The Emotions

       Feelings

      To the right of the Sacral is the Emotions centre, which stirs our feelings. It is where life swings between happiness and sadness, pain and passion, guilt and forgiveness. Of all the nine centres, it is the most intense because of what it arouses. It is unique because it is both one of the three ‘awareness centres’ and one of the four ‘motor centres’, meaning there is a perpetual balancing act between awareness and the drive to act and accomplish.

      Anatomically, this centre greatly affects our pancreas, kidneys, stomach, lungs and nervous system. This is perhaps why countless people will associate heightened emotional problems with a visit to the doctor’s surgery. It is why emotional situations can turn us off our food or make us binge, and why pain can lead to problems within the nervous system. It is also the centre associated with addictions, be they to sex, alcohol, food or drugs.

      Although this is the most complex centre it is perhaps the easiest to understand, because emotions are at the core of human nature. But this centre is about emotional awareness. It is about addressing which emotional experiences are good for you and which ones are not. Of course, it all depends on whether your Emotions are defined or undefined.

      If your Emotions are defined

      You’re a feeling person and yet I’d guess you have little idea about the true scope of your emotions. The chances are that you’re the life and soul of the party one minute, down in the dumps the next. Welcome to your erratic emotional wave! You are in this life to fly high and sample the cloud nines and then dive deep and find your nose in the mud. Emotionally, it is your nature to experience the full spectrum of feelings, which, from time to time, may feel like chaos to you and everyone around you. Emotions never sit still for long. They are like the restless ocean, rolling like waves, rising and falling, peaking and dipping. When you feel happy, you want to capture that moment. When you feel sad, you wonder when the blues will end. But there is never a state of permanence to emotion; recognizing these emotional waves and allowing them to pass through you instead of owning you is all part of your evolution.

      One lesson to heed is to not get attached to any particular feeling or the expectation of how something might turn out. Emotional decisions made in the heat of the moment are your enemy. So it’s all about allowing emotions to pass through you, disengaging from them and awaiting the calm – like a storm – tossed ship emerging from tumultuous seas spotting the steady beam of a lighthouse which guides the way home.

      But here’s the main revelation about having this centre defined: you are responsible for not only your own moods but also for influencing the moods of those people around you. Your Human Design affects people within your aura and triggers their emotions. As daft as it sounds, your emotions are contagious! The moods you experience will be mirrored by the people around you. If you’re feeling bummed out, watch others gradually join the despondency. If you’re exultant, watch others’ exuberance rise. Your lifetime is all about learning to handle, appreciate and embrace your feelings and how they affect others.

      If your Emotions are undefined

      You will probably consider yourself an emotional person when, in fact, you are actually riding the emotions transmitted by others. You laugh their laughs and cry their tears. So what you must realize is that your emotions are triggered by the emotional impact of others. Your natural state, when alone, is to be cool, calm and collected.

      What tends to happen when you step outside that personal space is that you get caught in other people’s emotional waves. This is a conditioning influence because your design isn’t made to cope with such intensity of feeling. People with this centre undefined have the greatest trouble in allowing themselves to feel emotions. If you’re not comfortable in your own skin at certain moments it messes with your nature, inducing confusion, temper or frustration. On the plus side, if you’re in the middle of a football stadium being swept away by an air of triumph, you’ll feel that glory and celebration. If you’re attending a religious ceremony, you’ll share the blessed uprising. But you are potentially subject to the emotions of those around you, whether healthy or toxic, so you must remain aware and watchful.

      To transform this conditioning influence into impassive wisdom, learn to not react to emotions which are not part of you. Instead, reflect back your clear perception of what is going on, observed from the objective sidelines. Be a witness, not a player.

      Put another way, if those with the defined centre are flailing in the sea of their emotions, you are someone on the shoreline, observing. This is where you have a choice: you can either dive in and magnify those emotions or stay out of the sea and reflect back to those people what is transpiring and how to be responsible about it.