Chetan Parkyn

Founding-era American teacher and the Human Design System’s first mainstream author.

Legal birth name

Chetan Parkyn (legal birth name not separately documented in the public record)

Teaching name

Chetan Parkyn

Born

Birth data not published in the public record

Birth time note

Birth data not published in the public record. Chart not published.

Type / Authority / Profile / Definition / Cross

Not published

Active in the system

1993 — present

Role

Founding-era American teacher and the Human Design System’s first mainstream author

Trained by

Introduced to the Human Design System in Taos, New Mexico, 1993; documented at the October 1994 Advanced Training; certified at the first US Teachers Training, Taos, May 1997.

Country

United States (San Diego, California)

Website

humandesignforusall.com IHDS listing: Holds IHDS-listed credentials; teaches independently of the IHDS.

Teaching focus

Chetan Parkyn was among the first people in the United States to encounter the Human Design System, introduced to it in Taos, New Mexico in 1993. He is documented in Chaitanyo Taschler’s preserved archive as attending the October 1994 Advanced Training in Taos — one of a cohort that included Eleanor Haspel-Portner, Don McKinney, and Dietrie Rudat — and was one of three participants certified at the first US Teachers Training in May 1997, alongside Don McKinney and Dietrie Rudat. Eleanor Haspel-Portner, in her 2025 account, describes studying with him in San Diego as part of her Human Design education.

Parkyn is a former mechanical engineer who studied with the Indian mystic Osho before encountering Human Design. He became the first Human Design teacher to reach a mainstream international audience: his book Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born to Be was published by HarperCollins UK in 2009 and New World Library in the USA, and has been translated into more than ten languages including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, Italian, Russian, French, Turkish, and Greek. It remains the most widely distributed introduction to Human Design in print.

He and his partner Carola Eastwood teach Human Design together from San Diego, California. Their subsequent books — The Book of Lines (with Alexander Roberts) and The Book of Destinies — extended the Human Design framework into the I’Ching line structure and the 192 Incarnation Crosses respectively.

In a 2015 account published by Osho News, titled “Blacklisted,” Parkyn dated his departure from Ra Uru Hu’s schooling to 1997, the year Ra qualified him as a teacher: “it became apparent that it was time to leave his schooling.” After his books appeared and his classes were publicised, he wrote, he “was blacklisted by this newly evolving ‘official’ Human Design community,” which he said made “claims that are not truthful, and threaten anyone who divulges this obviously mutative knowledge in their own way with legal action that is based on false premises, and with no legal standing whatsoever.” He and a colleague, he added, had “been threatened with frivolous lawsuits that never came to pass because there was absolutely no legal foundation to them.”

In the same account Parkyn recorded a first-hand claim bearing directly on the ownership question: that “Ra denied in writing any ownership of Human Design in 1992, and gave away the rights to the Life Chart (also called the ‘Body Graph’) to his friend Jurgen Saupe, whose family passed on the rights to others when Jurgen died.” He framed the institution’s conduct as inherited from its founder, citing the adage that “the culture of any organisation is the reflection of the founder’s unresolved issues,” and writing that Ra “lived much of his life from a place of scarcity, fear and ego, and has unfortunately passed down this attitude to many of his lieutenants and followers.”

Parkyn has given readings and classes worldwide for over three decades and continues to teach actively. He operates independently of the IHDS, though he holds IHDS-listed credentials.

Their testimony This record documents what Chetan Parkyn did. What they say about the founder, with the sources and the interest weighed, is kept separately in the witness dossier, under the register “Estranged; structural”.

Documented contributions

• Documented at the October 1994 Advanced Training in Taos, New Mexico — one of the first American analyst cohorts
• One of three participants certified at the first US Teachers Training, Taos, May 1997 (alongside Don McKinney and Dietrie Rudat)
• Studied with Zeno Dickson in San Diego — corroborated by Eleanor Haspel-Portner’s 2025 account
• Author of Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born to Be (HarperCollins UK / New World Library USA, 2009) — first Human Design book published by a major international publisher; translated into 10+ languages
• Author of The Book of Lines (with Carola Eastwood and Alexander Roberts)
• Author of The Book of Destinies (with Carola Eastwood)
• Active teacher for over three decades; readings and classes worldwide from San Diego, California

Primary sources

• humandesignsystem.com/archive/ — Chaitanyo Taschler’s archive: October 1994 Advanced Training photograph (Parkyn named in caption) and first US Teachers Training, May 1997 (Chetan Parkyn, Don McKinney, Dietrie Rudat certified)
• Eleanor Haspel-Portner, The Science of Human Design (2025): describes studying “in San Diego with Chetan Parkyn”
• Chetan Parkyn, Human Design: Discover the Person You Were Born to Be (HarperCollins UK, 2009, ISBN 978-0-00-728124-4; New World Library, USA, ISBN 978-1-57731-941-2). Editions also in Spanish (Diseño Humano), Japanese (ISBN 978-4-86451-003-5), and Turkish (Butik Yayıncılık) — the multi-language reach the institutional record does not acknowledge.
• Chetan Parkyn, The Book of Lines: A 21st-Century View of the I’Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes (2012); ISBN 978-1-4675-2745-3.
• humandesignforusall.com