First off, I think it is important to clarify that I was raised to be “scientifically” oriented, and while I have always been highly attuned to subtle energies long before I learned what they were, my education and family environment encouraged me to develop my intellectual abilities and to disdain things that had no basis in what I was told were empirical “facts”.

I considered subjects like astrology to be perhaps fun to look at, but nothing to be taken seriously as a tool for understanding myself or other people. I was amused by those who took these things seriously, but although I felt an attraction to that other way of looking at life, I felt no real common ground with them for most of my early life.

Even though I had experienced many things and also had insights about life and death and relationships that did not fit within the world view I grew up with, I had no one in my immediate sphere of family members who shared my intuitions and insights, and I learned early on to keep them to myself to avoid being belittled or judged negatively by others.

I now know that being able to honor my own sensitivity and perceptiveness, despite facing harsh judgments from others while growing up and thus having felt as though I had to hide these aspects of myself,  is part of my journey.

It has not been easy for me to embrace the deeper inner truths that were “poking” at me from early on in my life, but that no one else around me seemed to have any access to, because it meant separating myself from the only “tribe” I knew.

The truth was that I had never been at ease within the kind of family and cultural structures I was born into and raised with. Being of a very different makeup than my family members made me an outsider from early on.

But this often intense, lonely and sometimes even painful journey has pushed me to be relentless in looking for answers to my questions about myself, others and Life that have enriched my experience beyond measure.

Astrology, and more recently Human Design, combined with my background in counseling psychology with a phenomenological approach, has helped me develop a way of seeing individual human life and how we all fit together, and how that all fits with the larger universe we all live in, that is truly fascinating and enriching.

My Astrological Awakening

My first change of heart towards astrology came about when I was first living in Italy. My first boyfriend there was engaged in Jungian therapy, and he introduced me to a fabulous book written by an Italian Jungian therapist, Roberto Sicuteri: Astrologia e Mito, Simboli e Miti nella Psicologia dell’Inconscio – Astrology and Myth, Symbols and Myths in the Psychology of the Unconscious (if you scroll down to the bottom of the page I have linked here you can read a review of this book that unfortunately has not been translated into English … the other books mentioned on this page are also all books I highly recommend for any serious students of astrology. I have no affiliation with this particular astrologer; I am linking to their page because it is one of the rare ones where there is a mention of Sicuteri’s extraordinary book in English).

I began reading this and other books, and delving more into Jung and his thought, as well, which recognized the importance of astrology and other esoteric studies and methods as fundamental aspects of the rich cultural inheritance that we have as humans, accumulated through the centuries. 

Some years later I began my own therapeutic journey in Existential Personalistic Anthropology, which drew many insights from Jung’s thought, and eventually decided to go further, and become a psychologist and counselor myself.

I began delving deep into my personal history and understanding better how my childhood and family experiences had shaped me, for good and bad, and how I could heal my wounds and become freer, healthier, and more in touch with my true Self.

I was learning that my insides – how I experienced myself and my life, my thoughts and feelings, beliefs and convictions, dreams and fears and relationships – were actually connected with my outsides – how I was living, who I was choosing to love, work with and interact with – in ways I had never grasped before.

I was going through a time of immense personal transformation, and from being a hard core “atheist”, who had early on in my life rejected many of the aspects of the religion I had been taught as a child due to what seemed to me to be extremely contradictory and nonsensical messages, I was learning to open to a broader idea of spirituality. I was learning that I did not have to adhere to any particular religion to open to my deeper self, and that my quest to harmonize my own psyche and body, and eventually help others do the same, would allow me to open up to the deeper, more mysterious aspects of myself and of life in ways that were safe and supportive for me.

I was also learning how to observe and listen to the deeper messages coming from my Higher Self, and seeing how they then could be brought into my “real life” in ways that were supportive of my true needs for connection, meaning, love and purpose in my relationship to myself and to others, in my personal, professional and creative spheres.

My thinking was changing, my mind was opening, and my life was shifting radically as a result. It was not an easy time, but I was hungry for information and new tools, and was ready to challenge some of the ideas I had been raised with, such as the materialist view that all of reality was only based in our brains and biologies, or that we “think, therefore we are” (the Cartesian emphasis on rational thought that has shaped the world these last centuries). I was learning that love is an actual force, as well, and that when we choose to learn to love ourselves, others, and Life, an entire different reality begins to unfold within us, and around us.

One day, while I was browsing a street book vendor’s offerings in Rome, a book quite literally fell onto my feet.

I picked it up to put it back on the table, and glanced at the title: it was a book on astrology. I had little interest in astrology, but since by that point in my counseling training I had learned to pay attention to the broader things that were happening in my life (thanks to Jung’s ideas on synchronicity), I realized that maybe I needed to actually look more closely at the book and see what it might be telling me.

