Quantum Human Design is a new and transformed Human Design language that is more expansive, empowering, expressive and comes with a more comprehensive understanding. It’s been deliberately engineered and upgraded the HD vocabulary to a powerful, positive, higher vibrational frequency of energy to help you fully activate your potential. In this week’s episode, we have Asha Ramakrishna, a student of Human Design for 13 years. She feels it is one of the most powerful tools to guide us all into healing our conditioning and activating our true soulful authentic-self.
SHOW NOTES:
- How the idea of conscious commerce has evolved in the last few years. [03:39]
- The future of a compassionate, sacred commerce evolving in the next few years. [06:29]
- Personal growth, self-love and setting boundaries. [09:50]
- The most vital steps in the human design community that we need to start taking to make it more inclusive. [15:54]
- Catalytic aspects of growth and expansion. [21:20]
GUEST BIO:
Asha Ramakrishna is obsessed with Human Design and came to know Human Design thirteen years ago when she was struggling being a mother to a very sensitive daughter. Nothing she did seemed to “work” to make her happy. When someone suggested for her to look into her Human Design, she understood her sensitivity and the responsibility as a parent to provide the right environment for her, and ultimate for us all. She is a Reflector (very rare!) and really needed to live in a place where she could decompress. So, they moved to the country! Human design changed the way they were in relationship with each other (her husband) and how they parented each of their daughters.
LISTEN HERE:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Understanding Human Design podcast. I’m Karen Curry Parker. I’m so excited to be here today with someone who I have a deep honor of calling friend, in addition to being a privileged, I will say to be able to bear witness to this woman’s work in her professional arena. Asha Ramakrishna is joining us today. She’s the number one bestselling author of the book, The Priestess Code: Awakening the Modern Woman, which if you haven’t had a chance to read that book is a phenomenal, I don’t know what to call it more like a practical guide to help women or help humans, if you will unlock the essential nature of what it means to in a ritual-based way, really express the truth of who you are and the journey, the arc, that beautiful feminine arc that we go through. When we go through a process of awakening and opening up to the full expression of the power of who we are as women, she teaches feminine principles and does amazing workshops has been doing all this brand new, powerful work around the importance of ritual as serving as a representative threshold that defines for us the past and the potential that we’re moving into fulfilling and anchors us into a deeper place of alignment with not only who we are, but who we are historically, as people on the planet, who we are in accordance to the individual expression of our unique heritage.
That’s just like a small smidgen of the amazing stuff that she does. She’s also an amazing mom. She’s been studying human design as long as I have almost. She giving me numbers and just has a beautiful powerhouse of source of knowledge to share with you guys and is going to be speaking at our very first international Human Design conference and is going to be leading a session in Spanish. In addition to teaching, a post-conference session on sacred commerce, which is one of the many other juicy, powerful things that she activates in people. Thank you and welcome. I’m so excited to have you.
I am excited to be here. I get to be on your podcast. It’s always fun when we get to hang out together. So, I want to talk to you for just a minute about, I actually want to start talking about sacred commerce because you and I have been involved in various different ways over the last 20 years in evolving people’s understanding of business in activating the power of women in business, in connecting people to their sole purpose in business. And in some ways, this is a conversation that people have had a lot about conscious commerce, but you’re really bringing in a very different take on this. Now, talk to me about how the idea of conscious commerce, if you will, has evolved in the last few years.
I think that we’re still evolving, right? I think that based on how we’re seeing that the system doesn’t work for everybody, we were beginning to question it in a bigger way. I think the questioning has always been there. It’s now that we’re saying, okay, wait a second. Now that we’ve had this pause in 2020, I mean, now that we’ve had this POS, we have been able to reassess what it means for us to really take care of ourselves, what it means for us to really be present with our kids, what it means for us to be conscious of what we purchase, who we purchase from, and even taking a look at well, who’s the system working for and based on the levels of privilege that we have, what’s our role in all of that? I think that’s the deeper rootedness of the conversation. It’s just getting grittier rather than like lofty and philosophical. Now we’re like, okay, no, really, for real, how do we really do this differently? I do think that some people have the ability to turn things upside down and change the entire structure of their business. Like bless them. And then, some of us have to do this in steps and have to do this compassionately and in a process where we allow for progress, but also like that the best foundations, especially like the financial foundation is not rocked.
