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- Herausgeber: WS
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Serie: Human Design for Spiritual Entrepreneurs
- Sprache: Englisch
Have you ever looked at your Human Design Chart, and wondered my ladies at? In this book, we will look at the energies of Ceres, Vesta, Juno and Pallas (among others!) represented in the asteroid belt through the lens of Human Design and how they impact you as an entrepreneur.
We will also do a deep dive, unpacking conditioning by looking at wounds and shadows of the individual and collective like the Birth and Witch wound by reflecting on your shadow and gift energies.
This is a book about a love affair with yourself. It's about looking your ugly in the face and meeting it with love. It's about standing strong in your beauty and ultimately realizing they are both the same: The beauty that is your spirit, having a dynamic human experience on this planet we call Earth.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 206
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Copyright © 2023 by Carmen Farrell-Knapp
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by copyright law.
Contents
Intoduction
BFN. About one in four of you will have been exposed to this acronym. It's been in and out of my life for about nine years, and it's been heavy in the last few months. In December, I boldly stated that I was on track to publish this book at the end of December (2022) or early January (2023.) I finished writing, and it was all done but the editing. Then a miracle happened.
Jeff and I have been trying to get pregnant for almost a decade. We’ve done all the fertility things: IVF, IUI, injectable hormones, early morning ultrasounds for days in a row, all the endless and invasive tests, the weird energy treatments, diet changes, acupuncture, and finally, donor embryos.
Doing fertility cycles, especially back-to-back cycles, creates a rollercoaster that segments your life into two alternating two-week chunks. The first one is high. You’re hopped up on hormones, sleep deprived from the early appointments (in my case, a 2-hour drive before those 7 am ultrasounds), and jazzed out on all the emotions. The seasoned fertility pros know you have to stay up through this phase.
You can tell who the newbies are at the clinic. They are actually authentically hopeful, excited, and nervous. The rest of us are guarded. We know we must stay positive, but we also know that the low is much harder if you go too high. So, you manage your emotions, which is a challenge no matter what cocktail of hormones you’re on. And you feel guilty. So guilty.
You put on the happy mask for your partner, the nurses, and the people who know what’s going on. Those who don’t know what’s happening are even harder because you don’t want to say too much. You don’t want to be awkward that way or overshare with a client, or casual acquaintance, even though you feel the need to justify why you’re emotional or have scheduling restraints they have to deal with.
You put on the mask because energy matters, and you subscribe to the concept that thoughts create your reality, including physical limitations. Which, BTW, is a dangerous little loop: Thinking that maybe your thoughts have created a BFN (Big Fat Negative) month after month, year after year.
If I’m speaking to your situation, please don’t do this. It's self-flagellation. You’ve already got enough pain and trauma happening. Don’t add this to your plate, OK? You can’t meditate your way to controlling your body. Not for this, at least. As I’m writing this, I feel like a hypocrite because I have to dance with this thought loop over and over. I know I have permission to let go of the idea that I can think or do something to change the outcome. If you need permission, I’m giving it to you, and I understand that it is So. Much. Easier. Said. Than. Done.
The second two-week phase is all about the unknown. You go from daily appointments, knowing all your numbers in minute detail (Who knew that you could read the blood pressure in your uterine artery?) to nothing: no appointments, no information, no reassuring measuring of follicles and lining and hormone levels. You’re told to go home and relax. This is known as the two-week wait. It is the longest two weeks of your life.
This time, it coincided with Christmas, which is already an emotionally charged time. My family has cycles of blow-ups. We’re overdue for some drama on the family front. Thankfully it didn’t happen this year because I don’t think I could have managed it. Still, it was enough to navigate the underlying theme of longing that accompanies all holidays focusing on family and kids.
Finally, the wait was over. We could test to see if it worked. Two days before the sun moved into Gate 38:The Gate of the Fighter, we found out we would be parents.
Shit got real. The blow-up I was expecting in my extended family happened in my relationship. The things we’d both been tolerating and letting slide as a twosome suddenly felt urgent to express and work through. Things we couldn’t keep doing if we were going to add an infant into our household came out with a vengeance. This cold war continued for two weeks until I got food poisoning bad enough to land in the hospital overnight. We both realized that being right wasn’t as important as being together for our little one.
For a few weeks, things normalized. Jeff and I are on the same page the majority of the time. We are solid, stable, calm, and peaceful. I’m improving at letting his emotional wave alone and not buying into it. It's hard not to take things personally with those you love the most when the wave is triggered. Now, add pregnancy hormones, amplified by medications, because fertility pregnancies are special like that. Wowza. It’s a miracle we came out of that one alive.
