First things first:

What is a “Sacred Council”? Do you have one? Who are the people in your life you can truly open up to — the ones who hold your heart just right? These are the members of your Sacred Council — the relationships that nourish, witness, and expand you in ways that feel different from the rest.

Evaluating your connections is one of the most honest ways to understand how you feel in relationship with yourself and others.

Below, you’ll find specific ideas for contemplation based on your Human Design Environment, to begin cultivating healthier relationships in your life.

The Shifting of Connections

In your Human Design experiment, it’s natural to begin creating distance from certain relationships. This tends to happen around year three or four of deconditioning, often reaching a deep moment of aloneness around year six.

As your Awareness grows, you start to recognize unhealthy or misaligned dynamics between yourself and important characters in your story. That realization can be painful — but it’s also necessary. It’s how you return to yourself.

Sometimes the mirror reveals uncomfortable truths: parents, partners, friends. What happens when things feel unbearable with a parent, or you finally admit that a romantic relationship isn’t working — or that the friendship you’ve been holding onto has quietly expired?

It can feel like agony. And that’s normal.

Radical Accountability

Every relationship is an ecosystem. You are responsible for your half of it — no more, no less. It’s easy to point fingers, but healing begins when you ask:

“What part am I playing in this dynamic?”

Sometimes you simply don’t resonate anymore. Sometimes, you never did.

When you finally see that, grief can rise — grief for what was, for what could have been, or for who you thought you were within that relationship. You might spiral between “I’m the problem” and “Everyone else is the problem.”

But if the same problem keeps appearing everywhere you go… at some point, you must look inward. You’re the common thread.

This doesn’t mean you’re broken — it means you’re ready to awaken to your patterns.

The Loneliness Phase

There’s a stretch in the deconditioning process that can feel profoundly lonely. This is normal. For those of us with isolation or abandonment wounds, it can feel safer to keep unhealthy connections just to avoid being alone.

But I promise: it gets better.

So much better.

As you confront these truths, your relationship circles may shift. You may feel new vacancies — empty spaces where draining connections once lived. That’s a good thing.

If you’re full of what depletes you, there’s no room for what’s meant for you.

Sometimes you need to move into solitude to create space for new, aligned connections. Sometimes distance allows old relationships to breathe, grow, and return healthier in another season.

Saying goodbye now doesn’t always mean goodbye forever.

Reclaiming Your Power

If you catch yourself blaming someone else for your experience, that’s your cue: you’ve handed them your power.

No one else is responsible for your experience — only you. True accountability means asking, “What behaviour am I enabling?”

Returning your power to yourself is how you begin building your Sacred Council — people you resonate with on a soul level, who reflect your wholeness rather than your wounds.

It matters who you’re around.

When you feel stuck, it’s often because something in your energetic web is keeping you tethered. Changing those dynamics — or, when necessary, releasing them — takes enormous courage.

And remember: you’re only ready when you’re ready.

Some people stay in unhealthy dynamics because they depend on others financially or physically. That’s valid. You can’t move until you can see a path forward. The first step is always awareness — honestly admitting how you feel.

You can’t take aligned action before that moment of truth.

And once it arrives, let yourself sit with it.

Digest it.

Feel it.

Moving Forward

Below, you’ll find custom prompts designed for each Environment Colour — Caves, Markets, Kitchens, Mountains, Valleys, and Shores — to help you reflect on your relationship patterns and move closer to meaningful, resonant connections in this chapter of your life. Remember, these are just starting points and suggestions to get you thinking about this area in your life.

Save them to your pinboard for your Human Design studies.

If you’re unsure which Colour your Environment Variable holds, use my free Variable Calculator — and be sure your birth time is as precise as possible (down to the minute).

When you’re ready to explore all four of your Variables in depth, join me in The Art of Healing Variable Training — where we explore how Awareness reshapes your inner and outer architecture.