5 things all new Human Design Readers need to know.

13 min readSep 21, 2022

The short list of things I teach HD readers I mentor.

In the last couple of years, the number of people learning about Human Design and incorporating it into their online businesses has exploded. Here are the five things I feel that every Human Design Reader, Coach, Teacher, or Mentor really should be doing from an ethical standpoint.

If you’re someone who is learning about Human Design and love it so much that you just want to teach it, share it, and tell the whole world about it please take these considerations to heart as you do.

And if you have a friend, client, or coach who has enthusiastically dived into learning about Human Design since they discovered it a few days, weeks, or months ago you might like to forward this to them. It will help them to incorporate Human Design into their life and/or work in a way that’s truly going to help people.

Here are the 5 things I wish someone had sat me down and told me in my first year (or two or three) of my journey with Human Design:

Make sure you know enough.

“Enough” is relative. You can literally change a person’s life by introducing them to their Type and Strategy. You can also go and study at the International Human Design School and at the end of 3 1/2 years realise there’s still so much you don’t know.

It is my personal opinion that there is no right or wrong here. Everyone needs to find their own path through this knowledge. But it is very important that you know enough to serve your client or student really well. This is a human being who has decided to trust you and who really wants to improve their life. They deserve to be treated with respect and that means you need to know what the hell you’re talking about.

So make sure you genuinely know enough to provide whatever kind of reading, coaching, or mentoring program you’re offering. If you simply love opening the door for people and then pointing them to other resources where they can learn more (rather than having a thorough understanding of all possible chart configurations) then do that — open the door and point them in the right direction.

If you want to give introductory Human Design readings you‘ll do your clients an awesome service if you know a good chunk about their Type, Strategy, Inner Authority, Signature, Not-Self Theme, and Profile.

Want to deliver ongoing coaching with clients as you take them deeper and deeper into living their design and support them in deconditioning?

Then you really need a working knowledge of everything I mentioned above plus a decent understanding of all nine Centres and how different they are if they’re defined, undefined or open. You need to be able to teach them about their Defined Gates and/or Channels (especially the gates in their Personality Sun and Earth and their Design Sun and Earth — which make up their Incarnation Cross. This is something people are going to ask about in their session with you even if they can’t really live it until they’re following Strategy and Inner Authority!)

And if they stay with you long enough, or they’re having chronic health issues, or they’re about to move house and they’re struggling to work out where to live, (or they come to you after they’ve been experimenting with Design for years already) then understanding their Variables is going to allow you to help them even more in any or all of these circumstances.

These days I know more than enough to serve many, many thousands of people on their Human Design journey. I know who I can serve well and I know which parts of the chart I could explain so simply a 5-year-old would get it. But I also know that there is plenty more for me to learn and that’s why I still actively study aspects of Human Design more than 8 years into my HD journey.

In summary: “enough” is relative. So look at your business and ask yourself these questions:

What am I offering? And do I know enough to do that thing well?

That brings me to the next thing I wish all Human Design Readers, Teachers, and Coaches would do…

2. Know the limits of your knowledge and don’t guess.

It takes courage to say “I don’t know”. You have a client who asks you a question and you want to look like the expert. This is common and, dare I say, normal in most societies but it doesn’t help your client or student if you guess.

But to say “I don’t know” requires a few things.

First, you have to set the stage around what you can and cannot do in a session. If you set people up to have the expectation that you know everything then they will be disappointed when they see you can’t answer a question they expected you to know.

For some people setting up expectations well and creating clear boundaries is useful. For other people, it’s absolutely imperative. It depends on your own, individual Design. If you feel like you need really clear boundaries, communication, or even contracts about what you will and will not cover in your coaching, mentoring, or programs then do that.

Second, you have to be confident enough with what you do already know so you can value the help you’re already able to offer your client or student. If you feel like, at a core level, you are not good enough (as a human being) until you “know all the things” then you need to address how you’re feeling and what you’re believing about yourself as a priority.

Knowing endless amounts about Human Design is not, in and of itself, going to solve your imposter syndrome. You need to tackle that a different way and while you heal that hurting part of you that believes you’re not good enough, just make sure you keep communicating to your clients and students what you can and will cover in your work with them.

Third, you’ll need to practise saying this phrase (or something similar):

“I don’t know that off the top of my head. I’ll have to look it up and get back to you.”