Jeff and I have talked about how Dads go through the same losses as Mom’s do. While I take the brunt of the physical price of the fertility journey, he is often left out. When we have losses and disappointments, I often forget that he is also experiencing them. He doesn’t have the same support as I do when things go wrong. It's taboo enough for women to talk about these subjects. We often don’t even consider the social structures that keep men from processing their emotions and getting support from family and friends.
The first sign of trouble was at our eight-week scan. We knew something was wrong when we had to wait for the doctor to get the results. Typically, the nurses can tell you what you need to know, so things aren't good if you have to see the doctor.
The fetal heart rate was low. Really low. Jeff is a 1-3 profile, so he went down the rabbit hole of Dr. Google. The only positive outcomes for a fetal heart rate of 82 were associated with the embryo being younger than estimated. This didn’t apply to us since we knew exactly when conception would have occurred. There was no way our babe was two weeks younger than we thought.
We began grieving. A week later, before the following scan, we knew we had lost the pregnancy. Holywood makes out like miscarriage is this big dramatic event that happens suddenly. You’re living your life one moment; the next, you gush blood like your water is breaking. While I have experienced that sudden, unexpected loss, this wasn’t that. It was characterized by so much waiting.
In my discussions with friends, family, and others in the fertility space, you usually know it's coming. You know that there is no heartbeat. No progression. No life. And the worst part is that you have to wait until nature takes its course or your hormone levels normalize enough that the medication will work as intended. It was a 3-week process from the no heartbeat scan to the ultrasound that confirmed that all tissue had cleared.
Ironically, I’m in the middle of writing a book about feminine energy and wounding. We’ve been in the fertility space so long I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t trying to create a life. The days of sex for the pure animal enjoyment of it seem so far away. Even after good sex, you still wonder and hope that maybe a miracle occurred. Don’t even get me started on baby-making sex, or “business sex,” as we started referring to it.
I share my story openly for many reasons. One of them is to normalize the struggle. One in four couples struggles with fertility. I can guarantee that, whether you know it or not, someone in your life is or has dealt with pregnancy or infant loss or struggled to get pregnant. Maybe that person is you. To whom I say, soul sister, I see your struggle, I feel your pain, and I understand how goddamn strong you are. I know the difficulties of this road and the lack of successful outcomes that can make you feel weak, exhausted, and futile. I know you compartmentalize your life and success so that the pain of one area doesn’t stain the others. I want to convey that you are worthy. You are a feminine powerhouse, no matter the state of the nursery.
I feel vulnerable about this book. I've shared some of my personal reflections and stories that I'd usually prefer to keep hidden. But they are important topics and ones that contribute to the dialogue of feminine energetics. I belong to a peer support group for women in business, and was discussing that I had this book ready to publish, and I couldn't pull the pin. They asked me what the quality of the resistance was, and it all came spilling out, and at the core of it was the fear of being seen. We discussed the implications of being an entrepreneur and fearing visibility, and I asked them to keep me accountable to publish before our next meeting. So, here we go. It's raw, it's rough, but it's done.
To me, creation is creation. There is something eerily similar about my struggles as an entrepreneur to fertility. What I love about Human Design is that it gives me a framework for looking at my wounding and how it affects my outcomes in life. It helps me find meaning in the struggle. It helps me love myself, knowing I am a dynamic human who shows up on a spectrum of good, bad, and neutral. It helps me clarify who I’m here to help, how I’m meant to show up, and what lessons and experiences I have to draw from.
This book isn’t about leveraging your energy to be more successful. Although, that is often the side effect. This is a book about a love affair with yourself. It's about looking your ugly in the face and meeting it with love. It's about standing strong in your beauty and ultimately realizing they are both the same: The beauty that is your spirit, having a dynamic human experience on this planet we call Earth.
How to Explore Your Feminine Energy
Feminine Energy in HD and Business
Have you ever looked at the Human Design chart and wondered where my ladies at? The feminine energy of Venus and the Moon are the only significant representations in your chart, and let’s be real. Venus? Please. So many more substantial female archetypes got passed up because she was pretty. This book will explore some of the most relevant female energies that could impact your chart and modify your energy. We will examine how the deeply ingrained cultural narrative engages with your innate, powerful feminine energy and conditioning from the perspective of people's common wounds that can impact business and money.
I have a little disclaimer. This book isn’t actually about proper Human Design. I’m applying the concept of Human Design to asteroids and other celestial bodies. I also use the Human Design concept of “conditioning” and look at it through the lens of shadow work and the psychological wounds everyone has to some degree. Like all of my work, I mash together all the concepts and practices that I have found helpful. I take the perspective of Human Design and Gene Keys and run with it. I’m pulling from energy healing practices (I’ve studied too many to name,) my formal learning in education and experience as a teacher, my work counseling women who have experienced violence, quantum physics, and all of the experimentation that my 3 line has brought me to heal my wounds. Although, I’m not claiming that the healing work is ever done. Healing our wounds helps us reach the next level in business and life.
