn’t me. At all. I have no idea actually how to decorate, I just know it when I see it (similar to my appreciation of music)). Remember when I said I set up my office just right, which was super important to my left-arrow Environment need to own my space? I didn’t mean I decorated it. I meant picking out and setting up MY stuff - the computer and tech stack, books, candles, hand lotion. Between the beautiful decor and the way I’ve set it up exactly how I want it, my office brings me so much joy. Which is great since I spend so much time there.

Where I spend time elsewhere is the harder part to control, but knowing this is my cognition gives me permission to be a little picky about it (within reason). Where nervous system regulation comes in with cognition is that whatever sense is your most powerful is also going to have a huge impact on how you feel. The vibes need to be good in that sense in order to feel comfortable and at ease. Shallow as it may seem, I really struggle when I’m in an ugly or messy environment. I minimize it where I can, and when I can’t, at least I have awareness as to why I’m irritable and overwhelmed, and I can try to minimize other stressors or take extra care of myself in some way. On the flip side, going to a beautifully decorated restaurant or hotel is pure joy.

These are just a few of the variables but they’re the ones that have been the most impactful to me as of late. Knowing how you interact with the world on a cognitive level gives you more unique tools for what is going to support you. It’s definitely not necessary to start everywhere all at once. But the variables can give you ideas for little changes you might be able to make that can have a big impact. You can find yours on most charts listed somewhere on the side. If you’d like more personalized support around your design and how you can use it to help with nervous system regulation, check out my tier offerings.

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The nervous system is having an it girl moment. I’m here for it because I’ve been working on my nervous system for the past 15+ years so I’ve collected a lot of tools. I have a history of childhood trauma (and generational trauma), but I really want to skip that for now and take you back about 15 years, when my nervous system finally reached its breaking point. In my early 30s, when our two girls were young, I fell apart. Our oldest got diagnosed with autism just a few weeks before our second was born. At the time, we knew nothing about neurodivergence (and I didn’t know I would wind up being late diagnosed myself). We didn’t have the tools to support her or ourselves. We figured it out pretty quick but the load I took on from that moment had a cost. Everything I had in those early days went into caring for our two girls that I will happily classify as “difficult babies”. Some babies are easy (sleep through the night, cheery disposition, happy to hang out in a pac-n-play or a be held in a Baby Bjorn) and some babies are difficult (allergic to sleep, “colicky”, require being held in your arms while standing for hours on end, dubious disposition). Ours were the latter. (And if you haven’t had the privilege, you really have no idea, which is why I always say take parenting advice with a grain of salt). I say all that with nothing but love in my heart: I am now so grateful because difficult babies can turn into amazing, strong-willed, intelligent, absolute fire young ladies. (Take note Moms with difficult babies: their bodies are just too small for the universe exploding out of them).

But at that season of life I had no such perspective and was just pushing myself closer and closer to the breaking point co-regulating their stressed out nervous systems while mine got fucked. At some point my body just gave up. Within a couple years we had to have my in-laws move in with us to help take care of them because I could barely get out of bed. The constant pain was bad, but the fatigue was debilitating. I saw doctor after doctor and, long story short, finally got diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic health condition marked by an overactive nervous system. Basically, an overactive stress response eventually causes the nervous system to go haywire, and a malfunctioning nervous system leads to severe pain and fatigue. (That was way watered down and I am resisting every urge to explain this in the detail it deserves because the nitty gritty details of fibro are not the point of this post).

What is the point is that I’ve done my research on the nervous system. Fast forward to today and I’m doing pretty good. I still have flares, but I know how to manage and minimize them. I’m not running any marathons, but I’m active. I’m up and out of bed before at least one of my children (the teen, ofc). The difference between now and 10 years ago is night and day.

The single-most needle moving health practice that I implemented? Getting serious about my nervous system.

I think most people know the basics: the sympathetic nervous system state is our stress response, our fight or flight (or freeze or fawn). The parasympathetic nervous system state is back to to calm, our rest and digest response, our restorative mode. Most people have an idea that chronic stress is not good, and they’d like to figure out how to be less stressed.

They have a general idea that nervous system dysregulation is probably an issue and nervous system regulation would have a positive impact on their health.

The thing about nervous system regulation is that there are multiple moving pieces at play. What most people (including me) will often give you is a list of tools for your toolbox. This is great, but it is not the whole picture. What people aren’t explaining is is that nervous system regulation needs multiple things to happen, which ultimately means needing some combination of tools to really stick.

Furthermore, most people don’t really understand the actual goal with nervous system regulation. People have this vague idea that it means being more calm. Not being in constant fight or flight. Not suffering from chronic stress. All of that is true, in a way.

And real nervous system regulation means something beyond that: it means resilience. It means having the capacity for stressful shit and then being able to bounce back to calm after said stressful shit is over.

It’s not a problem that your kids make you want to lose your mind when they wake you up at 5am and immediately choose chaos. The issue is whether this is still affecting you 8 hours later.

Our nervous system is meant to nimbly switch between parasympathetic and sympathetic mode depending on what the situation calls for.

Put it that way, you might begin to see that there are a few different things that need to happen to get a nimble nervous system. Building resilience means both building capacity (how much stress your body can handle without going into burnout) and being able to get back to calm after the stressful shit (strengthening the calm response), and to even get started your nervous system needs to be physically healthy enough to work properly.

How do we do all this? Let’s break it down.

