193 | Why You Feel Constant Pressure and What Your Root Center Is Telling You

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You feel like you need to figure everything out right now.

So you keep moving and doing, trying to get ahead of it.

In this episode, I’m breaking down the root center in Human Design and why that constant pressure you feel in your body doesn’t actually mean something is wrong.

The pressure isn’t telling you what to do.  It’s just pushing you to do something.

And when you’re not aware of it, you start making decisions just to relieve the feeling, not because they’re actually aligned.

We talk about pressure, awareness, and what it actually looks like to slow down and move from clarity instead of urgency.

In this episode, we cover:

• What the root center is and how it creates pressure
• Why pressure creates urgency but not direction
• The difference between moving for relief vs. moving for expansion
• How people with undefined root centers can feel amplified pressure that isn’t even yours
• Why reacting quickly often leads to burnout and inconsistent decisions
• Simple ways to regulate, slow down, and start working with the pressure

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Episode 60 | Understanding Your Emotional Wave(s) within Human Design (with special guest Carmen Tuleta)

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Transcript

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The Pressure to Figure Everything Out

Erin Gray 0:00

Are you feeling like you need to figure everything out right now in your business? Like it's there's this sense of pressure or urgency. Like no matter how much you accomplish on your to-do list, there's always more to complete. This overall feeling, a sense of feeling of unease. And today, what I'm gonna do is we're gonna dive into the root center in human design. I'm gonna share why this happens, regardless of whether you're defined, undefined, or open and what we can do to work with it rather than using it against us. Welcome back to Your Money, Your Rules podcast. So this is gonna be more of an advanced podcast. So if you're new to human design, you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say human design. I'm gonna put a couple of links in the show notes for you to go back and to listen to first before you start to dive in here. For me, human design is a tool that I use with myself and my clients to help them understand themselves better. And in the beginning, for myself, what I had to do is I had to use human design more frequently because I was learning more about myself. And I was using human design to confirm what I was feeling internally. So think about it kind of like similar to bumpers and bowling, right? As you're diving deeper into yourself, learning more about yourself, how your energy moves, how you're meant to lead. Sometimes what we do is we use external things to confirm what we already know to be true about ourselves, right? This is why when I say things to clients and I know what their human design chart is and I and I make comments, they're like, Yes, that's so true. Yes, that's exactly how I am. Yes, right, because I'm already confirming what they know to be true about themselves. But we sometimes use external things like human design because we haven't yet built up the self-confidence in ourselves to trust ourselves for what is actually coming through. This isn't a problem. It's a process that I think a lot of us actually go through until we are just so tuned in and tapped in to ourselves internally.

What the Root Center Actually Does

Erin Gray 1:45

So in human design, the root center is at the very bottom of the chart and it is called the center for adrenaline or pressure. It's a very pressure-oriented center. It's this driver that helps us get things done, which is awesome when it is balanced and we're connected to it and when we know how to use it to enhance our experience. But when we don't and we aren't aware of what is actually happening inside of our bodies, it feels like we are constantly under pressure. And this pressure can feel so intense in our bodies. Like I've had clients explain this to me. You know, they're like, it feels so intense in the body, which I've experienced this as well, that because of this intense pressure, we take action to relieve the pressure. And those actions, from what I have found, they don't always actually bring us what we want. It's more like a what I call a moving away from energy versus a moving towards. And what I mean by that is when you want relief, when you want to stop feeling a certain way, when you want to, when you don't like how something feels, you're gonna do something to just get rid of that feeling versus when you're moving from expansion, when you're moving from where you're already going, that is a very different energy and action taken from that place is very different. It's like the fear-based decision or action taking versus expansion. So let's just use this as an example. If you're feeling pressure in your business with all the things that you have to do, all of the moving parts and the growth of your business, instead of slowing down, actually getting clear, feeling what needs to be felt, examining what is driving this pressure, you might think, oh, I just need to hire more people or something to relieve the pressure. It's actually going to add more. I don't like using the word chaos, but that's the word that comes to mind chaos or overwhelm to the mix because now you have more people, you have more payroll. Maybe you haven't thought everything out, right? This is just an example. So when we aren't as in tune with the root center, it's going to feel like when we take action, it's going to feel like it's relief. It's not going to feel like expansion. And those are two very different energies. And I think one of the things that most people do not understand about the root center is that it doesn't tell you what to do. It just creates the pressure to do something, right? So we might be feeling this pressure, but if you aren't clear on where you're going, what you actually want to create, then you're going to do things to relieve it versus being more intentional. So let's talk about being defined or undefined. And I'm not going to include open here, but because it kind of falls in line with undefined. But so here we go. Defined center will, it's going to be colored in your chart. You're going to have consistent pressure to get things done because this center, it pulses on and off. So you may not always feel this pressure to be on, right? Because if it's in one of those off cycles, you're not going to feel that pressure. And you're going to know your energy is turned on when things feel correct for you, right? When you have that energy and that pressure on, it's going to feel if you're in that, like it's going to feel good for you. The timing is going to be correct for you. You know it's going to be time to act.

