HORSE STANCE: the Radical Liberatory Pedagogy of Human Design
"I teach surfing. I don't teach the whole ocean" —John Martin, Human Design Hawaii
Firstly, WELCOME to the host of new people who have subscribed over the last few weeks. Thank you for being here! You can check out my website if you are an artist interested in working with a writing guide.
Here are a few previous posts from this newsletter that you might find useful: “self-help” book review; nonviolent communication primer; intro to fascial maneuvers.
What follows is a writeup (from a very individual perspective!) on Human Design, a knowledge system that I have been working with for about 12 years now. Right away I want to acknowledge the teacher who is my unofficial mentor for all things Human Design (HD), to whom I turn for clarity on every aspect of the system: John Martin. The description of his YouTube channel exemplifies his attitude (excerpted):
Human Design is a system of knowledge that moves the guidance of The Life away from the mind and into the body. It is actually so simple that most people's "minds" just can't accept it!!
By experimenting with your inner authority and the mechanics of your aura type you may discover the most amazing truth ever...YOURS!!!
Please don't believe any of this! If it feels correct for you, just try it. Your body will quickly verify this knowledge!
I want to highlight a few observations from this excerpt.
“The Life” that is being lived through is The Life, not your life. He sees HD as a deeply neutral and depersonalizing force of understanding. HD is anti-ego work.
HD is intended to reorient our guidance away from the mind and into the body. The mind is identified with the ego (following Eckhart Tolle, I refer to this construct throughout as either ego, mind, or “egomind”).
HD is a knowledge system devoted to the discovery of your truth: truth in relation to this knowledge system is unique to you (not your ego, but your true self, expressed through your body as it moves through space).
Truth can only be verified by your body.
This is already a lot to absorb, an intentional mindfuck. Just acknowledging these few basic facts is radical, and radically different from most HD content out there. Using those four points as a guide, you can already rule out at least half, if not more, of the content you see about the system online (most of which is marketing to try to sell you readings or courses). Like most mainstreams, the mainstream HD discourse is flooded and corrupted; I had to search for years before finding a stray heterodox individual who really had an angle on the system that I personally could hook into and begin to implement.1 That turned out to be John, who I found online right around the time of my Saturn Return (a hellscape), a few months after my first (profoundly life-altering) psilocybin journey in 2018. After studying the system purely from the book for over five years, I moved into studying John’s materials steadily for six more years.
Let it be known I am extremely idiosyncratic and selective when it comes to esoteric topics like astrology and Human Design. I research widely. There are few reputable websites with useful and accurate information about the details of the system—and it is an incredibly intricate and information-dense system, so it is tempting and much easier to allow your mind to get lost in the details and avoid doing the painful, years-long work of deconditioning the mind itself that is necessary before you can even get into working with the design of your bodygraph. Discovering John Martin marked a turning point in the way I understood Human Design. His content is the only stuff I genuinely value and would recommend to anyone wanting to work with this system (especially newbies). The only source that I recommend apart from John’s teachings is the book.
***EDIT, 7 August: Hi all, I realized I would like to add some important context on Signatures and Not-Self themes of the types, as well as a better frame for newcomers about my personal stakes in the Human Design system and my affinity with John Martin. Once you know the basics (below), you may wish to revisit this section for more clarity and context. Please forgive the oversight! xx KK
The majority of the world is an energy type: their chart has one or more motor centers that is fixed, always humming, providing them with juice for their life. These are the Generators and Mani-Gens: plugged in, 24/7, to the life force of the planet and the universe, feeling great satisfaction when they expend this energy by doing the work that is correct for them. Once they expend their energies, they sleep, which works to charge that “battery” of the fixed motor center. Then they can wake up and do it all over again!
The 25 or 30% of remaining humanoids lack fixed motors, so aren’t Generators; these are classified as non-energy types. We (for I am one such type) do not consistently experience that life force energy. The incessant doing that has built and rebuilt the civilizations is not correct for our non-energy mechanics; we experience energy through being in the auras of Generators, by being around them and plugging into their life force vicariously. You can imagine how this informs relationship.2
At various points over the first 21 years of my life, I was convinced (and others contributed to these judgments) that I was lots of things: an introvert; weak; lazy; chronically ill; broken; deficient; antisocial; depressed; anxious. Others still attribute these to me at times when I fail to show up in the world in accordance with the conditioned expectations of the Generator world.3 When I was gifted my first (and only) Human Design reading for my 21st birthday, and really grasped my chart for the first time, something clicked deep down and shifted permanently.
I learned what it meant to be a Projector, a non-energy type. I learned what it meant to have almost all centers undefined: a completely open chart, except for the top two centers. Real self-understanding dawned on me, which began to melt decades of conditioned self-judgment into waves of tears and compassion. Relief poured in, along with excited recognition of the error of the countless previous judgments of friends, family, society-at-large that I had internalized as my unworthiness (8th-house Chiron in Leo shored this up). Deconditioning these not-self egomind beliefs and narratives has allowed me to start to see my “truth” and live as a Mental Projector. Deconditioning according to HD has led me out of bitterness (the Projector’s not-self theme) and into success (our Signature).
