155. Understanding Your Human Design Shadows with 3/5 Manifesting Generator Irene McKenna

podcast Dec 16, 2025

When most entrepreneurs start exploring Human Design, they’re searching for permission, permission to build their business the way they’re wired, permission to trust their energy, permission to stop forcing strategies that never felt right. But what many don’t realize is that understanding your gifts is only half the work.

The other half?
Meeting your shadows with compassion, curiosity, and the willingness to grow through them.

This week on the podcast, I’m joined by the incredible Irene McKenna, 3/5 Manifesting Generator and the new Director of Alignment & Program Integration inside the Spiritual Business Incubator. Irene brings a depth of wisdom that merges Human Design, trauma-informed tools, nervous system regulation, and the Gene Keys, giving entrepreneurs a way to move through their blocks instead of just understanding them conceptually.

Why Shadows Matter in Your Business

Every chart holds a spectrum of expression. At one end sits the shadow — the conditioned patterns, fears, reactions, and beliefs that keep you looping in frustration, burnout, doubt, or avoidance. On the other end is the gift — the empowered, grounded, embodied version of the same energy.

Your business responds to both.

Shadows are not flaws. They are growth edges coded into your design to help you evolve into the person capable of fulfilling your purpose. But when we don’t understand them, we misinterpret them as personal failures or reasons we’re “not cut out for this.”

As Irene shares, your triggers, emotional reactions, and resistance patterns aren’t signs you’re off track.

They’re signposts showing you exactly where your next expansion lives.

The Power of Awareness + Nervous System Regulation

One of the most profound teachings from this episode is that insight alone isn’t enough.

You can know your gates, centers, lines, and incarnation cross — but if your nervous system is dysregulated, you’ll still default to old patterns.
This is why entrepreneurs often say: “I know what my design says… but I still can’t embody it.”

Irene breaks down how to:

Identify where your shadows show up in daily life
Create space through awareness and pause
Regulate the body so a new choice becomes possible
Shift into the gift expression with intention rather than force

It’s not about fixing yourself. It’s about re-patterning yourself.

A New Paradigm for Aligned Entrepreneurship

This episode is an invitation to step into a deeper kind of alignment — one where you honor your design and meet your humanity with tenderness.

Because when you learn to work with your shadows instead of fighting them, your business becomes more easeful, more magnetic, and more you.

If you're craving support in applying all of this to your business in a structured, high-touch way, Irene and I are guiding entrepreneurs through this work inside the Spiritual Business Incubator. Reach out if you feel called — your next level awaits.

Cheers to your alignment and your success.

Resources:

Get a copy of my NEW book!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1966346050/

https://www.spiritualbusinessincubator.com/Incubator-Mastermind

Take the “Aligned Biz Quiz”
https://www.spiritualbusinessincubator.com/hd-quiz

Learn more about your Human Design with the 64 Gates Library

https://www.spiritualbusinessincubator.com/hdlibrary

Get your personalized Entrepreneur by Design HD Report:

https://www.spiritualbusinessincubator.com/business, report

Schedule a Human Design for Business Reading:

https://www.spiritualbusinessincubator.com/hdreading