Philosophy, Jungian Psychology, Human Design, Mind-Body Connection

Feeling Aligned

What does it mean to "feel aligned"?

You hear a lot about being "in flow" with oneself, but this feels more random than experiential much of the time, as it is so easy to get tossed out of focus, out of flow.

But as I was listening to a particular podcast, this hit me — hard enough that I stopped and wrote it down.

When we are not consciously aware of our alignment, when we are deeply steeped in our "conditioned" way of life, we don't know that we are. I've heard the metaphor of a fish not knowing what water is, but I don't think that's right here. For me, it's more like something my boss once said to me, during what she considered a learning moment — at the time, I was being (not so gently) informed that I was "too harsh, too severe" to some folks who would not step up and help do the job that needed to be done. Rather than addressing their lack of collaboration, the fingers were pointed back at me as if I was the problem. The lesson here was harsh when she described the vitriolic backlash and said, "This is where you have blinders on." Despite my best efforts of getting the job done well, the perception was that I was judgmental; where I thought I was offering "teaching moments" to the less-experienced, instead I was derided for being condescending.

The truth of the matter was this: I was emotionally driving too erratically, under pressure to do, to deliver. I was not listening to my body's emotional frequencies, as the project itself was the issue — my sacral was screaming "No!" Turns out, that scream wasn't random, and it wasn't even the whole story. It's built into my design — a yes/no signal that's supposed to steer decisions before the mind ever gets a vote. Override it enough times, and burnout stops being a mystery. It's mechanical. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have also recognized the pressure itself wasn't fully mine — an open head and open root meant I was amplifying every ounce of urgency in that room like a speaker turned up too loud, mistaking other people's timelines for my own alarm bells. I wasn't just ignoring a "no." I was missing the right timing altogether, buried under pressure that was never mine to carry in the first place. And the push to succeed, to achieve, undermined my integrity, ultimately leading to excessive burnout and exhaustion — in addition to a trip down to HR.

Blinders seem more accurate, no?

Picture a horse, bridled, being led by a force outside its own view. Now picture that horse tethered to a single metal stake in the middle of a very large, round enclosure. The blinder only blocks the source of the tether — the horse can still see the meadow, the forest, the barn. It can see that it's fenced in, which frustrates it, but it still does as it's told. What it can't see is that it's walking in a spiral, around and around, and all it can sometimes discern is that it recognizes WHERE in the spiral it is. It can't fathom that it's the SAME spot — only that it feels familiar, like it's seen it before. And despite its deepest desires, the horse feels "stuck" — still walking forward but can't quite seem to get to where it wants to go.

This is what it feels like to have blinders on your emotions. You don't know you're specifically out of alignment — you just walked past an open gate you couldn't go out of. You believed you were walking in a straight line, when in reality you were being led by an invisible force, and your entire body was veering slightly left of what you thought was center.

Which got me thinking of the mind-body connection.

At my gym, we focus a lot on deliberate movement. The trainers don't want us going fast — they want solid form, asking us to feel each movement within the set. When I focus on my musculoskeletal frame to this degree, and with particular exercises, I have to really think about it. I have bad knees, a bad ankle (thanks to said bad knee), and a bothersome shoulder courtesy of perimenopause. If I don't step up straight onto a high step, my left knee canters inward and I risk injury and soreness. If I don't watch where my feet land, I worry about falling, rolling an ankle or worse. If I try to lift too heavy, I force my shoulder into overcompensating with the wrong muscles, which leads to greater pain.

Bottom line: I have to slow down. Force myself to check the form, catch the wrong muscles from doing the work, keep the body as healthy as it can be, and actually get the benefit of the routine instead of just going through the motion of it.

Alignment in the body — emotionally speaking — is no different. It's an ACTIVE practice: slowing down when you feel rushed, focusing on what's important instead of what's just in front of you, checking your emotional form the same way I check my physical form mid-set. The difference is that when you're newly awakened to working this emotional frequency like a muscle, it gets TIRED. It takes work! It takes time to heal, to integrate that level of concentrated awareness. It takes knowing what your baseline feels like so you can track and measure improvement. But once these blinders come off — once the alignment is well-honed — the muscle memory kicks in. You avoid the drama, so you avoid the trauma. You avoid the unnecessary pain, so you avoid the unnecessary drain. Turns out the gym and the horse were teaching me the same lesson. Slow down, check your form. Life will always circle back around to the same emotional themes but with Human Design as a guide to how to track your baseline patterns, the muscle memory of awareness becomes more fluid — allowing you to more frequently be "in flow."

Alignment in the body then becomes an intrinsic love of your own experiences, embracing the life lessons and fine-tuning old, conditioned behavioral themes into a well-recognized pattern that you can course-correct without feeling tethered.