Hello and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everyone. It is a new month. Thankfully, I am not here alone like I was last month. Last month it was my fault. I totally had a scheduling problem. And Christina couldn’t join us for last month’s episode, but she’s back. And I’m so happy you’re here because this is so much more fun with you than it is without you. Christina Luna is our resident astrologer and my friend, and Christina, welcome back to the show.

Oh, thank you so much, Nicole. I love doing these reports with you and I especially love what you were talking about the way that human design is approaching this quarter that we’re in. I’m so interested to hear how our perspectives overlap and how they differ in this August report.

Yeah, when I did July’s episode, and I was alone, I definitely felt like something was missing. There’s so much more juice when we do this together, because we get both of our perspectives. And I always get lightbulb moments from hearing what you see, and I think that it just compliments each other, and I think it really provides a much higher value to all of our listeners. So we’re talking about the transits, both astrologically and from a human design perspective, coming for us in August. So this is your look ahead, people, at what we’ve got coming on cosmically in the month of August.

So, Christina, I’ll start with what you were just saying. One of the things that I was saying to Christina before we started was that there are four quarters that the human design wheel falls into. So what that does is, It gives you a guide. If you’re born during a particular quarter, it tells you the overall theme that your incarnation cross has, that your purpose has.

And we mentioned this in May’s episode where I talked about us shifting into the second quarter, which is the quarter of civilization, which is all about action. It’s all about implementation. It’s like laying the groundwork and foundation for all the thoughts that we came up with, ideas that we came up with in the first quarter.

There’s the spark in the first quarter, the second quarter is action, and now this third quarter, when we hit the sixth of the month, we shift into this third quarter of duality. And duality is all about relationships. And Christina and I both, you’re September 19, I’m September 8, so this is like our land.

This is our quarter, babe. We’re duality people. And this was a huge eye opener for me because duality is all about relationships. It’s all about people and interpersonal relationships. We’re getting into all the emotional stuff is in this quarter. This is all the emotional gates are part of this quarter of duality.

So it tells you something about the theme. It’s all emotion, with a touch of fear. And all of that stuff that comes up for us in Virgo and Libra season. And for Leo we have a mixed bag of the things that are coming here, and the energies that we have. But to me the quarter of duality, what it means to me and what I’ve contemplated is it’s time to take your stuff out into the world.

But it kicks off to me in that big Leo energy of, here I am, ta da! Let everybody see who you are, I think is a big theme that can get lost in here a little bit. And to me, Quarter of Duality is time to take your ideas and your work and what you put into action. And it’s time to start talking to people about it. It’s time to start being interpersonal with the things that you have. Because that was something I had to overcome, was being very introverted and let me just crawl back inside of myself and explore some more.

And that cracked me open when I saw quarter of duality. Okay, so my purpose has something to do with relationships. The relationships I’ve always had, but also my ability to make, hold, and nurture relationships, I think, is a greater theme that we’re about to enter into. So, what comes up for you? What do you see, or what hits you when I talk about that?

Does that coincide with anything that you’re seeing, or with what you do and what you focus on with astrology at this time of year?

Well, I can say that I think astrology creates quarters a little bit differently than human design. We would start the first quarter in Aries season and each quarter consists of an initiating point, a maintaining point and a changing point. And so in astrology, August and Leo season is actually the middle of the second quarter.

It’s the maintenance part of a cycle that was initiated through vulnerability and emotionality. So, cancer season is the beginning where we feel what we deeply need in order to be mortal in this life, in order to actually feel safe to explore and live. And so we initiate what we need.

We get into Leo season, and this is where we see our life as our oyster. We imagine, we play, we dream. It’s the space where we understand why it’s worth living here. Why should we stay alive? What is the authentic reason that I like to be alive? And so what you’re talking about is this opening to relationship, and Leo is actually an opening to the relationship with life itself.

Yes. I’ve determined that I will be alive, and I will stay here, and I will be on this planet, and I will be a mortal human. And now I’ve got to get into the sandbox. I’ve got to get my tools out and see how this whole thing works. And so there is a lot of the laws of cause and effect that happen in Leo.

