Why I Left Human Design and Created the Soul Forward Method
In this post, I'll unravel how and why I went from being a trained Human Design reader to ultimately shifting away from Human Design and into the channeled healing modality of the Soul Forward Method. Before I explain how I made this shift, let’s talk a little bit about what Human Design is.
What is Human Design?
Human Design is a modality designed to help us understand who we are. In our quest for personal development, self-empowerment, and self-awareness we seek out teachers, gurus, programs, and courses to tell us who we are, what to do, and how to do it.
But a lot of what’s out there (personality tests like Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, or even talk therapy) has us answering questions from our conscious mind - which is driven by the subconscious programming we received in our formative years. So the answers we get about ourselves from these modalities can be flawed - because we’re answering from our programming.
Human Design shows us what existed before any programming - what is true of our energetic body. It shows us how we’re wired to be guided, how we are meant to navigate through life, make decisions, and the innate gifts we’re born with. When I discovered Human Design, I could see our uniqueness in a new light. We’re not meant to be in carefully defined “personality boxes” - combinations of letters and numbers from tests performed by the mind. We’re like snowflakes - and we're meant to live lives that are just as intricate.
Resting back into our Human Design allows us to come further into alignment with our soul, intuition, purpose, and a life of ease while adding our beautiful contribution to humanity. It allows us to level-up by giving us the tools to recognize where we’ve been conditioned out of our natural ways so that we can return to ourselves and live more authentically.
It guides us and gives us permission to live as we’re meant to.
Human Design is all about how we are uniquely designed to exchange energy. As energetic beings (who happen to have 3D bodies) we are constantly exchanging energy. That's what life is.
In Human Design, there are five different energy types. Five distinct ways you are energetically created to live in flow and alignment with what you're here to do and how you're meant to activate your gifts and support humanity while doing it.
The Five Energy Types of Human Design
Manifestors
Manifestors are here to show us where to go. They initiate action. They start the engine of newness (or neatness) with their ideas. They show us where we're meant to be headed. Manifestors are like the captain of a ship saying, "Here's where this ship is going." Manifestors refrain from polling or taking suggestions to see where the majority wants to go. Their insight (when aligned with their soul and design) is divine and is meant for our highest good.
But to move the ship (humanity) in the direction we need to go, we need the muscles and the energy to move the vision forward. This is where Generators and Manifesting Generators step into their critical roles.
Generators and Manifesting Generators
They are the only Human Design types with defined sacral centers (literally life force energy portals). They have access to the power of consistent life force energy and make up a whopping 70+ percent of all energy types, and there's good reason for it.
Generators and Manifesting Generators are conduits of life force energy, and they're the only ones who are made to have this powerful energy flowing into, through, and out of them at all times. They are the force of life that moves us forward. In the ship analogy, they are the muscles that power us (through rowing) to get where we need to be. They're here to carry us forward while doing what they love.
Generators are here to fall in love with what they do and tend to find one thing and become masterful at it. This alignment with their work allows them to share life force energy with the world while loving what they do.
Manifesting Generators are hybrids - they get ideas and want to initiate movement (a lot) and have the life force energy to do it. However, they're still bound by their strategy and authority in how and when to move on their impulses. They tend to fall in love with many things (hobbies, careers, etc.), and as they do, they live in alignment with their design. They share their life force with the world.
Projectors
Projectors are here to guide the efforts of the forward motion. We (I'm a Projector) are here to show Generators and Manifesting Generators the most efficient way to use their energy to get us where they're/we're headed (i.e., how to do life). We have the unique ability to see deeply into how things are (systems, organizations, people, etc.). We can see the way forward with the wisdom we extract from our potent energy diving deep into things.
Reflectors
Reflectors are like mirrored prisms (disco balls?!) that reflect all that we can and cannot see about how we're doing. Humanity is meant to recognize the health of the environment we're all in by looking at the health of the Reflector. And adjust where adjustment is needed.
All five types are meant to work together, and when we know what our role is (and the roles of those around us), we can find symbiosis and harmony.
But many aren't familiar with their own Human Design, let alone the design of those around them. We're often not living in the energy or the role we're meant to fulfill.
How Does Human Design Impact Your Life?
When we dive into understanding our Human Design and discover how we're meant to live (which is always an exchange of energy), we often find that we aren't living life in alignment with our design. We usually try to do it as a different energy type (this is very true for the 30% of energy types: Manifestors, Projectors, Reflectors) that are meant to live VERY differently than most of humanity).
Human Design illuminates your role, what your gifts are within your role, how you're meant to make decisions, and more. When you're armed with this information, it can feel empowering until you realize you've got to make some adjustments so that you come into alignment with how you're meant to be living.
The old-school rule is that it takes seven years to "decondition" and align with your Human Design.
This is if you begin to consciously choose to do things a different way than you have been over and over again.
7 years.
Ain't nobody got seven years to do this kind of conscious work to get into alignment with their Human Design. We don't know if we'll be lucky to see tomorrow.
When you aren't already living in the flow of your Human Design, it's because you've spent your entire life living out of the subconscious beliefs and programming you've memorized throughout your life. When you decide to make changes consciously (to do things according to your Human Design), you're working on the result of who you are, not the cause of who you are. It's like working in the caboose of a train to communicate something to the conductor in the engine. (Learn more about how our conscious, subconscious, and unconscious minds are connected.)
Why I Left Human Design
I’m a Quad Left 6/3 Projector with Splenic Authority. When I first discovered Human Design, I leaned into my Human Design and geeked out on the macro and micro details I found within my chart. I felt like I could be "me" the way I'd always wanted to be.
