The Link Between Human Design and Body Image

Human Design knowledge must be experienced in the body — how do you feel about yours?

I remember distinctly being in 4th grade and the girl next to me in music class lamenting her “fat thighs.”

As I heard this girl tear her body apart, I was struck by what she was saying. I hadn’t really given too much thought to my thighs before this moment and her words drove into me like a wedge.

Was I supposed to hate my body?

PAUSE: Human Design immediately makes me think about childhood body image?

YES.

A huge part of living your design is releasing the conditioning that you’ve picked up along the way that pushes you to live in your NOT SELF.

Something I reference all the time on my instagram is the Beauty Redefined book and teachings. Lexie and Lindsay Kite, PhD’s have researched exactly how women are taught to self-objectify themselves and the harm that causes.

As adults, we know that this 9 year old didn’t authentically hate her “fat thighs,” she was simply reflecting the conditioning of her family and the cultural beliefs that she had absorbed from her environment.

To connect with your energy and experiment with your unique Human Design you must first be living IN your body.

Take a minute to survey your own physical being. Are you inside or out? Many of us were conditioned to see ourselves from the outside and have learned to turn off our feelings and connection to our own well of truth.

Finding the beliefs that keep us stuck from being ourselves is one of the first steps needed when you are working towards living YOUR fulfilling life. If you are living in a woman’s body, chances are you need to work through your self-objectifying beliefs so that you can get into your authentic desires and energy.

To connect to our inner voice and guidance, we must be in and connected to our bodies.

Facing memories and beliefs about what keeps us disconnected from our bodies is a HUGE part of the process. It is not pretty and it doesn’t particularly feel good either, but it is a part of the process. When we are able to pause and see what programming is holding us hostage, we can get to a place of authenticity within ourselves. (And isn’t that the whole point of being alive?)

Competition, comparison, body image issues, it all starts YOUNG. It serves as a distraction from living your life. It is also strategically used to oppress women because we can’t move forward if we’re too worried about how we look.

In Human Design terminology, this is called conditioning. We are conditioned to fit in and be acceptable so that we get our needs met. Women believe that their value is tied to how they look and therefore we shut down huge swaths of our authentic selves to divert precious resources to making ourselves “acceptable.” But you are not a stock. Your value does NOT rise and fall in concordance with your physical appearance.

Why does this matter? Conditioning holds us back from being who we are. If we are worried about HOW WE LOOK, then we are not clued into HOW WE FEEL.

How you look may get you rewarded externally for a bit, but tuning into how you FEEL will lead to actually being aligned with your highest self.

When we are in flow we are freely allowing our unique energetic signature to beam into universe with clarity.

When we are living in our NOT SELF, we’re scrambling or hiding our energetic signature — and we’re not calling in the correct opportunities and people for us.

In order to clear out our conditioning so that we’re beaming out a clear signal, we’ve got to get in our bodies to feel our authority so that we’re not overthinking and getting stuck in our conditioning.

Embodiment is the antidote to self-objectification. Striving to live fully in our physical being leads to our full expression of being.

Embodiment is a word thrown around a lot lately. But what does it really mean when someone says this? If we look to the dictionary, we see embody to mean giving a body to a spirit. I see embodiment as a channel to deeper self-understanding. We need to be fully grounded in ourselves (our body) to make decisions that are truly the best for us.

I find it can be helpful if we all understand that embodiment simply means being grounded in our body. Now, this isn’t a seamless transition. It’s taken me a long time to drop my self-objectification and just allow myself to BE. It feels awkward at first to not participate in diet culture. I felt self-conscious to just let my body be — but the more I just allowed myself to be, the more I realized I could hear what my body was saying. I felt what a yes and no was in my body.

What do you feel? I found that slow flow yoga and yin yoga really helped me connect into my physical being. A physical practice of any kind that helps you be present and in the moment will help you connect to your inner voice.

Allow embodiment to be a daily practice. Notice how often you are disconnected and watching yourself in life. Gently steer yourself back into the present moment.