Breaking bones, energy rising, dissolving pieces of self: My intense somatic journey (so far!)
The insane physical experiences I had as I dove deep into Human Design substructure
In August of last year (2024), I joined a Human Design1 (HD for short) FB group that shared tons of really amazing learning resources for free amongst the group members.
I had been quite immersed in my experiment for a while already by then,2 as I had thrown my proverbial hands up in the air and internally shouted “Sacral take the wheel” two years prior—but, as is true to my nature, I was hungry for going deeper and ever deeper. Learning about design substructure was calling to me. Many people will say it doesn’t matter to learn about the deeper stuff because we “don’t have [conscious] access” to that level of our beings… but I can say that it doesn’t matter that my mind can’t necessarily access that deep level… because my body exists on that level and it is a very real, physical place where experience is what matters.
Conscious, mental control does not matter there. It is not about mind or control. It is about existence.
BTW: If you don’t really know much about Human Design, then this introduction and details regarding the HD concepts may be a bit confusing—and might not mean all that much to you. I do encourage you to bear with me and read on, though. My goal is to tell my stories in ways that are accessible to everyone, even if you’ve never heard of HD or any of this before.
Because the knowledge is only the starting point.
I am here to share my experiences. And this one is a doozie.
It began as I noticed my Not-Self
The first thing I really got into, after joining the group and gaining access to the resources, was the class on “Rave Psychology,” which deals with the “conscious,” personality side of our designs.
In a nutshell, it’s who we know ourselves to be (or as Ra3 would say, “Who you think you think you are.”)
In the first part of the lectures/course, Ra spoke about the Not-Self, which is essentially our mind and who it thinks we should be—which annoyingly ends up meaning that our minds think we should basically be everything that we are NOT! Most of the world lives entrenched in and is deeply driven by their Not-Self minds… in other words, most of the world is trying desperately to be anything but who they truly are. Is it any wonder most people hate themselves, and the world is such chaos?!
I already had some knowledge of the concepts, but what was taught in the classes kind of blew my mind wide open. It was like 🤯 over and over again throughout.
There was also something extremely special (for me anyway) about listening to the audios… hearing Ra speak instead of just reading his words. I imagine it has something to do with the sound waves and the vibrations they carry… and, to me, it seems like it’s more of an active process to read rather than listen- even though a quick Google search showed me many articles that say our brains process reading and listening in the same way, scientifically speaking. So whatever, lol. The fact of the matter is that it FELT different to listen rather than read his words. MOVING ON haha…
I experienced a lot of AHA-moments of self-recognition. Like, Ohh!! 😬 Yep. 😬 That is totally me trying to be who-I-am-not when I engage in that behavior 😬🫣
In the substructure of our designs, on our personality side, there are these two aspects that I was focusing on; one is called our perspective and the other, our motivation. There are 6 possibilities for each, and each possibility has its opposite, which we are pulled to play out when we are in our Not-Self. It is then said that our perspective is in “distraction,” and our motivation, in “transference.”
My “true”4 perspective is Power and its distraction is Personal; my “true” motivation is Innocence and its transference is Desire.
I don’t want to really go into the concepts of all this, as its “advanced” and there is a path that leads you to getting here, but in a nutshell, when I am in my correct perspective and not in distraction, I will see where everything belongs and how it all fits together… and where true power lies.
I always see people saying that Power Perspective people see “who the winners and the losers are,” but as I lean into experiencing my truths, I have begun to see that this is not actually true of my Perspective. Those whose true perspectives is Personal with Power as their distraction… well, power as their distraction seems to be about seeing winners and losers—and thinking that THAT is what power is about and where it lies. Ra’s perspective was Personal, and his distraction was Power, so it is my opinion that he could not conceptualize the true Power Perspective as different from how he experienced it in his distraction. But this is all just my thoughts and observations from my own experiences.