I opened it up, and was intrigued by what I saw. It was a beginner’s book that gave the basics on astrological symbols and how to interpret them, as well as how to calculate the positions of the planets in the solar system, draw up astrology charts, and place the planets within the charts. The entire process suddenly seemed truly fascinating to me, so I took the book home, and soon was deeply engrossed in learning this complex, ancient system, and creating charts by hand.

This was back in 1992, before I had a personal computer with astrology software to do the work of creating the charts for me, and I will say that having to spend hours and hours on every chart that I created, doing the calculations, placing the symbols within the zodiacal wheel, was an incredible experience.

Astrology soon revealed itself as a powerful tool to understand what was happening in my life. Combined with my education and training in clinical psychology and existential anthropological counseling, I became ever more aware that it was not only helping me in my own journey of healing, self-discovery, and understanding of broader world cycles, but it could be a powerful tool in my work with clients, as well.

Over the years, my understanding and appreciation of this incredible art and science has only deepened, and it is quite thrilling to see that there is now a new wave of interest and appreciation that is sweeping the consciousness of the new generations.

My orientation is Humanistic and Evolutionary, and while it is impossible for me to list (or remember!) all the wonderful authors and teachers who have informed my journey over these decades, some of the more important authors that have informed my understanding of astrology along the way are:

* Carl Jung – the renowned Swiss psychiatrist was a pioneer in affirming that humans have a spiritual dimension that is important to understand and cultivate in a psychologically oriented way rather than only within the religions. He advocated a bridging mentality between science and religious mysticism that opened the door for all kinds of new ideas regarding how to integrate these aspects of our being, and studied astrology and other esoteric approaches and how they can be important tools in our understanding of ourselves, of others, and of our purpose within the fabric of the universe.

* Dane Rudhyar – considered the father of humanistic astrology, his early insights in how the emerging understandings in psychology and psychoanalysis in the early years of the 20th century opened up a branch of inquiry and application that has been truly extraordinary. He is also a wonderful writer and thinker, and I consider him my first teacher, as it was through his books that I was able to make the first connections between my own journey in my training as a counseling psychologist and the understandings I was grasping as I learned astrology.

* Alice Bailey and Djwal Kuhl – Esoteric Astrology is a branch of study that helps develop a bridge in internal and external mind-body systems as well as the world religions.

* Stephen Arroyo – he helped broaden and develop the trend in psychological/humanistic astrology that is now quite common place among Western astrologers

* Raymond Merriman – a pioneer in financial astrology, his understanding of how planetary cycles interweave with human and financial cycles is profound and time-tested

* Alan Oken – another author and practitioner who helped strengthen the bridge between astrology and psychology and developed insights that have informed and guided many astrologers since.

* Steven Forrest – his approach to evolutionary astrology is very down to earth and he is a wonderful writer.

* Jeffrey Wolf Green – his ideas on evolutionary astrology offer some deep insights

* Richard Tarnas – his book Cosmos and Psyche is a must read for those wanting to understand broader cycles in human history

* Jessica Murray – a tried and true astrologer who writes well-researched and intelligent articles on world affairs that are often spot on.

How Human Design Changed (saved?!) My Life

In 2009 I was working full time as a Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and  Abuse counselor at the Women’s Center in Waukesha, WI. I loved my work but had been experiencing increasing bouts of strange symptoms, such as extreme exhaustion, and high temperatures spiking after going on my cherished walks through the nearby woods.

As I became more and more debilitated, I became more and more desperate, as well. I was doing a lot of things “right” in terms of how I was taking care of myself, and I just couldn’t understand why I was feeling increasingly exhausted.

During a session of a business mastermind group online I mentioned my health problems, and a woman from Namibia – of all places! so far away both culturally and geographically from my Wisconsin life! – suggested I go and check out Human Design. She briefly explained that it talked about different physical energy types in humans, and that I might find it helpful.

I went and did a search right away …. and what I found out completely blew my mind.

I found out that as a Projector, my exhaustion was fully understandable.

But I have to admit that when I first learned that I was a Projector, and thus not designed to push as I was doing, I was not one bit happy about it!! I had been working very hard all my life to adapt to the predominant models of living and working laid down by the so called “energy types”, and I wanted to be one of them! I wanted to experience the kind of 9-5 continuity that I saw them living, along with the material rewards that I saw them achieving. For me, things just had never worked like that, even though I wanted them to…. and from early on, I had been convinced that if only I managed to change myself and be more like the many generators and manifesting generators around me, things would work for me, too.

