Heart centre

Meaning

The Heart centre is a small triangle just to the right of the G centre. It is also called the Ego or the Will centre. Human Design makes it the motor of willpower: making a promise, keeping it, and the drive to earn, own and prove one’s worth. It is tied to the material world, to work, money, territory and what one can offer others.

It is one of four motors, with the Sacral, the Solar Plexus and the Root. It is also the smallest centre, with only four gates. Gate 21 seeks control over one’s own territory. Gate 26 carries the gift of persuasion. Gate 40 works for others, then needs to be alone. Gate 51 meets shock with the courage to be first.

Defined, the Heart gives steady access to willpower. Such a person can commit and see things through. The tradition adds that this motor works in cycles of effort and rest. Promises go best when the rest is built in from the start.

Undefined or open, the Heart makes willpower uneven. That is natural, not a weakness. The not-self signal here is the feeling of having to prove one’s worth: by overpromising, by overworking, or by asking too little for one’s work. Human Design’s answer is gentle: there is nothing to prove. A useful habit is to pause before any commitment taken on mainly to impress.

In practice

• Defined: one of four channels is complete, each to a different centre: the Throat, the G, the Spleen or the Solar Plexus.
• The Heart and the Throat: the channel between them joins a motor to the Throat directly. Without a defined Sacral, this is enough for a Manifestor.
• The Heart and the G: will joins identity, and a defined G joined to the Throat can carry that motor further.
• Authority: when the Solar Plexus, the Sacral and the Spleen are all undefined, the Heart gives ego authority. One listens to what one truly wants and is willing to stand behind, rather than what one thinks one should do.
• Undefined, with active gates: a hanging gate here names the theme in which willpower is borrowed, such as territory with gate 21.

Across traditions

• The chakras: the usual account says the heart chakra, Anahata, split into two centres, the G and the Heart. Some teachers instead compare the Heart’s willpower with Manipura, the navel chakra of fire and drive. Both readings are found among Human Design teachers.
• A word that misleads: the English name Heart does not mean the emotions. In Human Design, feelings belong to the Solar Plexus, and the Heart is the will.

Origin and history

Ra Uru Hu presented the nine centres from 1987, as a change from seven chakras that he dated to 1781. The Heart became a motor of its own, separate from the G. The tradition links the Heart centre to the heart, the stomach, the thymus and the gall bladder. These are correspondences the system teaches, never medical claims or advice.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune colours a gate when any of the 26 activations stands in it, the 13 bodies of the Personality and the 13 of the Design. A channel is defined when both of its gates are coloured, and a centre is defined when a defined channel touches it.

The Heart is defined exactly when channel 45–21, 25–51, 44–26 or 40–37 is defined. Otherwise it is undefined when any of its four gates is coloured, open when none is. Ulune counts it among its four motors. For type, it looks for any motor reached from the Throat along defined channels. For authority, it gives ego authority when the Heart is defined and the Solar Plexus, the Sacral and the Spleen are not. Ulune names its two forms as the tradition does: manifested for a Manifestor, projected for a Projector.

Correspondences