Now, Perspective and Motivation have a connection: the former leads to the latter. When I am not in distraction and can see from my correct Power perspective, I will be correctly motivated in my Innocence… which is something else that I see a lot of confusion and non-understanding about.
My own experience thus far has been that Innocence Motivation is about simply being present in the moment, experiencing That Which Is, without trying to get somewhere else. Like, I want to do the thing because I enjoy the thing and want to have the experience of enjoying the thing… for the sake of the experience of the thing itself. Or, to put an example to it (because I’m not sure that what I just wrote isn’t confusing as fuck haha), I want to eat this food because it tastes good, no other reason. I want to go for a walk on the beach because I feel like walking and I love going to the beach. I want to engage in writing on Substack because I need to express what is inside of me. Each of these have no ulterior motives other than the experience of the thing itself.
When I’m in transference, I am in Desire motivation… which seeks one thing in order to gain another. If I eat this food, it will keep me healthy or help me lose weight. Or… If I take this job, it will get me lots of money. Or… If I go this place, maybe it put me in touch with people who can further my career. I dunno, stuff like that. Can you see the difference?
Instead of engaging in doing things for the things themselves, when I am in desire transference, I am trying to engage in something to get something else.
It gets a little mucky in my case (and those with designs similar to mine), because Power Perspective and Desire Motivation are both related to each other.5 And Personal Perspective and Innocence Motivation are related to each other.6 So it can be a little tricky for me to navigate and quite easy to slip down the slope of falling into what is not correct for me.
But I’m starting to digress, so let me go back to my story…
As I listened to Ra speak to these things and how it all connects to the Not-Self, I started to become keenly aware of my own Not-Self behavior, as I’d previously mentioned above.
I started to really see how my distraction of Personal and my transference to Desire were absolutely driving me in my life… it was this crazy crystal-clear thing as it was happening at different times. I remember being at work one day, feeling excruciatingly frustrated and suddenly having this intense AHA moment, where I realized that I was deep in my transference of Desire and that was why I was feeling so frustrated… I was internally “railing” against what was actually happening and trying to figure out how to will something different into existence… and dear god, it was painful. In that moment of deep frustration, this light bulb went off… OMG this is transference! What if I just stopped worrying about what is NOT happening and what I can’t see how to make happen, and just focus on my present moment and what is actually happening instead? Just being present and enjoying existing?? What can I enjoy about right now?
It was like a vice that had been gripping me and squeezing the life out of me suddenly disappeared and my whole being relaxed. I even got a little dizzy! It all made me chuckle a little as I had the realization that I had just witnessed myself in transference and that the simple acknowledgement of it made what had seemed like an iron fist around me just dissolve into thin air. For the rest of that day, I felt like I was floating with ease and peace7 through my day.
Observation begets experience begets observation… and so on and so forth…
I kept having different experiences of that sort. Observing myself in my conditioning and my Not-Self, and finding that the simple observation and awareness of those things started to transform… well, me, I guess… how I was showing up in the world around me and with the people that surrounded me.
I began to see how much Not-Self conditioning was driving and choking my communication. Especially the need to prove that I was not a weirdo in order to avoid what might feel like confrontation, so that I could be loved and accepted. The need to show certainty, solve other people’s problems, and always come off as cool and collected and above all intelligent… those were thick for me and god, they made communication so difficult and painful. I never knew what the right thing to say was and oh-so-often I felt like I came off as a complete idiot… like jeeeeeeez woman, who says stuff like that?!?! 😵💫
After finishing the semester about the Not-Self in Rave Psychology, all of that was highlighted in an un-ignorable way. I had this moment one day where I was so sick and tired of feeling like a weirdo when I spoke most of the time, no matter what I said or did, that I challenged myself to just shut the fuck up!! I have always been fascinated by those characters that you will see in some movies that just don’t say anything at all, even when someone speaks directly to them. They just sit there looking at the other person, saying nothing. Like omg, the power inherent in that!! How does one even do that?!?!?!?! Lol. I decided I wanted to try it out. Well. At least to speak as little as possible. To wait for a direct question to speak, as much as I could possibly manage. To just grunt a Hmmm, or give a little a laugh in order to not feel like I was being rude… because not responding at all seemed so rude to me! But some little wordless response felt like it solved that for me.
