A Human Design chart can seem overwhelming at first glance. It helps to think of it as a map to your own body. It isn’t something to learn as much as it is something to learn how to read. So, in this post, you’ll learn how to read your chart – the map of your body – by understanding how energy flows through your body.

If you haven’t downloaded your free Leadership Chart and Report yet, do that first so you can look at your chart as you follow along with this post.

When you first look at your chart, you’ll notice 9 shapes. These are called your centers, each corresponding to an area of your life and leadership. They are “energy centers”, areas of your body where energy pools. This is the energy that animates your body, fuels your heart to pump, and your lungs to breathe. The Chinese call it Qi. The Hindus call it Prana. The Jewish mystics call it Divine Light. It is the unseen world, the “lifeforce of the universe” constantly in motion. One medical doctor puts it in scientific terms:

“Qi is energy produced by each cell, the binding force between those cells

and the work they produce: the sum of all metabolisms.”

– Dr. Daniel Keown, MD MCEM.

And each body has a unique way that energy flows through it. Understanding your chart means understanding how energy naturally flows through your body, through your 9 energy centers. This allows you to lead in alignment in all 9 Leadership Areas that coincide with each center.

1. The 9 Centers

Open vs. Defined Centers

Each of your centers could either be defined (colored in) or open (white).

Defined Centers: Consistency and Reliability.

When a center is defined (colored in), it means energy flows in a consistent way through that center. You can learn what that energy flow feels like in your body and begin to understand this natural consistent talent of yours and how to best lean into it in your life and leadership. This consistency, a consistent way you’re meant to operate in this area of life and leadership, can be a source of strength in leadership.

Leadership Insight: Leverage Your Strengths. Trust in the consistency of your defined centers to guide your leadership decisions and actions. For example, if your Throat Center is defined, your consistent way of communicating with and inspiring your team can be a pillar for your team.

Open Centers: Flexibility and Adaptability:

When a center is open (white), energy flows through it in an inconsistent way. This isn’t a bad thing. It means you’re not biased with “your way” of doing things in this area of life and leadership. You are open to many ways of doing things. You are designed to be flexible and adaptable in these areas. You are also more influenced by external energies and can experience a variety of expressions, allowing you to sample others’ ways of operating in this area, learning what works and doesn’t work over time and making you a great guide.

Leadership Insight: Embrace Flexibility. Use your open centers to adapt to different situations and perspectives. For example, if your Ajna Center is open, leverage your ability to see things from multiple viewpoints to make more inclusive decisions.

1. The Root Center: Drive and Motivation

The Root Center is connected to how you’re meant to experience drive and motivation in life and leadership. It is the pressure to experience life. Physiologically, it’s connected to the base of your spine, what keeps you “rooted” in the material realm.

Leaders with a defined Root Center have a consistent pressure and drive. Leaders with an Open Root Center experience drive and motivation in many different ways. Either way, it’s important to not react to the pressure but to build your capacity to be present with your pressure and to decide from you Inner Authority, which is described more later in this post.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Root Center: Use your consistent drive to inspire your team through uncertainties, to bring your fuel to the team. Your consistent motivation can help maintain momentum and focus within your team.

Open Root Center: Embrace flexibility in how you approach drive and motivation. Notice the pressure and drive you’re feeling without reacting to it. Take time to direct this drive that you’re feeling from those around you in the most effective way, based on the situation. Trust your ability to guide motivation and to know how it can be used effectively and ineffectively

2. The Spleen Center: Instincts and Intuition

The Spleen Center relates to instincts and intuition. Physiologically, it’s connected to the Spleen organ, which is connected to themes of trust and fear. The Spleen is connected to your immune system and your “lizard brain”, the amygdala, the most animalistic instinctual aspect of your brain.

Leaders with a defined Spleen Center can navigate uncertainties with keen instincts that operate consistently, which is invaluable in a rapidly changing environment. Leaders with an open Spleen Center experience their instincts in a variety of ways and can help guide others in listening to their instincts.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Spleen Center: Trust your consistent intuition and instincts to make swift, confident decisions. Your consistent ability to sense the right course of action can guide your team through uncertainties.

Open Spleen Center: Utilize your flexibility to explore different intuitive insights. Be open to various perspectives and intuitive inputs, which can enhance decision-making in diverse situations.

3. The Solar Plexus Center: Emotions and Moods

The Solar Plexus Center is connected to emotions and moods. Physiologically, it’s connected to your Liver organ, which weighs 3 lbs ranging from under your right rib cage to under your sternum in the front of your body. Bringing emotional intelligence into the workplace is crucial it ensures you’re able to be in control of your emotions vs. them being in control of you.

