Episode #357 – The Blueprint of You: Exploring Human Design with Emma Dunwoody

We’re exploring human design today with my guest, Emma Dunwoody. So welcome back to the show. I am really delighted when I get to learn something new along with you in these episodes. And it doesn’t happen all the time. Often I’ve, you know, studied something as a topic or I have my own point of view, or I’ve read someone’s book in depth. But this is one of those times where I am definitely learning right along with you. And I can tell you after this interview that I have a lot more to learn about human design. 

So my guest, Emma Dunwoody, is one of the world’s top experts in human design. And I wanna give you a real high level of what that is. Human design, which you may have heard of, you may not have. It’s a system to really help you unpack self-awareness and provide guidance. And it’s kind of a blend of a number of things that are, you know, emerging in popularity, but maybe less traditional. So, astrology, the chakra system, Kabbalah and Myers-Briggs, and numerous other systems. It’s essentially like a melting pot of a lot of these different self-awareness systems. And it’s really said to give us the blueprint to our personality. It gives us insights into our strengths and weaknesses, our kind of style of energy, or our energy type, the kind of people that we work best with, how we communicate, how we strategize, especially how we make decisions, and a lot more. So if you are a fan, um, of things like Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram or disc, or a lot of the other assessments that have been popular over the years, this is one that is probably going to perk your ears up and Emma’s goal with her career, her calling, is really to show how human design can inspire us to unlock our inner wisdom, really to tune into our bodies as a clue for decision making so we can take our power back and feel really confident in the decisions that we make.

Now, Emma comes to human design, um, with a background in psychology. She is a behavior specialist, she’s a master coach, and she is also certified in behavior and personality profiling, facilitation, neuro linguistic programming, which you may know as NLP. So she has really run the gamut of approaches and modalities over the last 17 or 18 years. And she has now coached thousands of people in human design. She has really big and growing platforms on all the social platforms, particularly Instagram, where we’ll link. So you can find her, her own website and her podcast, which is called the Human Design Podcast. She has, I think like 1.3 or 1.4 million downloads on that podcast. And she has really become the go-to authority in human design. She’s been featured in media outlets around the world. She is based in Australia. So you will hear her delicious Australian accent in this episode.

Um, and we had such a great conversation. We really tried, in this interview at least, I really tried to pull out of Emma the very highest level understanding of human design that we could get to in a 30 minute-ish episode, which barely scratches the surface of what is available to us through this particular assessment. So what you’re going to hear Emma encourage you to do in this episode is to go to her website and get your own assessment done. It just takes a couple of minutes. You need two very important pieces of information. In order to do this, you need the place of your birth. Like if you’re in the US you need the city and state, right? And if you, and you need to know the time of your birth with, with exactitude, like, you kind of need to know the minute you were born.

And that is the inputs in addition to a few other things that you need to get your chart. So if you go to emmadunwoody.com, which we’ve linked in the show notes, you can get your own chart, and then she will send you a series of emails that help you learn a little bit more about some of the elements of your human design. So again, today is really, if you are brand new to this, I think you are at the right place because we are gonna keep it pretty top level and then give you opportunities to learn more if you are interested. I know I will be learning more in the months ahead. So without further ado, let me introduce my guest today, Emma Dunwoody. 

Cherylanne Skolnicki:
Alright, well, welcome Emma to the Brilliant Balance Show. I am so excited to do this with you today. I have like all my personal questions lined up, and then a lot for us to teach the audience.

Emma Dunwoody:
Cool. I’m super excited. Let’s get into it.

CS:
Okay, perfect. So we’re gonna start with this. You are clearly a world renowned expert in human design. That’s why I’m so excited to have you. But can you start, for those people who have been living under a rock with what is the simplest definition of human design?

ED:
Okay. So the simplest definition of human design is that it is a synthesis of four ancient wisdoms, which are western astrology, the cabal tree of life, the Hindu chakra system, and the Chinese Aing. And all four of these wi wisdoms have been synthesized together to give you your body graph. Now, what your body graph is, is, I like to think of it as it’s your energetic blueprint or your treasure map to access the treasure that lies within you. It’s really all the, the, again, from my experience, because I’m a behaviorist, because I’m a behavioral coach, I talk a lot about behavior and personality. Human design is the energy that sits underneath that. Okay. In my opinion, it’s like, how it is, how we express and create, create our personality. The energy sits underneath that.

CS:
Yes. So it’s so foundational and it really, my understanding is this is nature, not nurture. It is completely determined by the time and place of our birth.

