The 9 Human Design Centers
Articles / Human Design
The 9 Human Design Centers
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to each of the 9 Centers on a Human Design BodyGraph, and the energy/information that each Center deals with. But before you read the rest of the article, you may want to have a look at your own Human Design chart to see which Centers are coloured in or left blank. If you haven’t already generated your Human Design chart, you can do it here. Okay, let’s continue…
The nine shapes that you see in your BodyGraph are called Centers. Each Center has themes or types of energy that it generates, receives, circulates, and radiates.
There are five types or categories of Centers, and each of the shapes you see on your BodyGraph belongs to one or more of these categories. There is one manifesting Center, two pressure Centers, three awareness Centers, four motor Centers, and one identity Center.
The Centers that you have coloured in (or defined) in your chart determine your Energy Type, Strategy, and Inner Authority which are the three most important things to know about when you start your Human Design experiment.
Now I’ll introduce you to each of the Centers:
Starting at the top, there is the Head Center which is a pressure Center. The themes of the Head Center are mental pressure, questions, doubts, confusion, and inspiration. Energy in the Head Center can be experienced as mental activity, as pressure to think about and understand things, as receiving information, as inspiration, as questions seeking answers, as problems needing to be solved, or as having doubts or feeling confused.
Next down is the Ajna Center which is an awareness Center that has a unique frequency that governs mental awareness. The themes of the Ajna Center are mental consciousness, conceptualizing, interpreting, forming answers and opinions, and coming up with theories. The Head and Ajna function together as the mind, where the Ajna receives energy from the Head and works with it. Energy in the Ajna Center can be experienced as mental intelligence, conceptualizing, as logic, as the processing of data, the interpreting of information, creativity, problem-solving, theorizing, the formulation of answers as opinions, as rationalization, and as mental anxiety and rumination.
Next down is the Throat Center which is the one manifesting Center. The themes of the Throat Center are communication, manifestation, metamorphosis, and transformation through interaction with the world. Energy from all the other Centers flows to the Throat Center where it can be verbally expressed, acted upon, or physically manifested out into the world.
Next down is the G-Center which is the one identity Center. The G-Center themes are love, identity, and direction. Energy in the G-Center can be experienced as a sense of direction, a sense of self-identity or who we are in relation to others, a sense of differentiation, a sense of separateness and longing for love, and a sense of being loved and lovable. The G-Center is also home to your Prime Magnetic Monopole, which is your internal GPS or driver of your vehicle who knows where you are, where you are designed to go, and how to get you there. It doesn’t matter if your G-Center is defined, undefined, or open — if you follow our Human Design Strategy and Inner Authority, and let your Prime Magnetic Monopole drive, you will experience the life and the love that you came here to experience.
Then just off to the right and down a bit from the G-Center there is the Heart Center (which is sometimes referred to as the Ego Center) The Heart Center is a motor Center, and it’s themes are willpower, ego, and the material world. Energy in the Heart Center can be experienced as self-esteem, self-worth, self-trust, feeling confident, valuable, and deserving (or not), and the will to survive in community and on the material plane. The Heart Center can also be experienced as feeling the need to over-achieve or committing to things that you don’t have the willpower to do in order to prove your value or worthiness or to compensate for poor self-esteem.
Straight down from the G-Center is the Sacral Center which is a motor Center. The themes of the Sacral Center are energetic and physical vitality, fertility, sexuality, work, movement, persistence, creation, receptivity, and responsiveness. Energy in the Sacral Center can be experienced as life-force energy, the spark or desire to create and do, the capacity or power to learn, work, build and persevere, and as a physical bodily response to life. The Sacral Center is designed to respond to life with yes or no answers. The Sacral’s answers can feel like either a perking up or lighting up or energized feeling (which would be a yes) or a sinking closing lack of energy blah feeling (which would be a no). You can think of the Sacral Center as your car engine that turns on when it responds yes to something.
Below the Heart Center on the far bottom right is the Solar Plexus Center (which is sometimes called the Emotional Solar Plexus). This is both a motor Center and an awareness Center. The Solar Plexus has a desire frequency that is continually moving us toward encounters with both pleasure and pain, and it’s the Center of revolution, poetry, romance, compassion, spirituality, and religion. The themes of the Solar Plexus Center are spirit consciousness, emotional and social awareness, passion and desire, abundance of spirit, feelings, moods, and sensitivity. The function of the Emotional Solar Plexus is to allow us to gain a sense of emotional clarity and well-being. Energy in this Center is experienced as an emotional wave of feelings, needs, and desires, but the Human Design system says that the most important thing to understand about the emotional wave is that it is simply a chemical process that we can not escape, so we shouldn’t try to rationalize the emotion, get attached to it, identify with it, or act on an emotional high or low, but rather wait for the clarity that comes when the wave levels out. The key is to ride the emotional wave as an observer, rather than getting swallowed or caught up in the waves by identifying with them. You are not the emotion, you are experiencing the emotion, and no emotion lasts forever.
On the far left, is the Splenic Center which is an awareness Center that operates in the now on a moment-to-moment basis. Of the three awareness Centers, the Splenic Center is the oldest, and most primal. It is driven by survival, and its main function is to literally keep us alive and well. The Splenic Center has a fear-based and instinctual awareness and alertness for anything that threatens our well-being — which includes both physical threats as well as negative emotional vibrations. The themes of the Splenic Center are body consciousness, full existential living, spontaneity, health and well-being, values, and the immune system. Energy in the Splenic Center can be experienced as a deep primal fear for your survival and well-being, as an intuitive whisper, and as a sort of “spidey sense” that protects you from harm. The Splenic Center is also a source of light-heartedness, laughter, spontaneity, and daring.