I think that’s a really valid point. I think that addresses what I see sometimes really stops people short for making those changes. There’s this sort of like, oh my gosh, I have to start from the foundation and redo everything that I’m doing in the way that I’m doing it. And being able to connect to that incrementally in a way that doesn’t feel threatening or scary or causes, as you just said to rock the foundation is huge, when we look at human design and we look at human design in the context of the fact that the chart itself is under a lot of evolutionary pressure and it’s really in the process of evolving. And we see that one of the things that’s really evolving is the energy for business that the channel 50 27, which is what I had to call the mama energy in the chart. It’s the energy that’s all about the people who come into contact with my business, being cared for, well fed, is the business itself more wellbeing, enhancing the wellbeing of the world. Talk to me a little bit about how you see the future of a compassionate, sacred commerce evolving in the next few years.
I think that human design is one of those mythologies or markers that ping us, for there’s a change and it’s not the only one. We can look at the vedic yugas and know that there’s a change coming. We’re in a Kali Yuga, then we go into a 10-year rebuild and we look at even integral theory or spiral dynamics. And we see where we are like where the percentages of people are, where the majority is really thinking about their own wellbeing. Some of us are thinking about, well, we’re all one. So, how do we compensate for that? And then, others are thinking, well, how about what would happen if everybody actually had a seat at the table? And it wasn’t just about like one ideology. The three ethos that I’ve been working with for since 2015 and now it’s really landed in sacred commerce is, it isn’t everything I do, but I can see it so vividly in this framework is the feel good, be wealthy, and give back. The feel good is really about incorporating the great mother assets. It’s about having that elder wise counsel, female wise counsel, who’s in your board of directors or it’s that kind of energy, not the cranky grandmother, by the way, but the really like embodied, fun, and creative. It’s with truth, love, and nurturing for the highest good of all.
And so, that feel good, great mother essence is not new. We see business today. We understand that the patriarch is at work. We understand that a colonized system is at work and we understand that the feminine is truly missing, not accounted for, and not honored from the employee to how many, you know, how many females are CEOs of companies to the practices, right? The practices are not necessarily about holding the earth. The practices are not necessarily about how do we honor women who have menstrual cycles? We don’t. To me, it’s like, yeah, that 50 27 is very much a part of this new way of being, and it’s not. It’s also something that it’s not just outside of us. It’s how do we incorporate that kind of philosophy, that kind of way of being for our own selves.
I’ll give you an example. As I’m preparing for the talk for the conference, one of the talks, I asked people, what do you think holds us back from fully expressing who we are? Mostly what I heard was fear or afraid of being judged. Some people set a system of oppression and family dynamics, trauma, all these things, which are all valid. I started looking at that and especially because so much of it was fear and caring, what other people think I started looking at that and thought, wow, we’ve internalized so much of the responsibility to a place where we’re kind of beating up on ourselves. I mean, the fact that we’re saying that for that, the reason we can’t fully express is because we feel fear or we have, we care about other people think, and I look at the archetype of the gate 10 as like a marker, a way to look at this. I mean, you taught me all this. If we look, but the way that I see the gate 10, self-love. Self-love because there’s no variation on that. It’s just cool. These levels of self-love how we get there, it’s like, okay, first level is like, we think we’re victims, right? We think we’re victims where the reason and obviously no one likes that place, no matter what, no matter if the system doesn’t work for you, it’s still not, it’s not an empowering place. And then, that next level of empowerment of taking a hundred percent responsibility for everything that happens in your life is such a powerful, amazing place. It’s a little heavy and it’s like guilt riddled.