Like all of the books in this series, you must use the basic Human Design tools of strategy and authority. It’s how you learn how to use and leverage your baseline energy. When you are aligned with your energy, you can show up in your life and business intentionally and powerfully. If you aren’t familiar with these basic tools, check out my other book, “Human Design for Coaches and Course Creators.” It will help you solidify an essential entrepreneurial skill: decision-making.
I also suggest that you have a good understanding of your sun and earth gates, and how they influence your energy. The sun and earth gates represent 70% of your energetic expression, so if you’re not seeing the results you want, go back to basics: Strategy and Authority and the Sun and Earth Gates.
If you’ve chosen to become an entrepreneur, you’ve decided to tackle some of your deepest wounds. You can’t coast along, ignoring your beliefs, patterns, and trauma if you want to grow and thrive as a business owner. I think many people are drawn to entrepreneurship to give them a vehicle for growth and learning. To be prosperous, you must figure out how to integrate many pieces of your shadow. Money, self-worth, confidence, ability to communicate, getting out of victim mode, letting things go, de-sensitizing your triggers, and any trauma you are holding on to as part of your identity will all come up at one point during your entrepreneurial journey. To get to the next level, you must figure out how to stop resisting and judging those pieces of yourself. It becomes a journey of self-love and acceptance through the vehicle of entrepreneurship.
Part of my soul’s work in this life is to work with women who have experienced gender-based violence. This work has given me an appreciation for people’s capacity to overcome extreme traumas. It has also given me an understanding of how systems of oppression can keep people stuck. The fact is, the world isn’t a level playing field. It is uncomfortable but valuable work to look at our privilege. I want to challenge you to unpack privilege as you read and reflect. I believe this is the collective work of society if we want to evolve as a human race. Everyone benefits when individuals look at the systems of privilege and oppression that create their reality. I think we are in a changing time, and those who can navigate the collective, tribal, and individual layers of how our society operates will be the ones to create better systems, relationships, and prosperity.
Let me explain some of my methodologies as it creates a framework for exploring the divine feminine, shadow work, and our strengths. I am deeply feminist. I know I will lose some of you here by declaring it, but I’m ok with that. It affects many elements of my work, but the most relevant concept to you and your consumption of this material are that words matter. Culture is shaped by language, and our language is entrenched in colonialism, oppression, and patriarchy.
Our words are what creates reality. Thoughts are words that we say to ourselves. When your self-talk is negative, your reality will usually match. So, I think addressing the underlying source of thoughts is essential. Which are the identity you adopt, your belief systems, and the unconscious world that drives your actions, reactions, and emotions.
I use a trauma-informed approach in my work. Everyone has trauma. Our body stores the memory of pain (physical or emotional) as a survival mechanism. The brain wants to avoid intense pain because it believes you must avoid it for survival. Here’s the thing: trauma is not about the situation that happened. It is the way our brain has stored the memory of that pain. It is about the coping mechanisms, thought patterns, and emotional reactions resulting from the initial “trauma.” What’s beautiful about this is that we can address trauma without changing the situation.
My work with trauma survivors translates directly to helping people excel and thrive because the mechanism is the same. Your brain will always perceive change as a threat to your survival. But… you need to be able to change and adapt as a business owner. It’s the catch-22 of growth. Your brain wants to keep you in familiar territory, but the growth and success you want to experience are new and different. You have to get good at recognizing your tells when you’re in this kind of resistance. Being able to recognize when and how you are triggered is the first step in being able to move beyond your current patterns and experiences. By addressing trauma, you can approach things in a way that isn’t motivated by pain and survival. Imagine recognizing thoughts, emotions, and patterns as pieces of programming that no longer serve you. Once you spot these incidences of conditioning, you can refocus on consciously creating the life, business, and relationships you want to experience.
I’m going to take a moment to pause and ask you to think about what healing means to you. It means a lot of things, and I suspect everyone has their own definition of healing. There is this sneaky concept that many people hold around healing that there is a destination. A point at which you are healed, and there is no more pain and suffering. Hallelujah. While that can be true for physical healing, mental and emotional healing operate differently. This isn’t new information for most people reading this, but it is often subconsciously how people approach healing. For example, someone might go hard at journaling and meditation for a time to “heal the money wound,” thinking that it will lead to experiencing more money.
You can’t take emotional healing by storm. Sure, breakthroughs happen, but to hold at that energetic level, you must integrate healing into your belief systems, subconscious thought patterns, and identity. The body has to integrate the new truth before real change can happen. This takes repetition of the new beliefs that support your identity as someone who experiences wealth (or whatever the “goal” is) and requires the actions that will lead you there. In this way, healing and learning have a lot in common.