ED:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Correct. Correct. So fascinating. It’s, it’s, so the way that we actually get your reading. So let’s think about a personality or behavioral profile. We might have Myers Briggs, we might have Enneagram. That’s huge. Right now we answer questions. So we’re using the mind to answer questions about who we think we are. Yes. Okay. So we, 95% of our behavior is unconscious. So we actually don’t really know who we are. Um, but if we have a great facilitator, then those results can be really close. Whereas with human design, the mind never gets involved. It’s a reading that’s taken from the moment where we were born and about three months before we were born. And it’s a time where these tiny little subatomic particles called neutrinos path through our body. Why is that important? Well, it’s important and, and neutrinos are being studied heavily at the moment. Like, there’s millions and millions of dollars going into these things because as they move through all the celestial bodies and everything else, they kind of pick up a piece of that. And then as they move through you, they drop it in you. So this is how we actually get our reading. It’s how these themes, these themes that were dropped in us at our moment of birth, and about three months before our birth, when the soul came in, that gives us our reading. It’s why it’s so accurate. The mind doesn’t get involved.

CS:
It’s so fascinating. It’s like, it’s just determined. It is. And then everything else that comes on later through experience and nurture and conditioning is like a different layer that really is probably the most that most of us have looked at exploring are those layers that were conditioned and sort of experiential later on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you’re an expert in this. You’ve been doing this for a long time. How did you find human design? Or maybe how did it find you?

ED:
Well, that is such a great reframe of that question because the first three times human design was brought to me, I was like, yeah, nah, you know, like, I’m so science. Even though I was very spiritual, I was not gonna do anything woo woo with my clients. I was very science-based, research-based, all of these sorts of things. And then finally I got to a place in my life where I had healed depression and panic disorder. I’d healed a relationship. I had two kids. We’d moved, I’d moved, transitioned from an advertising career into being, becoming a master coach, having a successful corporate business. And there was still this hole in me. I was like, there, there was a piece of my purpose missing. That’s the way I would language it. Yes. And I was always like, I have done so much to completely transform my life.

I mean, I never thought I would ever be happy again at one point. And I’m happier, like all of these great things in my life, but there’s something missing. And at that point, I just put out into the universe, right? You need to hit me in the face. You need to be so clear about what this missing piece is, and whatever it is, I promise I’ll do it. Oh, and within like 48 hours, human design, exactly Everyone was asking me about it, it all of a sudden appeared. And back then no one was talking about human design. It’s not like now that everybody’s talking about it.

Yes. No one was talking about it. So literally from that point, I was like, well, what can it hurt if I just run this human design experiment? If I just run the experiment and, you know, I’m very results driven. If I get the results, then great, I’ll keep going. And if I don’t, then I’ll just put it down. And from the moment I started writing the experiment, everything shifted, and that hole was gone so quickly. Yeah. It was an incredible experience.

CS:
It reminds me of, there is this, I, I feel like I’m just starting to hear this term of purpose, anxiety, this kind of psychological concept of purpose, anxiety, that, and I’ve seen the data lately, 91% of people would say that they have felt purpose anxiety at some point in their lives where you’re describing this hole, like, a piece of my purpose is missing and I don’t know what I need to do to fill it. And this was a big key for you in getting that unlocked. So you ran what you call the human design experiment. An experiment. What did that mean for you? What did you do?

ED:
Okay, so I’m gonna just take one step back before we talk about mine specifically. And that is that part of human design. It is actually an experiment. This knowledge was birthed through a person, a channel called RA <inaudible>. And one of the clear directives he got from what he called the voice was that this is an experiment, not a dogma. So what that means is that you learn the knowledge. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s only knowledge until you actually start to integrate and implement. So how did I start my experiment? Well, I said, okay, well there’s this thing called strategy, and there’s this thing called authority. And for everyone in, you know, doing their human design or running their human design experiment, this is ground zero. Okay? You actually don’t need to know anything else. If you just practice, if you live your life in alignment, listening to your strategy and authority, then everything else will unfold. Everything else will align. That’s

CS:
Fascinating.

