Embrace your Uniqueness through Human Design with Catherine Rivers

Introduction to Podcast

0:00Welcome to the Exploring Healing Arts podcast, your go-to source for learning about different healing techniques and meeting exceptional healing arts practitioners from around the globe. Together, we explore where the physical meets the subtle, the possibilities that exist for healing, and a diverse array of methods to try from acupuncture to yin yoga and Reiki to family constellation therapy. My name is Elizabeth Alexander. I am the creator and curator behind

0:32this podcast, a Reiki master and energy healing practitioner. This podcast is something I have dreamed of for many, many moons, and my intention is to birth the resource I wish I had had at the start of my own healing arts journey over a decade ago. Whether you are just getting started on your own journey, or you are intentionally diving deeper into a healing arts practice, this podcast is the place for you. You will hear inspiring stories, get real life practical tips, and connect with

1:04exceptional practitioners and teachers from around the world. No two paths in healing are the same, but that does not mean you need to be alone. Join us to explore and experience healing together.

Human Design Introduction

1:22Welcome to an episode on human design with Kathy Rivers. It's your lucky day. You get to listen to two amazing manifestors that lights both of us. Today's guest is Catherine Rivers. Kathy subscribes to the tenant that one size does not fit all. With her keen insight, it brings her clients the information they are missing so they can leverage their innate gifts and talents. Some highlights from Kathy's background

1:56include a Girl Scout since the age of eight, a classically trained violinist, an equestrian horse breeder and trainer, over 20 years as an information technology executive working with large scale global business systems, and 18 years of study with thought leaders on coaching, empowerment, and leadership. And these highlights all inform her perspective on coaching, authenticity, and leadership. Kathy has studied human design for 15 years and is a human design master professional consultant. She believes that success is a function of

2:31being who you are. Welcome, Kathy. Oh, thanks, Beth. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. There's nothing more I love to talk about than human design, as you know. I do. We always have so much fun together. And I just, I love, I think one of the reasons that I really love working with you so much is the last sentence in your bio, that you believe success is a function of being who you are, because I share that belief too. And that's, that's what I want for everyone. And I feel like human design. Absolutely. It's such a great tool for helping people with that. And I'm just

3:04really thrilled that you're here to share more about human design with the listeners and me today.

Kathy's Background

3:09Great. So for those of you that are listening, I've done a couple sessions with Kathy actually over the summer, and she helped me learn more about myself. I'm a manifestor. And we're going to go over a little bit of what human design is. But manifestors are a smaller subset of the population. So some of the ahas and takeaways I had were things that I had always innately felt, but I didn't really give myself permission to express. And through our coaching, I'm like, okay, this is just who I am. I'm going to run with it. And it's been so much fun. Oh, good. Good. This is what, this is what lights me up

3:46because I don't get to hear the results often. Right. So I'm so excited that you've been running with it. Great. Thank you. So I would love to know, I always love opening, hearing about people's

Human Design Basics

4:00ancestry and their roots. I feel like it grounds us into who we are. So can you tell us about your ancestry and your roots and how they influence you? Sure. I'm a German Irish English girl. And yeah, I've been lucky enough to find the branch of the family from Germany, one side of the family, where the big split happened. And we've reconnected. One family stayed behind while four siblings came to America, that, that story. And so I'm still connected with my generation in Germany. And

4:38now Facebook makes it even easier. A couple of years ago, I got to go back to Ireland and actually see the baptismal font for my great, great grandmother. Wow. Who came over to America as a 12 year old with her family in the potato famine. And she came over here and had a passel of kids. So I've been blessed because my dad was really big on keeping track of family stories. And I have a whole historical collection that I work with,

5:12not as often as I quote unquote should, but it's like a seed to keep passing, working on and passing on to my other family members. What a beautiful practice. And how special that you got to like, do a little pilgrimage back to places. Absolutely. I, we walked into this church and it's like, I mean, I, I have found the records, walked into the church. It's like, there's no baptismal font here. And I asked one of the curators and she said, Oh, it's around in this chapel, but we're getting ready to have a meeting.

