5 Tips for Decoding Your Human Design Chart
By Janeen Ellsworth
Your Summer of Authenticity is in full swing, which probably means you’re busy doing the work to align with your highest self, letting go of limiting beliefs, and embracing your inner power.
Good for you!
Still, ‘doing the work’ isn’t easy. So, to support you on that journey, consider exploring your Human Design, a powerful tool for expanding self-awareness and aligning with your authenticity.
Admittedly, gazing at your free Human Design chart for the first (or tenth!) time can be daunting.
After all, it is a map full of symbols and codes that requires special knowledge to interpret.
Really ‘getting it’ takes time and integration.
But if you’re serious about ‘doing the work’ to reclaim your truth and stand in your power, then you’re in the right place!
Here are five helpful tips to help you decipher your Human Design, so you can understand how your body is hardwired to process energy, start living the way you’re designed to, and embody your authentic radiance.
1. The 9 Energy Centers
Each chart, and every body, contains chakras, or energy processing units.
Some experts believe our bodies hold thousands of chakras!
But the nine that are revealed in the Human Design chart, represented by all those shapes you see, are each responsible for processing a particular theme of energy.
You’re probably already familiar with some of them, especially if you’ve ever been to a yoga class (e.g., Heart Center, Sacral Center, etc.).
The diagram below shows exactly what each Energy Center is called and what it oversees:
When you visualize your energy being processed through these chakras in your body, you begin to realize what a complex and unique person you really are.
2. Are You Broadcasting or Absorbing Energy?
You probably notice that some of the shapes (Energy Centers), lines (Channels), and numbers (Gates) on your chart are colored-in while others are left blank.
The difference between the two is critical.
We call the colored-in parts “Defined,” and the white or blank parts “Undefined” or “Open.”
Any part of your chart that’s colored-in, or Defined, is energy that you naturally emanate from somewhere deep inside of you.
These are the thoughts, feelings, fears, motivations or viewpoints you broadcast outwardly, for others to pick up on.
For example, with a Defined Emotional Solar Plexus, you’re always, actively transmitting the signal of your emotions, whether you mean to do it or not!
By contrast, all the places on your chart that are blank, or not colored-in, a.k.a. Undefined/Open, are the parts of you that are open and vulnerable to absorbing whatever energy is present in your environment.
That means these are the areas where you’re taking in and taking on energy from outside of your true self.
And, yes, this includes energy that’s coming from other people, places, objects, and even your pets.
The trick here is to remember that you are not meant to hold onto energy that’s coming at you from anywhere else.
You’re only meant to experience it temporarily – just long enough for you to build understanding and empathy for your fellow human who’s broadcasting it and may be struggling with it – and then to let it go.
This takes time and practice to really grasp, but start observing yourself and your surroundings as you engage with the world to see if you can figure out which impulses are truly coming from inside of you and which are coming from someone else.
3. What the Planets Have to Do with It
By now you’re probably wondering what those planet symbols and numbers in the columns to either side of your bodygraph mean.
They represent a snapshot in time:
The symbols depict each planet,
and the numbers next to them, which we call Gates, represent the specific energetic frequency each planet was transiting at the time of your birth.
According to the teachings, this unique compilation of atmospheric energies was imprinted upon you when you were born, simply because that’s what the planets were broadcasting when you came into the world.
Gates (the numbers) are gateways into each Energy Center. And they get expressed through us as our personality characteristics.
Each one is extraordinarily powerful and radiant! But nobody carries all 64 possible Gates.
Instead, each of us beholds a unique collection of 28.
So, you can think of the symbols and numbers in the columns on your chart as your toolbelt of energetic powers, your rich and complex personality, or the unique set of special gifts you possess.
But, because the Universe has a sense of humor, these gifts are also the lessons you’re here to learn in this lifetime.
‘Doing the work’ of aligning with your most authentic Self means learning to use each of your energetic gifts with integrity, grace and compassion.