I’m telling you, when I first started being in the personal growth, vortex, I was like, everything is my fault. And so as much as there can be empowerment in that to take a hundred percent responsibility, it was also that it can have a shadow aspect to it when we go off balance. When we moved to this place of self-love, it’s not, self-love like, well, okay, I’m going to love on myself. If it’s not my responsibility, then, what do we do with that? How do we still have sovereignty? The way that I see it as like, look, we love ourselves enough to know when it’s our responsibility, when it’s someone else’s responsibility. And we really hold this sense of the beloved. It’s not about excusing anyone’s naughty behavior or problematic behavior, but understanding that we have a responsibility to love ourselves enough sometimes to even create boundaries, not walls, but boundaries that allow us to experience love for ourselves and compassion for the other.
I think not only is that obviously self-loving, it’s actually loving in general, because when you say to someone, look, this is not my problem. It’s yours. You’re holding them in a space where you see them as capable of figuring it out, instead of disempowering them by being responsible or codependent with the relationship. I see that happening a lot in the healing arts and I think it’s a huge source of burnout when you can’t set those boundaries and release a client or release people to being responsible for their own thought. I think it’s okay for us to also consider that we have a hook, we have a hook with our thing. Our relationships don’t happen in void. We have hooks and that’s the responsibility we take. It’s like, okay, what’s my hook here because I also see in our spiritual communities where it’s the mirror paradigm. The mirror and projecting paradigm, or as well, this is about you. It’s not me. And then, we forget to say, well, okay, come on. It takes two to tango. Let’s be honest.
Totally. I want to shift gears just a little bit, because one of our core intentions around creating this conference was to begin. And I say begin because as you just said, there’s an incremental process of bringing things back into balance. When we start to explore your concepts like inclusiveness. One of our intentions this year was to make sure that we construct this event in a way that is inclusive. You have been bringing to the forefront, a lot of information and doing a lot of work in continuing to point people to those places that are not inclusive, where there were, we haven’t been creating an equal place at the table for people. You plan on that being your main gig right now. It goes back to that place of being responsible for making sure that we’re embodying the great mother in the work that we do. I think, my question for you is what do you think are some of the most vital, first steps in the human design community that we need to start taking to make it more inclusive? I’m putting you on the spot, forgive me. But I think that in human design, because it’s human design, you look at the triangle and you can go, oh, well, you know, there’s no racism, no bias. It’s a chart you don’t even know from looking at the chart. Is this a masculine person, a feminine person, or somebody who’s, you know, it’s neutral, but that’s not true. Where do you think there are places where people can begin to translate this information in a more inclusive way?
When I do a human design console, I always talk about how the chart doesn’t give context to the world we’re in, or the chart doesn’t give context to our identity and the things that we have to face every day. Some people face more things and some people face less. I think first is starting from that, it’s not about disempowering us from the chart. I always think, if you have your chart and you feel constricted, okay, we got to change that relationship because the experience of getting to know yourself needs to be an expansive one. I think we can escape doing our own individual work. I’ve seen brands and spaces that I’ve been kicked out of for highlighting certain things that, oh, well, they now have this awareness.
And so, now, their marketing is more diverse and that’s great, but we also have to consider, can I hold the space? Can I actually create safety for somebody? We can’t do that until the members do that own individual work of understanding. There’s a system at play. We contribute to the system, like all of us contribute to the system as woke as we want to think we are. It’s pretty dismantling that can really shift the relationships you have with humans in your own life, in your own family. Because you have to make decisions about, wow, now that we’ve made commitments. I think that’s another key point is we can’t have it all perfect. Just because we’ve read the books and we started doing the work. Even if we bring all of this into ceremonially, you know, healing, our lineage that has created harm or healing, the lineage of trauma, of course, even when we do that, it’s still a process. And it’s a process that it’s like shedding, just like when people begin to do spiritual work and spiritual healing, this is just like, oh, I operate within the system. I live within the system, so great to do inner spiritual work. And then, now it’s like, how does that, how does that get to express itself based on like the construct of this world?
