Human Design and Self Care with Kristi Sullivan

Rebecca:

Welcome to Beautifully Bloomed, the podcast where we explore how to break
you out of the box of rules and beliefs that are holding you back from the
life you're meant to live. I'm your host, Rebecca Tervo. Join me as I share
mindset tools, coaching conversations, and human design to help you uncover
your unique gifts and create the life, relationships, and business you
desire.

Rebecca:

Kristi Sullivan is a human design and self-care expert on a mission to help
busy women stop overworking and start overflowing. So, yay. Hey, Kristi.
Welcome to the podcast.

Kristi:

Hi, Rebecca. Thanks so much for having me.

Rebecca:

I'm so excited. I love when I have a fellow human design people on the
podcast, because then we all know what we're talking about. First of all,
how do you and I know each other from your perspective?

Kristi:

Oh, I would say our worlds, our paths crossed this past year probably
virtually on Zoom. Right? We have never met in person. And someone I think
referred me to you or you to me because of the human design commonality.
But then I remember we also crossed paths on a conference. We were like in
a live conference together recently.

Kristi:

So I just feel like sometimes my network over here and your network over
there, we ended up kind of crisscrossing. And I love that about the current
state that we're in this global sort of way of connecting virtually.

Rebecca:

Yeah. So I remember you're writing a book. I know we'll talk about that,
but I think you're some, one of my fellow mastermind sisters from a
different place told me about this book you're writing and it's in regards
to the human design, right?

Kristi:

Yes.

Rebecca:

So I went on a call about that to feel into me and my feelings. I got to
feel into it and respond to it and see if it's the right place, and at the
moment it didn't feel right for me, but that's I think where, first of all,
I met you there. I think we connected because of our four or line four-two.

Kristi:

Definitely.

Rebecca:

I'm like, "Oh, yay. We're fours." And then we saw each other at the
conference and it was an online conference, in Darla's conference. I think
that's sometimes a sign. If you start seeing people in multiple places,
it's like, "Oh, what's that about? Is there some connection? There's a
reason that we keep connecting. What is that?" I don't know. But yeah,
that's fun.

Kristi:

And then I saw you had a podcast and being a four. I wanted to know more
about that. And so here we are.

Rebecca:

Yeah, here we are. So I want to talk today... I hope that like... So human
design stuff is so fun to talk about. So maybe that'll come in, but what
I've heard you say about your work is it something with self-care. And
you're a yoga teacher, right, also.

Kristi:

Yes.

Rebecca:

So there's self-care and yoga, but then you bring in human design. What are
you doing now? I'm just curious how you got to where you are.

Kristi:

Well, I'm glad you brought up yoga. I feel like yoga was a pivotal point, I
think in my journey. And that was already 20 years ago that I discovered
yoga. I am not an early adopter, so I thought like, "Oh, doesn't everyone
know about this?" But they didn't at the time. I just love the idea of the
mind, body, spiritual connection that yoga had opened me up to.

Kristi:

I eventually started teaching yoga, sharing it. I loved learning and
teaching others. And fast forward, about 20 years later, actually maybe 15,
I discovered human design and the same kind of thing happened where I'm
like, "There must be a lot of people doing this." And then there's also
people who don't know what it is and I've love to learn it and share it.

Kristi:

So that's really what I've been doing is opening up this next place in my
path of understanding more about the energy body, which human design helps
you understand. And I am here to learn more about it, experiment with it
and share it. And yeah, I think bringing the two together because yoga is
about the chakras and that's what you see also in human design. So it was a
very natural kind of fit for the two for me.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And I'm trying to remember, were you like in a corporate world before
this?

Kristi:

Yes.

Rebecca:

What made you quit and go to... I feel like you quit. You quit your
corporate job. I'm curious.

