How Human Design Helps Your Relationship with Yourself
Modern mystic Dani Sage shares how knowing your specific "combination of oddities" can help you appreciate your unique way of being in the world.
Here at Yes, Misstrix, I often have the pleasure of speaking with amazing people doing fascinating work in the realm of sex, sexuality, relationships and desire. In part one of my two-part interview with Dani Sage, a mystic for the modern era and the savvy business woman behind the Good Vibes Hive, we talk about what human design is, what it can teach you and how it can help you understand and love yourself on a deeper level. In the second part of this interview (which will debut on Thursday), we’ll talk about what human design can do to elevate your partnership, so stay tuned!
Yes, Misstrix: Let’s kick things off by telling the readers who you are and about the work you do in the world.
Dani Sage: I'm Dani Sage. I'm a tarot reader and human design chart reader. I also own a metaphysical boutique and salon in Columbus, Ohio, called Good Vibes Hive.
YM: Very cool. So, tell me a little bit about human design for people who aren't familiar with it and how you got into it.
DS: A little human design 101. It is basically a combination of ancient oddities like the chakra system and astrology, and modern science like quantum physics. Your human design chart is calculated by your birth date and time, and it basically shows you your energetic blueprint. How you're literally designed to navigate the world down to how you’re best designed to make your most aligned decisions or communicate with the people around you or attract opportunities into your life.
And I honestly do not remember how I got into it. I might have seen it online somewhere and then looked up my chart and fell in love with myself all over again through the lens of human design. Basically, every conversation since then—that was probably five years ago—I’ve been trying to find a way to work in asking what time someone was born, so that I can figure out what their human design is.
YM: That makes sense. I know people do that a lot with natal charts. Can you talk a little bit about how the two differ and how you might use human design versus astrology?
DS: Absolutely. So, I would say human design is a much more modern modality. I think it's only been around since the 70s. The application for me personally is that is seems more day-to-day practical, whereas I feel like your natal chart is more esoteric and who you are, not how you are.
YM: So, what can people learn when they dive into a human design reading with you?
DS: You'll learn your type, which is, arguably, the most important part of your chart. I have some clients where they've looked their charts up online themselves, and it either felt overwhelming or didn't resonate because there's so much information in there. The readings that I personally do are 21 pages but they could be so much bigger because there's so much information in your human design chart.
I try to just take the most accessible and approachable parts of your chart out and give it to you, but I would say that if everyone just knew and embodied their type, the world would be such an easier place. Your type is similar to your sun sign in astrology. I'm a Capricorn in astrology. My human design type is Manifestor. It's kind of like the big umbrella. There are five different types in human design as opposed to 12 in astrology.
YM: And once you have your overarching type, where do you go next? What helps you dive into the details of what makes you different from someone else with that same type?
DS: Then you get into your authority, which is basically the way that you are designed to make decisions. Actually, I looked your chart up before chatting with you, and you and I actually have the same authority in human design. We have emotional or solar plexus authority. This means our most aligned decisions—the big choices that we feel like we really have to think about—the most aligned way to make those decisions for you and I is to wait 24 hours for our emotional wave to settle. Because what happens with emotional authorities is you get presented with an opportunity, you might get super excited, so your wave gets super high. Maybe eight hours later, you're like, ‘Why was I so excited about that?’ and you start doubting yourself.
If you had said yes immediately when you were so excited, that might not have been the most aligned decision for you. Then, you might dread the opportunity, and your wave goes down. In about 24 hours, your wave will be completely neutral. You probably won't feel either excited or dreading the opportunity. You just have this amazing clarity where you are deciding from a completely neutral space. And that is how you and I are designed to make decisions. There are other human design authorities where you can make your decision the second after somebody asks you, but for you and I, it's best to wait 24 hours.
YM: That's good to know, and it feels like a really good descriptor of how I feel when making decisions.
DS: I know. I remember reading that, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Because a lot of human design has to do with conditioning and the way that society or the people who raised you conditioned you to behave. My mom has sacral authority. So, immediately she decides because she has this inner knowing about what she wants. Growing up, when I was having a hard time making decisions and telling her, ‘I don't know what to do, Mom. Help me. What should I do?’ She would say, ‘Just go with your gut. What's your immediate reaction? Don't think about it. Just make a decision.’
That always felt so unclear. I'd be so confused when it comes to decision making because I don't know what my gut is telling me. I don't understand what people mean when they say that. I have no physical urge or feeling to respond to things, and then I read what emotional authority was, and it made sense as to why I operated that way, at that point, for the last 27 years.
YM: You mentioned that your type is Manifestor, and that type gives people important details about how they operate. Can you give a high-level overview of the five types?
DS: I'm a Manifestor, and we make up about 8 percent of the population. We are the visionaries of the world, and historically, we've been the people in charge. As the energy shifts on the planet, however, Manifestors are kind of pulling back and wanting to do their own thing. I'm a good example. It's just me that runs my business. I can come and go whenever I want, and there's nobody telling me what to do, which is like the Manifestor dream. We're kind of wanting to do our own thing right now.
The Next type, which is your type is generators. They are 37 percent of the population. In human design, there are energy types and non-energy types. Generators and Manifesting Generators, which I'll talk about next, are energy types. Both of those types create their own energy from within. So, as long as you are doing things that light you up, you have an abundance of energy. You might sometimes have to make yourself stop working on a project because you love it so much you just feel like you're not getting tired. It's lighting you up so much that you could keep going until you're finished.