I think I want to add one other point with that, over the weekend, Kim Gould’s going to address this a little bit and Rosy Aronson also addresses this a little bit, but I think we also have to look at the vocabulary that we use and continue to explore those places where perhaps the language that we’re using around, not just human design, but even astrology in general is inherently biased that it has built into it. First of all, I mean, Kim Gould talks about how we don’t even look at the feminine planets. We just, except for Venus, we have all masculine planets, all masculine archetypes, and many of us, regardless of how we identify don’t identify or relate to some of those archetypes. And yet, they’re sort of fixed in the chart. And I believe I don’t have the lens yet. I’m working on cultivating this lens personally. I’m so hoping for people to join me in this exploration, but I believe I’m sure that there’s racism in the language that we use and it’s not that it has built into it, a certain bias. I would love to see us all collaborate and explore together and to hear from black and brown voices, especially how perhaps the language doesn’t feel like they can, like people can take it in and really own it and relate to it and have it spoken to their personal experience and their journey.
I agree with you but that’s because of historically when that became more popular, more available. The way to circumvent that is to have a direct relationship with the cosmos. Religiosity can make spiritual concepts, mold people to a certain dogma. When we go directly with the divine or with the cosmos, then we can remove that layer. That was the translator at the time and it’s no longer valid translation.
I love that. One of my very first astrology teachers, in the very beginning of my career to go out every night and talk to the planets to really, as you said, cultivate a conscious relationship with the planets and to really hear what they have for us, this whole week, venus is right outside my window, in my office. And when I’m up in the mornings, it’s really bright as the morning start because I’m up pretty early, we’ve been having some deep dialogues this weekend. It’s pretty amazing to have that experience. I think I was encouraged people go talk to the planets, especially when you’ve got like a highlight in a life cycle coming up, like if you’ve got a Saturn return or Uranus opposition or Kira on return, go figure out in dialogue with the cosmos, as you said, what’s up. How do I use these cycles as catalytic aspects of my own growth and expansion?
Absolutely. It’s all there before us. It’s not there to work against us. It’s all there before us. There’s a sole curriculum that we get to explore through astrology and through human design. To look at ourselves through that lens is kind of the beginning.
Perfect. Tell us what you’re going to be talking about.
I have the workshop in Spanish but I’m doing the same one in English, which is in English is, power, patience, and presence using human design. We’re gonna talk about what it means and readdressing what power really means. And having patients with who we are and diving into that sense of presence. You know, it’s funny that you mentioned the cosmos and all of that, because I’ve been thinking so much lately about that Saturnian, step-by-step thing that happens in life, because so many people, like all of us, we come to human design or any consultation, and we’re like, how do I change it all? How do I be who I’m supposed to be? Especially having a defined sacral, what I’ve realized is what’s really landed in, what I’ve embodied, not just realize is that it’s all about a series of small steps. You were talking about this last weekend of like, how then in those series of small steps, the magic just gets to show up and we get to be blessed, but in little ways, that amount to something profound. I’m going to be talking about that. Finally, post-conference, I’m going to be diving into the framework of sacred commerce so people can begin to think about the ways that they want to shift short-term and long-term. The things like how they can look at their business from a model that will be sustainable. That’s the biggest thing. We’re, we’re entering a new world of commerce, whether we want to admit it or not. That invitation will be fun to walk people through that framework.
Go connect with Asha, explore your sacred path and your sacred commerce. Join us in two weeks. Uh, I lost a week last week at this yesterday. I thought it was three weeks and I looked at the calendar. I thought, I don’t think can’t lose a week in 2020. If you want to register for conferences, humandesignstore.com. It’s an honor. I don’t want to say it’s a breath of fresh air because you’re so much more, it’s like you bring this power and this groundedness to all the conversations we have that always leaves me walking away and going that’s what integrated wisdom looks like. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you all for joining us for listening. And I look forward to seeing you all at conference and I look forward to seeing you hopefully sometime soon in person.
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