Human Design For Real Change And A New Year That Fits | Dr Karen Parker

Ready to trade brittle resolutions for change that actually sticks? We sat down with Dr. Karen Parker to unpack human design as an instruction manual for life—one that teaches you how you are, not what you are. Instead of forcing habits on January 1, we explore timing, identity, and the human design new year as a better container for intention and growth.

We dig into strategy and authority in plain language. Dr Karen shows how asking what you truly want—and why—exposes band-aid goals that drain you and brings the real dream into view. From there, identity work becomes the engine: becoming the person with enough self-worth, capacity, and trust to hold the vision while the how unfolds through aligned opportunities.

We go beyond the chart to include ancestry, epigenetics, and lived experience, revealing how inherited patterns and unmet needs shape the story you tell yourself. Dr Karen shares her research demonstrating that disempowering narratives lower IgA—an immune marker—while creatively rewriting the same story restores immune function toward baseline. Language matters. The throat center’s role in manifestation reminds us that words structure reality, retrain the nervous system, and prime the brain to notice the next right step.

If you’re curious about human design for parenting, creativity, or sustainable wellness—or you’ve felt boxed in by labels—this conversation will catalyze a more fluid, body-led approach to decisions, goals, and change. Listen, subscribe, and leave a review with the one choice you’re ready to test today.

Connect with Dr Karen Parker at https://quantumhumandesign.com/ or on IG at @drkarenparker22

Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah

Transcript

Welcomes, Intros, And Intent

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Hello and welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. My name is Hannah. I get to have one of my favorite conversations today, which is talking about human design with someone that knows way more than you of human design than me, I believe. So Dr. Karen Parker, she uses quantum human design as an integrative and uh integrative wellness researcher. We also are both sacral authorities and manifesting generators. So Karen, you are uh she's a 4-6 sacral manifesting generator for the purposes of this conversation, just to hear mine as well. I'm a 1-3 sacral manifesting generator, but we're gonna talk all things human design in relation to where we are right now on our calendar year, which is the end of January, welcoming in the human design new year. So we have so much fun things to talk about, Karen. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you for coming. And one of my favorite questions is really to let you introduce yourself. So, who do we have the pleasure of learning from today?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

That's always a hard question because I'm old. So, you know, that's a you know, I I my my who I am is a very long story. Um, but I'll tell you, I I like to always start with who am I right now? And who I am right now, probably the part of who I am right now, because there's parts, because there's a lot of different parts of who I am. Uh I'm a grandmother. I am the grandmother of three children, ages six, four, and one. And I have a new grandbaby coming in March. And the reason why I start with that is because becoming a grandmother really cemented in me my vision for why I'm here and what I want to do in this world. And you know, when my I was I had the privilege of being there when my grandchildren were born, and I was the very first person to hold uh my grandchildren when they were born because my daughter had a cesarean and her husband faints at the sight of blood, so I got to be there. Um so um, so when they placed my oldest grandson in my arms, and it was the first time I held a grandbaby, my grandbaby, I like the my understanding of infinity and that whole that idea that the actions that you take, you have to evaluate them through the lens of the next seven generations. Like that just landed. It landed in my body, it landed in my sacral. And and I would say my mission in this world is to leave this world in a state of sustainability, abundance, uh, where we live and create equitably and with justice, and where we are sustainable and where every single being born, every human being born, every baby that is born, is born into the arms of not just a family, but a community that uh serves as a steward for the unfolding of that unique and vital and irreplaceable part of the cosmic plan, so that we are raising children in such a way that we are creating for them exactly what they need to be able to fulfill their full potential. And of course, human design, which I've been teaching and studying and learning for 27, almost 27 years, plays an integral part in that, but it's certainly not the only part of it. It's just a fabulous tool to help us really see each other better. And in terms of especially, you know, raising children, allows us to really be present to our children and serve as stewards for the sacred unfolding of who they are. I'll start there.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

That's the short version. That's so beautiful, and congratulations and congratulations on the baby to come in March. That is so wonderful. And one of the things that I really love about human design too is it's this tool that we can use to better understand ourselves and the people in our lives. And I don't have kids, but I use human design with my niece and nephew often, and I talk to my sister about it, and it's really helped even just the few tools and pieces that I've pulled out from their charts uh understand why they are the way that they are and why they might do the things that they do. So my sister and I always laugh about because they're both manifesting generators, but they have pretty different everything else, uh, my niece and nephew. And so they're they're just so opposite in so many ways, and it makes us laugh. But um, so for those that maybe don't know so much about human design or are are listening to my podcast and hear me talk about human design all the time and still are like, um, I haven't gotten a good foundation of what human design is. Can you explain a little bit about human design and what brought you to learning about it?