A Framework for Resilience

Your body needs four things to heal the nervous system and build resilience:

Nourishing the Nervous System (Nutrients + Sleep)

First, you need a nervous system that is physically primed to function well. All the physiology of your nervous system has to be well nourished and in working order. This means a whole foods diet with plenty of protein, fats and fiber. B vitamins. It also means balanced blood sugar and a healthy gut. These are all the things that are going to physically nourish your nervous system so that it actually has the ability to work on an optimal level. Now if you’ve read any of my Notes you’ll know I’m not a big fan of restrictive diets or stressing out about food. The stress about the cookie is always worse than the cookie. Joy is a nutrient. And a diet devoid of nutrients just won’t function at full capacity. Getting in as many nutrients in your body (that you truly enjoy) is always a winning foundational strategy.

And it means good sleep. None of this works without sleep. Sleep is literally where your body repairs itself.

Stress Management (Reduce Overload)

On the flip side of nourishing and repairing your nervous system is reducing your overall stress load so that your nervous system actually has the space to heal. If there are so many sources of stress you can’t breathe, it’s hard to get ahead of it. This is what I would call the oft thrown around term “stress management” and it’s often one of the main things people are talking about when it comes to nervous system regulation. (It IS a critical component - just not the only one.) This is where we talk about time management, outsourcing the mental load, outsourcing in general, boundaries, auditing your lifestyle and work, saying no to things that don’t light you up. What is dragging you down that’s actually possible to get off your plate?

In Human Design, this is where I’m talking about listening to your sacral response for Generators and Manifesting Generators, or waiting for emotional clarity for emotional authority types, or taking downtime when your body is asking for it for Manifestors.

Building Capacity (Strengthen the “Stress Muscle”)

Now to the capacity building. You need capacity, aka, the ability to handle as big a stressful load as possible. You can think of it like training a muscle: intentionally exercising the “stress muscle” can make it stronger. This is where the concept of good stress, or eustress, comes in. Certain types of stress can have a hormetic effect on the body, which means actually increase your body’s capacity for stress. Actual exercise, along with other things like sauna, cold plunge, and intermittent fasting all fall into this category. Now, to be clear, when things are too stressful for the body, especially a woman’s body, they are no longer beneficial and just add to the overall stress load. Intermittent fasting (beyond say 12-14 hours) is generally not a great idea for women. Personally, I actually love cold plunging but I only do it when I know my body is ready to handle it. Exercise is great but an intense 60 minute Peloton ride probably isn’t unless you’re in peak athletic condition (I said what I said).

What constitutes a good stress is unique to the individual and listening to your body is key. And although I’ve listed this as the third element in my framework (because it comes “third” in the order of operations when you think about it conceptually), it’s really best to approach this component only when you have a pretty decent handle on the other three. Don’t go on a run on 5 hours of sleep and nothing but an iced coffee. Makes sense right?

And Bouncing Back to Calm (Strengthen the Relaxation Response)

Finally, the calm response. Other than the “stress management” category, this is where the majority of the tools we’ve come to think of for nervous system regulation are related to. (Again, critical. Again, not the only component). Meditation, deep breathing, guided imagery, etc. All of these things are great, but none of them are actually necessary at all. Also great for eliciting the relaxation response: deep meaningful work in the flow state, social connection, creative pursuits, being in nature, or just laying down and letting your mind wander. Whatever gets you there is unique to you. This category is critical, though probably not for the reason you’re thinking. It’s not only for the period of relaxation you get in the moment you do it (though this is important too). Even more importantly, what you’re actually doing is training your nervous system to become familiar with being in a parasympathetic state. Neurons that fire together wire together. Practicing relaxation strengthens your nervous system’s ability to get back into a parasympathetic state after the stressful event is dunzo.

I could say a lot more on this subject but this was just meant to be an overview of the framework I developed to conceptualize the moving parts. Mainly because I wanted to respond to the frustration that comes with meditating for 30 minutes a day for weeks on end and not noticing any changes. It’s meant to acknowledge that if it feels like you’re doing the work but not seeing any difference, you’re not doing the work wrong. What’s missing are the other elements.

This should also show you exactly why they say healing is never linear. Because you cannot do all of these things at once and nail it right out of the park. Building resilience does require working on all of these on some level for some time. But it will be little by little, building on itself, spiraling up.

Giving you the framework was the easy part. The hard part is implementing it. I can (and will) give you plenty of thoughts on all of it in detail but the truth is that nervous system regulation (like anything in life) is truly bio-individual. While I do suggest auditing each of the 4 pillars to see for yourself what might need attention, the tools you use in each category should be based on what you need, not what some wellness influencer says is the best or only approach. When I work with clients it’s a continuous discussion: what worked? What didn’t? Here’s what your Human Design indicates - how does that resonate and what do you want to try? It’s often trial and error. If meditating feels like bullshit, don’t do it.

At the end of the day, your intuition is the decision-maker and the best nervous system tool you’ve got.

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This article was originally posted on nikibowenwellness.com

Disclaimer: This article is solely for informational and inspirational use as a self-help tool and is not intended to be professional medical advice, mental health advice, or medical nutrition therapy of any kind.

My nervous system was a hot mess for a solid 30 years. I came out of the womb in a hypervigilant state (plenty more to say on that in another post). By the time I was in my 30’s with children, I had developed fibromyalgia (which is a condition where chronic pain and fatigue are caused by a severely dysregulated nervous system). So I have a close connection to it. Taking care of my nervous system was the one thing that really got me back to feeling nearly normal.

I already had all the tools. But when I found Human Design a few years ago, everything fell into place on a spiritual level. It gave me actionable insight from a completely different perspective.

