Understanding Multiple Sclerosis Through the Lens of Human Design
In this month’s series, we interview Karen Curry Parker regarding multiple sclerosis and human design. Karen is an international speaker and bestselling author of “Understanding Human Design The New Science of Astrology: Discover Who You Really Are.” Her personal development firm uses Human Design to help her clients discover their unique gifts and best strategies to create a healthier, wealthier, and most fulfilling life. Karen, a former nurse, has also developed a program, “Healing by Human Design” to help people get to the heart of their pain: physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual.
What is Human Design
Human Design is a personality assessment tool based on your date, time and place of birth. It incorporates Eastern and Western Astrology synthesizing it with the I’Ching, the Kabbalah, the Hindu Chakra System, and Quantum Physics. The result is an amazing tool that allows us to understand our unique blueprint and way of being in the world.
Human Design helps us understand how each of us is meant to use our energy in the world, how each of us best takes decisions, what our gifts and talents are, where we might lose sight of ourselves and become ill, and our potential for healing.
Human Design and Chronic Disease
Through the lens of Human Design, one of the possible root causes of chronic disease is that we spend too much energy being who we are not. Society, our family’s genetic code, our experiences, and our collective beliefs about who we ‘should be’ mold our behaviors and ways of being. When these behaviors and ways of being don’t fit our energy blueprints, they end up requiring our bodies to spend excessive energy trying to hold up an allusion or mask that isn’t us. If one holds this mask for too long, the body burns out. Human Design helps us discover what is our unique energy blueprint so that we can live more in accord with who we are meant to be.
One of the things that Human Design teaches us is that there is no one size fits all formula – for living well, for health, for ways to get burned out, or for getting particular diseases.
Multiple Sclerosis and Human Design
In the case of human design and multiple sclerosis, there might be tendencies in common yet each chart is individual. Each person’s chart can show us where that particular person might spend energy being someone they are not, This conflict can lead to disease and burnout. The chart can also show us a person’s individual formula for what their bodies require (time to rest, joy, time alone, etc.) to work optimally.
Here are a few examples:
Gate 49 the Body Barometer
In the chart example below of someone diagnosed with MS, this person has gate 29 defined (see the black vertical line coming out of the red box in the lower-center of the chart). A person with this gate has an extreme body barometer. This means that their bodies will tell them very clearly, “Hey, I’m done. This is too much.” (while someone without this gate defined might not have such an immediate body response when they’ve done too much).
The Defined Will Center
This same chart also has a defined (small triangle on the right) Will Center. Interestingly enough, people with defined Will Centers absolutely need consistent cycles of rest. If they save their vacation time for later and overwork without taking any breaks, they will become extremely depleted. This center is the center of vital aspects of the immune system. When those with this center defined don’t give themselves consistent cycles of rest (play and deep rest not working on your computer in the backyard or laying on the coach worrying about work), they can burn out. This kind of burnout is not just mental (I hate my job), but physical (I have no energy to keep doing this).
In Human Design, areas in our chart that are white or “undefined,” are areas where we can absorb other people’s identity and lose connection to who we are. We can live other people’s stories rather than our own.
The Undefined Sacral Center
The next example charts of multiple sclerosis and human design below have undefined Sacral Centers (central box second from the bottom). 30% of the general population have an undefined sacral. This is the center for workforce and life force energy. Because it is white in so many of the charts of people diagnosed with MS, the majority of those with MS “borrow” or absorb other people’s energy. Borrowing energy feels awesome, yet it’s unsustainable as it is not one’s own. If you have an undefined sacral and try to work like you see so many people around you – working from 9 to 5 and trying to prove yourself through your hard work and sacrifice – you will burn yourself out midway through life. This usually happens around 35 to 40 years of age, sometimes earlier. Those that try to be workhorses when they do not have a defined Sacral Center will eventually find themselves struggling to get out of bed because their bodies will not collaborate. They are wiped out (this kind of fatigue could be what many describe as the “MS sleeps”).
As Karen points out in the interview, a 2-week vacation is not enough if you have run yourself into the ground in this way. This might result in long-term need for rest and restoration. It oftentimes takes as long to get unburned out after getting burned out in this way. This is not just resting the body, while your mind runs a mile a minute, but a total rest of body, mind, and spirit.
One of our struggles in society is that we’ve related self-worth with work. Society has erroneously said those with Sacral Centers defined have worth (70% of society) and those that don’t have it defined, aren’t. What is beautiful about Human Design is that it teaches us:
- How to get off the treadmill of societal expectations
- Define our worth and our unique value
- Learn how and when to share our unique contributions correctly.
There is No Formula to Why We get Illness
Just as Human Design teaches us how unique we are, in our energy, in how we decide, and in our values and gifts, it also lets us understand that there isn’t one reason or formula for why we get sick. According to Karen and her experience:
- Some people have thrown into the adventure of some kind of illness into their life path as part of their soul’s journey.
- Sometimes people get ill because it’s the marker that they are out of sync and not being their true selves.
- Sometimes it’s something they’ve agreed to live out to clear their family system from this energy
- Sometimes it’s literally the toxins in their environment. These don’t necessarily have anything to do with mindset or behaviors, but just an unfortunate series of events.
The No-Formula Model for Healing
“There is no one formula for healing as there is no-one else like you,” says Karen Curry. She advises us to listen to different modalities and if we don’t resonate with them, don’t use them!
Know you are not an accident. We all have a unique place in the cosmos. That occupation that you fill IS your contribution. Don’t burn yourself out trying to find that one thing that you have to do – a single significant life purpose. According to Human Design, your being and maximizing the full expression of yourself is the purpose.
Your Unique Formula for Healing Multiple Sclerosis and Human Design
Using the lens of Human Design, to find your unique formula for healing MS:
- Start following the things that you do that make you feel better. We are so conditioned to think that it has to be hard work and that we will need to sacrifice. In Karen’s practice, she constantly asks her clients “Does that feel good?”. If the answer is “yes” at that moment, then she asks them to do more of it. If It’s “no” then stop. Sometimes the body just needs a couch day. If being on the couch feels really good and we are open to experience a couch day, then we can benefit from that experience.
- Explore the beliefs behind the guilt, resistance, and should’s that are keeping you from following what feels good. If we are in resistance – feel guilty because it feels so good, or decide we ‘should be doing something else because we’ve bought into someone else’s formula – then we won’t benefit from the experience.
- Study your Human Design chart and understand your unique blueprint, especially how you are meant to use your energy, your decision strategy, and what areas to address that might be affecting your multiple sclerosis.
- Work with some kind of energy psychology techniques such as EFT, NLP, and hypnotherapy to unprogram and reprogram your beliefs.
- Support the process with subtle body therapies. Use modalities such as acupuncture or energy healing to stabilize the energy as you continue to make cognitive and emotional shifts.
- Give yourself time. It’s not hard, but it does take time.
Resources Multiple Sclerosis and Human Design
If you are interested in Multiple Sclerosis and Human Design, start by getting your free chart and reading material by visiting Karen Curry Parkers’s site, www.understandinghumandesign.com.
Visit Eva M Clark‘s Healing Multiple Sclerosis Program and considering doing one-on-sessions. Eva has been trained by Karen Curry Parker and incorporates Human Design in her practice.
Read and watch our Creating Health presentation to discover the formulas that work for you and your symptoms of MS. Remember, it doesn’t have to be hard and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all.
If you would like to receive interviews of healing practitioners and techniques for working through multiple sclerosis, subscribe to our newsletter.
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