Relief vs. Expansion (And Why It Matters)

Erin Gray 4:50

And I think one of the biggest things that we can do as entrepreneurs and humans, for that matter, is to get so clear on how we're feeling and notice if we are moving forward from that expansive place or if we're trying to relieve or to get away from a feeling that we are feeling. If you have an undefined root center, like I do, you're probably going to experience the feeling and I feel this way. And what the more that I have brought my body back online, the more connected I am to myself and to energy in my clients. I sense this in my clients. And I've had to stop myself and ask, like, is this energy even mine? I'm feeling such intense pressure in my body. And what has come from that is, oh my goodness, it's not even my pressure. I'm feeling my clients' pressure. So really starting to get very clear on asking yourself, is this energy mine or somebody else's? So we get, you know, as an undefined root center, we experience this feeling of pressure to get things done because if we aren't aware, we're going to take on, like I said, amplify the energy of others, of those with a defined root center. And this shows up like having a never-ending to-do list, not giving yourself breaks, rushing through just to be done to get rid of the pressure. It can also look like not taking care of what you need to because you feel overwhelmed. Like it just feels like almost too much to even get started. So you don't even start at all. And this is why I think understanding your chart, helping your employees understand their chart, or at least just suggesting that they need to learn some about human design so that they can better support themselves and then you can support them is so valuable. I always encourage clients, no matter whether you're defined or undefined, to move your body when you're feeling the pressure. This moves the energy and it allows you to slow down and ask, like move your body, get into your body, and then slow down. Ask yourself questions to gain more clarity. Name what you are feeling, like allow yourself to have some separation from it. Also recognize that you don't have to do anything about it in the current moment. A skill set that I really work with my clients on is sitting with the discomfort or what I call this turbulence. Many of us have not developed the skill set yet because we don't like that feeling in our bodies. So we want to do something to get rid of it. So we call someone, we take some action to relieve it, we drink or we overwork or we tune out and we watch Netflix. Like we want the pressure to go away. And what we need to be doing

Defined vs. Undefined Root Centers

Erin Gray 7:12

is actually practicing and allowing it to be there, to tune in even more, to go deeper. Like when our when our body feels unsafe or when it is feeling like that pressure that we're not used to feeling, we want to do something. And a lot of times it is a ignoring, right? A repress, a repressing or suppressing versus tune in even more. Like that's your invitation to go even deeper with yourself. So if you're making decisions from more of that relief, right, to relieve the pressure, like I mentioned before, that's not the energy that we want to be moving from. This is a practice, this is a skill set. This is you getting very intimate with your body and learning to connect with it and see what you are feeling and what it needs. Only take action once you are clean and clear. And how you will know this is by how you feel in your body. Also, with your authority, I've talked about that on um a couple of episodes. I think episode 60 talks about the different types of emotional authority or just authority in human design. So that's how you're meant to make decisions. But for me, I'm meant to ride my wave, right? I know how I feel in my body when it feels good. There's just like this knowing. It's not high. It's like, it's not an I'm so excited. It's also not like, oh, I don't know if this is gonna work. It just feels neutral. There's no emotion with it. It just feels like a knowing. And you've got to for many of us, because half of us have an emotionally defined solar plexus, half of us actually need to ride our wave. And what I was telling a client earlier is that most of us rush that wave riding experience. My wave is much longer than what I thought it was. So big decisions actually take me longer than what I had given myself in the past because I wasn't as in tune with my body. Okay, that's on emotional authority. That's a whole nother thing. I digress. So give yourself permission to slow down. I think we have normalized as a society, rushing, hustling, as if to say going slow isn't valuable. And a question I have for you to journal on is what is the value? And I'm air quoting of going slow. Like really ponder what is that value? I think we value speed, but what's the value of going slow? So the root center, it always wants release and relief. And rushing is the quickest way that we can get to that. But that doesn't help us grow from a place of calm and confidence, and it doesn't help us actually run our business the way we want to, right? We don't want to be running our business from a very reactive, survival-based place. So things to recognize when we move from relief probably burnout will ensue. Decisions where we acted impulsively instead of neutral or from a place of neutrality and being very calm and clear. You might have inconsistent strategy because you're doing something like you just want the relief, you want the pressure to stop. So you're just changing things constantly in your business. You're not giving anything time to cultivate and actually see it come to fruition. You might also have a loss of trust in yourself, right? If you're constantly second-guessing, if you're not tapping into your body, if you're thinking the strategy and the thing outside of you is what's going to create the calmness within