Kristi:

Well, interestingly I actually have also a 20 -ear career and longer in
marketing. And the year that I discovered yoga, I got married. So my name
shifted and I also had started this marketing position where I spent many
years. And while I was doing that in parallel, I was developing this other
spiritual path of mine with yoga and then branching off of that into my own
spiritual journey.

Kristi:

I just knew at some point that I would be doing more of the spiritual
energy stuff at some point. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know
what it looked like. I always had a passion for health and wellness as
well. So beyond yoga, I was also learning other ways to keep healthy and
improve wellness, not only in the mind and the body, but eventually the
spirit. And then around the time of COVID, I have the opportunity to step
away from my position.

Kristi:

It was as if the universe said, "You're ready, so let's move on." I started
to really experiment with actually human design and just seeing what
opportunities as a generator, waiting for opportunities is really an
important strategy. So I started to do that. I started to notice what
opportunities are around what feels good. What do I want to say yes to? And
that eventually turned into what I'm doing now, which is helping people
understand human design, helping them with self-care, supporting,
especially busy women with understanding their energy blueprint, how
self-care can support that and then just bringing together community and
collaboration because I'm a four-six.

Rebecca:

Awesome. Yeah. So you didn't feel inspired maybe as a generator or it
wasn't lighting you up anymore like your job, it wasn't really fulfilling
something or what was happening?

Kristi:

That's a great point. When I started, it was a position and a path that
really lit me up. Meanwhile, I said I was also doing wellness on the side.
And then I think things just started to shift. As much as I kind of held
both worlds together, eventually I knew that I was meant for something
different, but as a four-six generator, it really wasn't my design, now
that I look back to wait for the next right opportunity. And that happened
last year.

Kristi:

It happened when we all went virtual. So I was able to quickly pivot and
instead of building a concrete business or one in person, I really went
virtual. I made that switch so to speak or step more fully and I almost
call it like my next part of the journey, which was really to leave this
corporate position nonprofit and take all that I had learned from that,
especially around the idea of this is how we've learned to work in that
setting and now shift it to how do we work differently in human design?

Rebecca:

Yeah. I love the idea that we're not all meant to work a nine to five or
eight to five, whatever it is job, 40 hours or 60 hours a week. In fact, I
wonder if any of us is really cut out for that. But anyways.

Kristi:

I agree 1,000%. Exactly.

Rebecca:

I mean now that I've been in the space of personal development and human
design and all the things for a while, like I've been a coach since 2017, I
quit my job in 2016. So now it's been a while, right? When I've been in
this, I've just been like, it doesn't feel good to me to even think about
anybody driving off to an office for a full week of work. I don't know. I'm
sure there's some people that enjoy that, but it's interesting. I feel like
there's a different world coming or different way to work. And I feel like
that's what 2020 was about.

Kristi:

Yes. Amen.

Rebecca:

It's about like, "Hey, let me show you that you don't have to go to an
office to work. You could actually work from home." I have to say this
there's goods and bads about working from home because my husband came to
work from home last... Well, not last... Not this past March, the March
before. So he's been working from home since March of 2020 and both of us
at home in the same space, day in, day out, whoa. It's like we need some
separation sometimes.

Rebecca:

I need my alone time. I'm a one-four and I definitely feel the need for
alone time. Also, I have the gate 40, which is about aloneness. I mean, I
just feel like I need this alone time to regenerate and create, right? And
there's sometimes not enough of that, when you have people at home all the
time. So there's a different way to work and there needs to be boundaries.

Kristi:

Yeah. You need a do not disturb sign on your door like I have. And I will
say when you were like driving away, seeing people drive away, what brought
to mind for me was our pets. I don't know if you have pets, but I have a
cat.

Rebecca:

I do.

Kristi:

I think my cat is sort of like, "Why are you leaving? No, no, stay here and
think about how we've..." Like in this last year, that's come to mind where
this idea that if we've been home with our pets, what's going to happen
with their separation anxiety when we leave? They're letting us know. We
may need to be home a little more.

