SEASON 4: EPISODE 8
Published 02/02/2026
John:
We wanted to have this conversation and share some questions that have been coming up in our experience in our practice, and some of the things that we’ve been seeing over the years. It seems to be evolving, and the landscape is changing pretty quickly. So I wanted to start and ask you, Amy, what you’re seeing and what’s been coming up for you?
Amy:
Yeah, I think the landscape has been changing quite a lot and it’s been an interesting process to be in terms of meeting with people and talking with people, seeing how modern technological developments are altering the way people interact with knowledge and with systems, and it seems to be shifting what people need and what people are looking for in terms of making a real human connection around something like Human Design. 15 years ago, when I was first starting to learn about it and meet with people, it felt like there was just so much information to transmit. There were so many terms to explain. When I first started doing readings, I felt like it was almost difficult to fully connect with people, both because I was still learning a lot, but also because there was so much definition and translation involved. I almost used to feel like there was a lot of information to get through before I could really drop in and connect with the person, which I think is a natural thing anybody likely goes through when you first learn something and then you try to explain it to someone else. It often takes a while to get good at refining how you do that. Yeah, I would say it’s changed a lot in that now there’s just so much more access to Human Design information, and it has been so widespread that we’re in a really different time now.
John:
So it’s been what, almost 40 years since Ra had his voice experience, and the knowledge started making its way out into the world. And yeah, I think it’s about 11 years since Human Design came into my life. And even in that time period, I’ve seen it really shift and really change the amount of information that’s widely available now. The amount of people who are interested in it and have been either taking classes, engaging in self-study, it seems like it’s exploded over the last five, six years and now it’s like the information’s out there. And from what I’ve seen over the last couple years, AI is getting well versed in Human Design and astrology and a lot of these metaphysical systems and starting to do some levels of synthesis and it’s like information’s everywhere. It’s almost like a saturation point from what I can tell in terms of not just Human Design, but any psychospiritual knowledge. There’s no longer a question of access to information. There used to be, it’s almost more like what are we doing with it, and can we even digest what we have, what we’ve already taken in?
Amy:
Now, meeting with people, if someone shows up for the first time, having a reading with me, oftentimes it’s not the first reading that they’ve had. Oftentimes, they’ve had other readings with other people, and they’re kind of full. I actually feel like it used to feel like I was feeding people by just offering up the information that I could. Now I almost feel like people are coming in full, some people, but they’re needing some support digesting it. And so my role as a practitioner I feel like has really changed and it’s actually reinvigorating the experience for me as well.
John:
Do you mean that people are coming in and they already have an understanding of the system, or a general understanding of the system, the knowledge, and they have a familiarity with the terms and the language, and so what does that mean that you can have a different kind of conversation or you’re in a different relationship with them?
Amy:
I think actually a lot of people, either they have a lot on their plate and they sort of don’t know what to do with it, or they’ve taken in a lot and there might actually be some misunderstandings going on, some assumptions that they’re needing some support with.
John:
Sometimes it seems like we’re introducing the system for the first time. There’s still people coming in who are brand new to it, but more and more, there are people coming in who have a lot of information, have a certain amount of exposure to the knowledge, who’ve been studying it on their own and taking classes, and they’re trying to sort out what’s what. And I think about, I’d studied a traditional form of Japanese martial arts for a while, and my teacher had this metaphor that he referred to as the string of pearls. It was basically like a new person coming into this art, and there’s so many techniques, there’s so many principles or so much information. The string of pearls idea was that not everything holds the same degree of immediacy and importance for where someone is at a given time. And so if you’re just walking through that buffet line and you’re just, I’m combining two metaphors here, but you’re walking through this buffet line and you’re just taking everything, putting everything on your plate, ultimately gorging yourself, for one, it’s probably going to come up later.
But also, I think that there’s this question of in what order are we working through these concepts, and where do we put them? Some things are going to be more important than other things. Not everything is the same pearl on that string of equal importance. Some concepts are going to be more foundational, fundamental; some are going to be more nuances and refinement. I think his metaphor was a way of holding that or communicating that to the other teachers in the school and to students that there is something of an order of operations and levels of importance. Certain things are put on certain shelves, and certain things are put on other shelves, and some are greater ideas that encompass the whole teaching, the whole system. And some are more nuanced and they come in only under specific circumstances.
