According to Human Design, we are born with a unique soul imprint that makes us truly unique and creates specific energy pathways and circuits within us. A Human Design chart can tell you sooooo much about yourself! In fact, it can even tell you whether or not you are meant to follow a diet or if it is better for you to have freedom and variety in your eating decisions. It can also tell you what kind of digestion you have and the environment you will thrive in.
When I was struggling with health issues, my healers all wanted me to eat more cooked foods because they are warming, nurturing, and easily digestible. I had no desire. I love how I feel eating mostly raw food. When I tried doing things their way, I felt so much worse and they soon agreed that raw food was the way to go. I thought this was just due to my Ayurvedic constitution (I am a fiery pitta that loves cooling foods) but I later discovered that this is also part of my human design.
Between Ayurveda, Human Design, and my DNA Based Fitness Certification, my entire perspective of proper nutrition has changed in the last few years. Your eating habits truly do need to be as unique as you. There is no mainstream solution that works for everyone and I think that is why there is so much controversy in nutritional studies. Eggs are bad, no they are good, just the whites, no eat the yolks - well, it depends on who you are testing these theories on!
You can get a free Human Design chart at this website. Your arrows at the top of the chart are what tell you about your routine and digestion. The arrows that provide this information are on the top, left-hand side.
Top Left Arrow
This arrow is all about digestion, not just the way we digest our food but also how we take in life and digest information.
LEFT FACING ←
This means that you thrive when there is consistency and structure in your routine. You actively digest life and naturally absorb information in a logical and precise way. You may be able to recall exact details and memorize information easily. To-do lists, calendars, daily rituals, meal planning, and routines work best for you because you like to know what the next step is. Rituals and structure will enable you to live your best life so embrace them! If you have fallen out of a structured routine, this is a sign from the Universe telling you to get back on track.
With food, you like to have some sort of routine like breakfast at a certain time every day or following a specific way of eating. You can follow a diet, do a cleanse, and stick to paleo, vegan, or any other specific routine with ease.
Fasting is not ideal for you, as you need a more consistent intake of food to thrive. Be careful with intermittent fasting or any type of cleansing that requires fasting, that simply isn't how you are wired so don't torture yourself.
RIGHT FACING →
You are not built for a structured routine. Freedom and variety will work much better for you. You passively digest life and naturally take in information in a fluid way. This means that instead of remembering acute details you absorb all of the information about a situation. Maybe it's remembering a feeling or deeper meaning instead of the exact words someone actually said. You may not be able to recall or memorize exact details and sometimes you can even respond with answers that you didn’t even know that you knew.
With food, you don’t need to eat the exact same thing every day or eat in the same way all the time. One day you may have a few big meals and the next you may graze on snacks all day.
Following a diet is not for you. Give yourself the grace to go with the flow and let your intuition guide your meal choices, even if that means fasting. Fasting works well with your body!
This doesn't mean you don't need to eat healthily but you won't do well with a strict diet regime. It would be better to have a choice of several healthy breakfast options to choose from versus every Monday you should eat a specific breakfast, etc.
Bottom Left Arrow
This arrow is all about the environment that will help you naturally thrive and digest better.
LEFT FACING ←
This arrow means that you enjoy a consistent and structured environment. You thrive when you spend long periods of time in one place, nesting, and getting super cozy and comfortable. Being in a familiar environment brings you a great deal of comfort.
Having a designated place where you work, sleep, and eat are important. Make sure these spaces are designed to feel good to you! Your environmental wellness will help improve your digestion of food and information which will increase your productivity. If you have a job that requires you to move around a lot make sure you check in with a constant place to ground your energy. This may be as simple as starting your day at the same coffee shop or taking a few minutes to ground and decompress in your car.
If you’ve found that travel is challenging for you this could be why! This isn’t to say you shouldn’t travel but when you do, take time to get grounded in the new space. Immerse yourself in your new environment, unpack and make it feel like home. Find a place or space that you love and continue to go back time and time again. You may want to bring some items from home to make it feel even better like your own pillow, blanket, or favorite coffee mug.
RIGHT FACING →
You thrive on variety! Exploring new environments brings you inspiration. A set schedule and set place to be is not ideal for you. A normal 9 to 5 at an office would feel soul-sucking. You would thrive as a digital nomad and should work wherever you feel inspired to!