When I create this, this is what happens. And I believe that Leo is a testing ground to help us know how we are individual, and unique, and authentic, and different from everyone else. How can we be in a relationship when we don’t really know what makes us special in that relationship? And so it’s a coming into our own heart, coming into our own unique voice and expression so that we could individuate more fully and become even more complete and whole in Virgo season. And that complete and whole space is what we bring into relationship. So there is a lot of preparation for relationship that I see happening.

I love that. And from the human design perspective, coming into August, we start off in Gate 33 which is the Gate of Retreat. And it is all about taking in experiences and being able to reflect on those experiences. And through that, we share the lessons.

So there is this wisdom of being able to look back and reflect on everything that you have experienced over, whatever period of time but just find the lessons in whatever has happened, whether it has been bad, good, or anywhere in between.

I love that this gate of retreat, this reflection, happens right before we shift into the new quarter for human design. So it’s our last hurrah to say, let’s take a look back at everything that we’ve done, let’s reflect, and now we’re shifting into this new quarter of duality, and we’re doing it under Gate 7, which is leadership.

This is a gate that is all about leadership, it’s part of the channel of the Alpha, which is a G Center gate, it’s identity. Coming home to your identity, and there is something about Gate 7 that says, I see the path forward. I know what we need. I see the path forward, not just for me, but for other people.

There is this sort of higher calling to it, but it is this internal knowing of leading yourself and once you lead yourself, you can lead others. That is that main theme of this gate. So I love that we end with reflection and we start with ownership of who we are and leading from that place.

And I always find it interesting going through the transits, because you see which gates trigger you, you see what energies feel good, they feel like an old friend, and some of them just feel like, I don’t know, we just never seem to get along.

So I’m looking forward to this where I can look at this and say, I know I’m comfortable in retreat. I know I’m comfortable in reflection. That’s my land. I’m good there. The leadership part, I’m excited to see what my energy is like when we hit the gate seven to see how that leadership energy fits this year.

Because I feel like I’m in a really good place, so it’s always interesting to me to see how these themes fit as we change and we grow, or we go through things. And we see how they’re somehow validating something that we’ve gone through and helping us get to that next level, or they are showing us maybe where we have some work to do.

You nailed it. definitely we’re seeing where we have a little bit of work to do in August. From an astrological perspective, this August is going to be a little bit different astrologically than last August for a few different reasons. The first reason is we’re going to have a Mercury retrograde for the month of August and it’s going to be retrograding through the space of what our heart is deeply committed to.

So you talked about that leadership. Leadership starts with knowing what our true north core center why really is. And so, when you talk about the first week being about this retreat, what I see, it’s a week where we enter into the space of victory after battle of some kind, victory after overcoming some kind of big shift, change, or obstacle.

And so July had this energy to it that was like, ah, I’ve got to really adjust this. I’ve got to shift this. I’ve got to face this. I’ve got to be honest about this. I’ve got to face the issues in my relationships that are not quite authentic. And so this first week of August, we’ve got this victory after the shift, after the change, and you called it a reflection moment.

It is a reflection moment. We’ve made it through to this point of the journey. We can reflect on what we learned from that sort of playful battleground that we were in. And as we step into the second week, that seven gate you were talking about, that’s about standing up for what you’re passionate about.

So you called it a moment where you step into your leadership. We are going to be realizing that a lot of our internal guiding principles, or our why statements that we’ve made for ourself, we’re going to notice that a lot of those have fallen over, and there’s maybe one true, strong, passionate why that’s left.

And if we could grab that one and stand in front of that one, that’s what we’re being asked to do in the second week of August. And another reason why August this year is a little bit different is both the masculine and feminine principles, Venus and Mars, they’re in temples.

Venus is in Leo, Mars is in Gemini. These are both places that they retrograded in their last retrograde cycle. So they’re not retrograde this year. They’re moving direct. They’re clear. They’re focused. And they’re coming back to this temple of the heart that they worked so hard to reconstruct in their last retrograde.

And so it’s like you built something. And you worked really hard at it, and now you’re coming back to see if it ended up manifesting the way that the plans suggested. So what is the finished product? Is the Temple of the Heart the way we thought it would be when we set off manifesting it a year, year and a half ago?