ED:
Um, yeah. And, and I mean, RA talked about how that process will take seven years. And I’m a manifesting generator, so there’s no way I am waiting seven years <laugh>. Um, so, you know, I found all the hacks, all the fast roads, all of those things. So for me specifically, I went, okay, well, as an emotion, which is my authority, I’m an emotional authority manifesting generator. So as an mg my strategy is to respond. I would just do exactly that. So I might have an insight or an idea, but I would never put any action energy behind it until something external of me showed up for me, for me to respond to it. To go, yes, I have energy for that, or no, I don’t. Oh,

CS:
That’s interesting. Yeah. You stopped trying to create something and it was more like, yeah. You waited for it to cross your path that you could then respond to, oh yes, this, this feels right.

ED:
Interesting. Exactly. So most of the global population from a human design perspective are designed to respond to life in some way, not to initiate. There’s a very small percentage of people that are meant to initiate. That’s like 10, around 10% of the global population where the rest of us are designed to respond in some way. And for me, one of the really big shifts was I was in the shower where I got so many of my insights, <laugh>, and I just had this insight drop in that said, you have to change the name of your podcast from the, from whatever it was to the Human design podcast. And my inner critic, my ego went crazy. It’s like, you can’t do that. Who are you? You don’t know enough, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, it doesn’t matter what you say, voice, because I’m running my experiment.

It’s just an insight. It’s just a thought. I’m gonna write it down. And if something in my external reality turns up and it feels right, then I’ll go with it. Okay. The next day, I am on the phone to one of my mentors, and he literally says to me, Emma, you should do a podcast on this. ’cause there’s no good podcasts out there. And with that, my whole sacral went, yep, I’ve got energy for this. So literally I slept on it. ’cause again, I’m an emotional authority. Next day I am like, all right, I’m doing this thing. Even though my inner critic and my egos, everything’s telling me I can’t do this imposter syndrome, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, I’m running the experiment. I’ve gotta see what happens. And that was like this pivotal point in my life in my business, where all of a sudden I understood what real ease and flow looked like, what actual being guided on my path looked and felt like. So I just kept practicing strategy and authority, and then started to integrate all the other depths. Oh,

CS:
It just makes me take this big deep breath because you said the words ease and flow. And the number of times that I have said that as a desired state or talked about it with clients as a desired state is infinite. I think that’s really two words that people know. Like, yeah, I want more of that. Mm-Hmm. And so it sounds like you’re saying that following one’s human design actually is a pathway to that. It produces more ease and flow if we are in alignment with our own design?

ED:
A hundred percent. So it’s most simply put, one of the, the main principles of human design is to get us out of the head and into the body. And what’s the purpose of that? To minimize resistance, because we are conditioned, we are raised to believe that someone else external from us knows best for us. And that is not true. Mm. The mind always jumps in, it’s always operating. Our default mode is the negativity bias. It’s literally, the brain is always looking for danger. What could go wrong? What you don’t want. Right. Where once we actually start to understand that the authority lives with it in us, things really start to shift and change. When we understand that we actually have this inner guidance system that is going to take us on the path of least resistance, all of a sudden we stop listening to the chatter in the mind.

ED:
And a lot of us have mental energy that’s very important to give to the rest of the world. So we are not demonizing the mind, we’re not telling you that it’s bad. We’re just saying that the wisdom for you on your path, who you are and how you express your gifts in the world, and even how you navigate the challenges and the lessons Yeah. Actually comes from like, almost like biofeedback in the body and, and the energetic aura. So it’s super important to be paying more attention to that than letting the mind run, then letting the mind lead. Yeah. Which is the way we are conditioned. And

CS:
I wonder this, you might tell me, this is the terrible analogy, so feel free to, ’cause you’re the expert in this, but it feels to me like we, like, it’s like we didn’t get the operating manual to our body as a, as a direction setting mechanism or like a what’s the yes. What’s the no. So we don’t really know how to read it, and we’re, we’re stuck in our heads trying to analyze everything and think our way to the right answer, or what will other people validate is the right answer instead of really knowing like, what does a yes feel like in my body? Right. Or what is a no

ED:
Exactly. Right. Yeah.

CS:
That’s so fascinating to me. ’cause I would say I feel a real disconnect sometimes between my body and my brain, right? Yeah. That’s hard to kind of get clear signals. And so if to the extent that this becomes a tuning in system for that, I think that’s just exciting. Like it’s a whole new way of learning to follow your path.

CS:
Okay. There, there is a lot. I wanna talk about the output. I know on your site there’s a way, it’s where I got mine. People can go and enter. You need a couple of pieces of data. The time and place of your birth are very important pieces of data. If you have that handy, you can get your human design, what do we call this? A blueprint? A

ED:
Um, it’s your body graph. Yeah.