And then, make sure that you do.

For the record, I have tripped over this lesson as well. When my self-worth was less robust than it is now I used to just hope and pray people wouldn’t ask me questions I didn’t know. Of course, that just left me feeling afraid and guilty instead of grounded and empowered.

Over time, as I used tools like Tapping to heal wounded parts of me that were causing this behaviour, I simply got better and better at setting up expectations well, and now when clients ask me a question I don’t know I either tell them I’ll get back to them or I direct them to a resource where they can find the answer.

So practise. Hold your boundaries with clients and students, don’t guess and continue learning more so the next time you do know how to answer that question.

Next point…

3. Practise what you preach.

This is your Human Design experiment too. People are watching you. Your clients, your students, your followers on social media, your email subscribers. Whether you’re designed as a (6th Line) Role Model or not, if you’re teaching or coaching people to live into their potential through their Human Design they want to know if you are too.

We trust people who practise what they preach. You’ll lose followers, students, and clients — humans you could be helping — if you don’t actively practise what you’re teaching them.

Note: You’re allowed to stumble. You’re allowed to muck it up. You’re allowed to be a messy human who is learning too — if you’re a 3rd Line Profile you can’t help but be this way — but make sure you’re actively trying to live your own Design.

In fact, if you’re not willing to actively experiment with deeply understanding and learning how to embody your Human Design then I’m going to suggest you find something else you care about more to spend your time and energy on.

You’re either in (the best you can right now with the challenges of your own life) or you’re out. I suggest you consciously choose because living your Design isn’t something you just do when it feels fun, light, and interesting. Or once a week on a Sunday when you have the time and space to relax into it.

It’s messy, it’s challenging, it’s gobsmacking beautiful and it’s life-changing. But you have to choose to change your life far fewer people are going to listen to you as a teacher, coach, or mentor unless you’re willing to make the changes Human Design asks of you in your own life.

Next… let’s talk about money.

4. Charge an appropriate fee for your Human Design reading, coaching, or group program.

There are people online, right now, charging nothing at all for Human Design readings because they think they still need more practise. And there are others who are charging at least twice as much as they really should be for their knowledge level.

This latter issue is rampant in the coaching world as a whole; it’s not just in the Human Design corner of the industry. But it is a massive problem in the HD world as well. I see people who have been experimenting with Human Design for less than 2 years who are charging thousands of dollars for Human Design focused coaching sessions.

And don’t even get me started on the number of “certification” programs that have popped — at $10K or more — for the privilege of becoming a Human Design Reader.

Choosing an appropriate fee for your 1:1 services, group programs and online products is about finding a balance between the following:

Honouring your own time and energy that went into studying everything you know, bravely experimenting with everything you learned, and creating the product or service you’re offering
Considering the actual, tangible value that this product or service genuinely brings to the other person’s life, and
Choosing the market segment that you want to serve and how much money they actually have

Other things to consider:

Is someone else who knows far more than you offering something similar (i.e. Likely to be a way higher quality and value for their audience) but for far less than you want to charge? (If yes, are they just massively undercharging or is there a chance you’re being greedy because you know how to market and sell in a really convincing manner?)
Are you charging a lot of money because you’ve been taught to behave like a “queen” who is building her “empire” and told that “high ticket clients” are the best option? (Notice the inequality of this; this model causes the rich to stay rich and prevents the poor(er) people from having access to great information that will truly help them)
Do you believe that you’re doing better work than “so-and-so-over-there” and so you think you should charge more than them just because your work is higher quality than theirs or you know more than them? (This is egoic behaviour. Ignore others, feel into your truth about how much you want to charge separate from the nonsense of others).

This last point was a block I stumbled over. Several years ago I put my prices up to $300 AU for my 60-minute sessions. I did it because I was frustrated, furious, and actually shocked that a community leader who teaches the same business and marketing techniques to everyone (even though, as you know, we are all designed differently) was charging more than I was. Meanwhile, I was able to look at someone’s chart and immediately offer suggestions for how they could grow their business in a tailored way that made sense for their design.

