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Hello beautiful beings, welcome to Leadership by Design Podcast. I'm your host, Karina Polonia Tripp, and this is the first episode after a very long break and to be honest, quite a big pivot in my work. So if you have been following human design somatics, don't worry. We'll still focus on the intersection between these two topics. But I also have so much more to offer and I'm so excited to start this journey again. Today I want to tell you a story that will hopefully illustrate how having a completely open center in your human design chart, so the center that doesn't have any gates, can condition you so deeply that you have no idea that you are in big trouble. And guys, this is a personal story, but I can tell you that this same thing may be happening to you as we speak, just maybe in different aspects of your life than in my example, right? So for the last couple of months since March 2025, I have been in a big doubt if I should continue with my business. I've noticed a pattern, and this pattern is familiar to me from the time I remember. I would create, connect with my people, and then completely disappear to in my business, for example, to only serving my clients that I already have without promoting or marketing anything, and kind of like hoping that somehow it's going to work, and it worked, so I'm grateful for it, but it brought me a lot of shame and wonders why I cannot just get over this weird pattern that I couldn't grasp. And most people in the human design space would say this is a typical representation of emotional manifestor. Karina, you are just an emotional manifester. You can't be consistent. Why are you expecting yourself to work like a generator? And I will tell you that this can be so detrimental to us as business owners who use tools like human design, astrology, anything. Because when you look at your habits or behaviors and find the reason in your chart, you may assume that that's it. You don't dig deeper and you just accept it as it is, and you are not actually questioning anymore, right? You don't question this thing, you just say, ah, because I am a manifestor, that's the way I roll. I just need to live with it and arrange my life around this, right? And some of you may be thinking, if you are also familiar with human design, you are a manifestor, you have so-called rest cycles. So it's normal that you are just storming in and then backing away, you just need to recharge. And just to be clear, guys, this concept of rest cycles for manifestor is not true. I've never heard Ra or any other teacher in human design space uh that is like trained through the original human design said this about manifestors, and to give you an example, and I won't dig too much into this because it's it's like a topic for another episode, but basically, uh, if Ra would have so-called rest cycles, we would not have human design. Manifestors are energy type period. We just need to go about using our energy a little bit different, and we need to go to bed before we are tired, but then you can wake up refreshed and you can start and do things that that you want to do if you treat your body correctly, right? So, this concept of rest cycles was never like it didn't move me and it didn't make me like, oh yeah, this is it, that's why. But consistency on the other level, like kind of sacral generator consistency or starting and not finishing, these kind of things are still in the mechanical sense of a manifestor. So I kind of just like, oh yeah, that's me, but it didn't feel peaceful, it felt anxious, it felt like a lot of pain, and I was in a lot of pain because of this pattern because I knew how I feel when I connect, when I when I work, I love my work. And for those who don't know me and what I do, my background is in PR and marketing. I am also a human design professional, certified through International Human Design School. Also, I'm trained as BG5 consultant, which is a business application of human design. And on top of that, I also weave somatic parts work, which comes from internal family systems. So I will tell you that nervous system expansion and human design together can be incredible tools, but we need to approach it from the space where we are not just assuming that something is true about us because it's written in our chart, but check in with parts of you and the body that are communicating to you all the time. And I hope that my story will help you to see the difference and question more how is your relationship with your human design blueprint? Anything that kind of gives you a name for something for your lived experience. So let's go to the story. I've had had a business since I was 20. Not one, but now in total there's four businesses. And before I had this online business that I started two years ago, I was a professional makeup artist, stylist, and I worked with many models and photographers creating amazing worlds, and I was paid great money to do so. And for the last 15 years, I saw this pattern over and over again in business. This pattern, as I told you, was showing up also in school. But I would do something like creation, big impact, serving my clients, and then complete and total shutdown, but not in the good way, okay? Like zoned out, watching series with chips all over me and like crying, that