Or are there some things that we still need to adjust? And how can we step into our strong leadership and advocacy for the Temple of the Heart to make sure that it’s done right this time.

That rang true on so many levels. First of all, I want to say July was super crunchy for me. July has been a weird month. It’s been fine. Not mad about it. Nothing went wrong, but just felt weird, and we have these months, right? And usually it’s confirmed in the astrology why we feel that way. It feels like getting ready for something. It feels like we’re in that revving up phase, which sometimes can feel interesting and fun. This felt like, ew, crunchy to me. That’s the word that keeps coming up.

Oh, it’s not smooth. There’s some bumps here and unexpected things. But it does make me feel like good things are coming. And I do have that feeling like, you’re talking about Mars and Venus moving direct and having this different effect on us that they’re ready, I feel that.

And I hear that from what a lot of people are saying. There’s this kind of tone that I hear from a lot of people that I’m talking to right now, where they’re desiring for things to be more simple. They feel like they’ve put a lot of work into their lives and aspects of their lives, sometimes their businesses, and they’re just like, I feel like I’m ready for the fine tuning.

I don’t want to build anymore. I built, I have worked, I have crunched, I have changed, and now I’m ready to start polishing. As opposed to the big lift all over again. And I feel that myself. I feel like I’m in polishing phase. I’m in that phase of fine tuning and working on things that have been built.

And while I’m still building, it’s a very different energy to it now. This is the fun stuff. When it feels like it’s moving and you get to optimize as opposed to let me take a sledgehammer to this and rebuild the whole thing.

I actually recorded a 40 minute report just before this conversation, and I literally talked about how a lot of content creators, entrepreneurs, people that are in the field of leadership, and consciousness development, and guidance, they’re realizing that the work is moving from providing information, or creating and cultivating those intellectual properties, or those courses, et cetera.

It’s moving from that place to providing those resources at a more accessible and sustainable price point, or resource availability so that they can actually work with folks on the fine tuning things, the optimization. You’ve completed your library. Now, how do you help others to completely optimize from a higher level of understanding what service they actually provide?

Yeah, I’ve noticed even myself with the way that I’ve fine tuned offers and shifted things. It is this different shift. People don’t need information necessarily as much. We’re inundated with information. It’s the embodiment. It’s the integration. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

And that’s where people have real change and real impact. So I think it’s an exciting time and it’s interesting to hear that we’re entering into a time where that’s going to be a lot of the focus. Is that’s actually what the energy is guiding us to? Is this fine tuning? Is this shift where it’s doing less but better?

The other overview I would like to say about August is, if we sent out an arrow of initiation to manifest something from an emotional space in cancer season, that arrow is going to fly through the temple of the fiery heart. And lots and lots of things are going to burn off in the month of August.

Especially having most of the planets retrograde, including Mercury. We’re going to have this moment where we’ve got to imagine that there’s this rocket and pieces of the rocket that fueled the rocket have to fall off of the rocket and burn off. And so we can expect that a lot of things we thought we were passionate about in the past, they’re just burning off.

And as it burns off, it clarifies the one single point of impact that we really, really, really hope to make in our life. That really means the most to us. And I believe that point of impact will land on solid earth, solid proof, solid, tangible, optics, numbers, finances, etc. It’s gonna land around the 19th and 20th.

It’s gonna land right there in this place of reality. And once it lands, there’s gonna be a plume of smoke or dust. And it’s gonna be a moment where we’re like, where did it land? And then you know in movies how archetypally you get that scene with all the dust and you’re just watching expectantly, you’re going to start seeing this main character, or this main theme, or this main point of impact emerge through the smoke and there’ll be all this celebration by the end of the month where we’re like,

dun. The hero walk.

That’s right.

That resonates so, so deeply. And I love the analogy and the visual of the rocket ship. Because to me what was coming through was, you needed all of these pieces to make it out of the atmosphere, but once you get out there, you no longer need them and they’ll hold you back. They need to fall off so that you can complete the mission. And that is, I think, a really beautiful visual. So thank you for giving us that beautiful imagery that can help people understand these concepts that can feel a little out there and ground them in something that’s real.

