What is the impact of environment on our health? When we look at healing our body, we often focus on what we take in internally. We look at what we eat, how we eat it, when we eat it, whether it’s the different types of food or supplements. Investigating the internal part of our health patterns is one aspect. What about the external?
What do you look for in the external? Do you check for directions? For potentially harmful energies or for harmonious feng shui aspects? Or potential sources of earth radiation such as underground waterways? Do you look the proximity of solar panels, smart meters, fuse boxes, power lines and cell towers?
Hardscape and Landscape
In the Human Design System, the six environments are divided into hardscapes and landscapes. The correct environment is one that embraces our body and form, protects it, and nourishes it. It’s one that allows the body to rest, to not meet continuous resistance which wears it down. This also means an environment which nurtures and allows the expression of its differentiation and difference. Being in an incorrect environment can make the body sick as much as what we take in internally.
Hardscapes
You can get a sense of what hardscapes are. The urban jungle. Concrete. Built up. A hardscape is what Ra Uru Hu calls “highly communalized socially integrated environment.” It’s places where where there is a focus on surviving, that is more tuned in.
Landscapes
Landscapes are not necessarily rural; rather it is less developed and more importantly it’s about height. Mountain, a landscape environment, is about the view and you can be in a city and your Mountain environment when you are on a high floor. At this height, you now have a view and you can look down.
The Impact of Environment on health
Our relationship with our physical environment for our health and well-being is often overlooked or down played. Even if it’s considered, it’s not uncommon what we believe is our ideal environment is a conditioned concept. We live in a world full of conditioning forces and being conditioned incorrectly, having incorrect people in our aura, can be detrimental to our health, well-being, and the unfolding of our life.
Conditioning, for example, can make us believe hardscapes are healthy for us, when we are built for landscapes, and vice versa. This transference can be profound and we may not connect the dysfunctions and disharmonies of the body to it. So often where we live is decided by other people, such as parents, partners, family, culture, history, kids’ schooling, and jobs. Being in the incorrect environment means we are not finding our sustenance and security.
When we are in the wrong place, we are with the wrong people. It leaves us vulnerable to incorrect conditioning. True, we can adapt to an environment and most people do. We are resilient. However, adapting to what’s incorrect for us does not make it correct, or nourishing. There are longterm effects that by moving to a correct place cannot be remedied immediately.
(Note: the environment is less important before the Saturn Return, around age 30. The most important for kids is how they are nourished and that they are allowed to be who they are.)
Finding Your Environment
The form/body is naturally tuned into finding what’s correct for it, what presents the least amount of resistance. The way to align with your body to your trajectory, according to the Human Design System, is through Strategy and Authority. Strategy is based on which of the four aura types you are. This is to respond, be invited, inform, and to wait a lunar cycle. Our Inner Authority is our inner GPS guidance that supports our decision making. It’s not the mind that makes the decision! My inner authority is the sacral, so that’s recognizing my body’s response in sound, words, or movement. Another person’s authority may be splenic, which is a voice that informs in the moment.
Also as we move from our South Node phase or first half of life into the North Node phase, we may also have a shift in environment. Attempting to figure this out with the mind adds confusion and fear. Learning what you Strategy and Authority are and living your life through that lens will naturally align you with your path, being in the right place with the right people at the right time.