New Year Goals Through A Design Lens

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Well, yeah, uh that that is also two long stories. Um, I'll start with the how I got here, and then I'll do the what is human design. So um I found I say human design found me, and it was kind of accidental. I was in 1999 a suburban housewife. I was homeschooling my at the time I had four children, homeschooling my kids. And my husband at the time was a no-motors projector. So for those of you who do know human design, you'll know what that means, which means uh living with me as a manifesting generator and our two manifesting generator sons and our two manif our two generator daughters was creaming him. He was just like completely you know burning him out. And so I sent him to Sedona to go on a spiritual retreat, and he came back with a human design chart. And I he showed me the chart. I remember I was standing in the front yard, the kids were playing, and he showed me this chart, and it was literally like this temple bell went off inside of me. Like, and I know now in hindsight that was my sacral, right? And I just was like, I need to learn everything about this. I don't know what it is, but I need to learn everything about it. And uh so we made the decision very quickly to like within two weeks put the house on the market, which we'd sold right away. We packed everything up, the kids, the cats, the everything we owned, and drove from Houston, Texas to Sedona, Arizona with all these kids to see if we could find somebody to help us learn human design. And um, when we arrived, my youngest son had an ear infection. So I took him to the pediatrician's office. He was about three at the time, and I came out of the pediatrician's office with this kit on my hip, and across the hallway was an office with the human design symbol on the door, the chart on the door. And I thought, well, I'll just go in here. And so I walked in, and behind the desk was a little woman, and she asked me, Oh, did you come for the job? And I said, Yeah. And she hired me there on the spot. And that was actually at that time the headquarters for human design in America, Human Design America. And um I got the opportunity to work with there to study with the founder of the system, Rak Uruhu, and work with him. Um, I got, you know, just an incredible sort of experiential training in human design. And I mean, that's kind of how I fell into it, if you will, or it kind of I just feel like it found me. Um so that was the the how did I get here, right? And what is human design? Well, that's a that's also a really good question. So the way I like to just you know share human design is when we are creating in the world, when we are choosing and deciding, which is usually how we create. We are in the beginning of our lives, usually choosing and deciding based on the stories that we've been told we should follow. So we've internalized in many ways, and and sometimes it's our story, sometimes it's a variation of our story that's been shifted or even sometimes clouded based on our lived experiences. Sometimes it's a story that comes from our families, it's our cultural story, it's our ancestral story. We are creating from a story and choosing based on a story, and that story is the story we've internalized about who we think we are and how we think we are. What most of us learn eventually, either through some kind of cataclysmic event like a divorce or challenges with money or a health event or burnout, which is usually one of the most common entrance points, what we oftentimes learn is that the the decisions that we've been making really haven't been taking us in the direction that our soul, our body, our longing is wanting to go in. And human design, which is a synthesis of Eastern and Western astrology, the Chinese Yi Ching, the Hindu chakra system, Judaic Kabbalah, and quantum physics, basically, it is a system that using your birthday, birth time, and birthplace creates for you a map of how your energy works. It also creates for you a prescription, if you will, for how to get back into your body, reconnect with the wisdom of your body and your authentic self, and to learn to use the body as a vital compass to help you remember what the right choice feels like in my body, what does the not right choice feel like in my body, and it trains you or retrains you how to start making better choices and better decisions based on that alignment between your physical compass, your inner wisdom, the story of who you you were born to fulfill, and the choices that you make in the world. So that choice by choice by choice, you start realigning your life and taking it back into a direction that is the fulfillment of the story that you were born to fulfill. And that's that's a story that you know each and every one of us is very unique to each and every one of us. No one has the same story. So keep it really simple. Human design is a systematic way to explore what story am I telling? And is it the story that I love or is it a story that I want to change?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Oh, I love that. Is it a story that I love, or is is it a story that I want to change? That's that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing all of that. And I love how you're making the connection of human design being this tool that we can tap back into our bodies. We have so many tools these days to tap back into our bodies, whether we use them or not, or whether we know about them or not. But human design was one of the one of the tools that I didn't necessarily find for that purpose right away. I have a pretty significant like background in somatic work, uh, but more from the breath work aspect and meditation and getting into your body that way. And as I dove deeper and deeper into human design, I was like, oh yeah, no, this is actually a really great way that you can tap into your body as well and make decisions. So one of the things that we were talking about before we hit record was how the calendar new year, January 1st, isn't the human design new year, I guess. There we have different new years, right? We have like the Chinese New Year, we have all of these different new years, and um as we learn about them, sometimes we feel that one resonates over the other. So I definitely feel for sure more aligned with the human design or at the Chinese New Year. But um when we're talking about resolutions, New Year's goals, it's a really beautiful time to look at what do I want to change? Where, where do I want to change? How does human design aid us in this whole conversation of New Year's resolutions and goals?