What are you carrying that maybe got you here, but it won’t get you there. What needs to fall away? We often think about what we need to add, what we need to change, but so much of it is falling away and shifting. And you said somewhere around like the 19th, 20th of the month was when this is happening.

So that’s gate 29. Gate 29 in human design is the gate of perseverance, but this gate is so interesting because it’s called the abysmal in the I Ching. Which this is a gate that I have in two prominent positions in my chart. And when I heard the abysmal I was like, oh god. Another horrible, rough gate to have to deal with. Another shadowy gross energy. But actually, it’s one of my favorites and it’s so empowering to me now because the way that it’s described in the I Ching is, it’s a design of succeeding where others fail or failing where others succeed.

Everything is to have or to have not. It’s a duality. It’s this binary of you either are succeeding where others fail, so you are able to persevere through everything or you are failing where others succeed. And I definitely lived the failing where others succeeded in a lot of ways.

And what it all comes down to, it’s not just the fates are either guiding you to succeeding or failure. It’s about the choices that you make, about committing your energy to only the things that really, truly matter. It’s a sacral gate, so everything with the sacral has an underlying theme of don’t do it out of obligation, don’t do it because you should, don’t do it because you’ve always done it this way, and we just have to be in perpetual motion with things.

If your energy changes about something, you get to say no. You get to take it from a yes to a no. You get to let things fall away. You get to decide moment to moment what commitments you’re making with your energy and when you’re doing that and you’re doing it from a place of alignment and truth, then you will succeed where others fail.

You’ll be able to see the right things through to the end, but you can’t do that if you’re trying to do everything, is a big underlying theme of this. So I think it’s interesting and also of course that it’s happening at the same time because we are talking about very much the same things, different ways. Astrology and human design, it’s all very intrinsically connected. We just speak about different systems, talking about the same thing.

And then we shift over and then we get into intimacy after that. And I think the gate of intimacy is an interesting one. We’re ending the month with this one. The gate of intimacy, I think, is so interesting because it’s a gate of sexuality, it’s about romantic intimacy, it’s about all of the things that we think of when we traditionally think of intimacy. But it’s also, in Gene Keys, the city is transparency.

Being so honest with yourself, and so transparent. with who you are, and what you’re doing, and how you’re approaching things, that there’s no bullshit. It’s just pure. And none of the cities are easy to grasp, maybe intellectually, but to actually live them.

We’re talking about enlightenment here. But the gift is intimacy, but the shadow is dishonesty. And I think that as I’m looking at that one, and we’ve talked about this before, I don’t live by the transits where I’m not booking a launch, I don’t do that.

But I do look at the chart, so I am looking at gate 33, the gate of retreat at the beginning of the month. I’m gonna take a day off and reflect. I am going to bask in that energy a little bit and play with the theme. And with 59, I have this gate in my chart. It’s a part of my channel of mating.

I have that channel, the 59-6 and to me, it’s going to be about getting intimate with myself and notice where am I not being fully honest with what I’m doing, where am I holding on, where am I afraid to go deep? And where am I maybe carrying something that is not serving me, where am I wearing a mask?

Is there a mask that I’m wearing anywhere? That’s just something as far as my own personal process that I’m taking into this, those are two that I’m paying attention to cause they’re prominent in my chart, but I think that they’re also just universal energies. And if we’re going through this astrologically now after talking to you, maybe it’s time to clean house a little bit.

Maybe it’s time to fine tune and these are doorways I could walk through as far as how I’m fine tuning things.

Wow, I had so much personal recognition in what you just said. And I also want to share a huge breakthrough that just recently happened within my intimate relationship. Speaking of intimacy and real transparency. And I believe that this is being brought about by the fact that, astrologically, we have a south node in Libra, which is asking us to release and let go of ways that we’ve tried to balance the equation by pulling ourselves out of our center.

So sometimes we will pull ourselves out of our own authenticity in order to create harmony within our co creations. This is something when you look at human development, if we have to choose between connection and authenticity with ourself, we will sacrifice authenticity with ourself to ensure connection because connection is what we need in order to survive.