These are some of the specific aspects of my chart that have had a direct impact on my nervous system. At the end of the day, though, it boils down to one thing: giving yourself permission to be exactly who you are. When you do this, your body stops living on high alert, and everything else feels better.

Listening to my sacral response

Following your strategy and authority is the single most important thing you can do in living your Design. The whole premise of Human Design, in fact, is to get out of your head and into your body so you can hear and follow your intuition. Because we are all intuitive, but our unique Design shows you how it’s going to show up.

For Generators (that’s me) and Manifesting Generators, we have a defined Sacral center. Sacral center definition gives us steady energy and passion for whatever lights us up. This is because we are here on Earth to do what lights us up. The idea being, if you’re a Generator or an MG in flow state, you could do it forever without getting tired. The Sacral yes response just generates more energy for it. But because it’s usually unrealistic to be able to only do what lights you up all day everyday, our work here is to slowly but surely get on the path to what you’re passionate about. The gut literally tells us if something is a yes or a no. We’re healthier and happier in the long run if we listen to our gut. And if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.

This does several things. For one, that flow state I was talking about - it literally puts you into a parasympathetic (aka ventral vagal aka rest and digest) state. Instead of meditation, try doing some meaningful work that makes you feel like you’re transcending time. I get the best scores on my Oura Ring when I’m locked in and loving it. Whether it’s part of your actual job or not doesn’t matter. Get lost in something.

The other thing this practice does is move you into a feeling of fulfillment and purpose. The signature self theme of Generators and MGs - the feeling they get when they’ve had a damn good day - is satisfaction. Feeling like your day, your work, your life has meaning helps regulate the nervous system. Sometimes you need to make meaning out of the bullshit that’s coming your way (which is another regulation tool is its own right), but every chance you have to listen to your gut and line up with what you’re here to do, the downstream effects are incredible.

I’ve seen it play out in my own life. 10 years ago I was homebound with pain and fatigue from fibromyalgia. We had to move my husband’s parents in with us to take care of our young daughters because I could barely get out of bed. Today, I have a rewarding business and home life. There are a lot of things I had to do to feel better. Most of them were related to regulating my nervous system. But probably the biggest thing that keeps me from falling back into that hole now, despite all the craziness of life, is how purposeful my life feels. Human Design helped with that on a macro level - encouraging me to listen to my intuition -and on a micro level - pulling threads on each specific element that got to me right to this moment.

Emptying out everyone’s bullshit

We pick up energy from others all day long. How much we’re picking from others has a lot to do with how many undefined centers we. The undefined centers are “more porous” in the sense that we don’t have our own steady source of definition there. The undefined centers are kind of TBD at any moment. It’s not to say you don’t have anything there at all, but it’s heavily subjected to the influence of others. It’s like they’re up for debate. A lot of what you feel with those centers might not actually be yours. So, for example, if you have an undefined emotional center, you’re a lot more likely to be an empath. Where some people feel empathy on a cognitive level, you (and I) literally feel the feelings of others. It’s an incredible gift but it’s also pretty overwhelming at times.

The emotional center is the easiest to understand but every undefined center can take in everyone else’s stuff. The more undefined centers you have, the more you’re taking in. And if you don’t release all that stuff, it’s going to burn you out.

My chart brought you courtesy of Humdes, one of my favorite Human Design apps.

My Design helped explain why I’m an introvert that loves people (and knows how to turn it on when I need to). I’m a 4/6 with 7 undefined centers. Relationships are everything to me - but it’s literally physically exhausting to be around too many people too much - even if they’re not even saying anything.

Emptying out is the practice of releasing all that energy. It means spending time with you and just you. No people within 6 feet of you and no voices or content from other people. You don’t have to be silent or still necessarily - you can be doing your own writing or art, or driving in silence, walking in nature, or taking a shower. Or just lying down - in particular, being horizontal is helpful. The more undefined centers you have, the more time you need (experiment).

If I’m not doing this I feel it. It’s the easiest one to ignore (because who has time for this?), but it makes all the difference. Luckily, this right here (drafting this article) “counts” because it’s just me writing and reading my own words.

Speaking of undefined centers: the Emotional center and overwhelm

Being an empath is an incredible gift. And it’s seriously overwhelming. Pair it with children with Big Feelings (big surprise, they both have defined Emotional centers), and you’re in for a lot of waves.

NGL, it’s really hard.

I haven’t really figured out what to do with that beyond emptying out. Which does help. But it doesn’t help in the moment when I’m losing my shit because I’m overstimulated.

What I’ve tried to take myself to is a place where, in the moment, I’m acknowledging to myself that what I’m doing right now is letting them have the big feelings. I literally picture myself with a huge bucket that’s getting filled with water, and I’m struggling to hold it. This is maybe counterintuitive but I think it’s just acknowledging what’s happening. I don’t try to fix or engage too much (that’s not my job or our dynamic - they just need to get the feelings out). I listen, because that is my job (and greatest strength). It feels helpful.

But really, this one is just harder than others for me and I wanted to acknowledge that. I think my kind of Design can probably be mapped to the Highly Sensitive Person. There’s a lot of awareness, boundaries, and rest that has to accompany that level of sensitivity.

Speaking of undefined centers: the Root and adrenal fatigue

The Root Center is the body’s get up and go. It’s one of four energy centers (ie, centers that provide you with energy) and it’s arguably the main source of energy. Your battery. It’s correlated to the body’s adrenal glands. It is your cortisol. Patterns of HPA axis dysfunction (fka adrenal fatigue) can be mapped out to patterns of an unhealthy Root center.