Amy:
Yeah, I can see that for sure. And I think then that means sometimes people are trying to organize what they’ve taken in a way, which is part of the digestion process. It’s sort of like, which shelf does this go on? Do I need to worry about this part now? Is this other part actually applicable to me? Can I digest and synthesize all this at once? I mean, it’s a lot to take in through the mind. And so I think you’re right. I think that’s a great metaphor, that it’s not like everything is equally relevant all the time. So then it starts to move into the territory of more of an artistry to the process. And I think intake now, it’s so much more important than it used to be to actually take some time and get to hear from somebody, where are you?
What’s going on? How are you? And then we can start to hone in on what is relevant to a person for where they are at this moment in their life. And I think it’s also something to communicate to people because sometimes people worry about that. Do I need to know about this and do I need to know about this? And what about, I don’t understand every single word I’m seeing on this page, and do I need to know that? And if I don’t know that, am I missing something? So there’s a kind of urgency or a concern I think that can come up. And most of the time when there’s that kind of urgency or concern, it makes it harder to relax and just see what’s going on. And that is the number one most important thing I think in starting to work with this system, is that we’re able to be relaxed enough that we can actually receive and take things in.
So if there’s anxiety about, do I need to know this? What do I do with this? What do I do with that? I think it’s going to actually slow down the process to be trying to work with too much information at once. So I really like the approach that says, trust that there’s a few things you can focus on at this moment that might be most helpful to you. And if there are certain things you don’t understand or you don’t quite get yet, maybe you can just let that be. And you might find there’s a time when it’s time, it’ll come, and you’ll know, now I see what this part was about, and I couldn’t understand that before. So I feel like that’s my job now is to do my best to tune into somebody else and find out where are they and what’s the most important message I could share with them about their design that would be most useful, most helpful right now.
John:
Yeah, I love that you brought up the relaxation piece. I think that’s almost step one. Often, if we’re coming into something and there’s this sense of pressure, urgency, lack, there’s something wrong here, that already sets the tone for how we’re going to hold this, how we’re going to work with it, what we’re looking at, what we’re not looking at. And I think by relaxing and slowing down and maybe coming back to ourselves in a sense, we come into a different relationship with the material, with ourselves, with each other, and I think something else becomes possible. I think of it, of how different that is to a lot of the conditioning that we’re seeing and receiving out in the world through media, through marketing, through advertising. It’s like there is always this sense of there’s something wrong with you. There’s a sense of urgency. Here’s the solution: sign up now. And I really question that approach and its viability and sustainability, but I don’t really think that approaching Human Design in that same way, it’s not, at least for me, in the spirit of what this whole thing’s about.
Amy:
Yeah, I agree. It feels manipulative for me to be overly pressurized or urgent about it. For the most part, this is a system that is really advocating for deep intimacy and connection with the physical form. And it’s also advocating for a very personal relationship with how you are moved most naturally by life. So that requires attention. It requires a certain amount of focus and getting into the nuance of your own experience. And as we know if someone’s in fight or flight, if someone’s in urgency, if someone’s under high pressure, it can make it pretty difficult to recognize and sort through what’s going on in your body and in your mind. I mean, I think historically that’s what meditation was for. So you could just sit quietly, turn down some of the noise and just watch what your mind is doing as a way of being able to develop a relationship with that. So with Human Design, we can certainly be doing that with both the consciousness and with the body. I also just inherently have a deep trust in timing, and I just do. I don’t know if that’s part of my relationship with no choice or with the program, or I think we can lean into that as a way of countering a culture that runs on a lot of urgency.
John:
Yeah, the timing piece is interesting. I think about timing as a sequence of events that there is, again, this order to things. There’s a sequence, there’s an unfolding, and a lot of that, if you look at these systems like astrology and Human Design long enough, you can see that these things were set in motion at the time we were born according to our birth chart or time space coordinates when we come in. And so I think that’s always running in the background, everything in its own time. And often I think some of our suffering that we experience is wanting things to happen sooner or at a different time or thinking that we know better than nature what the timing should be. And so in that same way, taking it into consideration how much information’s available, it’s not so much an issue about access as much as it’s about saturation or being able to digest what we already have.
But sometimes I think we can take in so much that we forget to be present with ourselves. And so I think part of these systems at their best, they’re bringing us back to ourselves. They’re not asking us to go away somewhere else. They’re not asking us to become something different or something else or someone else. And yeah, I think for me, part of the work in these systems is to help ourselves remember, or to help support ourselves to be able to stay in connection with what’s already here, what’s already present. And so it’s almost like, in some ways, the less that we can work with, the less information that we can work with, I think the deeper we can go, the more intimacy there can be with ourselves and each other. I really hold the opinion that more information does not always necessarily lead to a better outcome or more intelligence.
