The Key Differences Between Open and Closed Taste in Human Design

In Human Design, Taste digestion is centered around repetition, where the body benefits from eating the same foods repeatedly. This digestion type is highly sensitive and focuses on the relationship between what you eat and how your body responds over time. There are two variations within the Taste digestion type: Open Taste and Closed Taste. Whether you have Open or Closed Taste depends on the direction of your digestion arrow in your chart.

What is Taste Digestion in Human Design?

The Taste digestion type is highly sensitive to the process of repetitive eating. Rather than focusing on variety, Taste digestion aligns with a narrow range of foods eaten over and over again, allowing the body to find balance and familiarity. Repetition is key to this digestion style, with each variation—Open or Closed Taste—differing in how the body determines what to eat.

Advanced Reader Tip: Taste digestion is Color 2. Open Taste is Tones 1-3 and Closed Taste is Tones 4-6.

Open Taste: Experimentation and Seasonal Alignment

If your digestion arrow points left, you align with Open Taste, which means your body decides what foods are aligned after experimenting with a bite. Here’s how Open Taste works:

• One Bite for Alignment: With Open Taste, your body doesn’t immediately know if a food is right for you. You need to take one bite to determine if the food aligns with your body’s current needs. It’s as though your body is testing each food before deciding if it should become part of your regular eating routine.
• Repetitive Eating: Once your body determines what food aligns, repetition becomes key. You benefit from eating the same foods repeatedly during a season, allowing your body to adapt and thrive. This helps streamline digestion and provides consistency for your sensitive system.
• Active Engagement with Food: Open Taste is considered more active, as it requires direct experimentation. You are encouraged to taste and try foods to understand if they fit with your body’s needs at any given time. Over time, your body will naturally gravitate toward the foods it prefers during certain periods, making it important to be mindful of how you feel after tasting new foods.

Closed Taste: Observation and Proximity

If your digestion arrow points right, you align with Closed Taste, meaning your body knows what it needs based on observation and proximity without needing to experiment. Here’s how Closed Taste works:

• Choosing through Observation: Unlike Open Taste, where you need to taste a food to decide if it aligns, Closed Taste operates through observation. You instinctively know what is right for your body based on the appearance, smell, or proximity of the food. Your body is in tune with what will nourish it without the need for experimentation.
• Repetitive and Familiar: Like Open Taste, repetition is crucial for Closed Taste. Once your body has identified the foods that work best, you benefit from eating them repeatedly, forming a routine that allows for optimal digestion. However, your body’s decisions are more intuitive, relying on subtle cues to determine what is right for you.
• Passive Engagement: Closed Taste is more passive, as you don’t need to engage directly with the food to know if it’s right for you. By simply observing or being in proximity to certain foods, your body naturally makes decisions about what aligns with your energy and needs.

Understanding Active vs. Passive Engagement

The key difference between Open and Closed Taste lies in how your body chooses the foods that align with it, reflected in the active (left-facing) or passive (right-facing) nature of your design:

• Active (left-facing) digestion, like Open Taste, requires direct experimentation. You need to taste a food to decide if it aligns with your body before repeating it in your diet.
• Passive (right-facing) digestion, like Closed Taste, relies on observation and intuition. Your body makes decisions about what to eat based on proximity and observation, without needing to taste the food first.

Which One Are You?

You can determine whether you have Open or Closed Taste by looking at your Human Design chart. Focus on the Digestion arrow, the top-left arrow near the head center. The direction of this arrow reveals your ideal digestion type:

• If the Digestion arrow is left-facing, you align with Open Taste. You need to taste a food before determining whether it aligns with your body’s needs, and once aligned, you thrive on repetitive eating.
• If the Digestion arrow is right-facing, you align with Closed Taste. You intuitively know which foods are right for you based on observation, and once you identify them, repetition becomes key.

Understanding whether you have Open or Closed Taste helps you align with your body’s natural process of choosing foods and optimizing digestion. Whether you need to experiment with a bite or rely on observation, aligning with your correct digestion type allows you to experience greater ease, mental clarity, and overall health.