Rebecca:

Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, and being home all the time just gave me so
much need for community again. I have a four also. Both of us have a four
in our profile, right? No, I actually like to be with people in person. All
the online stuff is great. And I also need the actual in-person connection
sometimes. Right? It's just I'm missing that right now.

Kristi:

Yeah. And I get that and I will also say that for me as an extrovert being
online, I was expecting even a stronger missing of that in person. But I
feel like maybe it's because, again, I'm in alignment with the right groups
that light me up that light up my energy that I don't feel... I feel like
I'm so connected to some of these women that I've been networking with even
though it's not been in person.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And we can create amazing connection online. And again, I love to see
the people in person. I'm like, "Oh, I still want to see them in person."
So yeah, I was waiting for the normal things to come. Like the quote,
normal things. I know some people have loved this cocooning time. They're
like, "Oh, I don't even want to go back to a normal thing." I don't know if
we'll ever really go back to totally whatever. I think it's a new...

Kristi:

Not what it was, no.

Rebecca:

Yeah. We're going back to a new place now, but I still feel especially
retreats, in person retreats for me. I love hosting in person retreats. I
like going to in-person retreats. I feel like people will still be craving
that. That is a sanctuary away from your home away from your normal life.

Kristi:

I actually signed up for a retreat in October and what's amazing is I'm
going to meet a bunch of women that I only have known through Zoom. Some of
the authors in a community that I've gotten to know. So I can't wait. It's
like exciting.

Rebecca:

I love that.

Kristi:

It's something to look forward to because it's like touching and feeling,
"Oh my gosh, you're really real."

Rebecca:

I know. I always love meeting people. And there's been just no in-person
events for a while. So it's been really tough. But I'm all for going in
person to come to these events, all of that. I'm like, "Oh, I just want to
do that again." So, yeah, perfect. I'm curious how you use human design.
What are some things you can tell us about how self-care and human design
work together?

Kristi:

Yes. And I'll talk a little bit more about my journey to explain that
because a few years ago, when I discovered human design, it was through a
mentor and a coaching program she had. She taught us the basis of human
design and what it meant, but we also really spent time trying to
understand how to get out of our head. And that means go not only into the
body, but what sort of self-care for the body that you need so that you
could also access that inner wisdom that in human design, we talk about,
the wisdom centers.

Kristi:

That was one thing that was important in my journey, but also in those few
years, I was also experiencing some crises in my family and my marriage,
and then eventually my job. I knew that self-care and doing that only like
the health and wellness body, mind, but also the spiritual self-care was
really something I just needed to do.

Kristi:

I needed to do to get through whatever those crises were or whatever those
challenges to just keep myself moving forward. So I also knew that that was
a way of aligning my energy if I needed more being in nature, going for
walks, if I needed some healing modalities like tapping or ancestral
clearing, which I've done. Things that just helped align my energy, then
that was important to my human design. The design that I have as generator
to make sure that I was in a sense keeping my inner self healthy.

Kristi:

So that's how I sort of married the two because of that experience. And I
knew that self-care during those few years that were difficult. I needed to
keep doing that. It's like putting on the oxygen mask, right?

Rebecca:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Before you help others, you can only help yourself.

Kristi:

Yes.

Rebecca:

For sure. So you use human as kind of like what type are you or is it about
the centers? I was just curious like what's the structure of how do you
determine for someone, what self-care... Or am I thinking too logically, me
and my formulated mind with gate 11 of all the ideas [crosstalk 00:15:10].
I'm like, "What is it about?" And me and my curiosity. I'm sorry. A lot of
curiosity.

Kristi:

It's a good question. I think we naturally want some sort of formula,
right?

Rebecca:

Yeah, for sure.

Kristi:

Like okay, you know that you're this type then what kind of self-care do
you do?

Rebecca:

Yeah.