Strategy, Authority, And Body Wisdom

SPEAKER_00 13:27

I love that. And I would say it, and anytime we go through an intentional growth cycle, it can use the information in human design. So I think the the beginning of that conversation is that we have a tendency to try to change our behavior. And we said I was laughing because I'm teaching my 16-year-old how to drive, and we drove by anytime fitness this week. And I'm like, oh my god, there's all these people in there, and usually it's empty, right? I'm like, okay, it's January, right? Um and and you know, so we try to make new habits, we try to, you know, follow through on changing whatever, right? And while sometimes some people can have a modicum of success with that, for most of us we are we are. If you go back to Anytime Fitness in February, it's empty, right? It's in there. So um, and and so when we start to make change, really changing our behavior isn't the first place to make change stick. If we want to make change stick, we have to really explore kind of a different formula for creating. Uh if I was gonna give you the formula, I would say it goes like kind of like this what, why, how, uh, who, and then how, which is a little bit different than I think the direction that we tend to create in. And so one of the things that I would encourage anybody to do is if you're really trying to make change, ask yourself first and foremost, what do you want? What do you want? And that that question alone is probably one of the most challenging questions that people wrestle with because we have a tendency to go for or tell ourselves what I want is, and whatever that is, whatever it is that we think that we want, is oftentimes what I might consider or what I'll call a band-aid solution. We don't like where we are, it doesn't feel good, we we don't have faith that we can actually have what we want. So we go for that in-between thing that we think if we can have that in-between thing, it's gonna facilitate later on down the road that thing we actually want. So let me give you an example. Let's say, let's say you want to write a book, and you really have this idea and maybe even this longing to take three months off, to go somewhere, you know, beautiful. Maybe you want to go to the Caribbean and get a cabin on the beach, or a I guess what do you call those, a a cabana or whatever, not a cabana, but a little thing on the beach, right? Yeah, and that that yeah, thank you. Bungalow. I live in Wisconsin, so it's a foreign vocabulary for me. We don't have bungalows here. So um, so you want to go and and that that's really your dream. Like you've been dreaming all your life about this story that you want to write, this novel that you want to write. And in your mind, you've been saying, Well, I'd like to, but I can't because I don't have the money, because I don't know. So you instead of saying, What I want is to really go for creating this book, you say, Well, what I want is to get this side hustle and work really, really hard and save$10,000 so that I can have this money. You probably need more than$10,000, but so I can have this money to really work on this book without pressure. And usually what happens is when we start to go to for that band-aid solution, we don't actually want to do the work for the band-aid, right? We want the$10,000, but we don't want the side hustle. Maybe we're already burned out. Maybe we're burned out because we've been denying our dream for so long that we're just crispy fried, which is a source of being burnt up, getting burned out. And so we create this alternative. I'll do this thing, which is gonna be my stepping stone or my band-aid solution that's gonna eventually get me to where I really want to go. And we don't ask for what we really want. And so we it's really important in the beginning to ask yourself, what do I want and get really honest with yourself and really get honest around the why? Why do you want what you want? Because sometimes the band-aid gets revealed when you start looking at, well, why do I want it? I want$10,000. Why? Because I can then I can use that money to go do this thing that I actually really want. Why not go for the thing you really want first? And at least define it and put language to it because language starts to create the structure. I mean, when we talk about in human design, you know, there are nine energetic centers in the chart. Each energetic center is part of, it holds key archetypes and helps us understand our story because those archetypes are part of our story, but it also gives us the instructions for how to create. And that throat energy, which is the energy that really actually connects to everything in the chart, is kind of like a gearbox. And it's the what we call the center for manifestation and the center for action. Well, the manifestation of the throat center happens with language. Language starts to build the the and translate inspiration into form. We can't create without language, and and and and having that capacity to really articulate and put into words, here's what I want, begins the process of actually structuring that out on the material plane. So you gotta know what you want, you gotta know why you want it, you gotta check in and use that why as an assessment to is that actually in alignment with what I actually really want. And then you have to become, meaning, your identity has to become the person you need to be for the what to come true. And that's really where human design is such a great tool because it gives us such a systematic approach to really looking at the question: who am I? And who do I need to become in order to really create that thing that I want to create? So if you're gonna go take this three-month retreat to go work on this book, I mean, you've got to value yourself enough to know that you deserve to have that experience. You've got to have a belief and confidence in your own creative capacity, right? You've got to have a trust in your support and a trust in yourself. These are just a few components of your identity that have to be really brought into alignment with that bigger vision. And once you sync that up, once the story you tell about who you are and how you are, and and that story you begin to embody your identity, once you live into that identity, then the the what of course becomes really clear. But that's kind of where the magic kicks in. That's when the how starts to happen. That's when the how starts to unfold. And part of what happens is the world, part basically what you're doing is you're pre sorry, reprogramming your nervous system. You're reprogramming your brain. You're programming your brain to start looking for evidence that matches the story you're telling about who you are. And when your story is really synced up with what you want, and now you've programmed your brain. Now your brain is looking at all that input that's coming at you that you have a very limited capacity to process, which is why programming the brain is so important. And now you're seeing the doorways and the opportunities, and then that synchronicity and serendipity, and what I like to call a little bit of magic that kicks in that lets you know what's the next right step and the next right step, and the next right step to making that what come true. And of course, you follow those next right steps because if you're living true to your design, you remembered or reconnected with what does the right decision feel like in my body, and what does the wrong decision feel like in my body? And so when those opportunities are coming at you, you're now able to really feel into this feels right, and sometimes that's an allowance. Logical thing. Sometimes it's an unreasonable thing. Sometimes things show up, and your logical brain wants to process it and sort it out and try to figure it out. But really, that body is going, I know this doesn't make sense to you right now. It's okay, just take the next right step and just trust me, right? Let me just tell you if this feels right, go for it. And and we we start habitually following that sort of trail, and we see eventually when we look up that we're at the destination that we've been intending.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I love that. You keep talking about having your body knowing what the right decision is. Where are we looking in our human design chart? Are there specific places that we can look in our human design chart to begin to build that conversation with our body? And especially when you're talking about like what do you want? That's that is such a huge question. And one thing that I wanted to add is what if what if you don't know what you want? And how can you use human design to begin to decipher and explore? Okay, let me maybe ask like yes-no questions, like do I want this? Do I want that? Like, where do we look in human design?