kind of shutdown. It looked like a burnout, but I loved what I did, right? I loved it. I I had all these ideas, and I would just like want to come up with some juice in me, but it didn't happen. So it also looked like depression, but I could feel this fire of my mission and my passion. So after years of struggling with this, of course, I found human design, and I felt huge relief because I am not faulty, right? It's just my design. How many of you have had a reason for why you are as you are through those systems? And it's beautiful, it often really takes away a lot of shame and guilt and thinking that something is wrong with you. But again, we need to be careful to not miss the clues that may be not at all part of your design. And I will be honest, and it's hard for me to admit that. As I said, I had big doubts if I can continue with my business, because every time I would start to show up, something happened that landed me in bed sick, or at least just not being able to move. I was so tired for weeks that I could not welcome new people to my world. I didn't want to market much, I didn't want to promote much. I was lucky enough to have most of my clients uh come through word of mouth, or my current clients would extend with me, but in general, this pattern would look like this. I had 10k month and then the next sometimes zero, and not because I tried everything and it didn't work, I literally didn't even try to sell anything. And when I started to market, I got this huge interest and turnover, and somehow I would sabotage, like air quotes, sabotage myself and refuse working with some people. Part of me was ashamed of showing up and being more visible because that's my behavior. And here I'm talking about aligning with your design, working with my clients using somatics, right? Something is wrong. I am a hypocrite. I knew that my clients had incredible results. Like sometimes the transformation that they would go through blew my mind, and I was supporting them to achieve that, and part of me was always saying, Would it be nice, Karina, to have this transformation for yourself? Wouldn't it? Like, oh wow, my clients have better results working with me than I have. Why can't I drink my own medicine? What's wrong? And like I've tried with somatics, with nervous system, with parts work. I mean, probably that's why I also became a professional, because I knew that something is off in my nervous system. And I'm always honest with my clients and tell them how it goes in my life. And I have this lovely, incredible people who just love me for who I am. Doesn't matter if I spent a week before our meeting just crying a link bad, and then I show up for the call, and there's just magic happening. But of course, I had limited capacity to welcome new people because there was a part of me that would be afraid, what if somebody cannot accept me as I am in that state? So coming to this year before my big launch that I planned in February um 2025, I got so sick that for two months I could not work at all. I had severe food allergies and basically needed to change everything about my diet. After I fixed that, because I fixed that, I felt so much better, and hope came back. So my body with proper nutrition can like heal and it will change this pattern that I dealt with for so many years. And this diet changed helped a lot, and I could still do more work, uh, but not fully enough that I would be able to show up consistently. So instead of marketing and selling, um, I would do some like back-end things or building some systems or creating some resources for my clients, but that was it, what I could do, and again I would have to rely on word-of-mouth marketing. So, of course, after that, I had this belief that apparently I did not resolve something in my subconscious, and there is a part of me that it's preventing this growth. And how can I support people on the journey of building their businesses with this incredible BG5 tool and my expertise in marketing? I don't do my own marketing, and this was definitely not in integrity, so I would only allow clients to come to me through those recommendations. But I had this big barrier who can work with me and who I'm allowing into my space. So I almost gave up till one day, not that long ago, I saw an Instagram post. Imagine this: you see a woman in underwear, and I see legs of this woman on the picture, and immediately, without even reading anything, I just got, oh my god, she has the legs that look like mine. And then I looked at the the description and there was like, are your legs looking like this? I'm like, huh? How are you in my head? And of course I started to read. And all of the questions and descriptions describe my life to the T. And you are probably wondering, Karina, what do you mean? What is the thing with your legs? And since I remember since my puberty, I started to grow um disproportionate, and like my top would be much smaller, my waist would be often very small, and my belly and uh you know my face. But then when you would look at the bottom part of my body, you would see like this big butt and big hips, big thighs, and it's just it was much fuller, and there was a big difference, like two size, at least two size difference between my waist and my uh bottom, right? So that was one thing, and I would bruise very often. And that post