Let's continue our Journey through the Centers of the Human Design Bodygraph with your extraordinary Root Center. This center carries a profound initiating quality that fuels the pressure driving your physical life processes. Responsible for energizing your body through your adrenal system, your Root Center initiates being, providing the powerful energy that demands we live a physical life and evolve.

Your Root Center is both a pressure center and a motor - as opposed to the only other source of pressure, your Head Center. We humans live in a 'pressure sandwich', amplified if you have these centers undefined. Note that neither center has direct access to your Throat Center, and your Root is the only motor in your bodygraph without direct access to expression and manifestation.

Originating energy for nine channels leading to the nearby Sacral, Splenic, and Solar Plexus Centers, your Root creates the frequencies through which you biologically operate, producing hormones that get and keep you moving through life.

Whether your Root Center has consistent energy present (defined) or not (undefined), these gates describe the mechanics of the nine essential ways our bodies operate. If your Root Center defines by connecting to a nearby center, you have a particular, fixed way of dealing with stress according to your unique genetic imprinting via the Neutrinos. If your Root Center is undefined, your way of dealing with stress is flexible, and you may tend to amplify pressure, continually rushing to get rid of it.

Either way, following your Strategy and Authority aligns you to the perfection of your Root's process and can help you keep your balance despite the stresses in your world. Take a look at your bodygraph as you read the gates below and take special note of the gates you have defined - these are pressures in you that must be fulfilled, and can only be fulfilled when you are operating correctly.

The Root Center and its Relationships

Root Center Gates to Sacral Center

The relationship between your Root and Sacral Center is perhaps one of the most extraordinary that exists within your bodygraph. The root center is the essence of all of our genetic possibilities, which emerge through the Sacral. The potential of what generated life can be is sourced from your Root Center, making up the frequencies of our world.

Pressures from your Root Center meeting the immense power of your Sacral Center are given a special name; the format energies. Originating these three distinctly unique frequencies, your Root pressures various elements of the bodygraph with a basic structure of operation. These formats are the main energy source for our Collective and Individual knowing processes in life.

The Gate of Beginnings

Root pressure to begin or start new things defines via Gate 53, “Development.” This gate formats energy into a cyclical frequency of experiential beginnings, middles, and ends. Bringing the pressure to complete, this is the most stressful of all gates. Depression can occur when you don't have freedom to begin a process so that you can complete it.

The Gate of Acceptance

The pulsation of 'there or not' pressure to mutate and to transcend limitation defines via Gate 60, “Limitation.” This gate formats all Individual circuitry in your bodygraph - the Knowing and Centering Circuits - through a restrained fuel quality that pulses an energy frequency carrying the possibility of mutation and melancholy; a mechanical moodiness of both happy and sad. When you feel limited and there's nothing new to know depression can hit.

The Gate of Inaction

The pressure to focus your energy and concentrate defines via Gate 52 - “Keeping Still / Mountain.” This gate formats all logical circuitry in your bodygraph - the Understanding Circuit of the Collective - into a logical, detailed and organized, fixed pattern frequency through a passive fuel quality that is not about stress, but about tension. When you don't have the right thing to focus on, depression can be the result.

Any conscious or unconscious definition in these format channels, whether a gate or channel, deeply influences the way your design operates. This energy frequency can also influence the people that come into aura contact with you.

Root Center Gates to Splenic Center

Between your Root Center and Splenic Center are three channels that initiate existential awareness, survival consciousness and the joy of being alive. Your Root Center fuels the Splenic Center with enormous energy for logical judgmentalism, individual intuition, and tribal instinct to maintain your physical well-being.

The Gate of Vitality

The pressure to correct and perfect life, to make things better defines via Gate 58, "The Joyous," the Gate of Vitality. This life force focused on providing logical energy for experimentation is essentially the love of life, fueling our awareness of recognizing patterns that need perfecting or not, and the fear of self-judgement or the judgment of others. It is a highly specialized energy dedicated to a logical experimentation and sharing to ensure a safe future for humanity.

The Gate of the Fighter

The pulsing pressure to find or struggle for purpose in life comes from your Root Center through Gate 38, "Opposition." This individual, mutative energy to struggle for purpose fuels the fear of purposelessness in life or that life has no purpose unless you take risks. This inherent energy of struggle for individual integrity and purpose empowers you to lock in on the one risk worth fighting for and developing your intuitive processes.

