Responding Authority (Sacral Authority) in Human Design

  ( Sacral Center. The classic gut feeling, from butterflies to stones in the stomach )

Around 35% of human beings have a responding authority.

The sacral center pulls life towards the person who carries it. If you have a responding authority you attract life and then you respond to it and give your energy to what you love. You are here to bring energy, fertility, and life to the world through the correct energetic response within your body.

The responding authority is an inner response in the Now. Your body responds to life. When it responds, you will either feel the energy rising, or you will feel a blockage, an energetic "no", or simply nothing. When your body responds positively to something, it will provide the energy available to do it. When the energy centered in your belly area jumps at something or pulls you towards something, then it is really for you and that energy wants to be used for what it was responding to. If something is repelling, then it is not for you. If there is no response at all, it means that right now there is no energy available for this specific thing. It can also feel as if something is opening or closing inside you. Response is your protection in life. It protects you from giving your energy away to the wrong things, and it protects you from letting the wrong people into your open and enveloping aura.

Maybe you can identify with the word "gut response". It is very natural to you to respond with deep guttural sounds, humming, sighs, groans, and growls. Uh-uh, Uh-huh, or in whatever diversity it comes out for you. If you are not sure about what a sacral response is, you can watch little preverbal children respond to others. They are still in touch with their inner response mechanisms. In them, you can observe it very clearly. Often, in people with a defined sacral center, this tonal response is repressed from early childhood on because society perceives it as no good social style. When the response is repressed, the life force of the sacral center is repressed. Maybe you were lucky to have very liberal parents and so you could live it out freely - perfect! Maybe you still think in sounds that are no articulated words, but you do not openly express them, or you do not trust them. Do you want to return back to your gut response, to your full life force? Then it is time to not let social norms dictate your behavior anymore. Listen to your energy and to the sounds that might flow.

What you respond to can be a book in a shop window, it can be a person you see on the street, or it can be a yes-or-no-question someone asks you. It can be all kinds of things. Your sacral center responds to life as life is happening, and you perceive that response in your body. Allow yourself not to be too fixed with the non-essential things in life, meaning: if someone invites you to a party in two weeks, check with your inner response the day you will meet, maybe that day there will be no energy available.
If you have an undecided issue, you can ask a friend if they would ask you some questions after you both have talked about it. These questions (if they are good ones) will help you to find out where your body is leading you.

The sacral response is a feeling in your body, but it is not an emotion. If you experience heavy pain, extreme pleasure, or if you are in some other way emotionally influenced, it is not a good idea to act on those emotions, other than taking good self-care to center yourself, and it is not a good time to make important decisions.
How do you distinguish emotional influence from your sacral response?
A sacral response is modest, patient and relaxed. An emotional reaction is an unconscious reflex, it is hasty. An emotional reaction can feel overly excited, it can be nervous, but not relaxed and modest.

You can also identify a sacral response in retrospect: If you respond to something that is really for you, it gives you satisfaction, it will not be torture. If you enter into it not following your inner response, you can become frustrated and you can feel tortured and weighed down.
In order to get in touch with your inner response, it won't hurt to reflect on past decisions. Where did the relaxed decisions lead you? To good things? Where did the emotional decisions lead you? Where did your mental decisions based on fears, logic, the pressure of expectations or other chatter lead you? To resistance and pain? How did you meet the decisions you regret the most? How did you find the things that have led you to satisfaction?

When you follow your sacral response, you will learn what brings you joy in life and what fulfills you. You will learn what makes you happy and satisfied by observing what your inner authority responds to, because what it responds to is what will bring you satisfaction. You will get to know yourself better. Unless you trust your Sacral, you are frustrated and you bring this frustration everywhere you go, into every project, into every relationship, and to everything you touch. But this is not what you are here for, you are here to bring love and joy.
Having read how it works - do you want to experiment with your responding authority?

Getting in touch with your Responding Authority

When you are not yet in touch with your responding authority, you can do all kinds of response experiments and practices. The more you get in touch with your response, the stronger it will get. It is like a muscle that you can train. And you'd really want to train it because you can rely on it in ways in which you can't rely on your mind.
When you are on your own, you can walk around the streets and practice to pay attention to your inner sounds and to your gut area when you cross a person's way. Every time you see somebody or you enter into someone's aura it can go "uh-uh" or "uh-huh". You can also train it by visiting your favorite museum or store and looking at the things on display. To some you will respond positively, to others you won't.
You can also practice with a friend to sense your gut response by pitching each other some easy yes-or-no-questions like "do you like Ice Cream?", "are you happy with your relationship?", "do you enjoy biking?", "do you believe in reincarnation?" Ideally this will be someone who has a responding authority as well and who does not want to push their agenda on you, someone who is open to whatever you will respond, so you can really let go and allow your Sacral to freely respond.

Would you like to try that out together with a friend? Would you like to practice it on your own, in the streets? In a book store? In a shopping mall? In a museum? On the internet?

When you are not in touch with your responding authority, your mind might imitate it. It has a bit of a high pitch to it and there is a nervousness in the body, maybe your eyes are moving, you are not calm. If you pay close attention, you can catch yourself doing this.

Children with a Responding Authority

Don't try to get them to speak too quickly. Let them express their sacral sounds freely, so that they can get used to it and that they can benefit from the positive experience of living their inner authority and strengthen their bond with their inner truth. They will start to speak when it is the right time for them to speak. If, in addition, your child has an open throat center, it will likely take longer for them to become verbal. There is no need to worry about that.

When do I have a Responding Authority?

You have a responding authority when you meet BOTH of these two criteria:
Your sacral center is defined AND the solar plexus center is open.
Manifesting Generator and Generator aura types can have a responding authority.