CS:
Body graph. So you get your body graph, and then I promise you all, if you go do this, or when you go do this, ’cause I know you all will, you will be very confused. This is not the kind of thing that you’re gonna look at and go, oh, I get it. Right. It’s not a single, um, number output like the Enneagram or there’s a lot here, but there is a very important layer, which is your type. And then we were talking right before we started recording about both your strategy and your authority. So could you maybe give us the 1 0 1 level on the types? Yep. And to the extent that we can talk about strategy and authority, that would be awesome.

ED:
Yeah, sure, sure. So our type is our, it’s kind of like the macro to your micro. It’s the jumping off point. And there’s five types. Well, technically there’s four types and a hybrid, which is a, a, you know, yeah. A hybrid of two of them. The first type is the manifesta. So the manifesta, as I said earlier, it’s about 10% of the global population they are here to initiate. These are people that the creative urge moves through them, and they have to start something. They’re trailblazers, they’re initiators, they’re their inspira, their inspiration themselves. Innovators. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly. Um, and so their strategy is to inspire or initiate, sorry, and inform. So they’re here to start things. And informing is very much talking about the direction that their energy is taking. It’s not asking for permission, it’s just being, communicating where they’re going. Then we have generators, the generator’s strategy is to respond.

ED:
I’ve kind of alluded a bit to that already. It’s about having something external to them for the sacral, the gut response to say, Uhhuh, I got energy for that. Or Uhuh, I don’t have energy for that. These people are very much here to follow what lights that uh huh that sacred up Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and whatever that is. They’ll, they’ll build, they’ll have the energy to build something. So once they’re in, if the manifesters are here to inspire them into action, they’re here to build what inspires them. Got it. Then we have the manifesting generator, which is half manifesta. Half generator. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. They are fundamentally a generator. Meaning that their strategy first and foremost is to respond, and they must inform as well. So they do pick up traits of the generator, and they do pick up some of the traits of the manifesta. These people are non-linear.

ED:
It means that they’re multi-passionate. They look like they jump all over the place and they’re inconsistent. But what they’re actually doing is they’re working out the fast track. Ah, they’re, they’re breaking things to remake things. And these people are very much on the planet to demonstrate human potential. Okay? So they can look like they’re a bit messy and chaotic to the outside world. But if you actually look a little bit closer, they’re breaking things to remake them. Then we have projectors and for projectors, their strategy is to wait for the invitation. Now our projectors are here to guide. So if manifestors are initiating us and inspiring us into action, and generators and manifesting generators are building this new paradigm, building this new world from the things that light them up and excite them, then the projectors are looking at all of this going on and saying, okay, we can do this better.

We can, there’s efficiencies that can be made here. You are using too much energy over here, or you are not investing energy over there. So these people can see the efficiencies and improve things, but they’re waiting for an invitation. They’re here to be seen and recognized on the planet, but we are not actually taught to see and recognize each other as kids. Right? So what happens is, if they don’t get the attention they need, then that turns into unresourceful attention getting, if you like. Ah. Um, so as a projector, you wanna invest in the things that you are obsessed with. Really obsess over the things that you wanna learn. These people also don’t have a lot of time to work per se. They don’t have the energy that’s consistent that the manifested generators and the generators have, and the manifestors work in bursts, whereas the projectors kind of have a couple of hours a day, and then they, they, they’re gonna be tired, but learning and building efficiencies, that’s gonna give them energy.

And then we have the reflectors, which are only 1% of the global population. And their strategy is to wait for the 28 day moon cycle, which I know sounds a bit weird, but really their whole objective is to slow down because they are actually taking in everybody else’s energy for people, places, opportunities, everything, environment. And they’re amplifying it and reflecting it back. So it’s really important that they just take their time to make decisions because the question is more, does this person make me feel good over time? Um, because if they don’t, then it’s not the right person for you, for example. So really, they’re here to reflect back the truth. Mm. So if you have a reflector in your life and you think they’re, I don’t know, a bit of a, you know, pain in your butt. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it’s you probably, that’s the pain in the, but they’re reflecting their back. Exactly. You are seeing you in them. So it’s really important that you pay attention to what you see in them because they’re reflecting back the truth. That

CS:
And I think it’s also fascinating how the tiny sliver of the population, that’s a reflector, really fairly small percentage that’s manifesters and then, you know, sort of where the bulk of people live. So that is, I know that Emma went really quickly through that. If you’re listening, I am still really trying to wrap my head around this model, but I think there’s a lot written on this in terms of these five, four basic types with the one blended type that I think is like the highest level we’re trying to get at, right? There are just types Mm-Hmm. Then within that, where this starts to get really interesting is you, there’s a bazillion layers in this, right? So strategy and authority. Mm-Hmm. What’s the simplest way to wrap our head around the role that those play in human design? Okay.

