08. The Root Center

Kelsey: 00:00

What it looks like when you get away from strategy and authority, when the undefined root is not comfortable allowing for pressure to flow through without acting it, is taking on everyone else's stress and sense of urgency, chronic burnout because you never stop moving because there's always pressure and you're always acting on it and always hurrying and being impatient. That's not healthy for the undefined route. Yes. There is often a physical pressure that you feel very strongly in your body because you're amplifying it, but the presence of the pressure alone is not an indication that it's actually time for you to to move on it. That's not sustainable for the undefined root, and that's why you have your strategy and authority to help you navigate which of those pressures are actually correct for you to engage with as you're being conditioned by them.

Welcome to the Living Your Design podcast. I'm your experimenter, Kelsey Rose Torrici. This podcast is an audio only release of the full length in-depth human design foundations course I've been teaching over the last several years. It is a no bullshit, comprehensive, embodied introduction to the human design system that will challenge your ego mind and support you in your process of reuniting with the unique wisdom of your body. In episode one, I speak a bit about the process that led me to releasing this course for free in podcast form, and I offer a few notes that might be useful to contextualize and clarify what you'll hear in this episode and beyond.

I recommend giving that short intro episode a listen if you haven't yet. The LYD podcast is part of a larger living body of work, a growing archive of my teachings about consciousness through languages of astrology and human design, hosted in an online community space where I stay in orbit with my students, mentees, alumni, peers, and collaborators. For more information about how to connect with me and tune in to my archives and ongoing live teachings, including how to access the original LYD course complete with videos and slides, stay tuned to the podcast or check out patreon.com/kelseyrosetort. Thank you for tuning in to my transmission of living your design. It's a deeply personal and somewhat vulnerable share that I feel honored, humbled, and excited to release into the world.

I hope that it helps you remember and come home to yourself. So beginning with the root center, we are beginning with the center that is the start or the source of all physical pressure inside of the body. As I have mentioned a couple of times up to this point, the root center is both a pressure center and a motor center. So it provides the impetus, that's the pressure, the pressure through a little pulse for energy to move in the body, And it provides a little bit of fuel for that impetus, and for processing stress and pressure by pressuring us to begin to move, to handle the stress, to handle the pressure. So this is where adrenaline lives.

And I think of it as like the start engine button or the ignition of the body. This is the center that is about internal pressure on the body. So people with a defined route, if you have a defined route, you have a fixed way of dealing with pressure and stress that is led by your own form. Your body guides you in the right way and the right timing to deal with things like deadlines and to dos and pressure, any, any kind of stressors. Your body provides a natural impulse, as well as a little bit of fuel to go along with that impulse to get you started in dealing with the stressors and the pressures in your lives.

With a defined route, you have your own natural way of handling that pressure and that stress, And you follow your own timing. You move when your body provides this pulse. It can't actually be rushed from the outside and it can't be rushed from your mind either. You're gonna move when you move. When defined root people feel a cue from your root center, that it's time to act, move or meet a deadline, or time to handle something, time to deal with the pressure, you can trust it because that's your own body's agency, your own body's root.

Remember where you're defined, that's a consistent source of, in this case, energy or pressure that comes from within. For those of us with defined roots, it can be helpful and compassionate to be mindful not to pressure others based on our own root cues or to expect others to deal with stress or pressure the way that we do. Not everybody has a defined root. So not everybody is really meant to move at the instance of that physical pressure, the way that for people with a defined root, it will feel correct to move in alignment with the presence of that physical pressure. For people who have an undefined center, now, since this is the first center that we're deep diving into here, I wanna revisit this idea of undefined centers.

Remember where you're undefined, you operate from conditioning. In our undefined centers, we're taking in. In our defined centers, we're operating from an internal energy or awareness or pressure in this case. And that energy or awareness or pressure is emanating out of us conditioning others. That's why for defined root people, I'm saying be mindful that not everybody is actually meant to subscribe to your timing and your sense of pressure and urgency, unless it is in alignment with their strategy and authority, but undefined route people will feel the urgency and the pressure of the defined routes around them.

Because in our undefined centers, we're taking in from the outside, either from other people's definition and or from the transit field, which can give us temporary definition where we're open or undefined. We're being conditioned by it. And one thing I really wanna stress here is that in our undefined and open centers, we absorb outside energy, but we also amplify outside energy, absorb and amplify words. You'll hear a lot in the human design space. I'll come back to absorb and amplify a bit once we get into the experience of the undefined root.