5:48And then she said, Oh, I'll take you in there. And so she snuck me in just before, um, they were having this big gathering and she was just wonderful. So I really, it was in this beautiful setting and you can just imagine what was happening back in the 1800s, you know? So. Wow. I'm like in awe of that. What a cool synchronicity. And then can you tell us where you are physically located? Like where are your two feet on the ground right now? I'm in Lacey, Washington. So think Olympia, Washington or, uh, South of Seattle by 30 miles.

6:26And I know you're interested in, you know, historical Native American roots as, which is part of our family history collection. We, you and I need to have a talk about that on the side. Cool. But I'm on Nisqually Indian lands. We have a very rich cultural Native American background here, historical community here in the Northwest. So I'm very blessed. I love, love, love that. All right. So we got the basics about you out of the way.

Explaining Human Design

6:57Tell us about human design.

7:00Well, it was fun. I got to think about it. How do I want to tell the story maybe a little differently? So human design starts with the premise that we've all received an energetic imprinting at our time of birth. That's premise assumption number one. How that imprinting happens, we could have an hour just talking about the physics of it and the quantum physics of it. It gets into the concept of

7:33neutrinos, neutrino theory and quantum physics, and how it blends with human genetics, how Western astrology informs that. That's all on the how it happens side. In the beginning, I just went, this thing works. I love that. I don't know why it works. I'm just going to believe it works because it just was so startlingly accurate. And I finally learned the science behind it, which is fascinating.

8:05The what we receive, we talk about it in terms of the gifts and qualities that get expressed through three other ancient modalities. So people have played with the I Ching or work with the I Ching, a system of the Chinese that's 4,000 to 5,000 years old. They have a schema of 64 states of consciousness, 64 states of being human. They're called hexagrams. And it's a beautiful modality

8:42in its own right, complete and entire. We have other qualities that get expressed through the Hindu chakra system. So when we think of chakras and correlate those to energy centers in human design, there's a lot of crossover. It gives people a place to, if they know chakras, they can start to get a handle on human design. And we also bring in other gifts and qualities that get expressed through the Hebrew tree of life, the Kabbalah. It's very, very rich. I always think about it,

9:18you know, those tissue paper collages where you're just putting layers of, and then it just gets richer and richer and richer. That's the way I think about human design. There's layers and layers and layers of juicy information. What is probably the best way to kind of create a bridge, most of us all know about astrology. We know our astrological sign, right? I'm a good Scorpio. We just left Scorpio.

9:49And so if we talked about the fact that astrology divides the heavens or the star field into the 12 astrological signs, and we think about those 12 segments as containing certain kinds of energy, people go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Western astrology is amazing in its own right. And it goes places human design can't. But human design goes places that astrology doesn't. And so one of

10:21the ways to think about it in a comparison, instead of dividing the heavens into 12, human design divides

Aura Types and Energies

10:30the heavens into 64. And they correlate to those 64 aspects of the I Ching. Now, each of those 64 gateways of energy are further divided into six. Wow. So we work with 384 discreetly different energies. And each of us gets 26. And that starts the that what did I receive? What was my imprinting that

11:06starts that journey into understanding what it is what 26 out of the 384 did I receive? Do I hold in my DNA in my energetic aura? And how does it then all come together to get expressed as me as you? At the lowest levels? There's layers and layers and layers at the lowest levels? There's there's differences. So I've looked at twins born five minutes apart. And at lowest levels,

11:40there's a difference. And expresses differently, you know, in their evolution as a human being. And so we talk about human design as being we each get to be unique. I love that. It's the big lesson is honoring uniqueness rather than trying to fit in. How do I fit in by being unique is really the the way I like to think about it and support my clients in. But we talk about human

12:11design. So from this uniqueness, it's like, how do we start to get handles on it? How do we how do we grok it? Right? And so there's groupings at the highest level, and then they keep breaking down to smaller and smaller components. So you mentioned about we're both manifestors, it's one of the

Manifestors and Generators

12:31higher groupings. And just knowing are you a manifest or a generator, a manifesting generator, a projector or reflector starts to tell you all sorts of things about your energy field. And then we start to learn about where's your inner authority. And there's seven different inner authorities in terms of our own inner wisdom guidance system. There's seven and now you start to see how the permutations start to get set up. Are you a manifestor with this inner authority or that