And so I did. And I started to experience how there were these times where, energetically, it was like communication would get pulled out of me. I started to be able to feel when there was space for me to speak and when there wasn’t… instead of trying to insert what I thought I should say in order to make this or that happen, or in order for me to be “acceptable” and liked. I was absolutely fascinated and delighted to find that when I did communicate… at those times when whatever it was that needed to be said would just get PULLED out, into the available space… it was so effective! And that whole feeling stupid for saying stupid things? That stopped happening—well, when I was honoring the waiting for the pull and the open space, anyway haha.
It was incredible.
Cracking open
When I was finishing up the Rave Psychology classes, I had this really intense experience.
I cannot for the life of me remember what it was that Ra said… some small something or other—in passing, even, I think… yet I had this moment of deep recognition and resonance within my body… and suddenly I was huddled in crying puddle, melting down onto my kitchen floor. In the middle of getting ready for work in the morning!!
There was this sense of something cracking open within me. Around me.
It wasn’t a mental thing at all… like I said, I can’t remember what he said, and I have no intellectual idea of what the heck it was that hit such a deep chord within me. I just know that there was a sudden recognition and understanding, and something in my body just… reacted.
The feeling was, like I said above, that of a cracking open. Shedding. Like a shell that had been enveloping my skin suddenly cracked and started flaking and falling off me, and I felt an intense freedom I had never felt before. I cried intensely for maybe 5/10 minutes, and then, as suddenly as it started, it was done. And I was left feeling this beautiful stillness. And wobbly legs haha. And then I just went about my day.
But something really felt different after that.
I kept experiencing that sensation of cracking open here and there at different times, as well as the sensation of the shedding and flaking shell from off my skin… I think, probably (I don't exactly recall) as I observed myself moving through my life and seeing the energetic mechanics of my design at work within me in real time. Moving with an even greater self-awareness than before. Catching myself in my conditioning. And then watching how things changed because of that.
After Rave Psychology, I moved on to another course… called Holistic Analysis, I believe. And once again, listening to the classes would bring me to moments of random crying and body recognition, like before. And, again, for the most part, I don’t know that I could mentally pinpoint what information or concept it was exactly that was causing all of it to happen.
I swear, listening to Ra speak was like pure voodoo magic on my body.
Well… when he would speak about the mechanics, and NOT at all when he’d speak about his values and philosophies lol… those made me roll my eyes a lot and want to scream “OMG MAN put those black-colored-Ra-glasses away and get back to the mechanics already!!!” 🤣 God, his pessimistic nihilist rants were the worst 🤣🤣 Although… maybe it’s my 5th line body… but I do sort of get him and find it somewhat amusing, even though I do not agree with like any of these values and philosophies lol. But I am starting to digress again…
Breaking bones and unseen forces
The most intense experiences came when I got into listening to Advanced Base Theory, which is some of the most advanced and abstract aspects of Human Design and its substructure.
Not only was it fascinating on a mental level to take in… but I started to experience what felt like… my bones breaking… I mean, not for real, physically… but I can’t think of any other words to use to describe it. Like something crunching and breaking my bones inside of me… like when you activate a glowstick and it makes all of those crunching, crackling sounds… that was what it felt like was happening to my bones (at a cellular level??) as I listened to the base theory classes.
Again, it was as if there was a part of the information… an energetic component… that completely surpassed my mind and went straight into my body… lol, straight into the bones of my body!!
Whereas the cracking open of the shell had felt exhilarating and freeing, making me feel lighter and was not at all painful, this new part was… well… not anything like that lol.
I started to feel rather ungainly and kind of awkward in everyday movements… and the image that comes to mind, connected to this time, is that of a cartoon character that is transforming into a werewolf, and as they transform, their bones crunch and crack as they change shape.