Kristi:

But I think what I do a little bit differently is to take out that
structure because I still think that a person's self-care just like their
design, okay? So you may be a generator and I may be a generator. You're a
manifesting generator. But we still have inner wiring that makes us unique
to other generators or manifesting generators. So the same with self-care
at that even if we share a similar type in human design, you still might
need different self-care. And that's related to what kind of conditioning
do you have? What kind of operating circuitry like the channels and gates
do you have?

Kristi:

So what I usually do is take people through a process where they create a
personalized self-care plan. And it starts with getting into the body, into
your inner wisdom, finding out what intention do you need to set? What do
you need right now also in the timing of your life. And then what's
self-care supports that. So for example, if you're really feeling like
self-love is an area that you want to expand and really cultivate, then
what self-care creates that self-love.

Kristi:

Is it more community? Is it maybe gratitude? Connecting to nature?
Volunteering. It could be many different things and self-care isn't just
that health and wellness eating well and exercising. So it's really around
what are the things for yourself that helps support you? And that's how I
tie the two together. So it's not so much a formula for your type, but for
what you need.

Rebecca:

And so I feel like it's feeding your energy, like what feeds your energy.

Kristi:

Yes.

Rebecca:

That's what I heard you say, even though you didn't say it that way.

Kristi:

Yeah. I think we often say this phrase, what lights you up, right? Because
if you're doing self-care, if you have, let's say a day for yourself, and
that just helps you get grounded and aligns you and lights you up, then
naturally that's helping your design for you to align in the true self
versus the not self.

Rebecca:

Yeah. It helps you get an alignment with your gifts and your talents. And
yeah, it helps take care of all those things.

Kristi:

And it helps you get out of the mind, which we know in human design is
really helpful to all of our strategies. And it also helps that
conditioning for us to understand ourselves better. Especially, I heard
recently generators really need to understand themselves. So if you do the
type of self-care, the inner work where you understand what's my
programming, what was I taught? Does that work for me? Question those
things so that you then become your true self even more and more.

Rebecca:

Yeah. I feel like human design is such an amazing tool for figuring... I
don't want to use the phrase, figuring it out because we go against
figuring it out in human design. That's not what we're about. We're not
about having to figure it out, but it's about really seeing yourself for
who you truly are and really accepting it. Right? Like this permission slip
to be you. I love that phrase. You get to be you. And sometimes when we're
shown our design, we're like, "Oh, we finally feel seen and heard." Like,
"Oh, somebody sees who we are and it's like stuff we probably are hiding or
judging and thinking, well, that's wrong. I can't be like that. And then we
get shown our human design like, oh, like this totally happened for me. So
did that happen for you? Did you have some of those experiences when you
learned about your human design?

Kristi:

Definitely. I also heard this recently that... I'm over 40 and a lot of the
readings I do are for women over 40. And that by the time you're that age,
I guess you've gone through some Saturn returns or however the planets are
aligned. So you've received wisdom. You've gone through experiences. You've
learned lessons. So when you get a human design reading, you start to say,
"Yes, that is what I..." It's like validating. That is what I uncovered
already about myself or that's what I know about myself. Sometimes there's
some aha's but a lot of times for people who are doing already personal
development, it helps validate what they do know.

Rebecca:

Yeah, for sure. You're talking about like at the age of 28-ish, we have the
Saturn return and then towards the age of 40-ish, we've got the Uranus
opposition. Then we get to like 50-ish, where I'm at, we have the Chiron
Return. So it's like every single at these eight edge of decades, right? We
get these lessons. Again, something that's going to come around to teach
you something. Right?

Rebecca:

So I find that too. I have a lot of readings with people in their 40s and
50s. And some in their 60s. Right? So it's interesting how we also attract
the stage we're at in our life. That's who's coming to us because they're
like, "Oh, you're at that stage." I don't think we consciously know that,
but it's so interesting how that happens. So yeah, it is. It's about let's
look at the lessons that these cycles are teaching us. And how can you lean
into that and use it, right, for your life in a way that gives you wisdom
and knowledge. All of us are here for something. So what are you here for?
That's what I love about you.

