Your Soul Map: Liberation, Human Design, and the BIPOC Experience

Super thrilled to receive and read Your Soul Map: Liberating, Human Design, and the BIPOC Experience by Asha and Aycee, two of my favorite women entrepreneurs who use Human Design and Astrology in their work. Their amazing and powerful book arrived on a Friday. I started reading it then and finished it a few days later. The entire book is soul food!I really appreciate Asha and Aycee's discussion about the ancient origins of African Kemetian astrology, the Hindu Chakra system, and the Chinese I-Ching. I am glad they talked about honoring the ancient origins of these wisdom tools. The way they described the chakras and the centers finally helped me reconcile my resistance towards the nine centers. You see, I have been a chakra lover since the 1990s! The nine centers really didn't mesh well with my own understanding of the body's energy centers. I now have a new level of peace and understanding. The book broke down my resistance.I am grateful Asha and Aycee devoted space to addressing how Ra, the white male founder of the Human Design, and his perspectives and diehart followers create barriers for people of color in the Human Design community. I so appreciate the various perspectives from women of color that were also included.I also appreciate how they walked the reader through the various parts of a Human Design chart, especially the centers, gates, channels, definition, profile, planets, and incarnation cross. My understanding and curiosity about my own Human Design and those of my family, friends, and clients have increased exponentially.As a Black woman who is 58 and navigating her second Saturn Return with the wisdom of my Manifesting Generator energy type, sacral authority, and 5/1 profile, my body lit all the way up as I read Aycee and Asha's Human Design stories and reasons for writing the book.I enjoyed reading their interviews with the different women of color, especially Fiona Wong.FUN FACTS: In 2021, Fiona gave me my first reading and recommended I foliw Aycee on Instagram and listen to her podcast.I also joined Fiona's Human Design co-hort that same year and deepened my own understanding and practice.That process, along with the creative entrepreneur coaching with Human Design I received from Black British coach Marilyn Fontaine, supported me as I gave birth to my gifts as a Human Design Doula.Aycee and Asha's book is also supporting my journey as a Human Design Doula.I shared Aycee and Asha's reflections on the astrological life stages with my clients during our sessions earlier this month. They really enjoyed them. Both clients will be getting their book. I've also recommended it to other clients and purchased two additional copies as birthday gifts for friends.If you're interested in Human Design as an in-powerment tool, get a copy of the book today.THANK YOU AYCEE & ASHA for writing your sacred book!PS: People of color please keep writing Human Design books. We need them!

I am really appreciating the depth and full spectrum Asha, Aycee and others are shining a light on and honouring.I am getting aha’s and mmhmm’s throughout.Only 32 pages in, and overall it feels important and nuanced in a liberatory way that is not often or at all expressed in Human Design - so so so much more permission giving AND SACRED! I knew this and now I know know it.I was calling friends who are readers when I was still in the numerals of the pages inviting them to get it themselves - and now I am writing this review!If you are considering this, trust yourself, trust the call to jump in and land firmly in the foundation of Human Design through a liberatory lens.Personally I would love some more stories but this is keeping to my own personal experience with HD books and all of the info they are chalked full of - brings me back to school text books a bit but this one I am actually wanting to/needing to read. And I have out my highlighter.

I purchased this book hoping to become more aware of how to ensure what I do with Human Design meets cultural sensitivity. Here's what I got:White appropriation referred to as colonialization has been harmful in more ways than we can enumerate. It has destroyed cultures, replacing them with hybrids that have allowed BIPOC to integrate while at the same time, not wanting them to integrate. The trauma inflicted generationally is something we still aren't willing to reconcile in this polarized white-dominated western world. The book touches on this but does not to address the harsh realities of it.I wish there was more concrete points made about the traditional Human Design and language that needs evolution for more culturally inclusiveness. I personally don't like the negative that appears in it and much prefer the focus on possibility and evolution that can come from knowing your Human Design. There were points raised about Ra but not fully addressed so for someone who doesn't know, it is unsatisfying. It's not enough to just put it out there and drop it. How do we learn more if we want to know? (you know those 1 lines and 48 gates want to know).The authors want us to learn more about the ancient traditions Human Design is built upon. They touch upon them in this book. I'm not clear whether they are saying that these indigenous traditions have been acculturated by whiteness as translated by Ra and whether we can be fully versed in Human Design without knowing them. I have researched the gates, for example, and find much divergence from the original such as with Quantum Human Design. I've been synthesizing the information to understand the themes better to be able to help my clients.The last part of the book (after page 119) was most helpful. I always seek new ways to explain the foundations and the verbiage here spoke to me. How do we get to the essence of each part of the chart to get to the whole instead of getting all caught up in words? We need to understand that essence.I'm not sure who the audience of this book is. If it was written for the BIPOC community, and since I'm not one, I can't speak to how it feels to them. As a white woman working with Human Design, I desire to be more culturally inclusive (in fact live that way) I would like to understand more and this book didn't give me enough for that. I know it is huge to cover. I hope the authors will follow up with additional books to help us learn to be more culturally sensitive and how to ask questions that get to the heart of the identity of our BIPOC community. The (Human Design) world needs more of this. When we all are able to fully express who we are designed to be, the world will be a better, healed place.

Reading "Your Soul Map: Liberation, Human Design, and the BIPOC Experience" was like a breeze of fresh air. Asha Ramakrishna and Aycee Brown bring to the table a most-needed conversation about Human Design through the lenses of black, indigenous, and people of Color in a very honest, insightful, conscious way.Being a Latina myself, I deeply resonated with many of the things shared. In another hand, the text gave me a better understanding of the optics, and feelings of those beautiful lifestreams who experience life in different ways from the "white privileged", plus I gained a deeper understanding of the origins of Human Design. In my country, Mexico, we have a saying: "Honor a quien honor merece". (Honor to whom honor is due). Thank you for this beautiful book.

Ever since I started learning and experimenting with Human Design, I started personally harbouring questions about it's origins, founders and culture it is embodying. Given, I am a cis gender white guy in Australia, I have travelled and worked cross-culturally enough to notice the bodies and genders advocating and evangelising for Human Design on social media etc.When I saw this book and authors I grabbed it devoured it with plenty of underlines and inner prayers of gratitude for the brave and necessities voices represented in this work. I was relieved to see that my doubts around whether the way many Human Design teachers were wholly presenting the ancient systems it combines were warranted .Don't get me wrong, like the authors, I think the Human Design system is remarkable but I have held substantive scepticism around the way its founder Ra Uru Hu presented and packaged it.It seems the thing I have been picking up on was a kind of colonisation that occurred in it's genesis and this book unpacks that with respect, research and a necessary critique.Filled with plenty of references, succinct historical accounts and important voices, I believe this book is a must read for anyone using (and especially advocating for) Human Design. It will challenge and educate you. You might even dare look past Ra and his allies, and consider the BIPOC world its ingredients were sourced from.