Except imagine that happening randomly as I’m trying to get through my normal days 😵💫
It was a very odd feeling.
There was another thing that also started happening at this time…
I would have these moments… where I would be doing normal life-things… eating… showering… whatever… just going about my day, thinking thoughts… and it would be like suddenly, out of nowhere… something would… take me over… oh dear god, the words do fail me so badly here!!!
When it first happened, I wanted to describe it as the ground beneath my feet opening up and an abyss beneath sucking me down and swallowing me whole… but that did not feel quite right.
It was more like an energy… an energetic force… that would creep up from “behind me,” and as it slowly made its way over the top of my head, time would warp and slow down, everything would become still and silent, and then, in the next instant, this force would grab me and pull/swipe/catapult me downward into new depths of… experience? I don’t even have the words!!
The analogy that my mind kept thinking of (I freakin’ love analogies, ok?!🤭) was that it was as if I was deep sea diving… on the bottom of the ocean floor… the deepest known parts. And I had previously been finding new cracks and crevices in the ocean floor, taking me deeper and deeper… hidden caves and dark grottos, leading farther down and down and down… to the point where absolutely no sunlight could even dream of finding me anymore… so deep…
And then, at some point, in the deep, dark bowels of the deepest caves in the deepest part of the ocean, when I think I am so deep that I can go no deeper, this unknown unseen force creeps up on me from beneath and behind, without my even sensing it, and suddenly it grabs me and pulls me down into a hole—an abyss!—I had no clue was there. Pulling me down and down and down into even further unimaginable depths. (I suppose this doesn’t really expand much upon my previous explanation, but oh well haha)
Also, in that feeling of warped time, I had this weird sense of… an auditory frequency… I want to describe it as if it was a sound, though it wasn’t actually something I heard with my physical years. It kind of makes me think of when “the bass drops” in dubstep/electronic music… in a frequency sense. (Does that even make sense?!?!) It’s really the closest I can get to finding words to explain what that frequency “sounded”/felt like.
This experience happened a few times during that period of time. It was… something else, I tell you.
Interestingly, it seemed like it would come on the heels of intriguing thoughts and realizations… except I cannot tell you at all what any of those thoughts and insights might have been. Because they—the thoughts and insights—did not matter in and of themselves; they were only the gateways to the physical/energetic connections/changes I was experiencing.
Energy rising
Here’s where the shit really goes insane… the most incredible part of it all…
I was at the very end of the base theory lectures.
Ra was wrapping it up and giving some closing thoughts, and he said this one little itty-bitty line…
“The search for god is the search for base.”
Mentally, there was this 🤯 Whoa moment,8 where it intellectually did deeply connect for me. Now, I could not really explain very well to you why exactly and in what way that was so insightful for me, even on a mental level (even though I did try in that footnote #8 up there)...
…but it was the deeper, body level where something really big happened...
Something within me………
I don’t even know what word to use!?
Burst? Overflowed? I don’t know, neither of those are quite right.
Something happened lol… a recognition. A resonance. The image of a glass exploding because of a really high-pitched noise comes to mind. It was kind of like that on a body level.
And (once again lol), I was crying. I could barely contain… myself? My energy? Something… in my body.
Something started to feel like it was rising within me… and I just leaned into it and allowed myself to cry and feel it.
Suddenly, I could barely stand and, at the same time, felt like I needed to move my body… it needed movement… and then I found myself standing by the bathroom sink, sort of leaning against it… my arms outstretched in front of me, holding the sink… my head down between my arms, as I crouched down… squatting… I swear, like a woman giving birth… and… well, here is where it gets really hard to describe what was happening… there was this feeling of something inside of me… breaking forth… breaking out… rising up… from the base of my spine… while I'm just... squatting there, contracting my hips/belly/legs… yelling and crying… nearly screaming for whatever to get the hell out of me… because that was what it felt like… like something needed to get the FUCK out.
