In Human Design, conditioning means what you take from other people and end up believing is yours: their emotions, their pressure, their ideas about who you should be. The system ties it mostly to your open centers.
Where conditioning comes from, according to the system
A defined center works in a fairly steady way, whoever is around. An open center takes in and amplifies what the people nearby are going through. Across our 2,000 random births, people have about 4 open centers out of 9 on average. Conditioning is when you make a decision based on what you pick up in one of them.
A few examples from our center pages:
- Open Solar plexus: dodging a conversation so you do not have to feel other people’s tension.
- Open Heart: trying to prove your worth by promising too much.
- Open Head: spending hours on questions that are none of your business.
- Open Root: rushing to finish things to make the pressure stop.
All 9 centers are covered on the open centers page.
What does deconditioning mean?
In the original teaching, deconditioning means making your decisions with your strategy and authority instead of the pressure you pick up in your open centers. It talks about a process of about 7 years. That number comes from the founder and has never been measured. Take it as an image: it is a matter of months, even years.
The system also sees a good side to conditioning: an open center lets you understand from the inside what other people go through. The goal is to notice it as it happens.
The two week notebook
- Find your open centers on your chart and pick one whose trap rings a bell.
- For 14 days, each time that trap shows up, write down the time, who was there and what you decided.
- At the end, sort your notes into two columns: alone and with someone.
If the “with someone” column is much fuller, the description holds for you, and you know who to watch out for. If both columns fill up the same, this center tells you nothing special. For an honest check, keep the same notebook for a center you have defined.