13:05inner authority, and the combinations start to happen. And we all get to be unique. And we all get to see how these energies play out through us. It's so exciting. It's like, you just get to be you. And this is just a tool to help you in like, connecting with that, you know, because I think sometimes, at least in my journey, it's been like, I kind of mentioned this earlier, but there were things that I was doing, because I felt like I needed to do them or advice that I was getting from friends and stuff. And it didn't always feel like congruent to me or in my body. And then once I got the

13:38information about my type and my authority and started to learn how to practice with it, I was like, Oh, it's okay that I don't do the things the same way my parents do. Like, I'm not necessarily supposed to. Please don't. And my friend, it's so funny, one of my best friends is a manifesting generator. And so we'll go into the types and authorities a little bit more for people who are listening. But her strategy is to respond. And my strategy is to initiate. And we talk a lot about, you know, like dating. And I'm

14:08like, well, and she'll give me advice from the lens of like a manifesting gender. And I'm like, no, I think I'm going to take the initiative on this one. I think, you know, I think this is my chance to be, you know, unique and deviate from, you know, what other people are doing that might work for them, but might not really work for me. And I just think it's so helpful for people to have that information. Yeah, you know, the continuum of normal is huge, right? With all its variety. And we have a lot of socially accepted norms that are about here, right? But the continuum is huge.

14:46And those norms, or family norms, cultural norms, societal norms, they set up lots of shoulds, right? I better, I should, it's the way. And we get externally driven. And what I love about human design is it helps us become internally driven. Will you say that again? So our culture really wants us to be externally influenced and externally driven.

15:20And you're going to hear that in all of the shoulds that you've taken that you've adopted and think of as normal. I should do this, I should do that. I'm a woman, therefore I should do X, Y, or Z, right? Or I'm a daughter, or I'm a business person, I should do X, Y, or Z. Human design allows us to be internally driven and internally determined. So then we can do what is correct for me in this

15:51situation in this moment. And we get a way to there are different ways then to tap into that and have your own knowing that then is correct for you. My heart is so happy right now. That's like, my biggest wish for myself, my biggest wish for people I love for the world. Like how cool would it be to live in a world where everybody just gets

16:21to actually be themselves in a way that's congruent with themselves on the inside? From a place of love. Yeah. Right? Where are you on your journey in that continuum of fear versus unconditional love? So when we are, when we can connect with who we are, which ultimately is down in this world of unconditional love and trust and joy, oh, juicy. And when we can't get there, then it just says,

16:53oh, these are the fears to shed. This is my work to do. Right? I remember something that you had brought up during our sessions together, which was, you know, people can have a very similar design. And whether they're orienting to love or orienting to fear, it can express or manifest very differently. Can you speak, like, what could you elaborate on or share about that?

Frequency and Aura

17:17I do believe that. I'm so glad you remembered. It's really important to me because we can all learn about human design. There's lots of people talking and sharing and teaching human design. And the differentiator to me is this concept of where is your auric frequency? Fear as a frequency, if we think about it, is vibrates lower, doesn't vibrate high or fast, and it's contracting

17:54and dense. And there's not a lot of possibility there. Love, unconditional love vibrates at a higher frequency and is expansive. And the potential for all possibility is blooms over here. When we get wounded, we have our own life journey of healing ourselves, the wounds that we received, the shoulds that we took on as a truth that may not be totally universal truth, but just the shoulds.

18:34And we hold that in our body as some kind of fear. And that expresses differently than the same quality that would be coming from love. And so as I'm working with people, I'm always listening. How is that quality? Where on the continuum is that quality expressing through them? And language always gives us away, right? I can hear in their language is, oh, there's some fear in there, you know, or there's a lot of fear in there.

19:05And we tease it out. And what would it be like to be able to move the slider over towards the unconditional love sign? You really will have a different experience of your life. Yeah. I'm curious because I've been learning about human design for probably like five or six years now. And there's so much information and it's available for free. And people that are curious, if you want to see like, your type and your strategy, some of the things we've been looking

19:35at, you can just Google it and get a free body graph, essentially, you can get lots of information now. Yes. I haven't ever heard that like orientation to love and fear before it really resonates with me. Could you share like, how you landed on that? Yeah, there's a couple ways. My mentors, in the beginning, it's like, who do I want to study with? I consumed everything I could find. 15 years ago, there was not as much available.