ED:
So, well, we’ve talked about the strategy and with authority there’s a number of authorities. I’m just gonna go super quickly. Yeah. So first you’ve got emotional authority. This is almost 50-50% of the global population. If you have emotional authority, you have to stop hurrying your decisions. You must sleep on decisions, slow down in decision making. Yeah. Because you are constantly in this emotional wave, which is almost like a filter over everything you think is true. It’s like if you’re emotionally high on a decision, you might say yes to something that should have been a no. Right? Because everything feels great. But if you’re emotional, no. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta take your time to slow down. Okay. Then we have sacral like you, that’s me, which is the polar opposite. You actually have to stop thinking about anything and let your sacral respond.

ED:
Like, aha, like your sacral responding to me right now. I’m watching your head nod that it’s saying, yep, I’ve got energy for this. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you just trust it. Yeah. And when it says no, you must say no and not let the mind override. Yes. Then we have splenic authority, which is this knowing, this knowing in the moment you don’t know how you know, or you don’t know how you got there. And sometimes it can seem nonsensical, but you just have to learn to trust your intuition. Trust that in instinctual knowing. Then we have some of the, the, the smaller percentage of authorities that are what we call a sounding board. So this is a process in which these people need to talk things out until they hear themselves speak the answer. Okay. Um, and there’s a lot of nuances to those, but I won’t go into those today.

ED:
And, and for reflectors again, it’s, it’s this waiting for the 28 days, like allowing yourself to feel through things. So once we have our strategy, our strategy is kind of what, like the way the universe speaks to us, if you like, our authority is how our inner authority, our internal guidance system guides us answers back. And it’s this communication. Exactly. It’s our communication loop that’s constantly going on. So when we just practice these two things in life, ultimately what it’s doing is bringing you into alignment with your design because it’s actually gonna send you to the right people, places, experiences, opportunities, environments that are correct for you. So it’s just important to practice with those things straight away. So I always say, let’s say you’re a sacred being, how do I practice my strategy and authority? 

ED:
The simplest for you because your strategy and authority is all rolled into one ’cause it’s all about your sacral. So you might just go to the supermarket and walk down the aisle and just look at the aisles and go, oh, yep, got energy for that. Yep. Oh, I got energy for that. Oh, nope. Don’t have energy for that. You might just practice. You, you’ve gone to coffee with your girlfriends, right? And everyone’s talking, notice the mind, what’s, it’s got something to say about everything, da da da da. Instead, just bring your energy back into the body. Just listen to your sacral and notice that your sacral will respond to exactly what is correct for you to respond to at the time, instead of what you think you should respond to. So do it in these little places where there aren’t big consequences or you don’t have a big attachment.

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I often, you know, joke about deciding what to eat or, yes. Because the more you build this muscle, the more when the big decisions come, you know, I, I was interviewed on a fascinating podcast by a, a cancer specialist, and she, she uses human design with her patients to build their trust in themselves, to make the correct decisions when it comes to healthcare for them, you know, for healing strategies and modalities. So it can get into like, once you trust it, and I’m at that place, you know, I even, um, exited a relationship, a 25 year marriage, or 24 year marriage last year. And I literally let my strategy and authority guide me. Wow. You know, instead of letting the mind override and I’d let my mind override before for

CS:
A long time. Right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah.

ED:
And I just lit, I just went through this whole process and I just responded to the thing that happened and I slept on, and I just, everything was so easy, you know, like it was awful as well. Like, you know, I still had to go through the whole process of course, of grief and all of those things, but I didn’t overthink the decision because I trusted my own body. I trusted this, this not only my heart, my soul, but this bigger wisdom that is guiding me. So basically start small with the things you have little attachment to, and you, and you feel don’t have great consequences. Make sure you write down, you know, you’ve got to actually record the wins. Mm-Hmm. When this is working. ’cause our brains need evidence to change. So you give your brain that evidence.