Someone with a defined Root center has steady access to the Root’s powerhosue. Their job is not to overdo it but generally speaking, a healthy defined Root center should feel pretty good in the morning and have steady energy all day. But since overdoing it is something we all seem to do, a defined Root center is subject to burnout when the person is making the Root carry everything. In other words, super spiked cortisol, tired but wired.

An undefined Root center can be a slow starter in the morning (hi, it’s me). A little less get up and go, naturally. Does it mean we have no energy at all? Well sometimes it feels like that, but a healthy undefined Root isn’t supposed to be synonymous with chronic fatigue - but the sensitivity to it is there. A little more rest is needed - we’re not wired for all day everyday. Which is easier said than done in this society, so we tend to push ourselves beyond what’s good for us. This leads to major burnout. The HPA axis pattern here is more of chronically low cortisol. Not wired, just tired.

What benefits an undefined Root center are practices that are helpful for treating low cortisol: rest, reducing caffeine IF it makes you feel jittery, increasing protein intake, and more rest.

The biggest one for me personally is morning daylight (I use the word daylight rather than sunlight to underscore the point that it does not actually have to be sunny - overcast is fine). I get outside within 30 minutes of waking up nearly every single day and spend at least 10 minutes out there.

(Side note: So why Human Design? Considering the practical implications are virtually the same as I would get from doing a DUTCH hormone test (which confirms I do struggle with low cortisol), it begs the question whether HD is necessary. But for me, it makes me wonder if the $350 DUTCH test is necessary. At the end of the day, I love blending both the labwork and the birth chart, for myself and clients. I don’t think a lot of coaches are talking about lab numbers and undefined energy sessions in the same session, but that’s what I do. I love seeing how everything fits together.)

More about the Root.

The Root center is also what’s known as a Pressure center. For the Root, it’s pressure to get shit done. It’s there to provide us with that drive for productivity.

For a defined Root, that Pressure should generally feel good or fairly neutral. One client described it to me as just having a to do list and doing the things he could do that day. Like all things being equal, your relationship with your to do list does not cause mental drama. Other aspects can get in the way - whether you feel lit up by your work, for example, can heavily drag you down even with a defined Root. And again, overworking yourself always leads to burnout.

For an undefined Root, the get shit done pressure can produce a lot of anxiety. The feeling is always if I can just clear everything on my plate I’ll be free. That should sound familiar to anyone with an undefined Root and I think that’s an important experience to name. I didn’t realize that thought was always running in the background until I had my first reading.

The thing is, we’ll never be free by that standard. The to do list will never actually get done. With an undefined Root, our work is to learn to live with the discomfort in the fact that the to do list is never really done. We’re here to gain wisdom when we really understand this. And we need to force ourselves to take a break and rest even when there’s more to do. This one is honestly so hard for me. I catch myself in this thinking all the time. Literally, even as I write this, I’m wondering in the back of my mind if I can just knock a whole project out in one day, just to get it done - even if that would override my body’s signals.

How do I work with it? I’ve really had to nail down a good productivity system so that even if I’m not knocking out a whole project in one day, I can fairly consistently plug away at my goals. I use Notion for just about everything and I love it. I also do quarterly planning and map out my biggest priorities, and make a plan to only work on my biggest priorities in that moment. Everything else - all the ideas I’m so excited about, need to get written down and stored for later (luckily Notion works well for this too).

And when I’ve said yes to too many things, I have to let some of them go.

Conscious Earth

The Gate placed in your Conscious Earth is one of your biggest teachers. In the Gene Keys framework (which is kind of a spin off of Human Design that I incorporate into my practice), this placement maps to what is called your “Evolution”. Then, bringing in elements of traditional astrology (which I also incorporate), your personality Earth is what grounds you. Brings you back into your body and brings you calm. Metaphorically speaking, it’s what plants your feet on the Earth. In other words, brings your nervous system into a ventral vagal state.

At first blush, they don’t seem related, right? But they are in fact perfectly dove-tailed, which (IMHO) is no coincidence and is exactly why, even if HD is my north star, I will never really pick a lane. Gene Keys, Astrology, the Oura Ring data, your yearly physical - they are all so intricately connected.

Ok, so as your Evolution: this Gate is a journey. It’s a Gate you may not totally “get” at first but as the years go on, it makes more sense. What it normally means is that your understanding of what the true essence of the Gate is different than how you had previously interpreted it.

But/and: when you do really get into alignment with this Gate, that’s where you feel grounded. You feel joy and contentment fulfilling this aspect of yourself. It turns into something that when you lean into it, it fills your cup. Helps regulate your nervous system. See that?

My Conscious Earth is Gate 31, the Gate of Leading. Leadership?! TBH that made me want to puke when I first heard that. I hate public speaking. I was deathly shy as a child. Now, as an adult, I’m great with 1:1, love it in fact, but still in a group setting I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin.

How could one of my biggest anxieties be tied to the thing that’s supposed to help regulate my nervous system? That makes zero sense.

The reason is that I was living in the Gate’s shadow for a good portion of my life. Shadow aspects of a Gate are always taking it to one extreme or another - doing the thing “too much” or eschewing it altogether. I was doing the latter. Keep my head down, keep to myself, and for the love of god, don’t look at me!

Until I began to understand what this Gate is really about. It’s not about power, or being overly assertive, taking charge before anyone else can, or public speaking (necessarily), or leading a huge team (necessarily). It’s about being a natural leader, a quiet force, caring for the collective, helping others empower themselves. It’s about being an influence (but not an influencer). 1:1 coaching - pulling up alongside someone to help them achieve the transformation they’re looking for - is actually exactly what Gate 31 had in mind.