Beyond The Chart: Story, Trauma, Ancestry

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Well, let me start first by saying you don't ever not know what you want. I mean, and and that because that and that's a that's a really common lie we tell ourselves. Well, I don't know what I want. Well, if you don't know what you want, what you want is to know what you want. So you've answer that that and that's that's an answer to the question. And I think our culture, can our cultural conditioning teaches us, oh, you know, I've got to identify this as a smart goal, and I have to say by I want to have this by three months, and I have to, you know, it's like and there's there's a place for that. I'm not saying that you don't want to be, you know, tactical sometimes in creating core things. I mean, if you want to write a book, you are gonna have to write the book, and that's gonna take a certain amount of sitting down and writing a book unless you're gonna hire a ghostwriter or do it on chat GPT. Um, so and even then, you gotta still make the time for that, right? And you gotta have the money to hire the ghostwriter. So we never don't know what we want. And if you're telling yourself, I don't know what I want, that's a really important clue to pay attention to. Because really, probably what I find in in working with my clients is that if somebody tells me, well, I don't know what I want, usually what they're really saying is, I actually do know what I want, but I absolutely don't believe I can have it, or I absolutely don't think I deserve it, or I absolutely don't know how to have that. So because I don't know how I'm gonna compromise and sell for less than. And and so, or again, sometimes it's about giving yourself permission to go, you know, I don't know what I want. And that, you know, and what I do know what I want is that I want to know what I want, and that's all that's knowing what you want. And I think sometimes we make it really, really complicated, and it's not. Um, so that's the first piece. The second thing is where in the chart is that information about what does it feel like in my body? How do I know? Well, there are two places that that you want to look in your human design chart. And the first place is you want to look at your type. There are five types in the human design system. Each type has a different way of making a decision, that's called your strategy. So you want to look at what's the strategy for my energy type, and in conjunction with that, and and really to me, I I call this the healing path of the chart. In conjunction with that, you want to look at what is your authority, because your decision-making strategy is going to be influenced by what we call your authority in the chart, and your authority is really kind of fine-tuning where in the body am I feeling, sensing, knowing what is the right decision for me and what isn't. And and so much of the the authority in the chart is absolutely just about getting back in the body and reconnecting with what does that feel like? And of course, in traditional human design, authority is something that we make really complicated. And I I'm a manifesting generator, so I find all the hacks in the system, right? I want the shortcuts. So, I mean, really, authority is pretty simple. Um, there's really, I would say, five kinds of authority, and whereas in traditional human design, there's a lot more. I would say the first kind of authority is what we'll call ego authority. And basically, if you have ego and authority in your chart, it means before you make a decision, you have to really check in and ask yourself, do I have the energy, time, money, the resources for this decision? And if you don't, don't do it. And of course, that takes some training because our society values the hustle and pushing to exhaustion. And really, if you have ego authority or any authority, you're not we're not designed to push till until exhaustion and depletion. The second kind of authority is called splenic authority, and that's really just meaning it really just means you have a gut feeling. And and it's it's a gut feeling that doesn't come with a logical description. It's a gut feeling that's just I have this feeling, I'm sensing, I'm feeling this thing. And you know, splenic authority is about learning to rebuild your relationship with trusting your gut. The third kind of authority is what we call sacral authority, and all there are only two types that have that kind of authority. Those are generators and manifesting generators, and that's a whole conversation in and of itself. But as you kind of alluded to, it is uh a visceral, also kind of gut-level authority, but a little bit different than splenic. It's more of a humming kind of quality of energy in the gut. That again, with practice, you learn to tune into. And it is an authority that can respond to yes-no questions, but also other opportunities. It's sort of another way of having visceral inner knowing. The next kind of authority is called emotional authority, and if you have emotional authority, it just simply means you need to, before you make a decision, make sure that your decision stays consistent even if your mood changes. Because when we have emotional authority, we have a tendency to have fluctuations in energy and mood. And the decisions that are right for you are the decisions that stay consistent over time. And if they're not staying consistent over time, you run the risk of making an impulsive decision and then getting into something and realizing uh this wasn't what I wanted. And then the last kind of authority, which um which is uh an authority that is very common for what we call projector types, and is true part partially true for all reflector types, um, is is what I'll call uh projected authority. And that just basically means you need a sounding board, another person in your life who you can orally process your decisions with. You're not asking, you're not asking for advice. That's not that's not a sounding board. You're you just need somebody to listen because you need to hear your thinking out loud. And in that experience of sort of hearing yourself think out loud, then you can kind of dial into, oh, what does what feels right for me and what doesn't?