And so we laid down a bunch of coping strategies, roles that we would have played from that early time, and the South node in Libra is allowing us to let go of those roles for greater authenticity. But something really profound that’s also happening is that now that this point in the sky that reveals our shame, resistance, shadow, fears, Black Moon Lilith, it’s in Libra too right now.

And while she’s there, she’s saying, you really need to look at your pattern of what you’re still doing in your relationships to make them work. And a new revelation I just had was, wow, I so badly would love to be a good fit with my partner. I so badly want to be that, that I have done somersaults in order to be a good fit, and I actually might not be.

Because I haven’t brought my full, authentic expression into this relationship, I have a lingering low level anxiety that perhaps he loves the hoops I jump through more than who I really am. And I don’t think that’s really true, but the work of August is to recognize any hoops that we jump through, any roles we put on, any costumes, masks you call it, that we put on so that we can make something work.

Strip it all off, strip it down, and see if our authentic self still fits and works in all the equations that we plug ourselves into.

This is so quarter of duality stuff. This is it. It’s the relationships. It’s a relationship with self. It is our interaction with people. This is the theme people. We’re gonna be like, get comfy here. And it’s an opportunity to really examine this. Where am I hiding from relationships? Where am I changing in relationships? Where am I succeeding in relationships? What’s working? It’s an opportunity to look at that. And I think one of the things that I think is interesting too, I always think this stuff is interesting, but we go from that gate 59 from the 23rd to the 28th, we’re in gate 59 and then we shift over.

So that’s the gate of intimacy that I was just talking about. And then we shift into gate 40, which is an ego center gate, which is interesting because it’s part of the channel of community, which is all about family, relationships, friendships, marriage.

It is the ego center side, that channel, there’s gate 37 in the emotional center, and gate 40 in the ego center. So if you think about a marriage of emotional support and material support. It is that balance. It is the channel of a bargain. I do this for you, you do this for me. Is that bargain really working out?

Are you holding up your end of the bargain? So that’s going to be a theme for the end of the month is going to be looking at the agreements that you have in relationships in your life. And I think it’s interesting that it follows this gate of intimacy, which is about sexuality and intimacy with yourself and intimacy with other people and allowing people to get close.

And then Gate 40 is actually called, I think it’s always very funny how there’s these contradictions in the way things are named. Almost to let you know, don’t think it’s as simple as this. Cause gate 40 is part of this channel of community, channel of the bargain.

But it’s called the gate of aloneness. And it is about saying I will take care of you, I will build the house, but I also get to take care of myself too. I get to be me. I get to be alone. I don’t have to be with you all the time in order to fulfill my half of the bargain. I still get to be loved by you, but I also get to take care of me, whatever that means to me.

So there’s always this interesting path of themes that we’re going through and I love that it’s like, let’s talk about intimacy and let’s get into like our feels and relationships and let’s get close to people. And then oh, by the way, don’t forget that I get to be alone. That I get to be me. That I still can be a good partner and be very invested in a relationship, and still say I don’t need to be with you all the time. I don’t need to give away part of myself in order to hold up my end of the bargain to be a good partner to you, to anyone.

This is so comforting for me to hear on such a personal level. So my partner and I moved in together last August while Venus was retrograding through the space of the heart. I hatched a big dream for my partner and I to live together. And I’m the kind of person, I’m an Enneagram 5, I’m a very introverted person. I have a hard time living with people. I need a lot of space alone. But, I had this dream that I could bring my family together under one roof and we could live together. And I could hold my personal boundaries and I could be in the space of open relationship with my partner, with my heart open to him and that it could work.

So I really, really put my energy and resources into building this dream and I did. And we moved in together in April and then we faced a lot of issues in relationship that you don’t face unless you actually put yourself in the place to do it. You can’t cram for the exam and then think that passing the exam means that you’ll be able to do your practice in the world.

You got to get into practice in the world in order to understand that you actually have conscious competency of what you’re doing. So I get into the space, I’m living with my partner and through the month of July, we both were like, whoa, we really sacrifice parts of ourselves when we’re in relationship with each other, and this is not working.

And so we have had a conversation about living separately for the month of August. What would happen if we gave ourselves a space to really individuate and do our own thing in August? Really feel out what it is we’ve lost by being together so that we can be really honest coming back together at the end of the month to see if living together really can work for us.

