My Thoughts
I’ve been using Reiki and chakra balancing techniques now for over 25 years. With every course I do and client I work with I continue to explore the chakras in some way. What they hold on to, how they feel, releasing resistance or emotions.
But for the last couple of years I’ve also been studying human design and the bodygraph.
How I Merge Human Design with Chakra Work
Here’s the thing. Human design is a very complex system which combines and layers astrology, both eastern and western, the Hindu Chakra system, the Kabbalah, and most importantly of all, the I’Ching, the Book of Changes.
The Hindu chakra system has already been adapted and changed through a variety of traditions and new age movements. The others also have their own complexities.
The human design bodygraph is a map. It shows an imprint from the 12 planets at two points in time. One at 88 degrees of the Sun before we are born, and the other at the instant of our actual, physical birth.
Within that map are 9 centers connected to each other by gates which are the hexagrams from I’Ching. One of the 6 lines of I’Ching and a gate are attached to each planet. This combination shows who you uniquely are.
Have I lost you yet?
Put simply Human Design is a map of your own nature and provides you with simple tools for making correct decisions, being yourself and eliminating resistance in your life.
This is a map to discover yourself more deeply.
Chakra balancing and energy healing are the tools to releasing resistance and being in your own energy.
Together they bring you back into who you innately are allowing you to follow your own dreams and vision for this life so that you feel happy, fulfilled and purposeful.
So here’s the thing…
The chakra system is much more than the 7 main chakras. Even before learning of the existence of human design I worked with the extended chakra system with the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, those above and below the physical body, as well as both the sacred and higher heart chakras.
The information around the mindset of balanced and imbalanced chakras is consistent and applicable to each of us which allows it to be seen as a framework to assess our lives in terms of what values, beliefs and experiences we want for ourselves. We can recognise behaviour in others as being an imbalance in a particular chakra of theirs rather than a lack within yourself.
Human design requires a birth chart to determine the expected potential traits of any particular person.
My recommendation is …
The chakra system is complete. The basics of each chakra and how they fit into your life can be learnt easily and implemented into your life quickly. It contains the tools needed to turn inwards and focus on your self care, self healing and self development.
If you want to go deeper or are fascinated by individual personality traits and combining them in relationships and workplaces you may choose to delve into human design, astrology, myers briggs or any similar systems. I find the gates of human design particularly helpful for understanding people and where they have absorbed external energy.
Your chakra tools will benefit you in clearing energy that is not natural for you regardless of which system identified its presence.
Let’s compare Human Design with Chakra Systems
Let’s talk about your energy system first. Although we have many major and minor chakras we focus on our 7 main chakras. These are the energy centres in our body which energy flows through. They are a whirling power of energy like a vortex.
Each chakra is connected to a physical part of our body, which also govern an area of our lives. These chakras run in a line up and down our spine and act as invisible rechargeable batteries, being charged from the energy in the atmosphere.
The meaning and application of these main chakras goes back to the early traditions of Hinduism. Early Sanskrit texts speak of them both as meditative visualizations combining flowers and mantras and as physical entities in the body.
These ideas are not unique to Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Similar and overlapping concepts emerged in other cultures in the East and the West, and these are called by other names such as subtle body, spirit body, esoteric anatomy, sidereal body and etheric body.
The Chakras are also part of esoteric medieval-era beliefs about physiology and psychic centers that emerged across Indian traditions. The belief held that human life simultaneously exists in two parallel dimensions, one “physical body” and other “psychological, emotional, mind, non-physical” it is called the “subtle body” This subtle body is energy, while the physical body is mass.
According to the Human Design knowledge revealed to Ra Uru Hu by “the Voice” in 1987, humans underwent a mutation to our physical form/body in 1781 coinciding with the discovery of the planet Uranus by W. Herschel.
This mutation represented an evolutionary progression within our species from 7 to 9-centered beings. The process involved a complex internal reorganization of the human form, beyond just the simple addition of two energy centers and was primarily a means of further developing the cognition of human consciousness.
This development of cognition is also seen as a shift from a strategic outer world vision to a more individual inner vision.
Human design splits the heart chakra into two centers, the G Center and the Will Center. It also splits the solar plexus into the splenic center and the emotional solar plexus.
The splitting of these chakras also shifts some characteristics of the chakra into a different area to what I understand of the chakra system.
This rearrangement of the energy centers has been the biggest thing for me to get my head around and I just can’t so I don’t.
It can’t be said that human design is an update of the chakra system. The best way for me to merge human design with chakra work is to treat the energy centers of human design as information hubs connected by the gates. These gates originate from the I’Ching and represents archetypal energies. Some are written into your birth chart, all of them you experience by your interactions with others.
By delving into the gates you gain information on what personality traits are written into your birth chart as your potential for this life and in knowing this you can steer your mindset and actions with more balance and purpose.