Manifesting Generators, the other energy type, are 32 percent of the population, and they're kind of a hybrid human design type. They've got that Generator energy that gives them the abundance of energy to keep going, and they also have the Manifestor energy to pull inspiration seemingly from nowhere. Generators and Manifesting Generators make up the most percentage of the population on Earth.
Then, all the other non-energy types, they get their energy from their environment. Mostly there are Projectors, which are about 20 percent of the population. It’s said that they have a bird's eye view of the world in a way that the other types don't. I'm married to a Projector, so I get to see it in action. All the time, there are things that I have been doing the way that I have been doing them for years, and all it takes is my husband walking up and being like, ‘Oh, have you ever tried to do that this way?’ And it makes the task so much easier, and it never occurred to me to ever even try it that way. But Projectors, just have a way of seeing things and immediately recognizing the most efficient and effective way of doing them. It's really nice to be married to him.
Lastly, Reflectors are only one to two percent of the population. They are another non-energy type, and they are a complete reflection of their environment. There’s a saying that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, and that is 100 percent true to Reflectors. They almost sample their environment and gather what's around them, to make the energy that they need the most in that moment.
YM: Great. That’s the first level, and then you talked about authority, which sounds like it’s based on the chakra system. Is that correct?
DS: Yea, so as we get in into individual charts, you become more and more individualized. Where you start differing in your chart past your type is each type also has a strategy, so the way that you’re designed to move throughout the world. For example, Manifestors’ is to inform. So, if I don't want interrupted when I'm doing a task, I'm supposed to inform the people around me what I'm doing and that I don't want to be bothered.
That is true for all Manifestors. Then, you have your signature and your not-self. Those are the two emotions that you'll feel when you're in alignment or out of alignment. I feel peace when I'm in alignment, and when I'm out of alignment, I feel anger. So, those are my little guideposts in life. If I feel so peaceful, I look around to see what am I doing that is making me feel this way. I know to do it more when I feel anger, and I realize something's interrupting my flow. Maybe I didn't inform the people around me of what I need right now. Those two things are true for all Manifestors. So, your strategy, your signature and your not-self theme are going to be true for everyone who is your type. So, you have the same as all Generators, then you get to authority. That's where you start differing,
After that, there's your profile, which are the archetypes that you embody within your design. Those get to be so individualized in human design. They're represented by two numbers in your charts. So, in your human design chart, you have three and five. Those archetypes are the Catalyst and the Savior. Having that dynamic in your chart, the three and the five, you have the archetype of the Great Life Experimenter, which I love. The way you embody your energy in the world is that you live mostly through trial and error.
You love stepping up to challenges, and what ends up happening is the people around you start living vicariously through you because they see everything that you're doing—taking risks and bouncing back from failures, whatever failure means to you, really quickly and then take in what you learned from this trial-and-error process that you go through as a three. Then, as a five, you transform that energy into wisdom and guidance for other people, so you can speak more from experience. You can tell people, ‘This is what happened to me,’ and that wisdom and that energy within you is transformational to the people around you.
YM: Oh, that's fascinating. And then can those archetypes be interchanged within the types? For example, can a Manifestor have the three and five archetypes, too?
DS: Yea. Then your profile—that's where you start becoming really individualized. You also have your human design chart, which is a little confusing the first time you see it. It's usually a little body with geometric shapes like triangles and then these little lines that move throughout them. Those geometric shapes are your chakra systems in human design. There are two more than is represented in the traditional seven chakra system.
In human design, you’ve got nine. The extra ones are your splenic center, which is kind of like your caveman center, your center for survival Instinct, and then you also have an identity center, while depending on if it's defined or undefined, you either just are who you are and you don't change or you're a social chameleon and you could be a totally different person depending on who you're around. And so all of your chakras in human design can be defined or undefined. You have access to consistent energy in that center if it's defined. You don't have access to consistent energy and are more easily influenced or conditioned in your open, undefined centers than you are in your defined centers.
YM: Wow. Okay, so the chart is speaking to energy on so many levels.
DS: Yea, it's a lot. There are also gates and channels, which if we got into would be a lot, but one of my favorite parts in someone's chart is something called your Incarnation Cross, which is your purpose in life. I sometimes hesitate to call it that because I feel like people are like, oh, then it should be my job, or it should be their purpose in whatever way they've been conditioned to see it. For example, there's an Incarnation Cross in human design called the Cross of Laws.
It's people whose sole purpose is testing out the laws that we have as humans or universal laws and going around asking, ‘Which laws can we break? Which laws are outdated? Which ones do we not need anymore? Which ones, as a society, do we need?’ There's over a 192 different Incarnation Crosses, so that’s your most unique part of your chart, but I have a couple clients with that Incarnation Cross. One is actually a lawyer, and the other one is not a lawyer at all. She’s like the antithesis of a lawyer almost, but it makes sense for her because she's such a rebel, and she's always questioning why people are doing things the way that they're doing them. It's always so fascinating how an Incarnation Cross can show up in different people, but you can still see how it is their purpose and how they're using it.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. Have you heard the news about my upcoming writing workshop? I’d love for you to join me as I work to realize my dream of helping people share their personal experiences and achieve a new level of sexual freedom. The workshop is only $16 (because 16 is my lucky number), so you don’t have much to lose. Feel free to reach out with any questions by replying to this newsletter or emailing me at yesmisstrix@gmail.com. See you there ;)