Put that way, the fulfillment I have in my work is me living out this Gate and it has direct positive impact on my nervous system.

It also operates on projected energy, which means it is something that must be called out of you to be in healthy alignment. It’s not supposed to be forced but instead recognized and asked for. And that’s when it comes alive. And it’s true: I’m so much more expressive, willing, assertive, so much more confident when I’m invited in to your journey. When I’m asked for help, guidance, leadership, if you will, I get a beautiful buzz in my chest that is literally sending me into ventral vagal state.

Put another way, it explains why my Oura Ring app shows I’m in Restorative mode (aka parasympathetic aka ventral vagal state) during client calls. Maybe it’s the being asked and recognized that this Gate specifically wants, or maybe it’s just the warmth that comes from the connection with someone, but quality conversations register as me being in the ventral vagal state. I literally have biofeedback data that lines up with the truth of this Gate and it’s placement.

Only in recent years have I really befriended my nervous system. I read all the books on the body keeping the score and awakening the tiger and all that and I learned amazing tools for regulating your nervous system. I turned it into my signature framework that I use with my clients, in fact. But it wasn’t until I found Human Design that I really grew to love my nervous system. Like really love it. That was the missing ingredient that really ignites the transformation.

Because knowing your Design means working with it instead of trying to fix yourself. Or even try to heal yourself. The work here is being yourself.

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Interested in learning about how your Design can show you what your nervous system needs? Book a 1:1 reading with me.

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Disclaimer: The content in this article is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical concerns or before making changes to your health, diet, medications, or treatment plan.

One of my best friends had magnets all over her mini fridge in her college dorm room. Most of them were slogans protesting the strikes against Afghanistan post 9/11 (“Barbara Lee Speaks for Me” was particularly special to us because Rep Lee graduated from our alma mater). One of them really stuck with me. It said “rushing is a form of violence”. I recently mentioned to her that I was writing a blog post about this magnet and she said it was a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama, which I didn’t realize. At the time, however, I didn’t get it.

I didn’t get it and I was a little annoyed, honestly, like this magnet was criticizing me personally. Because I’ve always been someone who rushes. Not just because I’m often running late and I need to rush (though this is also true). But even when I’m on time, I like to move fast. More to the point, I don’t like to waste time. I walk fast, I drive fast, I want to get everything done as fast as possible. Life is short and I want to squeeze the most out of every minute. I’ve never had patience for dilly dallying. But I’m not a violent person, so this makes no sense right?

Rushing is a form of violence.

25 years later, I haven’t been able to get that phrase out of my head. Each time I thought about it, though, I couldn’t wrap my head around what it meant. It didn’t seem to fit into my narrative of life.

It didn’t fit then and it didn’t fit as I grew into adulthood. It certainly didn’t fit when I was a stressed out law student, then an overworked lawyer, then an overwhelmed stay at home mom. It was no longer a matter of preference: rushing was necessary if I wanted to have time to take a break, ever. I had to get shit done if I wanted the chance to take a second to myself.

But the whole time, that phrase was always in the back of my mind, every time I’m in a hurry. Rushing is a form of violence. Like I couldn’t get a handle on it but I knew it was meant for me (like anything you have a visceral reaction to - it might just be exactly what you need to hear).

Even as I started doing more work on myself in the health and wellness space more than 15 years ago, and went headfirst into researching everything there was to know about the nervous system, it took awhile to put the pieces together.

On Rushing

In their book “Our Polyvagal World”, Seth Porges and Dr. Stephen Porges explain that a simple change in your breathing pattern can shift your body from a sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state to parasympathetic (rest and digest) state. As you breathe, make sure that your exhale is longer than your inhale. That’s it. In other words, don’t focus on the inhalations, just let out purposely long exhalations. This triggers a sense of safety in your brain because if you have the time and space to slowly exhale, you are definitely not running from a bear.

And if you were running from a bear, you would definitely be rushing.

(Side Note: I am well aware that you are not supposed to run from a bear. But it’s my analogy so go with it.)

What does this mean about how we look at relaxation? It’s not just about taking a break for a meditation or relaxing on the couch after the kids have gone to bed. It’s how we do life when we’re actually doing it.

It’s about not rushing.

Slow down your breathing because it relaxes you in the moment, even while you’re working or driving the kids to soccer practice.

Taken one step further, slow down everything you do. You will be calmer, and healthier, for it. Leave 5 minutes earlier and take your time driving to work. Let the kids goof off a little bit before sending them to get ready for bed. Eat slowly. Take pauses. Work softer.

And it’s not just the act of rushing that activates the sympathetic nervous system. It’s the feeling that accompanies it. The pending deadlines, the anxiety to get to where we’re going, or get the project done. I think we can all agree: every moment weighed down by the burden of hurrying is a stressful one.

Slowing down calms the nervous system. And if we approach our day with a little more ease, we might not feel the need to rush through everything to get to our break.

But Violence, Really?

Maybe violence doesn’t just mean physical altercation, abuse or war.

Maybe it’s a metaphor here (or maybe it’s completely literal and the Dalai Lama understood the nervous system better than anyone). We can consider violence (at least in this context) to be that flush of anger you feel when someone cuts you off in traffic. Blowing up at your kids after you’ve asked them nicely to put on their shoes five times and they just won’t listen. Snapping at your partner when you feel resentful that they haven’t done their share of the housework.

How did we get there? Why are we losing our shit when the customer service representative is being (you can only assume) intentionally unhelpful?