20:08There's more and more available all the time. And I ended up choosing to personally study with Chaitan Parkin and Carola Eastwood. There was a resonance for me. I love their use of language. Their generosity. They were part of that early circle around raw. So it was like original, you know, close to the source, guidance and wisdom. And it was Carola who actually was talking

20:40about this concept of frequency. But you need to go read Gene Keys. You need to go read Richard Rudd's Gene Keys. Richard was a student or a client of Chaitan's and working in that group also with raw. He was getting ready to open his own human design school where he had his own epiphanies, his own vision of how to think about these energies. He's an amazing man. His work calls out this concept,

21:17fear versus love, much more directly. And so for each gate, he helps describe this continuum. And so you can open up the book and read about some things about you and you can go, oh, I've worked on that. I've worked on that. I've moved past that. And you can go, uh-oh.

21:39Oh, I've got a little work here to do. This one still grabs me. I can feel the tag. And he describes that trajectory of how do you move from fear to love? And we can learn about our human design. We learn it intellectually, right? We have to learn it mentally. But human design is an experiential modality. You don't think about your inner authority. Your inner authority just guides you.

22:11And so you have to let go of the mind and get into your embodied wisdom. And so it just allows for this juicy work to have, well, are my fears coming up or my love coming up? And I just find it a speedy way. Make it really simple. Am I standing in love right now or am I standing in fear? Well, if I'm standing in fear, I'm not necessarily, unless there's a car about ready to crash into me, I'm not going to make

22:43good choices, right? I'm not going to make optimal choices. And so I need to be more, I need to be

Personal Journey with Human Design

22:50mindful when I'm in a fear state and support myself to be with what is happening there, have compassion for myself, but recognize that it may not be the highest frequency in the world. That's really cool. So for people just starting out and they like, they want to dive in to explore like how they're expressing this. I know that that goes deeper into like the gates. It's one of the more intricate parts of the, you know, our human designs. You, I think you told me this summer,

23:24like you want to know your type and your authority and like prioritize doing that first. Can you give us like, what would be an overview? What are the five types? Can you tell us about the five types? Five types. So we've got generators and manifesting generators. So let's just clean up the word type. It's a label. It's a label that's stuck. But what we're talking about here is the nature of your aura, the nature of your energetic field. So let's, let's give people the, you know, the, the sensation of

24:01what, what we're talking about here. Generators and manifesting generators make up 70% of the world's population. It's a, it's an aura type that is very enveloping. When you go to a big party, it's the generators in the middle that are, are responding to each other and feeding off of each other. They just, they, they love that interaction. They love being in that response, having that response dynamic. It was the generators in my world that were absolutely bonkers during COVID.

24:37And isolation, right? It, it doesn't, it, it, it, it's no, there's not a good fit for them. So manifestors and manifesting generators, they wake up once they get going, tons of energy there. They've got this access to life force that just lasts all day long. They need to get up, use up that energy, drain the gas tank at 10, 11, 12, one o'clock in the morning, crash into bed,

25:07start all over the next day. So that's generators and manifesting generators. And manifesting generators. Yeah. And then we 70%, then we come down to projectors, 20, 21%. Projectors, nobody else but generators has this energizer bunny battery, has this continual access to life force during the day. Projectors are, their aura, it tastes, it's like a hummingbird

25:38going in and tasting the nectar of a flower. Projectors come in, they taste the aura of the people around them and they know exactly what's going on over there. And they have great advice for them, but they shouldn't be so excited to go give their advice. They do just know. Projectors need to, their energy waxes and wanes a bit during the day. They need to manage their energy. And it's one of the big things that in working with a lot of projectors that we go over.

26:11Manifestors, here we are, eight, nine percent. So right there and then, it's like we're not supposed to work. We don't function like the majority of the world around us. We just don't. And so understanding how our energy works, we're either on or we're off. When we're on, get the hell out of our way because we'll run you over. And when we're not on,

26:41we're just recuperating and recharging for the next burst of manifesting. We're best suited for guiding others, providing insight, providing information as you're doing in this series of podcasts. We just essentially can show up and we're human catalysts. We spark people into action, prompt people into movement. Sometimes people don't want to change. And so we can feel uncomfortable to them. And other times we can be that, oh, Beth walked into the room. I just feel like I can