So for the undefined root, you do not have a fixed way of, of processing pressure and stress or of moving in regards to physical pressure in the body. Instead for the undefined root center, you have a fluctuating and transitory way of handling stress and pressure. The way that you navigate stress and pressure is not ever gonna be the same. There's no like formula or rhythm that is unique to you or innate to you. Instead, as with all undefined centers, you'll start to see sort of a pattern emerge here as I talk about the undefined centers.

Instead, you use your strategy and your authority to navigate how to deal with and how to move through and handle the changing physical pressure that you take in throughout your day, throughout your life. Undefined root centers experience and amplify the stresses, pressures, and urgency of those around you. So the undefined root is deeply sensitive to other people's root pressure, AKA others' physical sense of urgency. So again, I said I was gonna come back to absorb and amplify something I wanna point out in the root, but this is universal to the experience in all undefined and open centers where you're undefined, you're amplifying. So my defined root sitting next to someone with an undefined root, they're actually feeling the pressure, the physical pressure, the presence of stress and urgency in my body louder or more strongly in their body than I feel it in my own.

That's the nature of the amplification and the undefined center. And so this is why where we're undefined, we use words like we're susceptible to conditioning because the conditioning in and of itself is, is great. It's neutral. It's it's how we're meant to, to, to experience life. Undefined root people are meant to experience life as far as pressure and stress and urgency goes according to their conditioning.

However, that conditioning is so loud because of the amplification that without mindfulness, without awareness, it would be easy for the undefined root person in this case to just succumb to the amplification of the pressure and potentially the discomfort of the pressure, as I talked about in the last video, and start to attempt to defy their strategy, their authority, to try to negotiate the places where they may have definition because of the discomfort of the amplification of the pressure in their own body. Right? So in this case, and in all cases, throughout all the centers, strategy and authority are like the filters, the navigation tools for how we are meant to operate in the centers we're being conditioned. And so an important kind of summarization, I suppose, of that idea in regards to the root center specifically is that the presence of root pressure alone is not an indication of it being correct for the undefined root person to act on it. So the undefined root, for example, who works like in a group setting, they are going to be feeling everyone else's sense of urgency about what stressors, what pressures need to be dealt with now in this moment.

And the, the sensation of that pressure alone, the presence of that urgency alone, even though it's in your own body, because you're absorbing and amplifying it does not mean it's actually time for you to move. If it aligns with your strategy and authority, then it can be correct for you to feel into and act on someone else's sense of urgency or pressure. Or same with the transits. You might have a defined route for half a day if it's the moon defining that gate, because it moves quickly or for months, if it's an outer planet in that gate. And so you might have periods of time in your life where even when you're alone, even when you're not in aura with other people, you feel a consistent sense of pressure.

But even when the transits bring definition in your root, in your pressure center for a while, still that pressure is not correct for you to act on unless it is also in accordance with your strategy and authority. So for the undefined root, it's important to allow the pressure that begins in your root center to pass through you. It's not necessarily yours to act on, and you'll use your strategy and your authority to determine when when it is. Now for each of the centers, I have a slide like this that just kind of orients us to the functionality of each center and and makes a distinction between how that functionality in a healthy way shows up for the defined versus undefined. And then I have another slide that's honestly very similar and just kind of teasing it out a bit more.

And we'll look at look at it from a few different angles here. So on this slide, we're looking at the root center in a healthy state versus a not self state. And so we'll look at the defined root on the left here and a healthy state on top, not self state below, what it kind of looks like and feels like, how you can notice whether you or someone else might be in a healthy flow or a not self state with their defined route, and then same for the undefined route. So really just kind of further feeling into what we overviewed on this slide. So coming back to defined root people, people with a defined root are able to handle and process stress consistently according to their natural internal system.

Stress for a defined root person can actually be purposeful because it's your own body's wisdom telling you when and how to move through the pressures of your life. The healthy state person, the I'm sorry, the healthy defined root person, or would like to phrase that more thoughtfully, the defined root person working with their root definition in a healthy way is still using their strategy and authority and their design to navigate that internal pressure and doesn't expect others to deal with stress or handle pressure in the same way that you do. So I mentioned in the intro video to this unit, I invited you to pay attention as we overviewed your defined centers to the functionality of that center and the consistent access and fixed consistent access that you have to the functionality of those centers. And in a lot of cases, in in some way, I I guess I'll say, part of that is about getting to know the nature of your own body that you might not even realize is your own nature. But part of it also, especially when we're dealing with relational themes, is about understanding the impact that your definition and your nature has on those around you and understanding that you might one form of taking that definition for granted might be assuming that everybody else operates that same way.

