Introduction to Family Penta is a course designed to help reveal the hidden dynamics of your birth family. It will help you recognize how internalized conditioning pressures impact your sense of self and your current relationships. By learning penta dynamics and realizing how your family penta was structured, you can discover acceptance and compassion and let go of conditioned shame and blame.
Penta dysfunction can be passed down through generations, leading to stress in the present. When we explore penta roles in our birth family, we can recognize conditioning patterns we’ve become attached to or believe we need from others. Working through our family penta helps us see how the mind has turned life into a problem that must follow a pattern to achieve specific outcomes.
Family is neither inherently good nor bad, but for most of us, it plays a significant role in our lives. Family can sometimes overshadow our individuality, yet it also serves as the foundation for raising children, our communities, and societies. Recognizing that who we are as individuals differs from being part of our family can be a shocking realization. When we understand these dynamics and see how they influenced us in childhood, we can begin to grasp how they continue to impact us today.
FAQs about Introduction to Family Penta with Leela Swann-Herbert
- I don’t have my parents’ exact birth time – can I still use this course?
Yes. If you don’t have your parents’ exact birth time, it still can be a valuable experience to take this course. If you have your parents’ birth date and city of birth, you can use noon as a general birth time. The truth is, if you don’t have an accurate birth time, you’ll never know their entire design.
You will get an approximate chart using noon, which is usually accurate enough for exploring family conditioning. The PentaGraph uses only 12 specific gates. If you want, you can try different birth times to see if, at any point on that day, one of these 12 gates is activated in their chart.
During the course, we will explore the conditioning themes of these 12 gates in depth and their roles in both functional and dysfunctional family penta groups. Based on your childhood memories, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the functions that were present or missing in your birth penta.
- I’m not interested in my past family, only my current one. Can I still take this course?
I suggest using your birth family to understand penta dynamics. It can be challenging to learn about penta mechanics and engage fully in class discussions with our current family penta. Often, it’s easier to talk about our conditioned reactions with people we’re not currently living with than to discuss how we experience conditioning within our immediate family.
That said, if it is correct for you to use your current family group for this course, I support you in your process.
Our birth penta is our foundational experience and the origin of most deep-rooted conditioning about family. It shapes and influences how we operate in our adult families, workplaces, and social circles.
The desire to ‘fix’ our current family is often driven by the wish not to repeat our parents’ mistakes or to recreate happy childhood memories with our own family.
Neither approach will work, as every family penta is unique; no two group experiences are ever exactly the same. The inner work of family penta is to become aware of what the family structure truly is, not what it should be or could be if wishes came true. The work is to discover how you can function uniquely within and outside of penta groups. The value of family penta work lies in the experience of awareness and acceptance, and in discovering a deeper appreciation for yourself.
- I’m not sure I’m ready to look at my birth family. Can I still use this course?
The value of examining your past lies in discovering the threads that weave into your present. Many of our mental expectations and motivations for achieving results in life stem from the conditioning we received in the family we were born into. We often have strong feelings about our formative family that we’d prefer to keep beneath the surface. The challenge is that when a situation closely resembles our birth penta dynamics, those feelings tend to surface, often in our current penta groups.
Designed to meet you where you are in your experiment, this course structure offers six weekly classes with new material on the family Penta structure. After each lecture, there are weekly experiments focused on self-discovery and awareness. Starting with Class 2, our live class meetings will be organized around the weekly experiment discussion, including students’ family PentaGraph and family member charts. How you participate in these discussions is up to you: you can share in class with the group, or send your thoughts by email for me to read aloud during the group session. Participants in the discussion will receive personalized feedback and coaching. Alternatively, you can listen to the experiment discussions and lectures and work through the experiments on your own when you’re ready.
- I’m new to Human Design. Is this course for me?
Yes, if you have completed your Foundation Courses (Living Your Design, Rave ABCs, and Rave Cartography). Are you ready to take this course? You’ve been asked, invited, initiated, and informed.
I’m interested in taking the Family Practice Certification Course, and I see that the Introduction to Family Penta Course is a prerequisite for this advanced HD professional certification. How does this work?
Family Practice aims to guide and engage family members in their process of self-discovery within the framework of their family penta. To qualify for Family Practice Practitioner Certification, personal experience and training in the family penta form the foundation provided through the Introduction to Your Family Penta Course. Additionally, learning to use the family penta analysis as a basis for coaching families is essential. The skills for coaching families and designing a coaching plan are covered and practiced in the Family Practice Certification Course.
Family Practice Practitioner Certification is offered to certified Human Design Analysts and current PTL students. Both Introduction to Your Family Penta and the Family Practice Certification Course are required before submitting a final exam for certification. The final exam involves analyzing a family penta and creating a Family Practice coaching plan for the family.
For Course Registration and Information: https://www.ihdschool.com/courses/1837/introduction-to-your-family-penta
https://www.ihdschool.com/courses/programs/1004/advanced-analyst-training-programs