Stop Reacting: Regulate Before You Decide

Erin Gray 10:08

you, you're constantly going to be searching for and doing different things externally to try to feel that way. And it's very reactive energy. So we want to embody calm, intentional, confident energy, even when our root center, no matter if we're defined or undefined, even when we're feeling that pressure. And for me, what I had to recognize is that nothing has gone wrong. This is just part of being a human. This is part of, you know, the way that my energy moves. There's nothing to fix here. All of this is happening. It's fine. What we're feeling, this pressure in our bodies. Like I had to like use kind of not mantras, but I guess so affirmations of like, I can feel pressure in my body and I can still be okay. Every human experiences pressure in their body, like something to neutralize it, to get used to, like, hey, this is pressure again. Hey, friend, how are you? Come sit with me. Not a problem. No worries. Everything's fine. We're learning about ourselves. This is an opportunity to see how our energy moves. So then the question becomes how can I use this energy to support myself? And how can I let go of what isn't mine? So when we stop rushing to relieve the pressure and we respond from a place of alignment and congruence, everything in our business, everything in our lives starts to change. And that I think is what we're really after, right? Like we all want to have calm and peaceful. And that's not to say you're not gonna have obstacles, that you're not gonna feel the lower vibration emotions. I'm not saying any of that. I'm just saying that on your baseline, you're gonna feel calm and you're gonna feel more at peace versus this reactive energy. I have made so many decisions, which I wasn't aware of at the time, but so many decisions from pressure. And it's led to bad, uh, I don't want to say bad decisions. Let's just say not the I bet ideal, because I do believe everything works out, but like not necessarily the best decisions that like I could have chosen to pause, right? To allow the pressure to make an intuitive decision versus more of a heady decision. It also has resulted in me having burnout multiple times because of that pressure to keep going, to keep pushing, right? Versus sometimes you just have to stop. Sometimes the answer is to let

The Power of Slowing Down

Erin Gray 12:12

go. Sometimes the answer is to just let it be for a bit. So this is why I created my holistic advisory support for entrepreneurs, because I didn't have this kind of support when I was running my family's business. And I know how heavy that pressure felt. I wasn't aware of my human design back then. I didn't know what was happening in my body, and I definitely was not aware of my body. I was all in the 3D of the logical mind versus being in my body and having someone that I could talk to about what I was actually feeling and having someone to guide me from more of that 30,000-foot view versus being very reactionary. So, in this work that I do with clients, I focus on helping you regulate, right, your nervous system, your pressure that you're feeling, realigning you with your decision. These are asking, I ask really amazing questions to get you to pause and think to tap back into your body and build a business and grow your business that actually supports you, right? Looking at the full picture, which includes your energy, which includes your nervous system, and looking at everything holistically, right? Because we want to compartmentalize, oh, this is our business. This is what my body's feeling, this is what so-and-so is telling me. But like everything integrates, everything is as a whole. We can't, we can no longer, not that we ever did it successfully, but we can no longer compartmentalize things in our business. It all works together, it all starts with us. So if you're ready to grow differently, feel different in your body, look at your business more holistically. I would love to support you. I take on a certain limited amount of clients every year because this work is so impactful and deep. I go really deep with clients. So if this is something that resonates with you, you can

Working With Pressure (Not Against It)

Erin Gray 14:00

find the details in the show notes. So I want to leave you with really first and foremost, I would start with, okay, what is my root center? Do I have a defined or an undefined root center? Go back, listen to some of those episodes that I did previously so that you can get more information and understand your root center and then start playing with this week. How do I actually feel in my body? How often am I feeling pressure? Where is this pressure in my body? What does it feel like? What am I wanting to do when I feel this pressure? What does not having pressure feel like in your body? Like you have to be willing to play with this. Like, I can't be in your body for you. This is the work you've got to do on your own, but I can guide you to like what does that actually feel like in your body so that you can start feeling what that feels like, being more tuned in and tapped in so you can recognize, right? Because what we are doing is increasing your awareness. I was just telling the client this earlier today. You know, when you are increasing your awareness, what's going to happen is in the very beginning, it's going to happen after the fact. You're going to go through the whole thing and you're going to be like, oh my gosh, I see what I did here, right? But the more you do it, the more you practice it, the more you become tuned in, tapped into your body, you're going to recognize it in the moment. And then you're going to get even quicker at it or more efficient at it, if you want to call it. And you're going to see when it before it even like you're feeling the pressure and before you make a decision, then you're going to take note of it. So it's not that it never stops. I think that's a miss or a fallacy that that we think happens. Like, no, it's it's always going to be there. When we can make peace with, we'll always feel pressure, but how do we work with it? How do we move from such an empowered place versus letting it drive the bus? Okay, that's all I have for you today. I will see you in the next episode.