Deconditioning according to HD has led me out of bitterness (the Projector’s not-self theme) and into success (our Signature).
John Martin was also a Projector. He was also a 6/2 Profile Line, just like me (there are 12 possible line combinations): the Role Model / Hermit. Our affinity is obvious in design and was affirmed by my obsession with his materials, how well they worked for me as I have kept at this deconditioning journey. He may not be right for you, and that is fine. You will find your own way. Becoming your own inner authority, trusting yourself to the utmost, is the point of Human Design.
All types seek liberation, by design. That’s the flight of the human soul, it’s what we’re here to do: to express ourselves fully and in alignment with our inner truth. Signatures show us how by type. Projectors learn to live Success and outwit Bitterness. Manifestors (another non-energy type) who engage the knowledge of HD move from Anger into Peace. Reflectors (the rarest type, also non-energy) swap Disappointment for Surprise. And Generators, which will likely describe most of you out there, stand to give up a lifetime of Frustration for the experience of deep Satisfaction.
KEY TERMS: signature, aura mechanics, strategy, authority, energy centers (fixed, open), the red and the black, not-self mind
The aura is the energy field surrounding the body, a “bubble” about twelve feet across in all directions through which we filter our experience of reality. According to HD, everyone’s design blueprint for a lifetime comes with one of four types of auras. About 70% of the people on the planet have the same aura type, which is called generating; the other three types are projecting, manifesting, and reflecting. Aura mechanics refers to the ways in which Generators, Projectors, Manifestors, and Reflectors operate in four entirely different ways in relation to their energy (life force) and in relation to the other types.4
Each aura has a recommended Strategy for using their energy in the world. Humans are “yin” creatures according to HD, designed not to initiate or push but to receive, to be called to move (with the important exception of the rare Manifestor type). For all types, allowing life to come to you is one of the fundamental deep lessons of living in alignment with your design. Therefore, the strategy for most types is to respond (Generators) or to wait to be invited (Projectors). Moving beyond the stories of the mind is required before we can feel safe in allowing life to come to us via such strategies.
The bodygraph is your chart, a reflection of your body’s design in this lifetime. Unlike astrology, HD produces two charts overlaid atop each other: one is your personality design (shown in black lines), the other is your unconscious or embodied design (shown in the red lines). Who you think you are (“personality” in black) and who you really are (“body” in red) are almost never aligned, and this produces infinite possible “problems” for you to get stuck on as you travel through the course of your lifetime in your particular design. You can calculate your chart here.
Strategy is what HD labels this type-specific recommendation for moving out of the suffering-machine of the not-self mind. Mind, when used correctly, can be a lovely observer of consciousness. You will hear a diversity of spiritual teachings refer to this correct use of mind as The Witness, or the true self. In Hinduism, Buddhism, and a variety of flavors of Gnostic and mystical Abrahamic traditions, it is a hallmark of enlightenment to dwell permanently in this state of perfect witnessing, neutral and beyond egoic attachment. The not-self mind has covertly installed itself like a virus into your perfectly-designed bodygraph and long since taken over the controls in most people. This not-self (call it ego, call it the egomind, call it your reactivity or autopilot, call it social conditioning, call it society, man!) is what is driving any and all choices you think you are making when you go about imposing your will on the world, actively fighting to get what you think you want from life.
This not-self mind drives any and all choices you think you are making when you try to impose your will on the world, actively fighting to get what you think you want from life.
Strategy and Authority together make up the basic suggestions for how to differentiate and awaken through the information in your chart or bodygraph. There are seven possible decision-making pathways outlined in Human Design, called Authorities or Inner Authorities.
I won’t go into Authorities here, but they are important so you can learn just how to start getting in touch with your inner knowing and differentiating that voice or instinct from anxiety or social conditioning. Here is a playlist of short videos of John talking through each of the Authority types.
In addition to one of four aura types, everyone’s body is made up of nine energy centers. Energy flows throughout the body and between your body and others by means of these nine separate centers. This model of the energetic body evolved from the seven-centered model of the chakra system, on which the knowledge system of astrology is based.5
These energy centers can be put into four categories based on what they do: there are motor centers, awareness (or fear) centers, pressure centers, and voice centers. These centers may be fixed in a chart (always “on,” dependably sending life force through that person) or open (person has variable access to the energy of that center). (Reminder: like astrology, all the information is neutral. It is not better to have a fixed center than to have an open one, or vice versa.)