I felt known, seen, and understood, and it validated what I intuitively knew was true about myself. It shed a massive light on personal things I hadn’t been able to wrap my mind around, like:
Why I craved solitude as if it were air to breathe (turns out it's where I'm the most me and my entire being gets to reset).
Why my body had been run down for decades (I'd been exhausted for most of my life and at that point was halfway to adrenal failure).
Why I struggled so much in parenting my children (it feels like being in a blender).
Why it was so important for me to feel “seen” in life (I'm wired to be "successful" in a way that can be seen and measured from the outside).
That when I felt like I was “done” for the day (despite having 10 more hours 'til bedtime) it was the truth and not that I was lazy.
That my intuition was trustworthy (that thing has been powerful since I was a little girl but I didn't always follow it - whoops).
It validated the gifts that I'd been born with and had abandoned (like how I know things just because I know things). It gave me permission to live the way my soul was aching for me to live (but only after I stepped into my bravery and followed my intuition to do so). That faced me in the direction of my soul's chosen destiny (my energy type, my 6/3 profile, my quad left arrows, and my Left Angle Cross of Revolution incarnation cross, and specific channels and gates).
I applied my design and the permission I found within it to live my life the way I'd always wanted to but didn't know how to (because it felt so different than the way I'd been programmed to live by my Manifesting Generator mother, society, religion, etc.).
But I needed more than leaning in. I wanted to significantly move forward in the direction I'd finally found. But to actually begin to cover ground, I needed to heal what kept me tethered into place (those things that were also keeping me from living in alignment with my Human Design).
Those tethers (beliefs) were what my soul came here to experience and were all stored carefully within my subconscious and out of reach of my conscious mind.
The forward motion comes not from striving to move forward but from assessing why you aren't already there in the present.
When we identify that the things from our past keep us from aligning easily with who we came here to be, what we came here to do, and what we came to have, we can heal what needs healing and be free to move forward.
When I became a trained Human Design reader, my soul (via my intuition) told me that this would not be "the thing" I'd plant my flag in or become known for. I always knew Human Design was amazing, but that it was also limited. I didn't understand what would be beyond it, but I trusted I'd be shown, and I was.
Knowing my HD and applying myself to it just wasn't enough. Human Design is like the what (what you are, what you're here to do), but it's limited in the how and why.
Why aren't you naturally living out your HD?
Why isn't it easy to just do it?
Why does it have to take so long to get it all clicked in?
When I became a trained Human Design reader, my soul (via my intuition) told me that this would not be "the thing" I'd plant my flag in or become known for. I always knew Human Design was amazing, but that it was also limited. I didn't understand what would be beyond it, but I trusted I'd be shown, and I was.
There's so much more to discover about yourself than your Human Design; if you stop at Human Design, you miss out. If you dive into your Human Design, you might eventually learn how to shift your energy into alignment with it, but you'd be doing it the long and inefficient way.
I personally didn't have seven years to play with my Human Design, and hope I found alignment.
I wanted (and created) a way to work strategically and specifically with what keeps us being who we've always been (and not living our Human Design) so that we could naturally align with how we're meant to be.
I discovered that if I authentically show you how to live from your soul through healing within your subconscious, your Human Design will be easier to align with.
Your soul chose your Human Design, and your astrology, and your parents, and your past, etc. so if you can clear out a lot of what's nestled in your subconscious you make space for all the tools you want to lean into (like Human Design).
I've found that all the self-awareness and personal development modalities I've leaned into to live the best life I could, and I hoped those tools would help me do it, fell short of what I discovered when I began to just work within myself.
Now, those same tools are things I completely write off or use as a present-moment assessment of how I'm showing up (like the Enneagram - mine has changed three times throughout my life because I continue to heal in the deepest parts of myself and evolve beyond the way I used to answer the questions from my conscious mind).
Soul Forward Method is hands down the tool I'd take into my future if I could only take one (Human Design would be my second choice).
How Are Human Design and the Soul Forward Method Different?
Human Design shows you how you came here to live and what you came to do.
Soul Forward Method shows you why you aren't naturally living that way.
If your parents had been super conscious and had been handed an "owner manual" when you were born on exactly how to hold space for you - you might be living according to your Human Design. But your soul became human to drop into a specific experience loaded with lessons for an evolutionary journey.
Living aligned with your Human Design can be an aspirational goal, but it doesn't circumvent the evolutionary journey. Soul Forward Method expedites the evolution your soul came for.
What is the Soul Forward Method?
Soul Forward Method (SFM) is a multidimensional healing modality that allows you to unwrap yourself layer by layer to understand yourself and your journey so that you can move beyond the lessons from your past that you haven't learned yet and move into a future where your wise soul is forward and can lead you to where you're meant to be next.
In SFM, we work in the conscious mind, subconscious mind, nervous system, emotional energy, and energetic body for comprehensive healing so that you expand beyond the memorized patterns of limitation that have kept you the same and your soul's dreams out of reach.
Though Human Design and Soul Forward Method are my top two self-awareness and personal development tools, I keep them separate. I don't incorporate Human Design (HD) into the Soul Forward Method, though I find it valuable to know the basics of your HD in general and I encourage my SFM clients to get an HD reading at some point in their lives.
Why the Soul Forward Method over Human Design?
Human Design is excellent at painting a picture of the ideal way you could live your life, but it's external. It's showing you, "This is how you naturally want to do this life." But other than trying to consciously manipulate yourself into accepting and aligning with that way of being, it's not showing you why you aren't already (and skips over the inner discovery work that shows you what your soul came for).
Soul Forward Method is about the why.
It's for those brave enough to lean hard into what their soul came here for. They're not here for skipping over the real stuff. They want to get through it efficiently, but authentically, so they can find harmony between their human and their soul and live the rest of the life they came here to live (beyond the limitations of the past).