SPEAKER_01 28:15

I like that. That was simple, a little more simple than the traditional authority types. Um, I think, well, never mind. I will ask you instead of share my opinion, what do you feel is and classic Manny Jen? Maybe it's more than one, and I'll allow more than one answer. But what do you feel is the most important part or the most influential part in your human design chart that we can look at? And this is maybe asking with somebody that already has human design um knowledge, so maybe not just, you know, obviously we want to start with the energy type, but yeah, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I think that's a really impossible question. And I think that, and I think it's actually one of the flaws in human design that we have to really guard ourselves against because we want the chart to tell us everything. And I would say there are so many sources of our our story, and our story doesn't just come from the configuration of our chart. If you look at what makes what forms the story of who you are, yeah, your chart and how you process energy absolutely gives you some insights about why do I see the world this way? Why did I experience this circumstance this way? Why did I make these decisions about myself based on how I feel and sense and experience the world? That's that's a big part of the conversation, but that's kind of a a quarter of what your story is about. I would say in the next little section of what else makes your story and what do we need to look at when we start to say what's important about healing your story, I would say, you know, we all have lived experiences, and we can't deny the impact of our lived experiences on our story. And sometimes what happens to us creates a pattern within us, and it will have nothing to do with your human design, and everything to do with you have this defensive pattern that you've cultivated because you had some kind of experience where you internalized the message that it wasn't okay or safe or valuable for you to be who you are or how you are, and you learn to hide. And I would say the next thing we have to look at is we have to look at how you were imprinted by your family, by your ancestral lineage. I mean, let's remember that when human design was first created or shared, that we didn't have the science of epigenetics. We didn't know about epigenetics, and now we know that we have protein coats that regulate how our DNA functions, and those protein coats can carry up to 14 generations of memory. You start to think about that, that's a lot of memory encoded into our cells, and that memory can impact how we react to choices. You know, that the the work of epigenetics started with the work or the research of a woman named Dr. Rachel Yehuda who uh works out of Cedar Sinai, and she was noticing a phenomenon in her practice. She was noticing a phenomenon in her practice that um grandchildren of Holocaust survivors had an elevated level of anxiety and anxiety disorders. And she was perplexed. She was like, why would you have this experience in these people that were had, you know, they weren't experiencing the Holocaust. They were in America, they were safe, they were and she started to really research, okay, what's going on. And what she found was that all of us have you know history written into our genes and history written into how we see and experience the world. And so we can't discount that as part of the conditioning process. And in fact, I would say for those who are listening who really are into human design, you know, when we look at the fact that we are in a global cycle that comes to a completion in 2027, we have we're at the end of a 400-year-long global cycle, that one of the big jobs of this cross of planning global cycle has been to clear ancestral trauma and clear ancestral lineage. That's the 4037 where we hold all of those old agreements in ourselves. Um, the next thing that's gonna influence your story is gonna be, you know, your what I like to call your unmet energy needs. You know, most of us are raised in families where, you know, not for any fault of our parents. This is not about parent blaming. It's just the models of parenting have we've outgrown them and they're not effective anymore. And most of us did not learn how to, back to the big question, ask for what we want, right? And and you know, when you are two, three, and four years old and you're going through a developmental cycle where you are learning about becoming empowered, appropriately empowered, and your parents didn't help you learn how to be appropriately empowered. And instead of saying, Hey, do you want the green pants or the blue pants? said, You're gonna wear those pants by God, and I don't care if I have to take you naked to church. I'm gonna, you know, you're gonna wear those pants because I pick them out, right? If you don't learn how to become empowered, and you don't learn how to say, which of course you can't say when you're two, but you say in a two-year-old way, hey, I'm feeling a little disenfranchised in the family structure right now, and I need to find some appropriate power for my age. Can we please, you know, get me a plant or let me turn the light switch on and off? Because I I need some power. And and to look at the relationship between our developmental and our energetic needs and our human design, because the blending those two pieces together really help us oftentimes heal that inner narrative around why don't I know what I want and why can't I articulate it? Well, sometimes it's because we've never had permission to say, hey, I this doesn't work for me, and here's what I want instead, right? So there's a there's just so much that goes into that story about what is the most important part in decision making. And I would say it's gonna depend on who you are when you show up for your first human design reading. And if we're only looking at the chart, I don't think we're really serving people well because it's not the a big enough part of the story.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Love that answer. Thank you. So you have a book, speaking of writing books, and you have a book, um, quantum wellness, healing your mind, body, and spirit with human design. I am very curious what you felt is the most important pieces to share that caused you to write this book. And I I don't know your story, but I feel like everyone that I ever interview that's written a book, they're like, Well, I didn't set out to write a book. I never thought I would write a book. So maybe your story is different, but I'm curious what pieces of your human design journey, your life journey that you felt was very important that you wanted to put into written form.