So in the case of the defined root, understanding that you having a sense of pressure or urgency towards something is yours to tend to and yours to deal with, and that not everyone around you is meant to operate on that same timeline of urgency or handle stress and pressure in the timing or in the way that you are. And what's more, undefined root people, stress is just essentially, stress is going to feel more stressful for the undefined root people. So define roots, just being conscientious of the fact that you're not amplifying other people's pressures and stressors. You have your own, and that's a different thing to deal with than people who are amplifying the stress and the urgency and pressure from the whole world. So that kind of trickles into the not self state of the defined root.

I'll start with the second one since that's what I'm talking about already. The the defined root in a not self state is gonna pressure others and add unnecessary stress to others. A little bit of like a codependency theme showing up there when you expect others to handle your stress and your sense of timing and urgency in a way that feels good to you. Your defined route is for you, not for everyone around you. Sometimes your defined root will be a source of healthy stress for others, but it's up to their strategy and authority to discern when that's the case and when it's not.

For undefined root people, it can be really helpful to be working in partnership or on a team with a defined root person to have a sort of sense of timing and way of navigating stress and pressure to rely on, but that reliance for the undefined root person is only healthy so long as it is corroborated by that person's strategy and authority. And then another way the, the not self defined root can show up is when conditioning from the undefined centers, that person's body graph, try to they end up distorting the way that the root pressure is experienced and acted on. So if someone has like in my case, I have a defined root, but an undefined sacral. I know we haven't gotten to the sacral yet, but the sacral center is kinda one of the ways the the not self conditioning shows up in the sacral is by not knowing when to stop. So my defined root, the the way that I do consistently deal with stress might end up actually showing up in a distorted way because my undefined sacral is tell is communicating to me that I cannot stop working.

And so I'll still have my definition in my root center to depend on, but it might start to get distorted through the conditioning of my undefined sacral. Coming into the undefined root, the healthy expression or the healthy state of the undefined root looks like allowing your stress to be managed in an inconsistent way and utilizing strategy and authority to navigate external pressure. It's important for the undefined root person to get comfortable allowing pressure to flow in and out of your form without acting on it, getting comfortable with the idea that pressure will usually be there and that it is not yours to act on unless strategy and authority, which we'll get into strategy and authority. But for now, you do have a sort of at least initial understanding of your strategy, maybe not your authority, from the brief overview of types, but we'll tease all of this out more once we've gone through type strategy and authority. And the undefined root allows for external pressure to become an advantage to you, to become a tool for you by remaining detached from it.

Because when you stay detached from your conditioning, in the case of the root center from the pressure of the outside world, then it allows you to actually see it and engage with it from a place of alignment according to your type strategy and your authority center or process. When you feel that root pressure and immediately identify with it and think of it as something you need to manage right now, it stops you from being available for your body's natural system for navigating your stress in an inconsistent way. What it looks like when you get away from strategy and authority, when the undefined route is not comfortable allowing for pressure to flow through without acting it, is taking on everyone else's stress and sense of urgency, chronic burnout because you never stop moving because there's always pressure and you're always acting on it and always hurrying and being impatient. I see undefined root people just I always sort of talk about it, like walking around like a chicken with its head cut off. I don't know why as like such a bird lover, I go to that.

It's just a turn of phrase. I know. But I'll see undefined root people just like, they don't sit. They're just up moving something to get I have to tend to this, have to tend to this, have to tend to this, because there's always a physical pressure. That's not healthy for the undefined root.

Yes. There is often a physical pressure that you feel very strongly in your body because you're amplifying it, but the presence of the pressure alone is not an indication that it's actually time for you to to move on it. That's not sustainable for the undefined route, and that's why you have your strategy and authority to help you navigate which of those pressures are actually correct for you to engage with as you're being conditioned by them. One example that I saw relatively recently, or that I at least sort of conceived that I was seeing as I was witnessing some stuff on social media was when news started coming out about Roe v. Wade potentially getting overturned.