27:18conquer anything. Some of that is just you bringing your manifestor energy. Reflectors, one percent of the world's population. They're very, very rare. If you were looking at an energy diagram, there'd be none of their energy centers are consistently turned on and they function very, very differently. And I'm really blessed to say one of my very best friends who started out as a client seven years ago as a reflector. And I get to watch her journey and we talk about it all the time. And

27:53it's just, it's, it's just pretty amazing. What a gift. Yeah. And knowing, are you one percent of the world's population? It's like, oh, well, maybe I should, maybe, maybe how everybody else is doing life. Is it really my way? And it's not, it's their way, our way, your way, even for generators. It's like within that, are you finding your correct path? How do you know that?

28:24One thing that always comes up, because I ask every guest on the podcast, like what their human design is, is I, I love every single person. And like nine times out of 10, I like guess it correctly. But one common thing that I've noticed just between the guests and like other friends and loved ones, a lot of times when people fall into the generators pool, like the generator, or manifested and they're like, oh, I'm just so boring. It's just so like, everyone's like this. How would you respond to that question? Oh, oh my goodness. No. So when they find out they're in

28:59the big group, they're not, they're, they, they take it. Yeah. I'm like, like, this is not exciting. I'm the boring one. Like three or four people have said that. And my response is like, that's great. I want to work with generators. Like I need you. Tell us what your response is. So, well, to all you generators out there, you guys are in the big group. There's just so many yummy things. And one of the things I look at is even within, say you're in the big group with your

29:33auric field, there's always aspects in your chart where there's something less common and more rare. We always focus there. There is tons of variety in the generator world. Are you a generator that is, I'm going to use some lingo here, you guys. So are you a lightweight generator, meaning you've got two or three energy centers turned on and only one or two channels and the rest of your chart is undefined.

30:08Are you a very empathic and sensitive generator? You move through the world. You've had a different life experience than a generator that might be more heavily defined. Everybody's unique. Everybody's different. You know, are you a triple split generator? Are you a quadruple split generator? You function really different than another generator. So there's nothing boring here about any type, you know, and then we mix in all these other aspects of profile and your life theme and the

30:46channels you have turned on and the certain lines you have turned on. And they make this gloriously rich picture that you can tap into for all sorts of interesting insights about yourself or affirmations about, yeah, well, that's the part of myself I thought I had to change. No, I get to, that's me. I get to embrace it. And it starts to turn everything just around. I love that. Thank you. I'm like, I've been holding this question waiting for your answer.

Path to Human Design

31:23So I would love to kind of pivot into like your path to human design. Can you tell us how you landed here? How I landed here? Awesome. You don't know about me. So I'm very bad on chronology. So somewhere around 2004, I left the corporate world. And I went through a series of year long programs around life and business coaching. Fabulous. But I wasn't happy with my toolbox. A lot of traditional methods

32:00in coaching still get down to the, you know, you can treat people as individuals and what's their crap. What do you have to help them clear? But then you got to put them in a project and you, and you have to have them set goals and you have to be the accountability partner and you have to spur them on. And it's like, people don't work that way. They just don't work that. Organizations, this makes sense, much more sense for organizations, but not for all people. And I would have success with

32:32some of my clients in that mode. And remember, I was a project manager. I can put a project plan together. You know, nobody's business here. But only a certain percentage were being successful that way. Everybody else ended up feeling bad. It's like, I want a tool that allows me to support people as individuals. And so I was already trying to do that just with my people skills and all the work, all the coursework and life work I'd had leading up to that. And then I had dinner and

33:09invited Will Whitesmith, an amazing shaman. We've become really good friends. I had Will over for dinner with a couple other friends. And he'd been doing healings for me, which was wonderful. And he said, you want to know about human design? And he pulls out his laptop, and we're at my dinner table. And he runs my chart. And it was just like my jaw dropped. And I went, holy, wow. And it was just

33:41like one of those moments of, you know, my life just passing in front of me. It's like, I am supposed to be different. I do go about things differently. I've been trying for years following thought leaders, the Stephen Coveys and everybody of my era, right? And not feeling like I was able to get traction. And here, it was just like laid out for me. And I just, I, from that moment on, I could not get enough. And it was really that answer to that, you know, for my clients, but it was also the answer

