How I use Human Design to Regulate my Nervous System

Why following your intuition is the most powerful nervous system tool you're not using

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.

***

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

*****
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.