Stuff like this happens all the time in the news cycles. And this was this example of, of news about Roe v. Wade potentially getting overturned was probably just the first time I watched it happen with a really clear awareness around the root center. And for whatever reason, I just I saw undefined root behavior in it for the first time, so it stuck with me as a defined root person. The experience I had as I was watching, as I was hearing the news was like, yes, that's terrifying and an absolute problem and things need to be done about it, but I could feel that my body wasn't providing me any impulse or pressure or energy that I needed to do something about it right then.

And I saw just so many people on social media, not only like bringing attention to it, but I could really see and feel this energy of like amplified root pressure, where I could really feel and see that there were so many people feeling like I have to do something about this now because of this outside pressure. So that's an example on like a collective plane. But I remember in that moment feeling in my own body, like, oh, there's, there's no urgency for me to act on this right now. I can see that this is scary, that it's a problem, whatever, but I don't need to act on it. I can feel my own und my own definition in that root pressure center not moving me to act.

Right. And I'm not saying that everyone who was acting was moving from an unhealthy undefined root place. No. No. Not at all.

Sure. There were defined roots acting and there were undefined roots moving through using strategy and authority, but I also really could feel this, like, distorted amplification of root pressure. And, yeah, it was just an example that clarified for me the potential experience of the undefined root through my own reflection on my defined root, not moving me to act on that day in that moment. So now we're gonna ground a bit more into the undefined root. In an undefined or open root center, what does the not self voice sound like?

There's this concept of not self voices that we're gonna look at with each center over the next three units, and then we're gonna pull back in a really big way near the end of living your design. And the idea is our undefined centers, they're meant to be a gift. Right? They're meant to be a place where we can experience a full plethora of potentiality. We get to sample and take in and be conditioned by all these different ways of functioning according to that center, and we can become very wise about it.

And so the undefined root center people, these are people who have the potential to be extremely masterful and wise and intelligent about themes of pressure and stress. But in order to obtain that wisdom, obtain that mastery, it requires detachment that strategy and authority will help you access so that you can truly learn about the functionality of that center with awareness rather than become victim to it. And what essentially happens is your mind will try to override the wisdom of your body in your own definition and your body according to your aura type by convincing you that you need to act based on the conditioning of each of your undefined centers. And so the idea of the not self voices is sort of giving you a flavor or a sentiment that the conditioning in an undefined center, not the conditioning itself, that the mind's grasping at the undefined center, trying to change you, trying to have you identify with something that that is not consistent for you, it will take on a certain tone of voice or a certain character when it's speaking to you, the mind by it, I mean the mind. The mind will take on a certain character or a certain tone of voice in its attempts to make you victim to your conditioning rather than allow you to remain detached from it and be enriched by it.

And so the not self sort of flavor or the undefined root center is always in a hurry to be free. So that's, like, the phrase that tends to go with the undefined root center. And coming back to this idea of, like, pressure in the body being where everything starts, you'll know you're in root center conditioning, those of you with an undefined or open root center, because the thing you'll be trying to do is get free. You're trying to get free from pressure, always in a hurry to be free from pressure. And so some of the ways that that might sound like for you, your undefined open root center, not self voice might sound like I better hurry up and start.

Because remember the root center is the ignition to the body. I better hurry up and start, or this needs to be acted on urgently. Or if I just hurry up and do all of this, then I'll be free of that pressure. When the truth is that you'll never really ultimately be free of the pressure. Freedom doesn't come from acting on the pressure to get rid of it.

That just leaves you flailing and still feeling burdened by the pressure that you're amplifying. Freedom instead comes from seeing the pressure and not feeling compelled to compulsively act on it. There's no compulsive acting in a true self state. There's strategy and authority helping you navigate according to your own body's wisdom. And that's not compulsive at all.

Compulsion happens when the mind takes over. The not self root center voice might sound like I need to achieve something. I don't want to waste any time. I have to keep moving. I have to initiate something new now, or I need something to focus on because there's pressure.

And the mind will try to convince you that that pressure needs a focal point to be, to move towards in order to get free from the pressure. So your own undefined root center's version of this is totally differentiated. I'm sure you have your own voice around it, but these are some ideas to help you kind of place what it is that it feels like and sounds like in your body and your mind when you are in a position of being imprisoned by or being taken over by the not self of your undefined or open root center. And the idea with the not self voices is that as you start to establish awareness that, oh, I don't that's my not self root. I don't actually need to act on it.