Here’s John Ashbery again. The colored-in centers show where his energy is fixed, always available. For example, Ashbery’s crown or head center is fixed, a relatively rare thing (71% of people have the head center open). Unless he was operating from not-self conditioning, Ashbery always asked the right questions and felt the pressure to answer them for himself. He never wondered who put these questions in his head, and his ability to resolve mental pressures of doubt (gate 61, red) was a constant source of internal support for him. Continual, day-and-night access to this flow of mental energy through the head center, the “hard drive” of the body, was part of his design. (Reading any of his poems puts you right into the experience of that fixed head/ajna combo!)
The white centers are the open ones, which show where he is open to conditioning via auric interaction with other people. Open centers give a person the ability to have wisdom about the themes of those energies. For example, the ego or heart center is the little triangle on the right (white in Ashbery’s chart). It is responsible for a person’s willpower and self-image. With an open ego center (65% of people have this one open), a person may feel compelled to prove and to improve himself, afraid he may not “make it” in the material world; there’s a deep insecurity that the mind loves to feed with fear. Ashbery’s open ego center risks self-esteem issues, but also gives him the chance to trust in his design by surrendering to showing up in the world without any willpower whatsoever—to survive despite lacking any egoic thrust.
An open or undefined “ego center” has the ability to be wise about connection, vulnerability and power dynamics at play in themselves and others in ways a defined ego center cannot.
Like with astrology’s planets and signs (and aspects and transits and rulerships and asteroids and synastry and astrocartography and so on), there is an unbelievable amount of information to learn about the themes, challenges, rewards, pressures, and auspices of each energy center. Do not fall for this trap. Or do, if you want to give your mind something to chew on besides your mate or lot in life. Either way, recognize that the information is not the point. Getting out of your mind is step zero. The chart is essentially useless until you have made peace with your mind. As John said, “I think, therefore I’m fucked.”
John Martin lived and taught a very particular, “radical” approach to Human Design (from the Latin etymology of radical, i.e. root). He came from a background in martial arts, and from there he lived HD as a righteous discipline of embodiment, surrender, and flow. For me, his teaching exemplifies the mystical truth of the system—living one’s unique design—eradicating all beliefs, overcoming identification with mind, and verifying all knowledge on one’s own using the body (this, importantly, includes verifying any and all information presented by the Human Design system itself, and any of its teachers).
John rebelled against mainstream HD culture’s degeneration into pure not-self, which is often cliquey, commodified, poppy, and homogenizing—just the opposite of the object of true Human Design, which is liberation. His style is perfect for me. Engaged liberatory pedagogy, as mystical transformation, is the topic and genre of my doctoral dissertation. I read John Martin as a mystic, heterodox, analogous to the way Erik Davis has described Zen as the “punk” version of Buddhism. “Be your martial art in space,” John would say, with reference to working with the tools of Human Design: living your aura mechanic, following your strategy and authority, verifying your experiences and finding your truth by getting out of the mind and into the body.
It’s the rare person who can call me “sweetie” on first meeting and not raise my hackles. My bullshit detector is merciless and oversensitive (Virgo Venus, Virgo Mars). I spoke to John on the phone once, about a year ago. It was a few months before he passed. Working with HD intensely, and going through a very rough patch, my battered ego was scrabbling for sustenance; after all, everything I’d been studying and reading since 2018 was explicitly devoted to destroying the egomind and starving it out. After a cursory email exchange with one of his assistants, I had the nerve to pick up the phone and reach out for help. The call (very brief, very moving) was an out-of-body experience. I can’t remember anything he said except the following: “Just relax, sweetie. You’ll be ready for this when you’re ready.”
Get your Human Design chart here.
Check out the Human Design Hawaii Youtube channel
As John said, “if people are telling you they’re going to help you use HD to get money, sex, or love,” they are not doing Human Design. The idea that you want or need money, sex, or love is just a fabrication of the mind virus. These people are asserting themselves as an external authority over you and exploiting the weakness of your not-self egomind to make a profit. John did not hide moments of bitterness (we share this Projector signature) about the uses and abuses of Human Design in the “spiritual marketplace.” It was important to him to provide free content to help people get free. This is the main meta-reason I love him and respect him so much, and I do set him up as a role model (we share a 6 profile line) of how to be of service in the world.
I am available for consultation to those interested in learning more about energy vampirism and how to negotiate being a non-energy type without falling prey to such manipulations.
As John would say, wryly, but with gravitas: “It’s their (the Generators’) world, you guys. [As non-energy types,] We’re just living in it.”
There is one ‘hybrid’ variation of the main type, called a Manifesting Generator, which occurs when a graph has one or more motor centers connected to the throat. These types have the exact same kind of aura as the pure Generators. According to John, the aura mechanic is the single most important part of HD, so I am content to keep it simple for an introductory lesson and lump them together.
In my experience, Human Design and astrology are both useful and can both be leveraged for living out your truth. Working with my writing clients, I use my knowledge of both systems simultaneously without feeling any friction. I use astrology more explicitly because more people know more about it; at the same time, if I have their exact birth data, I am always applying my client’s HD chart and offering guidance based on what I know about their aura mechanics, strategy and authority, and open centers.