Our chronic stress. Our dysregulated nervous systems cause us to snap at small stresses (and fall apart at larger ones).

The term “fight or flight” is literally referring to the physical and sometimes violent reaction of our bodies to stress. Physiologically, fighting or flying is what we’re supposed to do in response to things that activate this system. It’s biology.

But we’re not abusers or criminals so we know true violence is wrong. We don’t actually “fight” in the way nature intended (and I’m not suggesting we should). And we can’t usually run away either. So the fight happens inside. Maybe we snap or blow up when we’re pushed. We argue. But that’s nothing compared to what’s going on inside. For the most part, we contain the bulk of the response. We turn inwards and the “fight or flight” is internalized. The violence happens in our bodies, and to our bodies.

We are the victims of our own violence. And rushing is one sure way to get you there.

Anyways, I think that’s what the Dalai Lama was getting at.

Rushing is a form of violence.

This blog post was originally published in https://www.nikibowenwellness.com/blog.

You finally have a day where you feel decent.

Not amazing. Not magically cured. But functional enough that you think:
“Okay. I better use this while I can.”

So you do what most high-performing women do.

You catch up on emails.
Clean the kitchen.
Run errands.
Answer texts you’ve been ignoring.
Maybe even squeeze in a workout because you’re finally feeling “normal” again.

This feels good for the moment, like maybe you’re finally getting momentum back.

Then two days later you’re on your ass again.

Pain spikes.
Fatigue hits.
Brain fog rolls in.
Everything suddenly feels harder than it should.

And now you’re trying to figure out what went wrong.

This is one of the most common patterns I see in women with chronic health conditions (such as fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions, etc.).

It’s not really about the bad days. It’s the swing between overdoing and crashing afterward.

Because eventually it starts to feel like your body makes no sense.

One week you can handle things.
The next week the exact same activities wipe you out.

So you start living in this weird constant negotiation with yourself:
“How much can I do before I pay for it later?”

That’s exhausting all by itself.

And honestly, most women have been taught to approach this in a way that accidentally keeps the cycle going.

We’ve been taught to think in extremes.

Go hard when you can.
Rest when you absolutely have to.
Push through while the energy is there.
Recover later.

But your nervous system does not build stability that way.

It builds stability through consistency.

That’s the missing piece for a lot of women.

Especially the women who are used to functioning at a very high level and overriding their own signals automatically. (Usually while taking care of everyone else too.)

The good news is that this cycle is not random.

And it’s not a sign that your body is broken.

Most of the time, it’s a capacity mismatch. What you can do occasionally and what you can recover from consistently are not the same thing.

That distinction matters a lot.

So let’s talk about what actually helps.

1. Stop Treating Good Days Like an Emergency

This one tends to hit people a little hard because most people don’t realize they’re doing it.

A good day shows up and suddenly everything becomes urgent.

You need to catch up.
Make up for lost time.
Be productive again.
Finally get your shit together, right?

So one decent day turns into:

• errands

• laundry

• meal prep

• work tasks

• appointments

• social plans

• maybe a workout on top of it all because you’re scared to lose momentum

The worst days like this are when I’m Christmas shopping, trying to get everyone’s presents all in one day. The mall is crowded and loud and so bright and my legs are starting to ache after a couple of hours but if I can just get it done it will be done.

The problem is that you’re pushing yourself too much on the good days.

Even if it’s healthy.
Even if it’s productive.
Even if you technically “can” do it in the moment.

This is why so many flares feel random.

They’re often delayed responses.

Your nervous system lets you borrow energy before it sends the bill.

That’s the part nobody explains well.

And I think this is especially hard for high-achieving women because moderation feels emotionally uncomfortable.

Steadiness can feel lazy when your identity has been built around pushing through.

But the goal is not to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of a good day.

The goal is to create enough consistency that your body stops swinging between overdrive and collapse.

That means:

• leaving margin in your day

• not stacking every task into the same 24 hours

• stopping before exhaustion instead of after

• resisting the urge to “cash in” every bit of energy immediately

Honestly, one of the biggest mindset shifts is realizing:
Just because you can push harder today doesn’t mean it’s a good trade.

2. Build a Baseline Your Body Can Actually Sustain

A lot of women are unintentionally living in recovery mode.

Crash.
Recover.
Feel better.
Overdo it.
Crash again.

And every time they get a little momentum back, they try to return to the pace their body used to tolerate.

That’s usually where things start unraveling again.

Your nervous system likes predictability way more than intensity.

Which is not very sexy wellness advice, I know.

But consistency is often what creates the stability people are looking for.

Not the perfect supplement.
Not the “root cause” rabbit hole.
Not another hyper-restrictive protocol.

Just a body that stops getting pushed past its current capacity every few days.

That’s why I talk so much about building capacity instead of chasing perfection.

Your body needs rhythms that feel sustainable enough to repeat.

Consistent meals.
Consistent sleep.
Movement that supports you instead of punishes you.
Recovery built into normal life instead of reserved for total burnout.

And yes, at first this can feel “boring” compared to the adrenaline hit of productivity.

But boring is underrated.

Boring is often where stability lives.

Rather than asking themselves how much can I get away with today, I encourage my clients to ask themselves what level of activity could I repeat consistently without crashing afterward.

3. Learn Your Early Warning Signs Before Your Body Forces the Shutdown

Most women wait way too long to respond. Not because they’re lazy or disconnected. Because they’ve spent years overriding themselves.

So by the time they notice what’s happening, they’re already deep into overload. But your body usually gives signals before the full crash.