It helps you to attune to your body's organic way of navigating, in this case, that amplified root pressure. So understanding it on an intellectual level is a great first step, and then the task becomes simply recognizing it when it shows up over time. And to sort of summarize this slide up, the question to ask yourself to determine whether you're in undefined root center conditioning, acting from a not self place because of your undefined root center conditioning is, am I in a hurry to get everything done so that I can be free of the pressure? And then getting into some of this extra stuff, about fifty percent of people have the root center defined, about 50% have it undefined. The biological correspondence of the root center is the adrenal glands.

And this is a picture of the root center with all of its gates. And as you can see, the root center channels or gates move in three directions, and the root those three directions are towards the sacral, towards the solar plexus or the emotional center, and towards the spleen. When we think about the root center as the ignition, as the physical pressure and pulse with a little bit of fuel, because remember it's a pressure center, but also a motor center, we can think about that fuel and that impetus being defined in connection to the sacral. So when we get a root impulse from 53, 60 or 52, from those three root center gates, there's the potential if it's an, not a fully defined channel or there's the consistency if it is a fully defined channel, in which case that person would have a defined root for that root impulse to then be further fueled by the sacral center for that fuel to be sustained. But there's no awareness in the root or the sacral, so it's just a lot of energy, a little bit of pressure and a lot of energy.

When the root center is defined through definition through connection to the solar plexus or the emotional center, that is fuel plus emotional awareness. So it's an impulse for an emotional process and a little bit of fuel for an emotional process. And when the root center is defined through one of these three gates, 54, thirty eight, and fifty eight to the spleen, that's the instinctive awareness center. There's no fuel in the spleen. So we get a little bit of fuel with a pressure and impulse in the root, and then that fuels an instinctive awareness in the spleen.

This won't really make sense to you if this is your first time moving through the centers of the body graph, perhaps, but we'll talk about it with each center. And so you'll start to be able to see how the centers work together in their definition, where they're connected. And the root, when it's defined, it's always defined through one of those three centers. So the roots, if the root center is defined, then at least the spleen, the solar plexus, or the sacral will also be defined and which of those it's defined through. Or if in some cases it can be two of those or all three of those, it adds a level of nuance and differentiation to how your defined root operates.

And there's versions of that that can be applied to the undefined root as well, but that's getting a little deeper into analysis of the body graph. And then lastly, the root center gates. Zodiacally, of the, the nine gates here in the root center, four of them are in Capricorn. That's a very heavy emphasis, four out of nine. There's very few other centers thinking of one, maybe two, where such a large percentage of the gates come from one sign.

For those of you who already have a relationship to the frequency or the prioritization or the perspective of Capricorn, you might be able to see a congruence there with the idea of, I need to move now. I need to handle this. I need to deal with pressure and stress. And those four gates in the root center that our Capricorn gates are 58, 38, 54, and 60. Three of the nine gates are in Cancer, and that's 53, 52, and 39.

Cancer is the polarity of Capricorn. And so this last bullet point I have down here, seven of the nine, if you add the cap and the Cancer gates, are in this Cancer Capricorn axis. And I call the Cancer Capricorn axis the axis of, I call it sometimes the axis of security or the container axis, but oftentimes, you'll hear people refer to it as the axis of responsibility. And so there's something there specifically with security to the root center, especially in the seven, seven chakra system has been associated with security. And in the nine centered system, my understanding is that the spleen and the root are together what made up the ancient Hindu Brahmin seven chakra systems root.

And so I'm, I'm saying that because this idea of the security and all three of these gates that go from the root to the spleen are Capricorn gates. Again, this is all extra. Two of these gates, a little more than two of these gates actually are in Aquarius. Nineteen and forty one are Aquarius gates and a little bit of 60. So 60 is actually on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius.

So of all of these gates, six of the nine of them are Saturn ruled, which is interesting as well. If we know about Saturn as a planet, and we're thinking about this root idea of pressure and stress. Circuitry wise, a pretty proportional breakdown. There are more collective gates in the body graph than any other and and less tribal gates. And so the root center is pretty much proportionate with the breakdown of collective and individual and tribal gates in the body graph.

And that is our root center overview. Thanks for listening to the Living Your Design podcast. Stay tuned for the rest of the curriculum. New batches of episodes are released every Tuesday. For immediate complete access to the full course and to explore other perks like learning and community, extracurricular astrology and human design workshops, and meeting with me face to face, go to patreon.com/kelseyrosetour.

You can also listen to me on my other podcasts, the Maya games and conversations with the zodiac, and And find me on Instagram at Kelsey Rose tour.