And so you saying, it looks like we’re going to have this gate of intimacy and then we’re going to have this gate of alone. That’s the only way that moving forward under one roof, for me personally, could be. There’s no way that he and I can live together and not be alone with ourselves as well.

And so it’s hopeful for me, and it also encourages me to know that I’m on the right track in creating this temporary separation in order to come back together with a lot more integrity and personal wholeness for the sake of the larger long term success of my family.

That gave me chills thinking about that. Just hearing you share that. Thank you for sharing that personal story. Cause I do think that this helps give people context to these themes. And it’s just nice to hear personal stories. I think that’s what makes podcasts awesome.

And those two themes, it’s been a huge lesson for me too, because I absolutely dealt with people pleasing, and dealt with giving parts of myself away. I’ve been with my partner for 20 years, and he’s my best friend in the world. But when you’re with someone from the time you’re like 24 years old, there’s a lot of growth in there, which we both champion for each other outwardly.

However, I had to ask myself, not how does he hold me back, how do I hold myself back from sharing certain things about me or stepping into other areas of my life because that’s not who I was when we found each other? So that personal integrity and being able to have myself outside of this relationship, this is a lifelong thing for me, half of my life I have been with him.

And so these are themes that I very much feel connected to, and to that, I love how you guys have approached this, that you have the maturity and the openness in your relationship to even have a conversation like that, let’s experiment with this, let’s give ourselves a month to go explore ourselves so that we can come back to this and find wholeness in this relationship, or at least know what we’re dealing with.

Yeah, and I think that a lot of our relationships are so foundational. The relationship with ourself is the first foundation. Well, we could argue a relationship with soul is the first relationship, then the one with our living self, and then the one in our intimate relationships. And that paves the way for the relationship we have with our larger community, and the world at large. And what I actually think is happening right now is we’re being given this opportunity before Pluto fully enters into Aquarius in November, before we really step into the larger world picture. We’re given this little space of time to really shore up each one of those foundational spaces to make sure that it can really hold us.

It feels secure. We can really feel that we understand, and we’re connected in these fundamental foundational spaces so that as we step and expand into the larger relationship with humanity, we know that we have that foundation in place.

I feel all of this and I can’t wait to start talking about the stuff that’s coming for the rest of the year, which we’ll get into in the coming months, we’ll be talking about these other big astrological moments that are going to be coming, these events that are going to be coming for us because it’s a big change.

We got a little taste of it at beginning of the year, but now we’re going to get the full effect in November?

November 17th is when it finally, for the last time, enters into Aquarius stay.

That will be a shift, because none of us know what that’s really going to be like, because no one’s ever experienced it before, right? Well, I am so grateful to you for being here, and for doing this with me because like I said, it’s a whole lot more fun and more interesting, and more colorful, and more full when you’re here, so thank you so much for being here.

You mentioned the report that you put together, that video, where can they find that? Cause we’ll put the link in the show notes for them, so if anybody wants to go and grab that.

Perfect. Yeah, I recorded something. I go through the detailed dates that these big dilation moments are coming and the contraction moments and how they all relate to each other. It’s about 40 minutes long and it’s really detailed and it covers the entire quarter.

They can find that on my YouTube station, which is LunaScope.

Also on my Instagram, I’ll be posting, which is @lunation.Live. I appreciate you linking to

Absolutely. And all you have to do, actually, you can DM me Christina on Instagram and the bot will automatically send you Christina’s links, but you can shoot on down to the show notes and we’ll have all of that linked up for you so you don’t have to remember the names of anything.

We’ll just magically take you over there with the beauty of the internet and fabulous links that you could just click and be transported someplace else. Christina, thank you for sharing your wisdom and your story with us. I appreciate you. Thank you for being here again, my friend.

Oh, thank you so much. I cannot wait till time.

Me neither. I love these episodes. I’m always excited when I see them come up on my calendar. I’m like, it’s time to do an episode with Christina again. It’s nice to not be here alone.

I appreciate you listener for making it to the end of this episode with us. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. We hope to see you in the next coming episodes as well. And remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakeable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakeable with human design, everyone. We’ll see you next time.