CS:
I think that it might bear underlining a couple of phrases that I think I’m pulling out from what you say. One is that this is very much about an energy exchange or energy management system. There is something about the way out, how much energy we have, how often it cycles, how we utilize or conserve it that feels like it’s inherent in this. And the second thing is decision making. You’ve said it like 10 times, right? This is our decision making system. And so many women, especially men too, struggle with feeling confident in decision making. So to the extent that this is another approach to say you can feel more sure of your decisions and then quickly get the feedback of like, how did it work out? Right? I made this decision following the system, but quick feedback on Yeah. Did it lead me to better decisions?

ED:
So this is such an important point, you know, and you’re absolutely right. The research does support that women doubt their decisions more than men. Mm-Hmm. And the reason why is because we’ve been taught, we’ve been conditioned to make decisions in alignment with the masculine. Yes. The masculine makes decisions from the focused outcome, the actions I need to take in their 24 hour energetic cycle. Whereas what we know about women is that we are intuitive. We have a 28 day energetic cycle. Like we are off the, off the scale. Like we now know the research is now in that this whole left brain right brain thing doesn’t work the way we thought it did. And in fact, in women, there is so much more conversation, if you like, between the two hemispheres, between the Yeah. And one of the big things is we doubt ourselves because when we make decisions through the frame of the masculine, they don’t feel right. Yes. Whereas with human design, it’s just arts and, and, and it’s both for men and women. It’s coming back to our innate knowledge, our guidance system.

CS:
Inner wisdom. Mm-Hmm.

ED:
<affirmative>. Exactly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the biggest piece for me is that we are in a time in human history where we are waking up to the fact that maybe these people that have said they’ve had our best interest at heart don’t. So how do we take back our power? How do we become sovereign beings? How do we make the best decisions for our bodies, for our children, for our lives? And for me specifically, I think this is one of the most important things about human design, is it puts the power back in our own hands. Yes. And when we actually record the evidence of how, when I listen to my strategy and authority, these good things happen, you know, I can trust my decisions, then we can navigate through a very challenging and chaotic time in human history with greater confidence in ourselves. We know we’re gonna make the best decision not only for us, but we can teach our children to make decisions in alignment for them. You know, for me, I think this empowerment piece is probably my, you know, my number one thing when it comes to, to human design

CS:
And purpose. I mean, I think when we started the conversation, you were saying there’s this missing piece of purpose. You bring this with clarity to the world, really to your entire audience, feels like it’s so purpose driven, um, and takes a lot of confidence. It makes me curious, when I was thinking about this interview, I was wondering to myself, what is the progression of how people apply this? Like when they really start to get it and use it to make changes, what usually changes first? And like, what’s the manifestation of that? How do they know? And then what do people resist changing or hold onto old systems and why? Like, can you answer those two?

ED:
Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll go with the second question first. People in my experience, both personal and working with thousands of people, now, the thing that you resist the most in your human design is the part of you that you resist the most. It’s the piece of you that you won’t accept. The piece of you that you have been taught is wrong. So it’s your shadow. You are trying to fix it, change it, shift it. But the truth is that it’s perfect. You might be expressing it through the shadow, through the fear expression, but actually it’s perfect and it doesn’t need to be changed. Why do we hang onto it? Because that’s the way the brain’s designed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> our brain is, you know, 95% of our behavior comes from the unconscious mind. These are patterns that we were taught. These are things that not only will we be born on this planet with many of them like intergenerational patterns and trauma, but between the ages of zero to seven, we learn who we need to be to get love, nurturing and to belong.

So what we learn from that becomes our identity, our future adult I identity. So we, the brain itself, will defend the identity to death. You know, how many people talked about, especially, I mean, I’m Gen X, so there was, we all smoked. I mean, I smoked for like two seconds, but a lot of my friends smoked for many, many years. And it was so hard to stop smoking and everyone would try everything. And they couldn’t, they couldn’t quit. They couldn’t quit. Now, the most successful way to quit smoking, besides a lot of the research they’re doing with things like psilocybin at the moment, but before that, um, was this book called The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, I think it’s called. And when you actually read the book, the author changes your identity from a smoker to a non-smoker to a non smoker <laugh>. Exactly. While you read the book. So as you, and, and part of the whole process is you have to smoke the last cigarette at the end of the book and 90% of people cannot smoke it. So it’s not about the addiction to nicotine, it’s not about the chemicals, it’s about your identity. So that’s why we don’t change, because our identity doesn’t change. So