From the base of my spine.
I felt rather insane, to be honest… but I went with it. My mind didn't get in the way or try to stop it; my mind just watched. I allowed my body to twist and turn and contract and just… move… in whatever way it needed to… and I tried to just be in it… sobbing, crying, yelling… even that was a part of what my body needed to do in that moment.
I could feel the energy begin to move out and up, creeping slowly from the base of my spine, moving up and up and up, over my spine. With every twist and contraction, moving up and up. It got all the way up to the middle of my back, in between my shoulder blades…
And then it was done.
It felt like the energy had gotten stuck in the middle of my back, between my shoulder blades. There wasn’t much to be done about it, other than just acknowledge that it was what had happened.
It had all just suddenly subsided, and I think I just stood in the bathroom door staring out in complete stillness. No thoughts even, for a little while. And then it was my body that moved me, and I finished getting ready for work… in mental stillness.
And that, that was kind of that.
I spent the next few weeks feeling achey and sore in my back and hips, with my mind in awe of the unfolding experiences. I mostly chuckled with and by myself about it all.
(Yeah, part of my morning routine at the time involved listening to these courses and lectures by Ra while having my coffee before work… I would say I probably should not have done that, but regardless of any of the insanity that happened, I always managed to get to work on time, so I guess it worked out fine lol.)
Dissolving pieces of self
After the energy rising experience, the whole breaking-bones feeling went away. Almost as if the energy that broke out and rose up had been released through the crunching and breaking.
In the next couple of weeks, I began to experience a different sensation…
As I mentioned (waaaay above) earlier, I had been working on deconditioning my communication.
Well, at one point, after the energy rising experience, I was texting with my sister, asking her for some help with something, and I found myself questioning how I was communicating.
I have always had this tendency to overexplain myself, and as I was texting with her, it was like ugh, ok, you really don’t need to say all this blah blah blah. It’s so unnecessary! But then there was this space left… where I had no idea how to communicate what I wanted to communicate. It was this space… a space between how I had always been and a new way of being… a void left by no longer being in my conditioned communication but not having a sense of what my true, authentic communication would be like.
As I sat with this void and observed myself there, I began to feel this sense of… dissolution… crumbling… like parts of me were physically crumbling and falling away! If you’ve ever seen the movie Lucy with Scarlet Johanssen—it kind of makes me think of her dissolving and flaking away. Though, lol, obviously nothing as physical or dramatic as in the scene I’m linking here.
It was so disconcerting.
I experienced this feeling of dissolving parts of myself a few times afterwards as well, although I don’t remember the specifics of those other times.
This has all been so incredibly fascinating to observe.
I just keep watching these experiences unfold within me in utmost awe.
What’s so hilarious to me is the fact that my mind is just flabbergasted by all of it.
Most of the time, my mind is like, Um, yeah, sure, that was definitely an interesting concept, and certainly it has some impact and insight… but seriously, body? Aren’t you being a bit dramatic?! I don’t really think anything he said warranted THAT kind of crazy reaction!! Why are you being so weird!?! 😅
All of these things are just going like straight around my mind and activating I don’t even know what. That’s kind of what has been most fascinating about all this. My mind has seemed to be quite out of that loop!
Where it all is now
This all happened a while ago now… it began in August and culminated in the energy rising in mid-November… with the feeling of dissolution petering out by the beginning of December.
My focus and attention shifted in December, and I felt pulled away from listening to Ra’s courses and lectures. After getting to the depths of base, there was a lecture I had wanted to listen to but could not find, and no other lecture was satisfying. But also, I didn’t choose to stop and shift away, my energy just got pulled elsewhere.
Actually, that was then I got the inner call and energy to start sharing my writing here!
It was like something within me needed to move from intake to output… inhale to exhale… ingestion to expression…
I mentioned that the energy that rose up my spine felt like it got stuck in my back… well, throughout these past… 5 months (it’s April 2025 now, as I write this)… I have experienced the feeling of the energy rising up further along my back again, at different times—although way, way, WAY less intensely than that first day.