To illustrate this further, the picture below shows a closeup example of a fictitious person’s chart with a quick summary of a few of their specific, Defined Gates, or energetic traits:
Here’s how I’d interpret this person’s chart, in very basic terms:
- The Sun in Gate 37 gives this person the power to be and share the energy of harmony and kinship.
- The Earth in Gate 40 gives them the power to stay grounded by being of service to others.
- The North Node in Gate 62 gives them the power to grow and mature by becoming more detail-oriented and organized.
- The South Node in Gate 61 urges them to move past, and let go of, the need to pursue every unknown mystery and make peace with their inner truth.
- The Moon in Gate 38 makes this person driven to find meaning in life by standing up for ‘the little guy’ in the fight for justice.
- And so on…
4. Left versus Right
You’re probably wondering what the difference is between the information on the left side of your chart versus the information on the right.
Any numbers or planets shown on the right side of your chart (here, they’re shown in orange) represent your collection of personality traits that are Conscious to you.
This is outward personality data.
You’re familiar with these parts of yourself. You use them all the time.
I think of the right-hand-column, Conscious Personality elements as the tabs on your laptop that you keep open all the time. Or the apps you use on your phone regularly.
They’re always there, reliable and ready to be accessed, whenever you need them.
By contrast, everything you see in that left-hand column on the chart (shown here in blue) represents the specific frequencies the planets were transiting 88 days, or approximately three months, prior to your birth.
Why 88 days? We’re not sure! Maybe that’s when our souls were implanted. Perhaps it’s when our spirit-selves officially chose which family we wanted to be born into.
Either way, that left-hand column contains the collection of personality traits that make up your Unconscious Design.
These are the parts of you that you don’t necessarily realize are there, but which you use and express, nevertheless.
In fact, other people probably notice these traits in you more than you see them, yourself.
The Unconscious, inner pieces of you may be somewhat buried, but they’re hard at work giving you your unique perspective on life and your most involuntary, natural impulses.
I think of these traits as our body’s operating system: you don’t have to tell Windows 11 to start running when you hit the power button on your computer. It just kicks into gear to make your machine operate smoothly.
That’s exactly how your Unconscious Design works: involuntarily, under the surface, to keep you thriving.
5. High Vibe or Low Vibe?
One of my favorite parts about Human Design is that every shape, number, symbol and line that you see on the chart carries both a high-vibrational potential and a low-vibrational potential.
In plain English, that means that every trait that makes each of us so wildly unique can be expressed in a way that either:
- emits the high-vibrational energy of lovingkindness, compassion, joy, respect, gentleness, understanding and personal sovereignty, or
- emits the low-vibrational energy of anger, judgment, manipulation, victimhood, shame, self-sabotage, aggression toward others or even violence.
Now, Human Design isn’t meant to be used as a tool of judgment or shame, or to single anyone out as being a “bad” person.
Rather, it exists to show us that we all possess the capacity for extraordinary goodness that, if leveraged, allow us to reach our highest potential in life;
and that we are also each vulnerable to languishing in the darkness of our deepest shadows if we let our gifts go unused or misused.
While it can be confronting to learn that we might be using our energy in a low-vibe way, it’s also liberating to realize there’s an empowered, radiant way to express every piece of our most authentic Selves–
And that we don’t have to hide the parts of us that were shamed or criticized, which we may have learned to hide or water down, earlier in life.
So “the work” is truly this process of deconditioning:
- building self-awareness around the extraordinary, unique energetic traits we each carry;
- committing ourselves to learning how each of those gifts is meant to be wielded in the highest vibration;
- letting go of the false stories and expectations we inherited about who or what our parents, teachers, coaches, peers or the media told us we were “supposed to” be;
- and beginning to recognize those moments when we emit our energy at lower frequencies.
Because that’s the magic moment when we make the conscious choice to disrupt old patterns, and express ourselves, instead, in alignment with our true power.
If you’d like support as you ‘do the work,’ or want to go deeper into understanding your body’s unique energetic design, I’d be thrilled to meet with you for a deep-dive Human Design reading. You can explore my offerings here or reach me directly to set up an appointment at ellsworthjaneen@gmail.com.