The problem is that many women have trained themselves to ignore them.

Early warning signs often look like:

• feeling wired but tired

• getting snappy with people

• rushing everything

• increased brain fog

• feeling overstimulated by noise or decisions

• tension building in the body

• limbs feeling heavier, even if they’re not in pain yet

• wanting to push through harder instead of pulling back

That last one is a big one, TBH. A lot of women think the answer to overload is more discipline. Usually it’s better responsiveness.

(There is also some major work around your Human Design root center that can be incredibly beneficial here when it comes to loosening the reigns of the need for productivity, but that’s a topic for another post).

The strongest thing you can do is recognize the spiral earlier and adjust before your body has to slam the brakes for you.

That might mean:

• shortening the to-do list

• building in more downtime that day

• lowering stimulation

• choosing gentler movement

• prioritizing sleep

• asking for help sooner

• intentionally leaving or quitting the thing while you still feel ok

Not because you’re fragile. Because responding early creates far more stability than constantly recovering late.

And this matters because the goal is not to spend your entire life managing symptoms. The goal is to stop organizing your entire life around avoiding crashes.

That’s a very different thing.

“But If I Slow Down, Won’t I Just Become More Limited?”

Honestly, I think this is one of the biggest fears women have.

Because moderation gets interpreted as:
“I guess I just have to live smaller forever.”

That’s not what I’m saying. The point of pacing and consistency is not restriction.

It’s capacity-building. Work softer and you will probably actually get more done over the course of the week or month or year. A lot of women are already limiting their lives. They’re just doing it through unpredictability instead of intentionally creating stability. And I know this work can sound deceptively simple.

But simple and easy are not the same thing.

Especially for women whose nervous systems are wired for urgency, productivity, and pushing through discomfort automatically. Steadiness feels unfamiliar at first. But steadiness is often what allows your body to stop reacting to everything.

And honestly, that’s when life starts opening back up again.

Final Thoughts

If you’re stuck in the push-crash cycle, the answer is usually not more willpower.

And it’s usually not finding the one perfect fix either.

It’s learning how to work with your body differently.

That starts with:

• stopping the “catch-up” mentality on good days

• building a baseline your body can actually sustain

• recognizing overload earlier instead of waiting for the full crash

This is how you start creating more predictability instead of constantly reacting to symptoms.

Over time, that changes a lot.

You stop spending so much of your life recovering from your life.
You stop feeling blindsided every time symptoms spike.
You build more trust in your body again.

Not because you’re forcing it.

Because you’re finally working with capacity instead of constantly fighting against it.

Want More Support Like This?

If this resonated with you, I write more about nervous system regulation, chronic symptoms, recovery patterns, sleep, nutrition, Human Design, and the push-crash cycle.

Practical guidance.
Real-life application.
And conversations that actually acknowledge what it’s like to live in a body that feels unpredictable.

This blog post was originally published in https://www.nikibowenwellness.com/blog.

I’ve had a hard time explaining what I do. There are multiple angles to speak about. Put simply (if I have to), I’m a holistic health coach (with a functional nutrition credential) who primarily works with women with chronic pain, fatigue and other debilitating symptoms.

A layer deeper, I help women regulate their nervous systems because a dysregulated nervous system is at the heart of most (if not all) chronic conditions. Nervous systems regulation is the root cause of the root cause, if you will. I have a 4 pillar framework for regulating the nervous system (because it’s so much more than just meditation and breath work, and if you do it the way I suggest, it can actually work).

But (and), a layer deeper than all of that is that I am also a Human Design reader and coach. I had been studying and training for years and doing it on the side for friends and family. I pursued a nutritional therapy practitioner credential because I knew I wanted to help women struggling with their health, and honestly kind of doubted whether I could be successful “just” doing Human Design. (I also had a significant falling out with someone in the Human Design space and needed to step back from the whole thing for a minute but that’s another story).

Fast forward to when I started my wellness practice. People started asking me about Human Design even when I talked about hormones. My health coaching clients asked me about their design and so I weaved it into my practice. I used it to guide them into a better understanding of their inner workings which in turn helped them regulate their nervous system and know how to take better care of themselves. Others started asking me for readings and I opened up an offering for a single session. Zero marketing in this regard, just word of mouth and referrals from people who got something significant out of talking about their chart with me for 90 minutes. My clients literally called it out of me (the most living your design pathway you could ask for) and as I built the plane, I formed a framework for using Human Design to inform health coaching.

I’ve loved every minute of it.

But even as this aspect grew, I kept it under wraps publicly.

For one thing, business coaches that I work with (and truly admire, so this is no shade) really gave me strong advice on how to market myself, and they advised I do not talk about it (very often at least).

They say:

“Share the result, not the journey. Don’t talk about Human Design because that’s just a tool in your toolbox. You can add it in after they become a client if they’re interested. And don’t talk about nervous system regulation because your clients don’t know that’s the problem. Instead, talk about the transformation they will get - being able to go on a vacation without worrying about a pain or fatigue flare.”

And I see the logic behind all this. Because we are all looking for results and don’t usually care how we get there.

But my experience is different. I think my clients love the idea of learning more about themselves because they know it’s going to be a good thing, even if they haven’t fully appreciated how impactful it can be, and they’re already curious about Human Design. They’ve been thinking about it in the back of their mind since they first heard of it and are just waiting for the time to jump.

(And I think my clients already know their nervous system is fucked up. They might not know the exact mechanism by which chronic stress leads to chronic fatigue (so maybe they don’t know, again, how impactful this work can be) but they know it’s an issue. It’s been at the back of their mind for awhile too.)