CS:
That, that’s fascinating because this audience, we’ve done Enneagram with my clients, we’ve taken the podcast listeners through the Enneagram, and I think it’s, you know, taken over the world. It sounds to me like what you’re saying is that is the kind of conditioning, I mean, Enneagram is really about our childhood experience and who we had to become to get love. And so if you’re a listener and you’re familiar with your Enneagram, what I’m hearing, MSA is like we’re defaulting to that, to the conditioning that we’ve had instead of to our essence at origin. Right? Yeah. So this is a kind of reconnection to the essence before we learned how to behave and modify that to kind of get love, you know, I really, as a young child, fascinating. Fascinating. Exactly. So that’s what we resist. We resist the truest part of ourselves that we probably are rejecting. Some people would refer to that as shadow. So that’s the part that we’re gonna have the hardest time making conversions. And we’re gonna hold on to old patterns of behavior. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> what usually changes first? What do people get early success with?

ED:
So it’s gonna be different for everyone, but one of the things that I think is so incredibly powerful about human design is that when we do a lot of these other profiling tools, we kind of learn about it. We’re like, oh yeah, that, yep. Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yep. That sounds like me. And very deliberate language, you know, makes sense. Sounds like me. When you start to even just read, you know, RA who said you could just show a child the picture of their design and it will already begin to come into alignment, it will resonate. So what happens with human design is the more you read your human design, and I use the gene keys a lot. I’m not sure if you guys have spoken about that, but the gene keys as well. And the more you read, the more it’s like this sigh of relief.

Like, oh, thank goodness. Like you are giving me language for the things that I’m feeling on the inside. And from my experience, that is the fast track to change because it’s like your cells resonate. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with that is me. And the more that that resonance happens, the more of that permission to be you shows up. That is what changes. You know? Um, maybe you, you read about your authority. This happens a lot because it’s early on and you’re an emotional authority like me. So all of a sudden you just slow down just hearing, oh my God, do you mean that I don’t have to make a split decision like straight, I can sleep on it, I can take my time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that in itself starts the change already.

CS:
And for me, when you said earlier you can, you don’t have to overthink everything. You can actually just follow your gut. You already know that’s free in, in kind of the opposite direction. Yeah. So

ED:
Fascinating. Yeah, exactly. And it’s, and it’s like the more you read it, the deeper you go, the more it’s just, it’s easy to trust the process and it’s easy to actually, you know, create those changes. And, and you don’t even try. It’s not like you’re trying a lot of behavioral changes that you have to create a new habit, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you have to, you know, uncover the pain and the trauma that that created in the first place, the purpose for it. And then you, you, you heal, integrate, and then create a new habit. Whereas with human design, a lot of the time you just start to run the experiment. So for example, let’s say, um, and this is, this will sound like mumbo jumbo, so don’t worry about it. Let’s say your profile, we all have a profile, which is, it’s a two, two numbers, right?

And you are a three five. I’m also a three five. So we start to realize that this is how we move through life. It’s how we serve, it’s how we learn. So one of the big themes in our lives is gonna be this line three. So it’s learning through experience. It’s all about trial and error. When I first came to human design, I did not like hearing this. ’cause they’re like, you know, well, you’ll fall down more than you’ll get up or you’ll, sorry, you’ll get up and keep getting up, keep going. But you become a very resilient person. And I was like, I don’t wanna hear that. Things don’t go my way all the time. But what I identified is I had this belief is why do I always have to do things the hard way? Once I identified that, I was like, hang on a second, I’m line three.

I have full permission to make the biggest mess ever because I gotta break everything to work out what’s correct. Because how I’m serving the planet is I’m calling out all the things that don’t work, don’t work <laugh>, and I’m gonna tell you what does. Yeah. Because I’ve tried it. Mm. And you know, and the line threes, they’re very experiential learners. So again, for me that made that like, I have this ability to watch someone do something and I can almost mimic it completely yet give me deep textbooks and I No, thank you. But again, it’s that, that experiential learning. And so all of a sudden I’m learning these things about myself that I had made wrong. You know, that I can’t draw information Exactly. I can’t draw information from a deep textbook. But at the same time, if you put me in front of a speaker, I can remember everything word for word or whatever that thing might be. Or of a sudden my life’s changing. ’cause I know it’s not, I don’t need to come up with the details. I’m not a line one, I’m not, no one wants the details from me. They want my experiences or as a line five, they want my solutions, they want my leadership, they want me to be in my power and universal. I’ve given them everything that I’ve learned so that they can do what I’ve done. So

CS:
It’s surprising that both of us have podcasts, right? Like I feel like Exactly. You’ve described the art form. Yeah,

ED:
Exactly. Fascinating. Exactly.

