Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast, a space where we explore what it really looks like to trust yourself, to trust your decisions, to say no without guilt, and to live your life like it actually belongs to you. I am Erica Voell and in my work as a decision mentor and inner trust guide, I help women in midlife, trust their inner guidance, understand their unique strengths, and stop saying yes to what drains them. I help them dismantle conditioning, regulate their nervous system and reclaim their inner authority so their no feels powerful and their yes feels unmistakably true. On this show, we have honest conversations about self-trust, boundaries, energy and identity, especially for women in midlife who are so done living in the shoulds and second-guessing themselves. You'll hear stories, insights and tools rooted in human design, coaching, and real life. Not to tell you what to do, but to help you hear yourself so you can stop overthinking and start making decisions that feel clear, grounded, and true. This is a fascinating time of year, especially this year, and I want to acknowledge all of the hurt and heartbreak that is happening in the United States right now. It is a time that I never thought I would live through. And also I want to acknowledge that keeping Hope alive is what is going to move us through this time. The space between the holidays and when we start to feel a shift towards spring, usually around the middle of February, can be really hard, dark, but it can also be a change towards the better. I have always noticed an energetic shift around February 10th through the 14th or so. It may be where I've lived that the times I've noticed it, but it's been there. It's like this heaviness of deep winter is lightening just a bit, even if we are buried under inches of snow. I know some people are buried in feet of snow. But in Kansas we don't generally get feet. I've always wondered what that shift is and my logical mind wants to know like, can it be measured? And when I recorded the "Not Feeling the New Year's Excitement?" episode a few weeks ago, I noticed that like people may not have been feeling this burst out of the gates energy at the beginning of the year. The weeks after January 1st are bringing in some very interesting energy. So many people seem very aware at the end of the water snake year and the shift into the year of the fire horse on February 17th. I mean, people who don't even follow astrology are talking to me about it. There seems to be this buzziness that's happening, and my mentor, Julie Ciardi talked about it as being like the race horse at the starting gates of a race. There's an anticipation and a restlessness to like, okay, we're done. Let's get rid of this. Let's keep, let's start going. I'm ready. But we still need to be in the energy of the water snake and to allow us to shed just those last little bits. And I wanted to bring some human design into this episode, probably more human design that I have in a long time. This is not gonna be about looking at the parts of your chart, so don't worry. You don't need to look at anything. I really just want you to listen. Astrology talks about the energy of a specific planet being in a specific sign. Like for example, the sun is in Capricorn and the moon is in Aquarius. That's like the background energy of where the planet is in the astrological wheel. And the same actually happens in human design. And instead of 12 signs, like in the Zodiac, there are 64 gates within that wheel. This is the background energy. It's like the weather. We all feel it, even if we may not be aware of it, just like everyone in a specific town experiences a cloudy day or the cold, but everyone may experience it differently. Everyone experiences the background energy differently depending on their own unique design. The daily energies are part of the cycles we experience in our lives. There are daily cycles, monthly or lunar cycles, seasonal shifts, along with different cycles in our lives, as well as generational and global shifts. We're experiencing a lot. There are also cycles within our own lives that happen in our thirties and our forties and our fifties. You may have heard them referred to as the Saturn return around 28 to 30, the Uranus opposition in your forties. The Chiron return around age 50, and it's important that we not attach to these cycles is if they are changing us. We will always be who we were born to be, but we can look at these cycles or these transits as the energy moving through us in the moment, but it's not who we are or who I am. And today in this episode, I'm talking about the daily frequencies that we experience each day. That background energy depends on where the sun and the earth are located in the wheel or the mandala as it's called. It takes the sun a year to move through that whole wheel just as it takes the sun 12 months to go through all the signs in the Zodiac. And within human design, there are 64 gates. The gates are the little numbers that show up in your chart. And I mentioned this because the number one question I get asked when we're looking at a chart for the first time is people say, so what do the numbers all mean? The numbers just tell us where the planets are located. About three months before your birth and at your birth time and when you're beginning to study your own chart. The numbers are not significant, but the background frequency can be bring in some interesting energy. That's where the sun and the earth are located in the wheel and what gate they are