I can still remember the disappointment and upset that I felt when instead I learned that I was, instead, a “non energy type” and that not only would I not function well in a lifestyle that required a consistent kind of working life, but that it could very well lead me to serious illness and shorten my life.

It felt like a condemnation, not a liberation. 

Although deep, deep down, it also felt true, and like an enormous relief. 

Finally I was hearing someone tell my story, about trying and trying to get things to work the way I saw other people doing it – first and foremost within my family growing up, surrounded by generators and one manifesting generator – and never having it work out the same way for me, and being blamed for it. My family had tried in a million ways to get me to conform to their way of being, thinking, and acting, and we were all confused and upset that it just never seemed to stick with me. I was seen as the terrible rebel and black sheep, and our relations were constantly fraught with struggle, incomprehension, and, for me, increasing alienation, not only from them, but from myself. 

I began to believe that indeed there was something wrong with me, even though deeper down, I knew that it wasn’t true.

Fortunately my encounter with Existential Personalistic and Cosmoartistic Anthropology allowed me to begin to see myself in a  more positive light, and even though most of my mentors were also energy types, they saw me as valid and valuable as a person who was creative, with a good heart, and an undying desire to be of help to others as much as I wanted to heal myself. They helped me begin to see myself and my struggles with adapting to “normal” society – the kinds of life rhythms developed by the energy types and that dominate all over the globe – and honor them as unique to me, even though they could not necessarily completely understand what I was experiencing. Fortunately, they were well enough exposed to the increasingly available teachings and wisdom coming from the Eastern mindset and religions, which are more able to recognize the importance of “Wu Wei” – the non doing receptive energy described in Zen Buddhism – that is very resonant to the way the non energy types are designed to function according to Human Design. 

This had already given me a bit of a head start to being able to embrace this new way of seeing myself, the ebbs and flows of my energy and how my life unfolded in the outer world, but it was not enough to help me truly embrace my own rhythms, which were very, very different from pretty much everyone else around me. Today I know that part of this profound difference is due to my own unique energetic configuration, and part of it is due to the damage that I endured thanks to my early life experiences and conditioning. Back then, all I knew was that I was in a terrible state of physical, emotional and spiritual distress, perhaps especially because I had been working very hard to break through my conditioning and learn to love and care for myself in new ways, but I was still encountering obstacles that seemed inexplicable.

Human Design finally offered me some clues that began to make real sense. 

I dove in with all the energy and money I could muster, and I studied all the material I could get my hands on, received many consultations and took classes and training modules to become a Human Design Guide. I slowly learned to understand the unique and beautiful gifts inherent in each of the types described by this odd but powerful approach, and how they blend together perfectly – if and when people are in alignment with who they are.

If not, people suffer… and I certainly had suffered greatly, trying to be someone and something I was not, for almost 50 years (I was 48 when I found out about Human Design).

Human Design’s founder Ra Uru Hu talked about a period of 7 years as being a basic time necessary to begin to decondition and realign oneself to the true needs of one’s body and soul.

I have been on my own journey for 16 years now and I must say, sinking into the beauty and managing the challenges of my own energy type, and guiding others in understanding theirs, has been absolutely fascinating.

To offer a more precise idea of my journey with this particular discipline, I completed Human Design Guide trainings with John Martin early on (now deceased, unfortunately), multiple trainings with Karen Parker, and had several mentorship readings done by Randy Richmond, one of the early HD developers along with Ra (also now deceased). I have studied the Gene Keys extensively, and many other offshoots that have sprung up in the wake of the original teachings.

I have also received many other readings and explorations from a variety of practitioners, and have given hundreds of readings for individuals, couples, families, and work situations and creative endeavors.

I am very passionate about sharing this information with those who are ready and able to hear it!

Today there are many, many people offering Human Design services. I will only mention here the official site of Jovian Archive, as that is the home base and it is where you can find the most authentic and trustworthy information. You can also have your chart created to check out what your Design is, and begin your journey with all kinds of resources.

Conclusion

Thanks to my education and training as a counslor and the extensive work I have done over several decades with individuals, couples, and families in my holistic counseling and coaching practice, I am uniquely positioned to incorporate tools like Human Design and Astrology, to help couples and family groups understand how to learn how to be deeply mutually supportive, and how to guide couples/parents in the sometimes daunting task of shepherding the growth of children, while continuing to evolve themselves.

Check out my services page to see what kinds of readings I offer and send me an email martha@marthabw.com to find out about my availability for sessions.

I look forward to assisting you in your journey towards ever increasing love and acceptance of yourself and your ability to live your unique life with joy, prosperity and true connection, with yourself and others!