The Gate of Drive 

The pressure to achieve, to rise up, to transform comes through Gate 54, "The Marrying Maiden." Laden with incredible potential, this powerful tribal energy brings the drive to succeed, fueling instinctive awareness of what can be transformed or not and the fear of failure. This gate brings the realization that true spirituality is lived out on the mundane plane.

These gates originating from your Root Center are of enormous importance to your well-being, providing pressure to grasp the beauty of your process and fueling the survival-based fears of the Splenic Center. Those with definition between these two centers especially need regular physical activity in order to stay healthy.

Root Center Gates to Solar Plexus

Pressuring the most important mutation in our history, your Root Center brings the energy that fuels emotional awareness and relational intelligence expressed in your Solar Plexus. With definition of these channels, you experience a fixed way of dealing with tribal relationships, individual emotional stress and collective desire to share new experiences.

The Gate of Wanting

Pressure to be sensitive to basic needs comes through Gate 19, "Approach," the Gate of Wanting. Driving us have the necessary resources, Gate 19 pressures us with accepting or rejecting principles based on whether it supports the continuity of the tribe, and fuels nervousness about rejection, unpredictability, and consequences. Providing the powerful energy for supporting having enough resources, this gate recognizes everything is interrelated.

The Gate of Provocation 

Pressure find the passion, spirit in life and to emote comes through Gate 39, "Obstruction." This strongly individual, mutative frequency provokes out of uncertainty, certainty in Spirit. Gate 39's energy pulses fuel personal melancholy, as well as nervousness from not knowing what or who to be passionate about. Once linked to the correct spirit, this gate fuels the potential to emote, bringing mutation to manifestation and bringing out the individual spirit.

The Gate of Contraction 

Pressure to feel and desire a new experience comes through Gate 41, "Decrease." This collective, abstract energy drives the wave of emotions from hope to pain, locking in the desire for one experience at a time, pressuring nervousness about what might or might not happen. Pushing us into a life experience that is nothing but cycles, our human experiential process begins here and fuels our evolutionary process in sequences.

When your Root Center is defined, you can put pressure on those with undefined roots, especially if your mind is dictating your life. You can become obsessive, improperly initiating, meeting resistance that brings stress you aren't designed to handle which can undermine your health. Follow your Strategy and Authority to move forward in life grounded in the correct frequency of your Root.

Question for Inquiry: Do you recognize the pressures in your life that are yours? What about the pressures that are not yours?

The Undefined or Open Root Center 

If you have an undefined or open Root Center, you have the flexibility of dealing with stress in many different ways. However, transits and other people can activate your root, immensely pressurizing you, which tends to amplify and distort this powerful energy. This can show up as hyperactivity (especially in children), an uncontrollable restlessness and inability to focus.

When you have a totally open root center, you can experience the full range of pressure - from deep stillness to intense hyperactivity. Letting pressure pass through you that is not your own is important. Nature is an especially helpful place of renewal and peace for you.

The key for either undefined or open is to move forward in alignment with your Strategy and Authority; either taking a deep breath and moving away from stress if it is uncomfortable, or taking a deep breath and taking advantage of the pressure in order to get things done quickly if needed, or in the appropriate timing - allowing yourself to enjoy the process. Practice getting familiar with the pressures you have defined in you and recognize where the stresses in your environment are coming from.

Questions for Inquiry: What examples of the thoughts that may come up on behalf of your deeply conditioned mind - what we call “Not-Self” talk - do you recognize in you? Can you match the questions with the gate it might be coming from?

I have to achieve something big in my life.
What is my purpose?
What pattern can I experiment with or use my energy for?
I’m depressed because I feel limited. How can I get past this limitation?
I’m depressed because I need something to focus on. What should I focus on?
I’m depressed because nothing new is happening; I’m tired of the same old thing.
I need to start something new.
I need to be needed. Who needs me? Where can I go to be needed?
What is my passion? Who am I passionate about?
I want to initiate a new experience. I want to feel something new.
I need to get this done quickly, I can’t waste any time.

Whether your Root Center is defined or undefined, honoring your Strategy to deal with the correct pressures, and using your Authority to move on those pressures, is key to avoiding resistance. Moving forward from a place of stillness, clarity of purpose and joy for living through following your Strategy and Authority encourages proper initiation of your flow of energy. Human Design can lead you to what truly fulfills and differentiates you into your unique potential.

Would you like to share any of your Root Center epiphanies or feedback with me? You’re invited to ask questions as well.

By Laveena Lovick

A version of this article was written for JovianArchive.com.