in. The sun brings in the core essence or the brilliance the earth brings in the balance or the grounding that we feel. They're always perfectly matched, but their energies can feel like partners at times, and other times they might feel like a bit opposite at the same time. But whenever the sun is in a particular energy, we feel it. Where the sun is in the wheel gives us the energy of the day. It's this collective experience. We're all feeling it. It just depends on how we feel it based on our design. The sun energy is approximately 70% of the energy we feel, and the sun stays in each gate for about six days. So that energy sticks with us through those six days, and then you add a layer to it and each day with those six days can feel differently. Some days might feel easier, some might feel harder. One day you might feel more contemplative and introspective. The next, you might wanna stay in and The next day you'll feel really flexible and maybe even a bit restless. And then the next day you might be wanna be out with your community or your network, and then the next day might feel like a leadership day, and then the following day, the sixth day might feel really reflective, but you also feel very wise at the same time. And instead of wondering why a day feels particularly emotional, mental, or chaotic, we can look at the daily frequency and see what energy is in the air that day. This isn't an area of human design that I got into until the last nine months, and I have been studying human design for over three and a half years. I've always known about it, but I was never sure how to dive in. It was like that really esoteric part of human design, and I was like, okay, I have no idea what this means. But my mentor, Julie Ciardi does a daily frequency report for the membership I'm in with her. And as we've moved through the year, I have been absolutely fascinated. I get it now, but I'm not so well-versed in human design that I know every energy. I know the energies that appear in my own chart, and when they feel more amplified, I really use Julie's knowledge and the tools that she's given us to help me understand it better. But I've also started to notice different things. Like there are weeks that I'm super productive and I feel so much momentum like someone suddenly injected me with this consistent motivation that I don't have all the time. And for example, a few weeks ago, the day after I recorded the New Year's episode, the background energy shifted into a new frequency. And I felt it. It activated some of the parts of my chart that aren't normally activated, and here's how I know that it, I felt it. I wrote five episodes in three days for the private podcast that I've recorded for my masterclass. It's coming up in just over a week. I haven't had that much inspiration in a while. And when I looked at the background frequency and listened to the daily frequency from Julie, it all made sense. And remember, these are energies that are moving through us, and they're happening, but they aren't changing us. We're just feeling that maybe like turning up the knob a little bit. And I was just feeling those energies. During the first part of this calendar year and every calendar year, we experience the same energy from the sun, but there are also different frequencies we get from other planets, so it's not always gonna feel exactly the same. So I'm gonna talk about them and I just want you to listen. I'm gonna talk about the energies that we've experienced over the last two weeks, and what we'll be experiencing over the next week after this podcast is released. And I just want you to notice what resonates. Did you notice this energy or experience it in some way? Everyone's going to feel it differently based on their design. This may not resonate, but that's perfectly okay. These were in the background anyway, so I want you to think back to the first full week of January, starting January 5th. That energy was this alignment with ambition and realistic beginnings? Were we saying yes to new things to avoid finishing old ones? This is when beginnings can become distractions, feeling a constant pressure to begin, even without clarity. Like is this a true beginning or are we trying to escape the present and considering what's happening in our world right now? I think that that feeling has been especially present at the start of this year. There was this feeling of momentum, but also a pressure. There's a natural rise to achieve your potential and a determination to reach your goal with this inner drive to rise up and create opportunities to level the playing field. But the ambition really needs direction. And when you instinctively seek guidance from those who might help you channel that drive toward meaningful and lasting achievements, and it's balanced by the energy of wanting to start new things, but it's important to ensure that we're prepared to see them through or pass them on to others to complete them. So it means that like allowing that ambition to be anchored in the proper timing rather than urgency. Then starting January 11th, we moved into the energy of feeling like we needed to have it all figured out. But the gift in this is that knowing we don't need to, I'm recording this on January 16th, when we're in the last day of this energy and moving into a new energy. The energy of January 11th through the 16th was the energy of the pressure to know the unknown, and wanting to unravel mysteries and discover profound truths to guide those around us towards greater self-acceptance and