And then finally, straight down from the Sacral Center is the Root Center which is both a pressure Center and a motor Center. The themes of the Root Center are physical adrenalized pressure, stress, and momentum for living. Energy in the Root Center can be felt as a push, a sort of stress, a surge of fuel, or a pressure to move and do. To use the example from the Sacral Center, if the Sacral is our car engine, then the Root Center would be the fuel tank and gas pedal. Your car engine can be on and idling, but it’s the pushing of the gas pedal that sends the fuel into the motor to make the vehicle move. The Root Center provides energy and momentum to keep life moving forward — Root pressure literally gets the body moving. There are nine different types of pressure (represented by the numbers or gates in the Root Center) that are fueled by energy that comes from the Root Center and are pushed toward the Throat Center to be communicated or manifested, but since the Root Center energy is so strong, it must first be processed through the Sacral, Solar Plexus, and Splenic Centers on its way to the Throat.
How you experience the energy of each Center changes depending if it is defined, undefined, or open in your chart. When you look at a Human Design BodyGraph, you can tell if a Center is defined if it is coloured in. Centers that are defined will be coloured in with a specific colour depending on the Center — each Center has one colour that it will be if it is defined, and the Human Design system actually doesn’t explain why each colour is used for each Center. You can tell if a Center is open if it is left blank or white with no coloured-in lines coming out from it. You can tell if a Center is undefined if it has one or more coloured-in lines coming out of it, but it is still blank or white.
Coloured-in (Defined) Centers
The areas of your chart that are coloured in are referred to as your definition, and these defined areas are where you received permanent activation from the sun, moon, nodes of the moon, and planets during your development in utero and at the time of your birth. This means that you will be constantly experiencing the energy of that area throughout your life, and you can trust and depend on this energy to be a consistent part of your personality and the way that you function. Your definition is your solid and stable core, and the potential that you can grow into as you fully embrace and embody your design. Your definition is also what determines your Type, Strategy, Authority, and Profile, which are the first 4 things that I recommend practicing in order to live your design. You can think of your defined areas as musical instruments that are permanently hardwired into your form, where the sound that comes from these instruments is constantly heard and felt by you, but is also radiating out to be received by others.
White/Blank (Undefined or Open) Centers
The areas of your chart that are white or left blank are referred to as undefined or open. These areas are where you were not activated by the sun, moon, nodes of the moon, or planets during your development in utero or at the time of your birth, and so you do not have the energy of those areas as a permanent, fixed, or consistent part of your human experience. Instead, these areas are where you are open to receive, sample, and experience energy from outside sources, like when the planets temporarily activate you as they move through the sky, or if someone comes within about 6 feet of you and radiates their definition into your aura. You can think of your undefined or open areas as amplifiers. They are not a source of sound, but they can plug into a sound source, hold it, experience it, and amplify it out louder than it came in.
Undefined/open areas are useful in so many ways. Just like music amplifiers, they can allow people to become aware of sounds that might not otherwise be noticed, and they are also portals through which we can become aware of, empathetic to, and wise about the world around us. Because of this, the openness in your Human Design chart shows you what you came to learn about in this lifetime. Undefined and open Centers are also the places where we can easily be conditioned by the energy around us, and identify with things that are not actually part of our authentic Self, therefore creating layers of Not-Self stuff that cover your authentic self. To learn more about the ‘Not-Self’ in Human Design, read this article.
Just to be super clear, the open Centres on your BodyGraph are not necessarily or automatically your Not-Self. Your open and undefined Centers are simply innocent parts of your nature that are the most vulnerable to conditioning. They are your true gifts and opportunity for wisdom, and can also easily become your wounds.
Your Not-Self is actually a dysfunctioning of ALL your Centres (not just your open Centers). How it generally works is that your open Centers get trained to behave as if they were defined, and your defined Centers experience the resistance that comes from trying to live what you are not. For example, if someone has an undefined Throat Centre and a defined Emotional Solar Plexus Centre, they may try to attract attention because that is the Not-Self strategy of an undefined Throat, but they will experience the resistance that comes from that in their emotions because that is where they are defined.
What’s Next?
Check out the links below if you want to learn more about Human Design, if you want to be notified when new articles are published, if you want to see where I sourced my information from, or if you want to generate your Human Design chart for free on my website.
And if you’re now feeling the urge to start experimenting with Human Design, please read my post: Human Design at the Tenth House.
:) Steph
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Click the link below to generate your Human Design chart on my website for free.
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The Human Design System by Ra Uru Hu
From The Book of Letters: A Guide to Human Design Analysis Based on the Human Design System by Ra Uru Hu
The Science of Differentiation: The Definitive Book of Human Design By Ra Uru Hu & Lynda Brunell
Rave Cosmology III: Dying, Death, and the Bardo Stages by Ra Uru Hu
Rave Cosmology VIII: Mystic Monologues by Ra Uru Hu
Rave Cosmology V: Brahma's Night and Beyond by Ra Uru Hu
Living your Design: A New Manual for Awakening by Ra Uru Hu, revised & edited by Richard Rudd
Living your Design: A Manual for Cellular Transformation, Instructor Manual by: Lynda Bunnell
https://www.jovianarchive.com/Products/377/A_Look_at_the_Rave
https://www.jovianarchive.com/Stories/10/Introduction_to_the_Human_Design_System
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