Amy:
Mm, I agree with that. And I think there is a lot of pressure in learning Human Design to be processing all of this stuff about yourself. There’s 64 gates, there’s 36 channels, you’ve got the planets, you’ve got all of the different aspects of the chart to take in, to understand. And often, I’m finding people will get stuck right there. So actually, once they come to me, the role reverses in that I’m almost suggesting they just set it aside for a while. There’s so much to know yourself aside from looking at all of that stuff and getting every part of it down. There’s something that can happen when we just start to pay attention to ourselves as we are experiencing ourselves without feeling we have to get all of that stuff figured out. In fact, it may even be in the way at times. So sometimes I feel like I want to help people kind of clear that out so that they can just be with themselves and then see what happens.
And also for people who are learning to practice, to do readings, one of the most important things to focus on is actually your ability to be calm, to be present, to listen. I think there was a long time, maybe about five or six years ago, that I was just getting asked constantly, which courses do you recommend, which books do you recommend to read if I want to learn how to practice? And I think that there’s this assumption that there is a certain body of knowledge that you have to have, that if you consume all of that then you’re ready to practice. I think the thing that has made my practice most enjoyable has been meditating for many years and spending time and presence work, being able to listen, being able to be calm and be clear, which means not just taking my conditioning as gospel, and being able to tune in to somebody else and listen.
So I think, actually, the foundation that people need, in my opinion, if they really want to work with Human Design, at least 50% of it needs to be going on in their own development in terms of learning how to be present and learning how to see. So it’s almost like the information that I have can help guide my awareness and guide my attention, but if I don’t have a good relationship with my own awareness and attention, I don’t know what I’m looking for, and I don’t know when it’s showing up, and I can’t really hold somebody else’s experience either. So I actually think there’s a lot more to being a practitioner that’s not actually about studying a book of someone else’s interpretations of what channels and gates might mean.
John:
I think that’s such an important distinction. I think there’s both a transmission and also an application. And I think a lot of people sometimes confuse, or I know I do, I confuse transmission and application, and they’re two different things. And I think Human Design can give us a transmission. I think a lot of knowledge systems can. Ra had his original experience as a transmission, and then he brought that down, and he communicated that through the mandala and through the charts and through teaching and through his classes and what he left behind. And I do think that there is something in being with this information, being around someone who deeply embodies and holds a teaching, that there is a transmission that’s available. There’s something in the ether beyond words, beyond language, beyond concept that is just there, and I think that something is there for people to plug into, and that’s important.
And then I think there’s also the application piece of what are we doing with ourselves? How are we conducting ourselves? How are we living? And do we have practices? And do we have the life skills that support us coming into ourselves, calming down, being present? Because Human Design can’t do that for us in the same way. It can point us in the direction of, hey, maybe this awareness practice is important, maybe you need to practice being present, maybe you need to learn how to be still, learn how to slow down, and you might be pointed towards some other work that will do that. And I think that’s probably one of the most important skills that anyone could have. So if someone was coming to me and asking, what book should I read? What system should I study? I would say, find some way to learn how to be present, first and foremost. Learn how to know yourself. Learn how to sit with yourself. And whatever system of whatever teachings support that, those are the ones to go towards first.
Amy:
Yeah, I think that’s so important. And I do think it helps clarify what is the function of this information? The function is to serve our awareness. That’s what it’s there for. And so our awareness is more important. Sometimes I feel like people can get a little confused and think that if I have the information, then I know, and then I can feel safe, and everything will be okay, but it’s not really how it works. First of all, there’s no way you can hold all the permutations, all the possible combinations in your mind all at once. And honestly, if you try, you’re probably going to be pretty overwhelmed. I think sometimes I find out people’s design, and it’s complicated, there’s a lot going on, and I just find it in my experience so much better to focus on one or two things and go a little bit deeper with that.
I think it’s more important to really deeply inquire, like what does open and undefined really mean for the way I’m experiencing myself? And then you could take it into an individual context. Well, how is that relating to my open head? How is that relating to my open spleen? Etcetera. But if you really haven’t gotten the depth of what open and undefined actually means for you, and you’re just kind of doing it in a conceptual way, then it’s not that helpful. And it’s not really that easy to recognize when it’s actually happening. So I think depth matters a lot. And so what I’m trying to say is the information serves awareness, and if it’s not serving awareness, if it’s not helping us be more present and more in relationship with ourselves, then we might want to redirect how we’re using it.