The Book, Research, And Immune Findings

SPEAKER_00 35:10

I actually always wanted to write a book from the very start. I actually graduated from high school at 16 early because I was like, I'm gonna go write a novel. Um, which I did, but it was terrible and no one and it does not exist on the planet anymore. Um I lied. I do have an old boyfriend from college who recently I ran into and told me, Oh, yeah, I still have that copy of your book. So I don't know if there's one copy left. Anyway, um, that's neither here nor there. But so, you know, my story about this book, and I've I've written quite a few books about human design. Um, my story about that that is sort of the origin story of this particular book is, you know, I started off my my life path as a nurse and as a nurse midwife. And in my midwifery practice, I really noticed very early on that I could predict who was gonna have complications in their birth practice. I mean, it was 100%, but I could tell listening to people and listening to their stories, I could tell who was probably gonna be challenged by the birth process. Um, and usually it was women who had a lot of need to control the process. And that that rigidity in, you know, I'm gonna control this process, usually ended up creating a lot of challenges in learning to adapt to the thing. I mean, birth is something you have to adapt to minute by minute. Um I when I had my second child, I stopped working as a midwife because it just was very difficult to balance, but I went on to become a life coach. And I noticed in my coaching clients, same thing. Like I could tell, I could hear in the narrative that they were telling about money or relationships or career success or whatever. I could hear in their story what was bungling them up, and it's certainly one of the things that I loved about human design is it gave me a systematic approach to start looking at well, what's going on in your story? Where's that story coming from? How can we reframe it? Because if you think about this for a minute, and a story is built out of archetypes, and an archetype is just an element of the character in the story, right? And human design, which as I said is a synthesis of Eastern and Western astrology, the Chinese Yi Qing, the Hindu chakra system, Judaic Kabbalah, quantum physics, even is really just a system that blends ancient and modern archetypes. It's just a storytelling tool. And so when we use the chart as a storytelling tool, it gives us a very systematic way to start digging digging into what's going on in your story. For me, when I turned 40, I was at that point in time in my life a full-time single parent. I had four teens and pre-teens, well, two teeth, two preteens and two teens. I my first husband had kind of gone off and left us. And so I was raising the kids by myself. I was responsible for all the money by myself, and I was very committed to being home at three o'clock in the afternoon, been driving people and doing homework and fixing a home cooked meal and giving them that stability of home as part of their foundation. Um, and it was hard for me. It was really, really hard for me. I had just started really teaching and sharing about human design. I was getting up at five o'clock in the morning. I literally was working, you know, 364 days a year. I think I was only taking Christmas off. Well, I think I took Thanksgiving off too. So 363 days a year. And I was just depleted, and I around that time developed breast cancer. And um, it was fortunately I caught it early and it was fairly very treatable. But the at the end of my treatment, they put me on a medication called tamoxifen, which is uh has a side effect of creating depression. Depression is a very common side effect of tamoxifen. Um I definitely experienced depression and it was horrible. I've never been depressed in my life, I've never experienced that kind of darkness. And I woke up at one point and said, I there is no way I can live like this. This is untenable. There's no way I can do what I want to do. I just I can't do this. And so, and and and and I'm gonna just really be clear. This is my story. I'm certainly not advocating that anybody make the decisions that I made for myself. And so if you're in that situation to make that as a guided decision, I did ask my physician for something different, and they were like, nope. Um, and so I said, Well, I can't do this, I literally would rather die. Um, and so I sat down and began to really dialogue with my body and say, What is going on with you? Why why are we sick? Because I can't live like this, we can't live like this. And so my body very clearly told me you can't live the way you've been living, that there is no nurturing coming back at you. You're not nurturing yourself, everything is going out of you, and of course, the breasts sort of represent nurturing, right? And and of course, that's where it embodied in my body. So I began a process of systematically looking at my personal story and where had I really internalized an identity of martyrdom and self-sufficiency and being the one in charge of everything for all times on my own. Thank you very much. And um, you know, this sort of systematic approach, which I used my human design as sort of the template for the systematic exploration of my narrative, um, really helped me rewrite my internal story. And from that process, my own personal journey with this, I created a process called Story Lab, where I walk people through the different layers in the chart and use it as a narrative path to. Reframe and rewrite your story. And that's really what I outline in the quantum wellness book. We use the chart as a template for a systematic exploration of what story are you telling about yourself? Is that a true story? Is that story working for you? Is that story creating what you want? And if not, how do you rewrite it? After I created that process, I actually went on, and this is what the what I did for my