At some point in the year or so after that, one of my clients reflected back to me, in no uncertain terms, that she felt I was massively overcharging for what I was offering. It was horrible and I was mortified. This was the opposite of what I had wanted to express and be as an entrepreneur. I wanted to operate with integrity and be of service and instead, I found myself with a very unhappy client who had quickly outgrown what I was genuinely able to help her with.

As I integrated and learned from that experience I dropped my prices. While I did feel a huge amount of shame through that experience, I didn’t drop my prices because I was ashamed. I worked through those emotions as soon as I could and in the space that created it lead me to realise that she was right — I was overcharging for what I could offer at the time.

And I learned a really valuable lesson about finding a far more conscious way to set prices for readings, coaching, classes, programs, and products. I keep in mind all the things I shared above and then I ask myself these two questions:

What’s the lowest amount I can charge without feeling resentful towards my client?
What’s the highest amount I can charge without feeling like I’m ripping them off?

This is the process I suggest for all my clients who need to set fees for their own practice and are unsure where to start.

My ideal fee — for anything I’m offering — is always somewhere between those two numbers. It magically takes into account whatever I believe about the value or worth of my work and myself at that point in time.

And while I can (and do) continue to work on any unhelpful beliefs I find bouncing around inside of me, I have learned that mentally deciding to just “charge more” doesn’t work. If it’s not in alignment with what feels right for me then I will either build resentment towards my clients/students (which is bad for both of us) or I will get unhappy customers along with resistance, pushback and a damaged reputation.

So please, if you’re trying to set your prices don’t undersell yourself and, at the other end of the spectrum, remember just because you can change a lot of money doesn’t mean you should.

Final thought, and it’s maybe more important than all the others I’ve shared so far…

5. Do your own deconditioning.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “deconditioning” it simply means unravelling or unlearning the things you were taught about who you should be and how you should behave in the world. Most of this stuff we picked up from our parents or primary caregivers, but almost everyone received big doses of programming from teachers, preachers, their local culture, the country they live in, and the media.

Deconditioning is important, from a Human Design perspective, because it’s what allows us to live our design. If you want to live out the greatest potential of this incarnation you have to unhook the beliefs you had installed into your mind when you were a small, vulnerable human. That stuff lives in us, wired into our subconscious and unconscious mind, and taking up space in our physical bodies until the day we die unless we actively choose to clear it out.

There are many ways you can decondition. If you’re very focused and strong-willed (as per your Human Design chart — and this is fairly rare) and you haven’t experienced too many traumatic events in your life then you may be able to do a chunk of that deconditioning through following your (HD) Strategy and Inner Authority.

But in the 8 1/2 years (and counting) of working with this system and observing my clients, students, and friends, and in my own journey with HD I cannot tell you a single person who was able to decondition with Human Design alone. We all used additional tools to support the unravelling of these outdated and unhelpful beliefs.

I personally use Trauma-Informed Tapping (similar to EFT which I was trained but gentler therefore and more effective) for myself and with my clients as the main tool to support deconditioning. And there are many tools you can use. Just pick one you love, that you can use regularly, that is both safe (for your body) and effective at getting the job done.

Why is deconditioning so important for you as a budding Human Design Reader, Coach, or Mentor (beyond just doing the work for the sake of your own personal journey)?

Because you are holding space for other humans as they learn about something that has the potential to not only change their life but completely shatter who they thought they were.

The more regulated your own nervous system is and the less junk you hold from your own childhood and past traumas, the safer, kinder, and more powerful a space you can hold for other people.

So they’re the top five things I would say to anything who is somewhat new to Human Design and is determined to incorporate this incredible system into their work in any way. I hope they serve you — or the newbie you send this to — really well.

May we see Human Design spread around the globe and into the corners of every society for the benefit of all. And may we all play our part in doing the very best job we can each do in teaching HD to those whom we are here to serve.

With love,

Caroline.

If you like how I teach (or want the same lessons but in shorter or different formats!) then keep reading to find more resources to help you become your most authentic, empowered, conscious self.

Really new to HD? Check out these courses:

Want to continue your learning with HD or learn more about how to decondition?

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5 things all new Human Design Readers need to know.

Here are the 5 things I wish someone had sat me down and told me in my first year (or two or three) of my journey with Human Design:

If you like how I teach (or want the same lessons but in shorter or different formats!) then keep reading to find more resources to help you become your most authentic, empowered, conscious self.

Written by Caroline Southwell