I guess it’s time for me to offer my definition of healing. It is when you can face something with love that previously you had met with resistance or fear. You can’t approach healing like a horse trade; if I give you (shadow) attention, you will stop preventing me from attracting clients. Deal? Shadow work doesn’t operate on a tit-for-tat system. Don’t throw this book out yet! Most of you are trying to grow a business and thought this book was the answer. And it is. But not in the way you think.
I want to talk about how our nervous systems work for a minute. It’s essential to understand the mechanism when you start to unpack some of your patterns and the trauma that shapes behavior. We’re going to start with the Vagus nerve. The Vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that comes right out of your skull without going through your spinal cord. This is one of the reasons that people with spinal cord injuries can survive; because the cranial nerves are responsible for the critical functions of the organs.
The Vagus nerve is responsible for vital bodily functions like heart rate, digestion, breathing, and reflex actions like sneezing. It has sensory and motor functions, providing sensation for the area around the heart, lungs, and abdomen and creating movement in neck muscles that swallow and allow you to speak. The nerve also regulates our fight or flight/rest and digest functions. You have probably heard of three responses you can have when your survival mechanisms are triggered: Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
In 1994, Stephen Porges identified a third autonomic nervous system function of the Vagus nerve responsible for social engagement. As human beings, historically, survival has depended on the ability to be part of the tribe. We are hardwired from birth to read the social cues of the people around us. Polyvagal theory identified a fourth parasympathetic response of fawn, meaning people pleasing is a survival response.
Co-regulation is a natural function when two or more people are in each other’s aura, creating a shared sense of safety or danger. These incidences of co-regulation happen all the time, and you develop patterns around social situations, especially if you have early trauma because your parents were inconsistent or trauma from your lifetime that sensitizes you to certain social cues. There are implications for coaches and people who work 1:1 with clients that you take a leadership role in assisting your clients in regulating their nervous systems.
You’ve probably heard the term “triggered.” Your alarm system has become so sensitive that it triggers a fight/flight/freeze/fawn response with minimal stimulation. For example, let’s say you are paying your bills, and one is $200 more than you expected. Does your heart start to race a bit? Do you have the urge to get up and walk away? Does it make you angry? If the responses your body mounts are intense, more extreme than the situation warrants, or last longer than necessary, we call this autonomic nervous system dysregulation.
Your body constantly scans the environment, your body, and the people around you for signs of danger and safety. When the signs of danger outweigh the signs of safety, it will trigger one of the four survival patterns of Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn. It is normal for people to move between regulated and dysregulated states of the parasympathetic nervous system. It can become problematic if you are triggered into dysregulation by minor stimulus or have trouble moving to a regulated state once you identify that your life isn’t in danger from that little spider.
Trauma occurs when there is “too much too soon, too much for too long, or not enough for too long.” (Duros & Crowley, 2014) The coping strategies that arise from trauma are not always helpful when you aren’t in danger. You’re hardwired to remember trauma because your brain’s priority is survival. It keeps you safe by becoming hyper-sensitive to the environment for things similar to past trauma so that it can initiate a response to keep you alive. This is useful in situations of actual danger, but not so much when you are in a sales conversation where they use a tone or phrase that triggers your nervous system. Or, you don’t post on social media because being visible has attracted dangerous people in the past. Or displaying your authentic self causes your existing social circle to pull away, causing you to give up everything so that you fit in. When you are coming up against self-sabotaging patterns in your business, you’re challenging an old survival pattern.
I need to pause for a moment because the scope of this book does not include healing from severe trauma. My role as a coach is to help people thrive, and it involves talking about trauma, but if you need specialized treatment or medication, please get professional help. My educational background is in education and health care. I have experience as a counselor and a teacher, but I am not a therapist. I have done a lot of work on my own and with others (coaches and professional counselors) to heal my trauma. I am a 3-5 profile, so my experience is anecdotal and experiential.
In the coaching world, you hear a lot about “emotional regulation.” Emotions are often the identifiable cues that your nervous system is dysregulated. When you are trying to create emotional regulation, the first step is to be aware of when you are dysregulated and then unpack the situations, environment, people, and stimulus that triggered the response in the first place. Bringing awareness to what triggers you is often a majority of the work. All of my programs have elements of reflection to help recognize the body’s responses to stress because it creates a vibration in your body that emotions, thoughts, and actions follow. When you’re trying to create results in your business and don’t understand why you are constantly reacting a certain way, chances are it is because it’s triggering a physiological trauma response. If you’re interested in working 1:1 with me or in one of my programs, check out my current offers: www.carmenfarrellknapp.com/workwithme