34:18for me, that I've been, you know, desperately not knowing necessarily that I really needed it. Yeah, it's funny how that works. And so now I can, I don't work with anybody if I don't know their design, because I could give them the should advice about how to get from A to Z, but it's may not be how they get from A to Z. Everybody can be successful. I truly believe everybody can get to the finish line at the same

34:49time. There's no good designs, bad design, one design isn't faster than another or more effective. But if we are in alignment with our design, then there's this flow and momentum that happens. We all get to the finish line at the same time. And that brings up a great point. Because like, as a manifester, people are like, oh, like, well, you're cool. It's a manifester. Mostly it's generators saying this. But I feel like that it needs to be clarified. Like, every type can manifest, we just do it in

35:22different ways. And that's what you're saying. We do. We make things happen. Life happens, success happens in a whole variety of different ways. Mm hmm. And there's no limit for any design in terms of the potential of what they can bring about in their life. Hmm. I'd love to hear if you had any like fears or skepticisms around human design? No. Or were you just, you were just on board. You're like, I'm going.

35:52Yeah. So you guys, I'm a splenic manifester. Okay. And so that means, and so here I am, manifestors, eight to 9% of the world's population. I have a splenic inner authority, lingo. My inner guidance system of knowing what's correct for me is splenic in nature. It's intuitive and instinctive. So when I get a hit, it's just, it literally is that. And, and then I know, and I had that experience with human design and there's no questioning it.

36:31I know. And it was that strong. It was just, I know. And for me to recognize, learning now to recognize those, they're usually very soft. Right. And so, it's so easy to have mental chatter and the shoulds and the seriousness of life about, I got to figure this out, get in the way of us hearing any of our inner wisdom signals that we receive. But no, I didn't have any hesitation at all.

37:03I would love to hear a story that sheds light on like the pre-human design you and the post-human design you and just something that's been impactful. Like once you got this information and we're integrating it, like how you approached situations or experiences differently. Sure. Great. Before human design, I was completely exhausted. I burned out my thyroid and I burned out my adrenals, trying to keep up with all the generators.

37:34I love you generators, but your manifester friends have been trying to function as a generator their whole life. And that makes us, that makes us not pay attention to what our natural energy levels are and not respect them. And I was working in a big state agency for decades and then a private financial firm, high pressure and IT, information technology, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

38:09And I literally fried, fried everything. It took me a while to maybe not a fear, but a trust of human design, Elizabeth, you know, it's like, do I really trust it? It took me a while to just like, okay. I, and I literally spent a whole year cause I truly, I was, I was very ill, very, very ill. Others didn't know it cause I'd go out and I'd be, you know, Sally sunshine out public, but in private,

38:39I'd be on the couch, you know, pretty, pretty unable to function and get things done for myself. I gifted myself with a year of not getting into any kind of action, not making any commitment, not taking on any obligations, unless I felt it coming from inside me.

39:05And it was, I was scared to death because it meant that, no, you're not going to go necessarily make money, Kathy. You're not, you're not going to focus on what you have to do. You're not going to be afraid about money and these types of things. You're going to take that leap of faith and really lean into your human design. Best decision I ever made. But I had to be that drastic to get to that place of shedding that pressure to be doing what if all the shoulds doing all the ways that

39:43everybody else says to make money. I have to be out networking. I have to be doing this to be writing articles, have to, have to, have to. And I'm splenic. I get hits about what it is that's next for me. And they guide me really, really well. And as a result, my health is restored. There's a continual healing. My adrenals are, I'm not, I'm not adrenally exhausted any longer. I don't even get

40:16remotely into adrenal exhaustion, which I imagine in your work, you run into people that that is one of the issues for them. It just doesn't happen for me anymore. And so, yeah, it was that one. That's, that's, that's the big, the one big. And the other big is I grew up in a family, my mother's motto, I swear it was tattooed on her forehead. It was, what will people think of me if, right?

40:47So talk about the ultimate being externally sourced, driven by, oh, people have to like me. I have to please people. I was a really good people pleaser for many, many years. And human design helped me absolutely turn that one around as well. Wow. That's powerful. Yeah. And by, by living into ourselves, it is the, I truly believe it's the most generous thing we do for

41:17the other people in our lives. It's an act of generosity. It is not an act of selfishness. We can give more by being whole and who we are, and we're giving authentically. And if the people around us knew that we were sacrificing our life energy, sacrificing our health and our mental, our mental equilibrium by pressuring ourselves to, you know, do, do, do, they wouldn't want us to.

