Episode 4

full
Published on:

19th Aug 2025

04. The Bodygraph

In this episode, Kelsey dives into the mechanics of the Human Design Bodygraph and the foundational elements of the chart that create your Type, Strategy and Authority. She also explains the connections between the Rave Mandala and Astrology and the I-Ching. Kelsey also explores how both your conscious personality and your unconscious design are represented in the chart so that you can start to uncover some of the nuances beneath the surface of your design.

This conversation blends technical insight with accessible guidance, so whether you’re a detail-loving 1st line or a seasoned experimenter, you’ll leave with a deeper appreciation how the nuances within the Bodygraph inform your unique experience of life.


What's discussed in this episode:

  • The various aspects of the Bodygraph including Gates, Channels, and Centers
  • Mechanics of Definition
  • Difference between Defined, Undefined and Open Centers
  • The Rave Mandala and its link to the zodiac & I-Ching
  • Black (personality) vs. red (design) activations
  • The 9 Centers and their categories: pressure, awareness, motor, identity, and manifestation
  • The flow of energy through the chart — from pressure to expression
  • How definition shapes type, strategy, authority, and themes


If you would like full access to the course, including the videos and slides, make sure to join the Patreon, where you will find the full LYD course and exclusive Human Design and Astrology content.

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About the Podcast

Living Your Design
Your Comprehensive Introduction to the Human Design System
The LYD podcast is a free, audio-only release of the standard foundational Human Design curriculum as taught by IHDS Certified LYD Guide, Kelsey Rose Tortorice.


This transmission of Human Design fundamentals clarifies the basics, including core principles and mechanics, centers, aura type, strategy, authority, and profile. Kelsey demystifies these concepts so that listeners can understand how every piece is rooted in a clear, cosmic, mechanical system, as well as how they’re all synthesized together for practical, differentiated, embodied application.


Kelsey (5/2 emotional manifestor) is a lover of nuance, a challenger of the binary, an agent for upheaval, and a natural at finding ways to make the complex systems of Astrology & Human Design intuitive, organic, and accessible. People from all points on the novice to seasoned spectrum are drawn to Kelsey's teachings and transmissions on these languages of cosmos and consciousness - less because of what they already know or don’t know and more because they feel a resonance with Kelsey's voice and the potential for impact that their spirit craves.


The LYD podcast is a great place to begin your Human Design studies. It's also a fitting place to fill in the holes from self-study, to challenge the superficial understandings that are especially susceptible to mental distortion, or to revisit these foundations with the intent to integrate them in a more rooted, intuitive, personal, and radically honest way.

About your host

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Kelsey Tortorice

Kelsey is a post-capitalist astrologer, teacher, human design experiMentor, and community initiator. Ruled by a 7th house Jupiter in Gemini, she is a student-teacher of the Maia; seeking to understand and universalize the mechanics of reality within the context of individuality, relationship, cosmos, and consciousness as a whole.

Her frequency facilitates upheaval; disrupting homogenized programming and re-orienting people to their differentiated truth and separateness as a means to arriving to connection & inherent wholeness. With reverence for differentiation and a knack for universalization, Kelsey embraces the simultaneous uniqueness and sameness of each human experience. Their work incorporates various modalities, frameworks, and spiritual teachings in honoring and navigating this apparent contradiction.

Accompanying others on their journeys towards remembering what they Know, Kelsey invites deeper levels of autonomy, authenticity, faith, freedom, and surrender.