appreciation for your own unique perspective. We need to allow our own inner truth to emerge naturally and to trust our inner knowing. And this was balanced by the energy where the shadow side may be focusing on the details, which can lead to overthinking, but it can be beautiful when we use our skills to organize and articulate details and to simplify the complex and enhance understanding. So that was the last six days, and I felt that so much because I was like, yes, I was trying to figure this masterclass out, and I'm like, I gotta get it all figured out. I gotta get it all figured out. But each day I was like, Nope. I don't need to know. I can put notes down, but it will all come together at the right time. I don't need to have it all figured out. And as we move into the week of January 17th, over the next six days, the energy is related to feeling restless or frustrated by the inability to change. But the gift is when we are realistic and sensible and we understand and accept the natural limitations of our creative processes, then our full creative potential can be released. It's like a pulse that is not there, and then it is. And then realizing you have no control over when or how this transformation occurs within you and the world around you. So think of your creativity during this time as a space between the notes and the music. You're embracing your limitations, allowing your. Unique creativity to flow naturally, and this is balanced with the struggle with distraction. And when we're desiring new experiences and new ideas, the gift really lies in the natural storytelling ability that brings depth and meaning to your experiences. Using past experiences to illustrate concepts and encouraging the formation of ideas and beliefs. There can be this hunger for new ideas and experiences which you can express in a way that captures attention and enriches understanding. And what we're seeing in this energy from about, from January 5th until we hit to about the 22nd, is this like wanting to start things, this momentum, this like moving forward. But like there's a, there's a sense that we wanna move there, but it's not about moving, it's about like allowing those things to come, but not necessarily moving forward with this burst of momentum. They are all about allowing the right timing to come through. And when we think about like all of these things that we want to do in this newness that is coming through in these energies is that then we're like, oh, shiny object. Ooh, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. I need to do this. So that is when we need to take a pause and then be like, oh, I need to wait until that energy comes. And I talked earlier in the episode about the cycles we experience. I said that there are daily shifts, seasonal, yearly, generational, and global shifts. And we experienced these shifts collectively and also personally. But the personal cycles about the thirties, forties, and fifties are a whole other episode. In fact, it's going to be a whole month within my new program. But globally, in addition to these other daily cycles and yearly cycles, we are moving into the last year of a major era. The eras change only about every 400 years, so it's no wonder we're all feeling it along with the energies that we're feeling with the end of the year of the water snake. I think that's why we're all feeling like this is not the New Year's energy to go, go, go. Some people are feeling it, but many are not, and it's okay because it is the middle of winter. In the five element theory, that's part of traditional Chinese medicine, the element of winter is water and it's related to dormancy and stillness and rest. I mean, think about the water under the ice. It's still moving, but it's not flowing rapidly. Water is also related to the potential. It's not moving forward. It's the potential. We're gathering our energy, so when the energy does shift, we are ready to start planning and sprouting and growing as the seasons change into spring. And I'm so excited to share that my clients are going to be receiving weekly energetic reports from me similar to this one. I did like almost three weeks in this episode, but I know that understanding these energetic shifts every six days can bring so much relief. Especially when our minds are wanting us to move on and our bodies are telling us to stay in the energy of slowness a bit longer. On January 28th and 29th, I'm gonna be talking more about cycles and how they impact our trust in ourselves and our decision making. How we weave human design into helping us notice our patterns, the stories we tell ourselves. Getting clear and acknowledging the fear that gets in our way and helping us set clear and healthy boundaries. The masterclass is called Decide by Design, A New Way to Trust Your Decisions Masterclass that starts on January 28th, and you can find the link in the show notes. It's gonna be amazing if you're listening to this after January 28th and wanna learn more about how human design can help you, trust yourself and your decisions, click the Decision Audit link in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would tap the plus sign to follow the show so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you're feeling generous, leave a quick review. It helps more people find Unfolding. I'd be so grateful. Your support means so much to me. And if there is someone in your life who you know would love these conversations, please share it with a friend or colleague. Thanks for being here, and I will see you next time.