41:49They wouldn't want us to at all. Yeah. I think a little asterisk I want to add to that is like, I think our loved ones feel that way, but maybe some of the systems of oppression that we live in don't are not as supportive of that. Definitely not as supportive and may have different agendas. They certainly do. That's a bigger conversation, but just adding a little asterisk in here. Yeah, that's a good asterisk. Excellent one.

42:17So two questions I have before we dive into the rapid fire statements. And I think you may have

Discerning Practitioners

42:24already alluded to this, but I always love asking people like how they discern what kind of a practitioner to work with and you're, you're splenic. So how do you like, tell us how you know that you experienced clarity around who to work with? Well, let me, let me, I'm going to go at it a little different, take a different chat. Beth had given me a couple of questions ahead of time. So this one, I have a very strong opinion of. Okay, great. I can't wait to hear it.

42:54So, you know, there's more and more practitioners out there. Great. I was one of those at one time, right? And I look back and I go, okay, I didn't hurt anybody. But I also know that I give a completely different reading now after 15 years after one. So just look at the length, the study a person's done. And that's fine. Be just be aware of there is just so much richness to bring. And it absolutely

43:26takes time. It really does as a, as a reader to bring that depth of richness to a reading. But I mean, I, I inspired people from day one with it as well. So find the people that resonate with you. My deal breaker. And I would tell people to run for the hills. There is nothing negative about any aspect of human design at all. And if you end up conversing with somebody who paints any aspect of

44:04human design as negative, run, don't let it in. We do not need another modality that says you're inherently wrong, that there's an energetic imprinting inside you that has you doomed. It's like, oh my God, give me a break. But there are writings and speakings out there where that negative aspect of dimensions of a design sneak in. And that just breaks my heart. Our job is here is to truly,

44:38it is the one system that you can look at, that is just, and if it's spoken correctly, is totally empowering. My own path in terms of how did I find is I really, I really dithered for a long time, Beth. I didn't know who to study with. And I tried to make a mental choice, which, you know, if there's anything in human design, you guys, we haven't talked about inner authority. I know we're running out of time, but the big piece about human design is our minds aren't very good at making

45:15decisions for our own personal path. That is the purpose of inner authority. Our minds are brilliant. We want to use them correctly, but they're not good personal decision makers. They're good at gathering data. But the moment your mind tries to figure something out for you, you have totally stepped away from your inner wisdom and you're stuck, you're stuck up here. You're living up here and you're not living in as a fully embodied energetic field. And so I was trying to figure out who to study

45:50with. And finally, it was like, something came up and, and I had it down to do I go this way? Do I go that way? Something came up and I went leap and, and started working with team. And now I, I don't know how many years, eight years. Now I can teach with him. That's so cool. Yeah, it's just lovely. And you'll find the people that resonate with you. I don't resonate with everybody. There'll be people out there that are, you're going to find your natural connection with as long as they make you

46:27feel good about yourself. And as long as the information they're providing helps move you forward, go for it. Thank you. That was so many important things that you shared there. And you probably caught me laughing at one point because literally like three hours ago, I was like, I need to stop figuring it out. I was like, I caught myself. Oh, good. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I just stopped figuring out and just be and like, trust my strategy and trust my inner authority. And yeah, it's nice when you can lean back into that.

47:00Yeah. And it's so easy then. Right. And it ends all suffering. Yeah. It gets a lot easier the more you practice it too. It still keeps happening, but. And then I also don't make my mind wrong because you've really helped me understand that my mind has a very important role and it's brilliant and it's helpful. It just needs to be applied properly. Like there's nothing wrong. Right. I just like, I'm like, am I organizing myself and orienting the way that's going to be most supportive for me?