CS:
I mean, Emma, it’s so endlessly fascinating. There’s, and y’all, when you go and get this, the report that you can get from her site, there is just so much depth in this. It will create curiosity in you where you will want to understand, well what do these things mean? And there are lots and lots of ways that we can learn from Emma. So while we are not gonna have infinite time today, and I could sit and talk to you for 12 hours, um, and might find a way to do that, I wanna make sure that people know where, if we’ve wet their appetite about this idea, where do they find you online? I’ll link it in the show notes. Mm-Hmm. But let’s give that to them verbally and then what would you suggest they start with to kind of go down this path of learning?

ED:
So this is such a great question, and this is actually a question we identified as a big problem in the whole human design world. So in my style, ’cause one of my core ta part of my core talent is simplification, if you just gotta go to my website, emma dunwoody.com and get your free chart. Once you get your free chart on my site, what we do is we drip feed you emails that will send you to the correct podcast episode for your type, for your authority to our roadmap series. Which is like, okay, step one is this. Step two is that. So we have so many resources that are actually refined for you. Perfect. And then if you are super interested, there’s so many pathways that you can take depending on how you wanna use your human design. So we’ve got it all sorted out and clarified and simplified for you.

CS:
I think that’s great. And I think your team sent over a couple of resources that people might wanna get their hands on right away, that we will link in the show notes. It’s just the easiest way rather than remembering URLs to go type in. So if you are listening, whatever kind of device you’re listening on, just scroll down from the player to the show notes. They’re always right below. There’ll be links there that you can click. It’ll take you straight to the assessment so that you can get your design and then also to some of these other incredible resources. I think it’s so evident, Emma, when I have a guest like you that you could teach for just days on this, right. There’s clearly so much stuff. I

ED:
Love it.

CS:
Yeah. And it’s not a light model. I mean, there are things that I can have someone come and do an episode on where we get it in 30 minutes. We’re not gonna get this. I don’t want anyone to leave today thinking, oh, I understand human design now. No, you don’t. Right? We all kind of know enough to be dangerous, but I think this was such a surging, trending topic. And when your team reached out, I was like, a hundred percent yes. I wanna get, I wanna get this into the hands of our listeners. I wanna learn more. Um, and I am such a sort of self-awareness junkie. Any angle that I can get into self-awareness. I just believe firmly when we know ourselves, we can be ourselves. Right? Yes. And being more fully ourselves is, I think, a journey that so many of us are on. So thank you for sharing all of this. Do you have any closing thoughts for the listeners today?

ED:
You know what, I just wanna share a really quick story with a great, incredible guest that I had on my podcast recently, Dr. Jude Caravan. Now this woman is incredible. She’s a quantum physicist, she’s an astrologer, she’s a, um, she worked in corporate for 25 years. She’s a futurist. She’s amazing. And this thing that I learned from her, she said, we now know that the universe that we live in is a meaningful purpose-driven universe, and the purpose of the universe, the number one, the reason for being is evolution. And that for me was like this big, like, oh, you know, take that. And she talks about this big breath, like, take that big breath. Because the purpose of life is evolution. Our human design is the treasure map. It’s the roadmap for our differentiated evolution, our individual evolution. So the thing that I would say is like, just get curious. Just go and run the experiment. See how it feels if it resonates with you, if you have fun with it. And, and keep this lightness with it. Because in my experience, it’s gonna change your life. For sure.

CS:
Amazing. Thank you again for being here today. It was an absolute delight to meet you. Your energy is contagious.

ED:
Thank you. It’s been awesome being here. Thank you for having me.

CS:
Okay. Thank you so much for listening today. If you found your way to this particular episode because you were interested in human design and you, you know, maybe you Google searched for human design and found Emma’s episode here, welcome to the Brilliant Ballot Show. I’m glad you found your way here. If you liked this episode and you liked the style of interview and you wanna stick around, I would suggest that you take a second to follow this show so that you can get more episodes sent to your feed. We delve into all kinds of topics that you might find interesting. You can do that anywhere that you’re listening to podcasts. Just make sure to follow or subscribe to the show so that new episodes get pushed to you. Another thing that you can do that is helpful is subscribe to my list where we email the new podcast every single week. You can just go to brilliant balance.com/weekly and get on our list so that we can stay in touch going forward. So that is all for today, my friends. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.