The other reason I was keeping the woo-woo side out of everything was because I feel a little guilty. Like did I waste time and money getting a holistic nutrition credential and learning about functional labs? But then I remember that I also have an unused law degree and I don’t regret my days at Berkeley for a single second. And it’s not like I’m going to stop educating on nutrition and labs with my clients.

So about a week ago, right around when I decided to start this Substack, I decided I was going to start talking more about Human Design. That and nervous system regulation were going to come to the forefront. I knew in gut it was the right way to go, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t/don’t have feelings of self doubt for all the reasons stated above.

(I was just going to make this a note and the paragraph that follows was going to be the whole note btw. But I realized I needed to give you the entire backstory in order to let it carry any weight, hence the article).

I got my tarot cards read today. All of the above was on my mind ofc. I told her nothing about my career or interests.

Midway through the reader says “you should get into Human Design.”

I cried.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who needs express reassurance even when I know I’m doing the right thing, but I’m beyond grateful for the bread crumbs.

When I say listen to your intuition, that’s why.

Anyways, that’s what I do.

Let’s talk about self-care for a minute.

In today’s hustle culture, self-care is often treated like a luxury, not a necessity. Like something you have to earn after giving everything to everyone else. And (let’s be honest) women, and especially mothers, are taught from a young age that our value lies in what we do for other people.

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So we put ourselves last. Our rest gets back-burnered. Our nourishment becomes an afterthought. Our bodies whisper (or scream) for support, and we’re too overwhelmed or exhausted to respond.

In an attempt to correct this imbalance, the wellness world has given us permission to self-care through a new set of mantras.

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.”
“Put your own oxygen mask on first.”
“You need to take care of yourself in order to take care of others.”

You hear them all the time. And they’re not wrong. But they’re not getting it right either.

Because the underlying message of these well-meaning statements is an assumption I don’t subscribe to:

That the only reason you should take care of yourself is so you can be well enough to take care of someone else.

And that, my friend, is bullshit.

Let me be clear. Yes, you do need to put your own oxygen mask on first. True, you cannot pour from an empty cup. And absolutely, if you’re a mother or a caretaker of any kind (of children, of coworkers, of family) you need to be supported, resourced, well-rested, and nourished so you can show up as the best version of yourself.

But here’s what I take issue with:
The message that your well-being is only important because of what it allows you to do for others.

Absolutely not. Your well-being matters because you matter. Full stop.

You don’t need a justification to rest or prioritize your health.
You don’t need permission to take care of your body, your mind, your nervous system.
You don’t need to earn it by being productive or selfless or sacrificial.

YOU are the reason.

Not your kids. Not your job. Not your partner or your to-do list. You.

And yes — if thinking about how your health affects the people you love motivates you get started, that’s okay. I’m not here to shame your why. In fact, I’m fueled by my children too. Their well-being is deeply important to me, and I want to show up for them as my best self, now and when I’m old. That’s totally valid.

And I also invite you to turn inward and recognize that you are reason enough.

You are worth caring for, investing in, resting for, nourishing and healing.

Just because you’re you.

So yes, put your own oxygen mask on. Not so you can go help everyone else.

Put it on because you deserve to breathe.

I think we’ve all tuned into the fact that we need to get more comfortable saying no - no to more things on our plate and no to things that make us feel uncomfortable. There is no self-help concept that’s garnered as much attention in recent years as that of Boundaries. Build them and enforce them.

But I think a lot of us struggle with where to put up those boundaries.

When we know something is going to suck, we know we should say no.

But what about all those things we’re waffling on? A friend asks you to volunteer at a nonprofit with her. It doesn’t sound like the worst idea. You know it’s a nonprofit you support. You can think of a lot of good reasons why you “should” do it. But you’re not excited about it. You don’t have a “yes!” feeling in your gut. Some people might say give it a try, maybe you’ll like it. I say, say no thank you and don’t look back.

If it’s not a hell yes it’s a hell no.

I spoke with a client the other day - a manifesting generator. MGs tend to be people who are multi-passionate and do a LOT of things in their lifetime. They often get accused (unfairly) of being flakes because they’re always changing their mind. Coaching them often involves giving them permission to change their minds. This client, however, said she never gave anything up when she found something that excited her - she just kept adding more and more to her plate. She was taught that everything you commit to needs to be seen through to the bitter end. The very idea of taking something - anything - off her plate was novel.

Guess what? Commitment JUST for the sake of commitment is not commendable.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. Or sometimes you do things for other people that you’re not excited about because you love them that much. But honestly? Those things shouldn’t be the majority of your day. And they should always be open to reevaluation. (After all, there’s nothing virtuous about doing an act of love with a heart full of resentment).

Every single day of your life you are making all of your life decisions all over again.

And it’s ok to answer differently than you did yesterday.

Spending time on bullshit (ie, stuff you’re not excited about) is stressful. And depleting. And it wastes time that you could be spending on things you are excited about. Or doing nothing. Worst of all, it closes you off to the opportunities to do the things that were meant for you had you been open and available.

And if you’re still not convinced that quitting the draining thing wouldn’t be the “right thing” to do: keeping it on your plate when you’re not jazzed about it means someone who would be really excited to do it doesn’t get the opportunity.

This framework has helped me so much with decision making. Instead of going back and forth on why you should or shouldn’t do something (stressing yourself out with just the decision), just go with your gut.

It’s either yes or it’s the absence of yes.

Don’t do it unless you actually get the yes.