47:30And my goals. And then that's what creates momentum in your life. Totally. So one last thing that I want to touch on is just some people don't know their date, their time of birth. Like they come up against this in astrology too. And I want them to feel like there's still a seat at the table here at human design. Absolutely. Can you share how you like work with people like that? I do. We can get close. So I do have a very detailed blog posting out there. It's actually

48:06the highest searched item on my website. So if you Google a human design without birth time, you're probably going to find CatherineRivers.com blog and my article out there. We'll drop it in the show notes here so people can find it. Okay. And if you want to figure it out yourself, there's a step-by-step process of what you can do. Now, I am happy if people do the work on their own to, I think it's this, or I think it's that,

48:36or I'm just really lost. I always, how you met me, you know, I'm always happy to do a 30-minute kind of meet and greet and discovery session. We can talk about how you triangulate in to get close to their correct birth time. There are some things you'll never be able to do in terms of milking the knowledge of your human design, but it's so, so advanced that it's like you're missing 2%. You're getting the whole rest of it. But some 24-hour periods have

49:12huge changes. So please don't, some software says just choose noon. Please don't do that. It could be so phenomenally wrong that you'll go, and again, you're, then you're going to start doing the, it said I should do this and you're going to become externally sourced instead of internally driven. But I'm more than happy to help people figure that out. Thank you. Thank you. So we're going

Rapid Fire Statements

49:40to go into our rapid fire statements. And so those of you that are listening, normally there's a rapid fire questions, but manifestors prefer statements and information. And so we're working with each other on this. So I just want you to say the first thing that comes to you. Okay. The first one's going to be really easy. Tell us your human design. I'm a four, six splenic manifestor with a life theme of contagion. Love it. Share your favorite place in nature. In my kayak in the middle of some

50:13beautiful body of water. Lovely. Your beverage of choice is? Ah, Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley right now. Yum. Share your top tip for good energy hygiene. Oh my goodness. Think before you say yes to anything. Or pause, not think. Pause before you say yes to anything. Be clear. Tell us how you define healing. When we work with our energetic makeup, instead of against it, it creates this environment that

50:50allows all sorts of amazing healing to take place. We stop fighting on the cell. We stop fighting at the DNA level. What does that, what can that do? Wow. Healing. Yeah. Literal, physical, everything. Wow. Yeah. So Kathy, please share the services you'd offer. And I'd love for people to know like how and where they can connect with you. Best place is my website, Catherine Rivers. I even spelled my name

51:21right on the name tag. CatherineRivers.com. I offer a whole variety of human design readings, but most important is just to come sign up and have 30 minutes with me. I'd love to chat and see if we're a fit. Let you see if we're a fit. I often do just that initial, although I fill you up and cram your brain with that initial reading for an hour and a half. And I love doing that. And then I have people

51:54that say they want more and we maybe do another one or two sessions, or I have people that I work with a year at a time. And we use human design as the basis then for what it is they're wanting to accomplish. And I bring in all my other coaching and my empowerment work and support people to meet that, you know, create that outcome that they're wanting to create. But we do it from a foundation of human design. And they really learn how to integrate that design into their being over

52:30that period of time. So lovely. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you, Kathy. As you know, it's always so much fun when we get together. You always share so much fruitful information. I'm already excited to go back and listen to this. And I go through and I pick out the impactful quotes. And there's, there's already like five that I can't wait to pull out and highlight. And I hope that everybody who's listening today is also walking away with a little bit of laughter and lightness in their heart and curious about their

53:05own design. Yeah. I hope they come check you out, come talk to you. Or go, go calculate it out there in the web and go read an article about it. Well, Beth, you are just a bright light in the world. I love that you're doing this series. It's just very, very cool. Thank you. So thank you. I feel so honored that you asked me to, to be your guest speaker for this topic. So my pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Exploring Healing Arts podcast.

53:38I hope that our words, our stories and the wisdom shared on today's episode inspire you and support you in feeling connected. If you loved this episode, please leave us a five star review so we can reach more people. And as a thank you for listening, join me for a mini course on energy hygiene. You get three simple practices you can do anywhere, anytime to support you in feeling more grounded, connected to yourself and confident in your energetic boundaries. Sign up at energy

54:11healing, elizabeth.com slash energy hygiene. Thanks for being here today. And I look forward to being with you again soon. The primary purpose of the Exploring Healing Arts podcast is to inspire and educate. As a reminder, the information and opinions shared on this podcast are not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We encourage you to speak with your doctor for professional medical advice or treatment. Opinions offered on this podcast are just

54:47that. Opinions. Opinions.