Your highest inspiration comes from travel and exploration. Feeling stuck? Get outside, go for a walk, mix up your environment and see how you feel. If you do work in an office, make sure you leave during the day for your lunch or breaks. Even getting up from your desk or rearranging your furniture will bring you new energy and motivation. You observe the world passively and soak it all in so people-watching can be an enjoyable activity.
You may also like to move often. Whether that's moving to a new house, city, state, or country…go for it! If you feel called to a certain place or space make sure you listen and respond. That is your intuition guiding you and it has a higher intelligence than your mind. If you have a habit of ignoring these calls because of society's expectations and opinions, then you are going against your design and will end up feeling angry, disappointed, frustrated, or depressed.
So as you can see, just these two arrows in the chart can tell you quite a bit about yourself and the information does go much deeper. When learning about your Human Design, it is encouraged to approach it like an experiment. You can follow the wisdom and see if life starts to flow with more ease or you can do the opposite and see what happens.
In Human Design there are six digestion types with two variables for each type. If you used the link I provided above to look at your chart, your digestion will be located on the lower right-hand side of the page.
Six Types of Digestion
#1: Appetite: Consecutive and Alternating. These people need to eat bland foods. Consecutive people need to eat foods one at a time (no eating a bite of fish followed by a bite of potato like the Alternating type). This type is the most primitive and restrictive digestion type. Think “caveman” diet since they would only eat what they could hunt and gather, there usually wasn't a large variety of foods each day. Similarly, when digesting information, you need to take in information little by little and one subject or topic at a time; otherwise, you could easily overwhelm yourself.
#2: Taste: Closed and Open. These people need to eat the same foods over and over again. Eat habitually and with a routine. The Open type tends to do well in sharing food with others. Seasonal foods are okay, but the keyword here is “habitual”. If it is information, then these people digest information in the same pattern or way. They have habits and a routine they follow that helps them learn better.
#3: Thirst: Hot and Cold. Hot people should eat foods warmer than their body temperature. Cold people should eat food cooler than their body temperature. For information, the temperature is key too. If the knowledge is being delivered with low energy (cold), those who are Hot will struggle to take in new information. The same goes for those with the Cold type, information delivered too hot with too much passion can be hard for them to take it all in.
#4: Touch: Calm and Nervous. These people need to prepare for digestion. Calm people need peace and quiet to digest. Eating alone is good for them. Nervous people need action to digest so they do better eating with other people, with TV or radio, while talking/socializing, in public, or moving around (driving, walking, fidgeting). Information is taken in the same way. A calm person does better studying and working in a very peaceful environment whereas a nervous person may be working online while watching a movie on Netflix.
#5: Sound: High and Low. This is all about the amount of noise when digesting (food or info). High sound people need sound so turn on some music while you eat. Low sound people need quiet so you may want to put in your noise-canceling earbuds if you can't control the sound levels in your environment. High sound needs to eat frequently or study repetitively over a longer time. A High person may snack all day long and will be preparing for a test for weeks. Low sound needs to eat less or cram for that test! A Low person may eat one time all day and may wait until the last minute to finish things.
#6: Light: Direct and Indirect. This is the most sensitive type. Direct people need to digest information or food during the daylight hours, not after dark. Indirect people need to digest at night so intermittent fasting can be ideal for them and they may be most productive in the evening hours.
Can you see why blindly picking up a diet book because it is the newest sensation isn't the best idea to find an approach to eating that will actually work for YOU over the long haul? This is also why nutritionists can be so wrong when providing advice and guidance. We all need different habits, routines, and environments that can't be considered in a book written for the masses and it definitely hasn't been taught in most universities.
Human Design can show you that there are aspects of yourself that are just wired a specific way. This is why we should all have more compassion and patience for one another. Some of these habits or ways of being may drive you nuts in other people, but just like you, they are wired a specific way and it is part of what makes them wonderfully unique. If we actually lean in and embrace these things then life will become easier and filled with more joy. We tend to fight some of our natural tendencies because society and the mainstream pressures us to conform in different ways.
Using DNA, Ayurveda, and Human Design in combination can tell you exactly what dietary "routine" would help you thrive. If you are interested in learning more, book a free discovery call, and let's see how I can help you!