John:
I think one of the themes that’s coming up for me through this whole conversation is that there’s a time for everything, including what we’re learning and how we’re learning it and when we’re learning it. Everything has its season, everything has its time and place. And I think that’s just nature. That’s just how things are. And there’s a process and an unfolding that I think we’re always in the middle of. And so I think with this idea of the saturation of information and needing to digest what we already have in the right time, I think it’s less about having the newest information or the latest information or the most information or all the information. It’s about what’s relevant now, what’s useful, what’s informing our awareness? And can we work with that?
I was looking at our course calendar, and we’ve got the Art of Seeing series that’s coming out that we’re offering again, coming up in March, I believe. And I was just going to mention that because that program is really about the application and the synthesis. So people who have been taking in a lot of information and they want to have some support being able to organize it and apply it, that’s what that program’s about. It’s not about learning new information as much as it’s about learning how to work with what we already have, how to see, and how to apply the knowledge to ourselves and each other and our lived experience. So that’s something that’s coming up, and I’m pretty excited about that. And that’s going to be in real time, we’ll be working together as a group, looking at each other’s charts, practicing seeing, having that dialogue, and yeah, there’ll be some live demonstrations that Amy and I will be doing together.
Amy:
Yeah, I’m excited about that. I think it’s exciting to actually have an opportunity to be in inquiry together and to have some conversation about it. That’s something I’m really looking forward to, especially to see how it shows up differently than the first time that we did it. The first time we offered the course we had maybe 12 or 14 people in it, and it was a wide variety of people in terms of how long people had been studying Human Design for. And I was really amazed by how well it went and how much people were actually able to synthesize. Sometimes I wonder, is this going to make sense? Are people going to be able to grok this? And it was really exciting to see people just start to get it and put things together and to participate and share what they were seeing. So I’m excited to offer it again and see what shows up this time.
John:
So could you say a little bit more about the Art of Seeing series and practicum, and who’s it for?
Amy:
The Art of Seeing is really for people who have done the foundation courses, have that foundation of knowledge or something equivalent. And if you have that as a basis, then you should be able to come in and the focus will be on synthesis, it will be on demonstration through different charts. It’ll be a lot of interaction in terms of looking at each other’s charts. I think it’s really helpful to get real time feedback. I feel like I do that all the time in readings, for real, and I love that part. I love being able to say to somebody, you might experience this channel like this, or it might show up in your life like this or this. And I love getting the feedback of them saying, not so much the first one, but the second way you described that, that’s really how it is for me.
I love being able to have that feedback from somebody. So this is for people who are interested in actually participating and getting some feedback in real time and getting to see what shows up, and also being willing to let somebody else know, hey, that landed for me, or it didn’t. And then to be able to practice and develop and discuss how else can we apply this? Even if we’re not explaining it, how does this apply? If we all look at my daughter’s chart together, what’s that going to do for my relationship with my daughter? To hear someone describe her in a way that I don’t necessarily always see in her, and now when I go home, how am I going to treat her? So I think it has a real life application as well. So for people that are interested in that, that’s part of it also.
John:
So the program’s for all types, all people, it does require a foundational working knowledge. So we can start there and we’re not having to introduce the concepts and the language from the ground up. We’ll put a link in the show notes, and then you can also find it listed on our website, humandesigncollective.com. Is there anything else that you’d like to say in closing to share in terms of what you’ve been seeing or just how you’re holding all this?
Amy:
I just think it’s an exciting time to be in it. If Human Design as a language really speaks to us, I think it’s an exciting time to be working with it because now that a lot of the pioneers of the system, who I’m grateful to, have spent and invested a lot of time and energy in spreading the knowledge, writing books, developing courses, getting the information out there, formatting it all. Now, I think is the time that actually Ra seemed to be excited about, which was once we all have a working understanding of the information, now we get to have a conversation. Now we get to have new conversations. So I think it’s an exciting time to be working with Human Design and to get to have conversations with each other and to be spending potentially less time explaining all the different terms and more time communing in awareness. So I’m excited about it.
John:
Yeah, me too.
Amy:
Yeah.
John:
Well, that’s it for today. So thanks for listening if you made it this far, and we will try to get more podcast episodes out soon. It’s been a little slow lately, so if you’re still around, you’re still listening.
Amy:
Thanks for listening.
John:
We really appreciate you.
Amy:
We do.
John:
And two projectors over here and timing is the timing.
Amy:
More to come. Yeah.