There has still been crying and squatting by the bathroom sink involved (I dunno dude, don’t ask me why the bathroom sink… right height, I’m thinking?! 😅)
To be honest, I’m not sure if the energy has made it all the way to my head yet?! It may have gotten up to the base of my skull, I think… but I’ve got a lot of tension in my upper back and neck, so I keep having to work through it little by little. My mind is a strong controlling force, what can I say?! haha.
Overall, though, it’s like my experiences have shifted from being in the depths to coming back up to the surface. Like I went through experiencing the changes that happened in those depths to following it all through to how those shifts are now being manifest on the “surface” of my life experience.
This year (2025) has been a fucking storm for me so far… emotionally speaking.
It feels like after all of that deep transformation, I am now needing to sit in a fire of anger and frustration that I had kept blocked and frozen up until now.
It’s intense. Stupendously fucking intense.
I continue to have crazy physical experiences that make me question my sanity at times.
Recently, it has felt like my body has started to secrete strange liquid energy when I cry. I know, that makes no sense to me either, but there it is, nonetheless. 🤭
I have begun to feel emotionally nauseous and when I cry (and lord don’t I cry a lot right now), I have, at times, run to the bathroom because I’m not sure if I’m going to physically throw up. I don’t—well, I haven’t yet. It just ends up being a lot of spit that ends up forming… but weird spit. I can’t even explain weird-in-what-way.
I keep remembering the bone crunching.
Even though I don’t think I’ve experienced that again since, it kind of feels like I am still experiencing the… effects… of that? I don’t know… I do end up feeling quite insane when my mind starts to try to make sense of any of what I have been experiencing 🤣
Anyway.
That’s a wrap on this story for today.
I’m sure there shall be more insanity to report later…
But for now…
We are complete.
What to read next 👇😁
Don’t know what Human Design is? Check this site out for some basic info: https://www.jovianarchive.com/Human_Design/What_is_it
In HD, they refer to the experience of “being in experiment,” which really just means that you are applying the knowledge and principles in your life, experiencing in practice what all of it actually means. Think about it… what do scientists do when they experiment? They take a concept or a thought, then test it out and observe… then learn from the experience of it all.
And so, in HD, you experiment with your design. Because none of the information means anything if it does not have any bearing upon your real life!
Ra Uru Hu, the founder of Human Design
Using “true” in this context is just a me thing… a way I am finding to try to explain the concepts in a simple way, and not exactly something that is used in the source material. (I think?! lol. As far as I can remember right now anyway!)
HD speak: Power perspective is Color 3 for the Nodal placements and Desire motivation is Color 3 for the Sun/Earth placements
HD speak: Innocence motivation is Color 6 for the Sun/Earth placements and Personal perspective is Color 6 for the Nodal placements
Funny how my mind thought that I should say “satisfaction” instead of “peace,” since I am a Generator and not a Manifestor, but no. Peace is the correct word to describe the feeling I had. Which is interesting, because the peace came from no longer trying to use sheer will to bring something into existence… 🤔
This is an extremely profound concept for me… and if you don’t anything about Human Design substructure, this may not mean anything to you, even after I try to explain it. But in a nutshell, the Base is the base of the crystals of consciousness and where the neutrinos enter into them. In each incarnation, we have a different design (body) crystal, but our personality crystals are the same throughout all of our incarnations and lifetimes. Now, all of our different aspects and placements change with every lifetime—EXCEPT for our personality crystal base. That is the same for us, always.
Because of how much we are conditioned, we really have very little to no sense of connection to our bases… there is too much incorrectness in the way… the information has long since been garbled once it gets to our “conscious surface.” But because there is an innate sense within us that there is this base to our existence, we are forever searching for it. And in the end, our endless search for god is really only our search for our true selves.
THAT was the profound whoa for me. (I hope I explained it well enough to make it understood!!)