Leaders with a defined Solar Plexus Center have a consistent way of experiencing their emotions. It’s important to allow consistent waves (emotional highs and lows) to run their course before making decisions, especially big ones. These “waves” can be something you learn to rely on. Leaders with an open Solar Plexus Center can amplify the emotions around them, experiencing emotions in a variety of ways. As you get accustomed to feeling the emotions around you without reacting to them, you can use it as information on how to lead.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Solar Plexus Center: Lead with emotional clarity and awareness, waiting out the highs and lows before deciding or acting. Your consistent emotional awareness and healthy expression can help create an environment where emotional intelligence is valued.

Open Solar Plexus Center: Adapt to the emotional climates around you. Leverage your ability to experience a range of emotions to understand and empathize with others, fostering a supportive workplace.

4. The Sacral Center: Energy and Vitality

The Sacral Center is connected to the energy to bring projects forward consistently. Physiologically, it’s connected to your gut and the 100 million neurons in your gut, a neural network that is connected to your mind, meant to work with your mind.

Leaders with a defined Sacral Center have a consistent battery of energy that will refill each day, as long as you use it on the projects that are correct for you. Your Sacral Energy will let you know what opportunities are correct for you or not. Leaders with an open Sacral Center have an inconsistent battery of energy depending on the circumstances and day. It’s important for you to use your energy when it’s there and rest when it isn’t. You can be a great guide for others in how to effectively use their energy, guiding the energy of teams to the highest leverage path.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Sacral Center: Harness your consistent energy to maintain productivity and drive initiatives. Your steady vitality can be a powerful motivator for your team. Just be careful not to assume every team member has the same amount of energy that you do.

Open Sacral Center: Embrace your adaptability in how you manage and use energy. Trust your ability to guide the energy of a team. Use the flexibility of your energy levels to tackle tasks creatively and efficiently.

5. The Ego Center: Willpower and Self-Worth

The Ego Center is connected to willpower and self-worth. Physiologically, it connects lower drives and emotions to the guidance of the Heart and its 40,000 neurons. Leaders with a defined Ego Center have a willpower that shows up in consistent ways. That doesn’t mean you’re meant to “push through” when you’re tired. When you’re tired rest. When your willpower is active, ride the wave to drive initiatives and lead with your strong sense of purpose.

Leaders with an open Ego Center experience their willpower and self-worth in a variety of ways. You can help naturally guide others to more deeply realize their self-worth. For you, it’s important to notice any tendencies to prove yourself or to try to control your environment in order to feel secure. Trust your ability to lead in uncertainty, and generating your self-worth from within.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Ego Center: Use your consistent willpower to lead with confidence and determination. Your consistent sense of self-worth can inspire and motivate your team to achieve goals.

Open Ego Center: Leverage your flexibility in how you experience willpower and self-worth to help others deepen their self-worth. Inspire your team by demonstrating different ways to harness willpower.

6. The G Center: Identity and Direction

The G Center is linked to identity and direction. Physiologically, it’s connected to the heart. Leaders with a defined G Center have a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of identity and, in a unique consistent way, can sense correct direction an move towards it.

Leaders with an open G center don’t necessarily experience a consistent self-identity or experience one consistent direction to move towards. They often experience themselves differently depending on who their around and the environment their in. They typically experience many different directions in life.

Leadership Insights:

Defined G Center: Trust the direction that you sense is correct and guide your team confidently. Your consistent sense-of-self and trust in your direction can provide stability for your team.

Open G Center: Embrace the flexibility in your sense of direction and identity. Adapt to changing circumstances and leverage your diverse experiences to guide your team effectively in rapid change.

7. The Throat Center: Expression and Manifestation

The Throat Center is the center of expression and manifestation, the ability to turn ideas into reality through words and actions. Physiologically, it’s connected to your Throat. Leaders with a defined Throat Center have a consistent way of communicating and expressing that they can trust and lean into.

Leaders with an open Throat Center can communicate in many different ways and it’s important to lean into that flexibility. You may feel the impulse to fill up silence and say what isn’t being said in an environment. Speak from your inner authority rather than that impulse.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Throat Center: Use your consistent communication skills to lead and inspire in your unique way. Your consistent way of expressing ideas can help create clarity for your teams.

Open Throat Center: Adapt your communication style to fit different situations and audiences. Leverage your flexibility to connect with diverse team members and facilitate effective collaboration, guiding others to their most effective communication and action.