Kristi:

Yes. We're all here for different reasons too, different incarnation cross,
different life purposes, but we're also here to help others. So what we
learn, we then pass on and it's a great circle of life and way.

Rebecca:

Yeah. In some way or another, all of us have a purpose through our type,
through our personality profile. I mean, there's so many things to know,
but it's so lovely when you hear that, "Oh, I'm here to be a resource and a
teacher because that's my line one." I'm like, "Yeah. Okay. I'm just going
to lean totally into that then. Why not? Right?" You aligned six. You're
here to be just like a role model. Right? You're a role model.

Kristi:

When I heard that for the first time like, "Well, around age 50, you step
into your third phase." I was like, "Oh, I have something to look forward
to." Versus like, "Oh, I'm 50." It's like, "No, this is going to be my next
great journey."

Rebecca:

Yeah. So it's interesting because what I've heard about that is the line
six, it's just more maybe exaggerated those phases. Although we all have
this phase, like I just turned 50. I'm in the Chiron Return. Right? So I've
gone through the space. So it's interesting. And line six, there's just a
deeper meaning about role modeling and influencing at that stage. More of a
being energy, right? More of a Buddha energy. I heard someone say that one
time. Well, line six is more of a Buddha than a priesthood. Have you heard
that? It's more of a Buddha energy-

Kristi:

No.

Rebecca:

... not a priesthood. So think of the difference between Buddha and like a
priest, they're standing up there and trying to tell people how they
should... The Buddha is more like just being and living it.

Kristi:

Being. I love it.

Rebecca:

I'm like, "Ooh, that's a good analogy for line six." I always think of that
for sixes. I'm like, "Oh, yeah."

Kristi:

Beautiful.

Rebecca:

Can you just be, right?

Kristi:

I like that.

Rebecca:

How can you be the role model?

Kristi:

Exactly. For sure.

Rebecca:

And then show us through your being. So is there anything else you want to
tell us about like what your program is now that you're doing? I know
you're writing a book. We didn't even talk about that yet. So what's this
book about, let's talk about that before we wrap up.

Kristi:

Yeah. For sure, things are evolving. So I feel like I'm still at the early
stage of this type of journey with human design and self-care. And I love
just having conversations about it, needing people to share it. What I'm
doing with the book is I was fortunate to be in a couple of books last year
as a coauthor in a collaborative book. So I had that opportunity to write a
chapter in three different books and get experience of being in these book
projects with other authors. And I wanted to do something similar this year
under the umbrella of human design.

Kristi:

I haven't seen many books out there that tell the story of how human design
really shifts things for people when they uncover that design. The title of
the book is Stop Overworking and Start Overflowing, and is bringing
together 25 authors to talk about their human design stories and shifts so
that people who don't know what human design is, can get it in a story
form. And also that they can then connect to these practitioners who are
also teaching human design. Because there's a lot of people out there to
support this journey. You can get readings. You can get advice around
parenting with human design or business, what you're doing, for example,
Rebecca. So I want people to be able to find the authors and tap into what
they're offering too. And it's coming out in October. So that's when the
date will be.

Rebecca:

Oh, wow. That's quick.

Kristi:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

So if people want to find out more about your work, like your work with the
self-care and human design and whatever else, where can they go?

Kristi:

So easiest is probably my website, kristihsullivan.com. I also am pretty
active on Facebook, starting to get more on Instagram. So I'm there too,
but Facebook, I have a group called Kristi's Self Care Tribe, and that's
just a free group for people to get inspired to do their daily self-care
and just that inner work. And that's where people can connect with me.

Rebecca:

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on, Kristi. It was totally
fun.

Kristi:

It was so fun. Thank you.

Rebecca:

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please go subscribe so that you get
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there, please leave me a review and let me know what you think. So excited
to share this with you and can't wait to talk to you next time. Bye.