also asked, Are you bruising very often? Um, do you feel pain when somebody touches you? And I'm like, How do you know all of this? You know, and I discovered something that I was so shocked about. Since I remember they just told me to lose weight. Um, I was very often in the category of obese by my weight, but actually, people would look at me, my face, my arms, like my top, and they would say, like, there's no way you are obese. And then most of my weight was accumulated actually in my um legs and my buttocks. And I did not know that there is actually a condition called lipodema, and it's so misdiagnosed, mostly it is affecting women, of course, and it's connected to estrogen and lymphatic system as well, but it's basically connective tissue disorder where fluid and lymph get stuck in the fat cells, and fat cells are not growing like normal fat cells. So basically, there is this um fibrosis that happens in the fat, in the legs, and later in later stages, also in upper arms. And this is a serious chronic condition that can make you end up in a wheelchair if you don't take care of it. It's a progressive disease, people go into surgery and it can really help and improve your life, but it's very yeah, intense recovery journey, and you can also do some core conservative treatments and all of that. But when I saw this post, I was like, oh my god, I'm 99% sure that I have this, but of course, I needed to confirm, and because it's misdiagnosed with obesity, um, most women who have this problem they are not taken care of, and most of their lives they're walking on swollen legs with incredible pain that they are not even aware of, and because they are so used to this kind of pain, um, they don't think that there is something wrong, and they just assume and accept how they feel without questioning it because they don't have any other reference to how it can feel because they're not in somebody else's body. So 11% of women have it, and there is a bigger and bigger awareness in online spaces about lipodema. But if you're a woman listening and you resonate with anything that I said, and you had trouble with losing weight from the bottom half of your body, it may not be cosmetic or it might not be genetics, but actually it can be a chronic condition that is definitely lowering the quality of your life. So I found a specialist here in the Netherlands and first did the interview, asked me about my family history, asked me if I had trouble with losing weight because again, yay, you cannot lose weight. Uh, I mean, you can lose weight with lipodema, but the disproportionate uh shape will be always there if you don't go through the surgery, and it's just very hard and very slow to kind of like tone up your legs, and you may have a lot of muscles underneath it, but there's this fat layer and this swell that you mistaken for just bigger volume. So the doctor also did uh physical exam, and um, there's four stages, and I am currently in stage two of lipodema with the pain that was there since I was probably 15 years old, so 20 years. 20 years I lived with chronic condition that of course progressed, so it started to be really bad last three years or so, and I've had had the heaviness in my legs always, I always felt the pain, and now I understand that that was pain, but because I didn't know that this shouldn't be there, I just assumed it's normal to have pain in your legs because you're just human standing on them, and there's a lot of pressure in your feet, and uh it's just normal, that's just how how life goes, and I compared myself with people who would do so much more in a day, who'd achieve so much more, while I was walking on swollen legs and I didn't even know. I cried in the doctor's office because everything just started to make so much sense, and I got so many tips on how I can like help this condition, how I can alleviate this pain, how I can support myself. So I started to do this immediately, and I'm not going to tell you all about the the treatment and things, but I will tell you one thing. Since I know I started to incorporate a little bit of like the tools that I can support myself with, and I've seen incredible difference in the way how I lead my life. I was able to do in two or three days things that I was not able to do in last six months, just because the main reason of my nervous system collapsing was not connected to some sort of unresolved trauma which I worked through. And I will tell you, I'm 4'6, currently on the roof. My life before 30 was nuts, and of course, I am able to like heal, and this is the time for healing. It was just like an incredible journey to get to know myself. But at one point I felt I've done so much inner work, and I don't see the results in action because in the end, when you do enough inner work, you are able to take steps to manifest the life you want connected to your decision-making strategy, to your true authority, what's correct for you. And I had clarity. Some of you may be like, Karina, but how couldn't you feel that your legs are uncomfortable? Didn't you connect the dots where you could feel this heaviness, this this pain, that something is wrong? So I will tell you one thing about my design that you might not know. I have a completely open splenic center without any gate in it. And in BG5 language, so business application of human