8. The Ajna Center: Thinking and Conceptualization

The Ajna Center is associated with thinking and conceptualization. Leaders with a defined Ajna Center have a consistent way of thinking and conceptualizing that they can lean into. Leaders with an open Ajna have a naturally flexible mind that allows them to see many different perspectives.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Ajna Center: Use your unique, consistent way of thinking and steady thought processes to analyze challenges on the path your inner authority guides you on.

Open Ajna Center: Embrace your flexible thinking. Leverage your ability to see multiple perspectives and foster an environment where diverse ideas and strategies are welcomed.

9. The Head Center: Mental Pressure

The Head Center is linked to mental pressure and the pressure to figure things out. Like the Root center, it’s important to not give into this pressure and react to it. Instead, build your capacity to be present with it and still speak and act from your inner authority.

Leaders with a defined Head Center will experience this pressure in a consistent way that they can get used to. Leaders with an open Head Center will experience the pressure in a variety of ways, often being able to sense and think what others are thinking in the space. It can be easy to get lost in trying to figure everything out. Trust your inner authority to know what is important to focus on and what isn’t.

Leadership Insights:

Defined Head Center: Use your consistent way of navigating mental pressure to inspire curiosity and continuous learning within your team by thinking through the correct challenges you’re meant to think through, guided by your inner authority.

Open Head Center: Embrace the flexibility in how you experience mental pressure. Adapt to different thought processes and perspectives, using your openness to explore diverse solutions.

Channels: Bridging Centers and Amplifying Strengths

Now that you better understand each of the nine energy centers and their Leadership themes, the next step is to understand how energy flows between the centers, showing the ways that you bridge areas of leadership naturally.

In your chart, channels are the lines you see that connect two centers. When a channel is defined (colored in), it is showing that you have a consistent energy flow between the two centers, representing a natural talent that connects those 2 Leadership Areas.

Leadership Insight: Understand Your Channels. Recognize the consistent talents that your defined channels are pointing to. You can learn to feel what this consistency feels like in your body and how it expresses out in the world. For example, a defined channel between the G Center and the Throat Center might indicate a natural ability to express your identity and direction clearly.

Channels represent archetypal intelligences at a level below logic. They are energetic intelligences at the subatomic level, imprinted through subatomic particles called neutrinos, and are what constitute the natural unique expression that is “you”. Channels that are half or fully open (white), are where energy moves flexibly through your body, allowing you to experience those gifts and talents in inconsistent way, e.g. they turn “on” and “off” depending on the day and who you’re around.

Leadership Insight: Tap into Subatomic Wisdom. Trust the energetic intelligence within your defined channels to guide your decisions and actions, especially in complex situations where logical reasoning alone may not suffice.

Your Inner Authority: The Key to Decision Making

Your Authority is “defined” by one or more of your channels and is where you have the most consistent ability to listen to your body to make decisions. It is a body’s wisdom, an inner authority, that you can trust above any external authority. It is what sets leaders apart as the leaders that drive change rather than react to it.

It takes a deeper capacity of trust to trust something so illogical, that often doesn’t make sense, that will feel like a clear step in foggy circumstances. When you follow your inner authority, you are a guiding light in the unknown, as long as you trust it to guide you one step at a time. This is key for effective leadership, especially in times of rapid change and uncertainty.

There are many different types of Authority, depending on which channels and centers you have defined, which you can find out more about in detail in this post. Or you can download your free personalized report here to find out more about yours.

Types of Authority:

• Solar Plexus Authority: By waiting out your emotional waves, you will feel emotional clarity over time. Wait for emotional clarity before making decisions.
• Sacral Authority: Listen to your gut responses, called your “Sacral Response”. Your energy will either rise up or contract into your belly to let you know if something is correct for you. Trust your gut response over your mind.
• Splenic Authority: This is an instant yes or no, an intuition or instinct that only exists in the moment and needs to be followed immediately. Trust your instincts
• Ego Authority: Follow your healthy willpower, not the willpower that society talks about. Don’t push or force through things. Trust when you have willpower to complete something and utilize it. Rest when you don’t.
• Self-Projected Authority: Listen to what you say. Talk through decisions with others or into a voice recorder so that, after you finish saying everything your mind is thinking, you’ll hear a deeper truth come out of your mouth, rotted in your heart.
• Environmental Authority (Projectors): With this authority, it’s extra important to be in an environment where you’re regulary invited to share your insights and guidance as well as recognized for your unique talents. If you’re not, notice what other environments you’re being invited into.
• Lunar Cycle Authority (Reflectors): With this authority, you see the bigger picture, the paragraph while others see the sentence. As much as possible, wait at least 28 days to make a decision, a period of time where you’ll naturally see all the elements of the decision.

