Record · The Institution
What is the IHDS?
The IHDS is the International Human Design School — the centralized institution that sets the Human Design System's education and certification standards and issues the credentials a professional analyst or teacher holds. This page reports what the record shows: what the school is today, the plural network of national schools it grew out of, how it took its current form under Lynda Bunnell in 2010, the founding date it claims and what the documentary record says about that claim, and the certification path it runs. It returns no verdict of its own.
This page is documentary. It is not affiliated with the IHDS and does not tell anyone whether to enroll, certify, or teach. Where the institution's published account of itself and the documentary record diverge — as they do on the founding year — it sets both out and links each so readers can verify them. It draws no conclusion.
What the IHDS is today
The International Human Design School (singular), operating as the IHDS, is the centralized body that defines the Human Design System's professional training standards and issues its certifications. It is licensed and operated under Jovian Archive — the corporate rights-holder behind Human Design — and its director is Lynda Bunnell. Its public home is the domain ihdschool.com, and its curriculum runs from introductory courses through a professional analyst track, a teaching track, and advanced certifications.
A point of terminology matters at the outset, because the record turns on it. The institution known today as the International Human Design School — School, singular, under a single director — is distinct from the earlier International Human Design Schools — Schools, plural — the network of national organizations Ra Uru Hu formalized around 2000. The two are not the same organization at different points in time; the singular, centralized IHDS is the later structure. The distinction is documented in full in the archive's public record.
Sources in this archive: /record — the corporate record (Section 3) and the FAQ on the difference between International Human Design Schools and the IHDS.
Where it came from: the plural network
In 2000, Ra Uru Hu invited a group of established students to found national Human Design organizations. Seven were formed — Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Austria — each operating under a direct contract with Jovian Archive Corporation and holding exclusive rights in its own territory. This was a federation of peers, not branches of a central school. Ilse Sendler, founding director of Human Design Austria and one of the original signatories, described it in her own words: the group were "International Human Design Schools — SCHOOLS — plural."
The record also documents that a formal, separable institution did not exist during much of Ra's lifetime. In a May 2008 email to Human Design professionals he wrote, "The IHDS spent most of its existence as me" — describing the school, in his own account, as a designation applied to his own teaching rather than a standing organization. The IHDS 2009/10 course calendar, for its part, dates the formal establishment of its Professional Training Academy to September 2008 and presents Ra as the dean of one college among several. Both accounts are set out, with sources, in the public record.
Sources in this archive: /record — Ilse Sendler on the plural network and Ra's May 2008 email (Section 3); /history — the 2000 formation of the national network and the 2008 dating of the Professional Training Academy.
The 2010 consolidation under Lynda Bunnell
The IHDS took its current, centralized form in 2010. Lynda Bunnell had become Dean of the IHDS in 2006; in July 2010 — sixteen months before Ra's death — she took over the school. In her own written account, preserved in the Human Design Austria archive, Ra "asked me to take over the IHDS in July 2010 and gave me the authority to continue his work and run these programs… He entrusted his school to me and gave me complete authority." The IHDS states on its own site that "in 2010, according to Jovian Archive's legal rights, the International Human Design School was licensed to Lynda Bunnell, Director." The domain ihdschool.com was registered the same year, on June 16, 2010.
The record documents two facts that sit alongside the transfer without resolving into a single story. Bunnell's account describes an oral transfer — Ra asked, Ra gave authority, Ra entrusted — with no public written instrument on record. And the contracts the seven national directors had signed with Jovian Archive Corporation from 2000 onward were, per correspondence from Jovian's then-president, not terminated by the 2010 transfer. The archive states both and adjudicates neither.
Sources in this archive: /record — Lynda Bunnell's written account of the July 2010 transfer and the standing of the national contracts (Section 3); /history — the June 16, 2010 domain registration and the 2010 licensing to Lynda Bunnell.
The founding-date question: 1992 or 2010?
The IHDS states on its About page that it was "Founded in 1992 by Ra Uru Hu." The record does not assert this is false, but it documents facts that bear on what, exactly, is being dated to 1992. The domain ihdschool.com was not registered until June 16, 2010. Ra's own May 2008 email describes the IHDS as having "spent most of its existence as me." Ilse Sendler, one of the original national directors, dated the network's formation to 2000. And Ra's own 2005 address describes the first teachers training as occurring in January 1996 in San Juan Bautista, California. As a transferable institution with a single director, the IHDS dates to July 2010; what "1992" marks — the start of Ra's public teaching, an informal community, or a formal school — the published materials do not specify.
Sources in this archive: /record — the documented discrepancy on the IHDS founding year (Section 6) and the domain history (Section 3).
The certification structure it runs
The IHDS runs the official certification path for Human Design analysts and teachers. In broad shape, it moves from foundation courses (Living Your Design, Rave ABC, Rave Cartography) into a Professional Analyst track of four levels running about three and a half years, then into a teaching track — Living Your Design Guide, and above it the stacked teacher credentials that lead, eventually, to teaching the analyst training itself. Advanced and specialist certifications (the Differentiation Degree, DreamRave, Rave Sociology, Rave Cosmologist) sit on top. A separate business track, BG5, is certified through the BG5 Business Institute rather than the IHDS proper, though both are licensed by the same rights-holder.
The archive documents the full itemized structure — every course, its published tuition, the time-bars and graduate quotas gating the teaching credentials, and the cumulative cost to reach each one — on its dedicated certification page rather than repeating it here. That page also records a pattern it draws no conclusion from: the system's largest public footprints belong overwhelmingly to figures who left the official path, built something adjacent to it, or never entered it.
Sources in this archive: /the-credential — the itemized IHDS and BG5 certification path, its published tuition, and the documented cost to hold each credential.
The IHDS in the record of removals
The IHDS is also the institution through which the removal of Human Design's founding-era teachers was administered. Ra's July 25, 2003 "Misrepresentation" letter, sent to every certified practitioner, set a deadline after which professionals listed with the named teachers' organizations would be "removed from the IHDS official register." In 2010, within the same window as the transfer above, Ilse Sendler and Human Design Austria were deleted from all IHDS listings while their underlying contracts remained in force. The mechanism the record documents in each case was administrative — removal from a directory — rather than legal termination. The archive's documentary account of that pattern is the book ZENO.
Sources in this archive: /record — the 2003 "Misrepresentation" letter and the 2010 deletion of Human Design Austria (Sections 3 and 9); /zeno — the documentary history of the erasure of Human Design's teachers.
Sources in this archive
- /record — the corporate record and IHDS domain history (Section 3), the documented founding-year discrepancy (Section 6), the 2003 letter (Section 9), and the FAQ distinguishing International Human Design Schools from the IHDS.
- /history — the institutional chronology: the 2000 national network, Bunnell as Dean (2006), Ra's 2008 email, and the June/July 2010 consolidation.
- /the-credential — the certification path the IHDS runs, its published tuition, and the documented cost of each credential.
- /zeno — the documentary history of the teachers written out of the institution.
The corporate entity that licenses the IHDS is documented on its own page: what Jovian Archive is, what it holds, and its role in the ownership story. The fuller account of who the founding teachers were and what was done to them is the book ZENO; the archive's documentary books are collected at the books page.