design, this is called survival instinct function. And when it's completely open, there is this theme of not knowing what to fear or fearing the wrong things, the things that actually are not there, and completely being oblivious what's actually worth fearing. There is no really consistent instinct. And because there is this total openness, this is the biggest area of my conditioning. And now, if you have any centers like this in your chart, depending on maybe it's also splenic center like me, but it may be another center. I just want you to question because you don't know what you don't know. And it this experience humbled me so much because I literally didn't know and I was not designed to know. And very often, people with completely open splenic center don't feel good very often, so their baseline for what it means to feel good in the body may be very, very distorted. And mine was definitely distorted. I build this identity around this problem that I had. The amount of shame and guilt and just feeling like I am failing as a human being and I am already 35, and why can't I just behave like a normal adult? Where I at least get consistent care for my body. There were days that I wasn't able to cook, I was only able to sit in my chair and just zone out. So I just want you to imagine like how my nervous system would feel when I was trying to push and work and do all of those things like normal people do while I was walking on swollen legs, while the fluid was building up, while there was no support, and I Basically, in constant chronic pain, and I just got used to and I was pushing through while my body was giving me signals every single day that I just could not even read. So, no wonder my nervous system was not ready to have more business, to have more clients, to deal with all of that because I was sick for years. The wisdom of completely open splenic center is one of those surprises, if I'm being honest. We don't know what we don't know, right? And now I have so much appreciation and so much compassion to my own body, to my incredibly brilliant nervous system, and those parts of me that would sabotage so-called sabotage my success. I am forever grateful because they were just literally saving my life. So the disease wouldn't progress so much. So I was forced out of my feet in the horizontal position. And this story will always humble me. And every time I assume something that it's wrong with me, something that I cannot understand, or my mind cannot understand why it's happening, there is a reason why those blockages happen. And that's why for me, working with the nervous system, with the parts that would tell you so many times that something is for you or not for you, and you wouldn't listen. To give you an example, once I was going into a very deep somatic meditation, I was going into the money expansion, and the message that I got from you know one part that would show up as a representation of this topic would be Karina, you need to take care of your legs. And I didn't understand what that message was. And I could feel at this moment, oh, I have a little bit of pain and heaviness in my feet and my calves, I'll take care of them. Maybe elevate them or go for a massage, do nice pedicure, whatever. And I ignored it. I mean, I did those things, but the message was critical. Look at your legs, take care of them. And I got this message two years ago. Two years ago. So yeah, parts are communicating, your subconscious is always communicating. That's why the first thing we need to know is the body. It's the body. And another nuance looking at human design is that uh my profile is for six, and for those who know uh about profiles, you will know that the fourth line is the conscious side, and the sixth line is unconscious. So my trial and error and my part of becoming a role model happens on the body level, like my struggle, my drama, then my healing and my wisdom actually is on the unconscious side, so I don't know what I don't know till somebody points that out and they see it in me, and that's why this post just literally saved my life at this point. I am so grateful. I wanna cry when I think about this. And to all of you who are struggling in some area of your business or in life, I want you to examine and look. How do you really feel in your body? Is your health really good as you think it is, or you just got used to certain states and you just live with it without even knowing that it can be so much better if you could just do a little switch, a little shift. So I hope that's been helpful, guys. And one thing I can tell you, I have so much juice coming up. Um, it's not that I am promising, hey, I'm going to show up more. I already created content, okay, to post because I've done so much, so much, and I cannot wait to share all of that with you. And we'll be talking about business, about your unique design, your configuration, your unique nervous system, your parts, all of that, all of that, and the most important thing. We need you. I'm speaking to the leaders of the new world, and the world is on fire, and it's time for us to step up, and I mean it. So if you are listening, I hope you get inspired. I hope you got some value from what I shared, and I am so grateful that you are witnessing me in this journey. I'm so grateful to be witnessed, and I will talk to you next time.