Leadership Insight:

• Listen to Your Body: Cultivate the practice of tuning into your Authority to make more aligned and effective decisions. Whether it’s your gut, emotions, intuition, or heart, trusting your body’s wisdom will guide you through complexities.
• Empower Your Team: Encourage team members to discover and trust their Authorities, fostering a culture of authentic and empowered decision-making.

Depending on which channels and centers you have defined, you’ll also see that you are a particular Leadership Type with a Decision-Making Strategy:

Trusting the Energy Flow

To sum all of that up, Human Design invites you to understand how energy flows through your body uniquely and to build your sensitivity to hearing the wisdom of your body. It also invites you to notice all the learned patterns that prevent you from listening to the wisdom of your gut neural network, heart neural network, and all the nerves and ganglia that have the biological purpose of guiding your direction. They work with your mind as part of the Central Nervous System, your mind being designed to clear obstacles along the path your body is guiding it on.

So, take the pressure off your mind to figure out the direction. That’s not its job. Let your chart guide you to the parts of your body to practice listening to. It can take time to rebuild your natural sensitivity and ability to hear the subtle signals of your body.

All energy in your body flows towards the Throat Center, to be expressed and manifested. This means that all the centers and channels below the Throat Center work to bring their energy up to be expressed, while the centers and channels above the Throat Center aim to bring their insights down to be expressed. Depending on where your chart is open or defined, that expression will be unique. So, the more you can lean into your unique gifts and talents (Definition) and your flexibility and openness (adaptability), the more ease and impact you’ll experience and create.

Energy Flow Dynamics:

• Mental Pressure: The Head Center exerts pressure to think and solve problems, driving energy towards the Throat Center for expression.
• Root Pressure: The Root Center provides the pressure to take action and stay motivated, channeling energy upward for manifestation.

Leadership Insight:

• Balance Mental and Physical Pressures: Recognize the pressures from both the Head and Root Centers and learn to be use them as fuel while still making decisions from your authority, not from that pressure. Use mental clarity to guide your actions and physical energy to support your strategic thinking.
• Presence and Breath: Build your capacity to be present with the pressures from both ends by using breathwork and mindfulness techniques. This helps you to slow down and make more conscious decisions.

Openness and Definition

The interplay between defined and open centers shapes how you experience and express energy. Defined centers provide consistency, while open centers offer flexibility and adaptability.

Leadership Insight:

• Lean into Your Strengths: Use the consistency of your defined centers to provide stability and reliability in your leadership.
• Embrace Openness: Leverage the flexibility of your open centers to adapt to new situations and understand diverse perspectives.

The 64 Gates: Archetypal Wisdom and DNA

In your chart, you’ll also notice 64 numbers. These are your 64 Gates, each representing an archetypal (subatomic/energetic) intelligence rooted in ancient Chinese philosophy and mirrored in the 64 codons of your DNA. Each gate offers specific insights and wisdom that can guide your leadership. Each channel is made up of 2 of these Gates. We won’t go into each of these Gates here but you can purchase your full report here.

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Leadership Insight:

• Understand Archetypes: Each gate corresponds to a unique archetypal gift that provides specific strengths and insights. Recognize the gates that are activated in your chart and how they influence your leadership style.
• Integrate Gate Wisdom: Use the wisdom of your activated gates to enhance your decision-making and leadership approach.

Simplifying Complexity: Focus on Definition, Openness, and Authority

While Human Design can seem complex with its 64 gates, channels, and centers, you can simplify its application by focusing on a few key aspects:

Leadership Insight:

• Flow Through Definition and Openness: Understand how energy flows through your defined and open centers to harness your strengths and adapt to challenges.
• Trust Your Authority: Always come back to your Authority for making decisions. It is your most reliable guide in navigating leadership complexities.

Actionable Steps:

• Start Small: Begin by learning your Type, Authority, Center themes, energy flow and how to feel it in your body. This forms the foundation of your Human Design understanding.
• Practice Daily: Apply the insights from your defined and open centers, channels, and gates in your daily leadership tasks. Start with small decisions to rebuild your trust in this illogical inner authority.
• Expand Gradually: As you become comfortable, delve deeper into the specifics of your chart, such as individual gates and channels.

Conclusion

Understanding and leveraging the nine centers of Human Design, recognizing the dynamics of open and defined centers, tapping into the unique strengths of your channels, trusting your Authority, and comprehending the flow of energy can transform leadership. Recognize your unique strengths and those of your team to create a more adaptable, creative, and inclusive leadership approach. Embrace these insights to navigate complexities, fostering a workplace where innovation thrives and diverse perspectives are valued.

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