dissertation for my PhD, is I began to study how is this process of taking back control of your narrative, how does that actually affect not only your life, but your health and wellness. And I looked at the relationship between your immune function. Specifically, I looked at IgA, which is a immunoglobulin A, which is an element of your immune system that is part of main uh really fighting disease, and is oftentimes when the levels are low associated with chronic illnesses, chronic autoimmune disorders. So I actually took people in the lab, I taught them about elements of their chart, I had them share with me a story about something that happened to them that was that was catalytic, and I asked them to share the story with me. And after they shared the story with me, we went in and we measured IgA levels after they shared the story. And what we saw is that when they shared a story of something or an event that left them feeling disempowered and out of control and victimized, that when they shared that story, right after they shared it, their immune levels dropped. And then after they they shared the story with me, I had them go back and rewrite the story using a template that I created that was based on certain key elements in the human design chart, which I actually took quite the questions of the head gates, the 63, the 64, and the 61, which is basically you know, is the story true? Is the story of what you decided about yourself, is that true? And um what was the bigger purpose or the bigger lesson in that story? And if you would rewrite that story, what else is possible for you in that story? So I have them rewrite the story and and the the rewriting of the story was kind of fun. It was a little bit challenging for some people because I asked them to rewrite it, not necessarily in a very reasonable, logical way. I invited them to we actually used glitter and glue and paint and other things too. It was a very fun process, but I invited them to add fantasy to the story if they wanted to, to add mystic mystical or mythical creatures to the story, to get superpowers in the retelling of the story. They could rewrite that story however they wanted to, including using creative writing. Because the brain doesn't know the difference. This is the thing that we we think sometimes when we talk about the brain, you know, the brain is actually kind of dumb. Um, the brain, the brain is just a all the purpose, the big purpose of the brain is to translate meaning into narrative. It's the brain in and of itself is a storytelling tool. And all it's doing all day long is translating things into stories. And so when you give it a story, even if the story includes fantastical elements, the brain translates that into a core meme or a core narrative. And and it doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction, which is, I guess, maybe a good explanation for what's going on on our planet right now. But there's, you know, it's really important to understand the brain, if you feed the brain a new story, it doesn't have to be a real story, and it can be a fantastical story, and it can be a story that happens outside of the confines of linear time. In fact, it works better that way. In fact, that's how we start stories, right? Particularly with kids. We say once upon a time, we don't say, you know, on November 29th, last year, right? We don't, right? And so when you take stories out of the context of time, which is the spleen, right, which is where fear lives, and you move it over onto the emotional solar plexus, which is where faith lives, right? And impossibility and creativity lives, when you move that storytelling process over here into that creative realm, it allows the brain to entertain the possibility of the story shifting without getting into the fear and doubt and suspicion that gets triggered in the logical circuit in human design. So when we're over here working in this creative part of ourselves, and then we retell this story from this sometimes fantastical lens, when you read that new story out loud, and we went back and measured immune function again, immune function was either almost back to baseline or back to baseline. So words and stories matter, they influence how we create and they literally impact our health and wellness. And again, your human design chart becomes this very beautiful systematic way to start looking at what story am I telling myself in the world about who I am and how I am.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Wow, what a cool PhD dissertation and research. I mean, that is incredible. I love, I've definitely seen some research on um, and then unfortunately I can't share where exactly I found the research from, but uh of the benefit of talking out loud to yourself and how people who talk out loud to themselves actually live longer and have lower um chronic stress rates because they're kind of narrating their life. And obviously, you want to speak out loud in it, doesn't have to be like wildly positive stuff, but the benefits of speaking out loud to yourself because then it's your brain, you're getting that like feedback loop of hearing once again what you're doing and what's going on. And I don't know about you and your experience, but I definitely feel when I speak out loud, it just baseline is more positive. Then you can get really stuck in like these repetitive loop thought loops if you're not breaking that cycle of speaking out loud. So that reminded me of of of just the benefits of yeah, I guess what you're saying, the story that we tell ourselves, the words that we are sharing in our mind or out loud. Wow. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I have two more questions. Um, the first question is obviously you speak a lot about human design. I know that you come on podcasts often. What is one thing or one aspect of human design, even that you wish that more people would ask you about that you could touch upon?

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Hmm. I I would love it if people asked me about. I'll see if I can figure out how to say this. We have a tendency to think of personality assessment systems as a what, right? It tells you what you are or who you are. And I really would love it if people would explore the question, how does human design tell you how you are? Because I don't think it's a what, I think it's a how.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

Keep going. I'm getting it.

Talk It Out: Language, Brain, And Change

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Well, so again, going back to the very beginning when we talked about it's a decision-making tool. It tells you how you make a decision, it's an instruction manual, it doesn't tell you what you are. What you are is is is not static, it's dynamic. You know, I'll say at 60 years of age, you know, especially as a woman, I'm a seasonal being. I've seen a lot of different seasons in my life and who I am today, and even who I am, you know, yesterday, who I'm today is different than who I was yesterday. And when we start to use systems like this to define ourselves in a static way, which is I think the big to me, that's the big pitfall to be aware of with human design. And I see a lot of people define themselves very statically using human design. And I don't think it's it was designed that way. It wasn't designed to tell you what you are, it was designed to tell you how you are so that you can consciously take back control over what you are minute by minute.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

I love that. I might adopt that and quote you in it. No, I love that. And I always the verbiage that I always use is yeah, I agree. I think we have a lot of these personality tools like Enneagram, astrology, human design, and and they all Myers Briggs, whatever, they all have different aspects, and some I think are fundamentally a little bit stronger, but we can use these tools to put ourselves in a box or to explore and not put ourselves in a box. And I've always coached my clients to remember that these are not, this is not a tool to put you in a box and to define, like, oh, I'm just a I'm just a manifesting generator, that's why I do things, or I'm just a Leo, that's why I do things the way that I do. Yes. It can be really, it can be really limiting when we use these tools to put ourselves in a box, yeah, as an excuse rather than this self-reflect, almost like holding up a mirror. How do you, how does your body respond to the information that you're learning today? Do you feel that this is something that aligns or doesn't? Do you what pieces of it do you feel really resonate or don't? Rather than, I mean, we we have so many tools that do tell us what we are, what we should do, or what we how we should act. And human design doesn't need to be that tool.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Well, and I would say if you look at all the course, the sources of the archetypes, you know, if you look at the i Ching, the the Kabbalah, the um, you know, the Hindu chakra system, all of these systems, especially the I Ching, is all about fluidity and evolution, not about I'm this static, and because I'm this, I can't do this, this, this, this, and this. And I I think we we want labels. It makes things so much easier when you don't have to figure that part out. And then you can be like, okay, I'm this, but but we can't stop there. You are an evolving, we're all evolving beings. We're designed to grow and to transform constantly. And when we define ourselves in you know with a label, then we get stuck. And oftentimes where we tend to stick ourselves is we stick ourselves in an identity that revolves around the cliffhanger in our story instead of the redemption arc. And then we start defining ourselves as survivors instead of thrivers, and we're, you know, it's like we're all Harry Potter with you know the title The Boy Who Lived. Like there was so much more to Harry Potter's story than that moment when he was zapped by Voldemort, right? That was just the beginning. But we tend to freeze ourselves in this place where we have a cliffhanger in our story instead of going on and looking at, well, what's gonna be in the redemption arc? What am I gonna include in the rest of this narrative?

SPEAKER_01 52:00

Hmm, mmm, what an invitation. I love that. So, where can people find you if they want to continue learning from you, if they want to reach out and connect with you, where do you hang out the most?

SPEAKER_00 52:13

In my office. Um you can find me on Instagram as Dr. Karen Parker22, same thing on Facebook, uh, YouTube is Dr. Karen Parker, and if you look up, if you go to any major um retail book outlet, you can find any of my human design books. Um, but not my novel.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

So unfortunately, yeah, no, or fortunately.

unknown 52:36

Fortunately.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

So, last question: if the world could remember only one feeling from your work, what would you hope that feeling would be?

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Catalyzed.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Ooh, I like that. I like that a lot. I can say I feel catalyzed from this conversation. This was such a fun conversation. You've brought in a lot of tools, a lot of perspectives that is not the typical verbiage that I use. So thank you for expanding my mind and expanding the mind of all the listeners today. Thank you so much for coming on and for your valuable precious time. I really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Well, thank you for having me.