Episode 247: The Gift of Timing
If you have a casual interest in Human Design, perhaps what you know you learned from Instagram. Maybe you’ve even looked up your Human Design chart to know your Type and Strategy, maybe even your Authority. You might even know what your Profile Lines are.
But if you want to get into the nuances of your design, look beyond those things. One place to start is with your active gates. What active gates are in your design? What hanging gates are in your design? What channels do you have?
In this episode, we’re talking about Gate 5, which is in the Sacral Center.
Gate 5 is about universal timing - having a solid sense of your rhythm of life that doesn’t have to fit into the timing and schedule of the rest of the world.
You’ll hear me share:
How Gate 5 is woven into my daily life
How it’s helped me understand other parts of my design
What happens when we’re not in alignment with Gate 5
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 185: Exploring Human Design Motor Centers: Root, Solar Plexus, Sacral, Heart
Episode 191: The Sacral Center and Shifting My Relationship with Exercise and Workouts
Episode 192: The Sacral Center and Shifting My Relationship with Food
Connect with Naomi:
Share the Episode:
“Waiting and trusting my inner sense of timing has helped me learn to follow my Splenic Authority.”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there, friend, and welcome to another episode of The Live FAB Life Podcast. I am your host, Naomi Nakamura.
Today I want to talk about Gate 5, a gate in my Human Design that I’ve spent quite a bit of time experimenting with.
Given that we do a lot of reflecting and goal-setting this time of year, I decided to have a conversation on Gate 5.
Gate 5 is in the Sacral Center. If you’re not familiar with the Sacral Center, it’s one of the four motor centers in Human Design. It’s a significant center because it alone determines what makes someone a Sacral being – a Generator or Manifesting Generator, meaning, if your Sacral Center is defined, you will be either a Generator or Manifesting Generator. You cannot be a Manifestor, Projector, or Reflector.
The Sacral Center is the center of lifeforce energy. It’s where the energy to sustain life comes from. It’s the center of creativity, growth, and pleasure.
If you’re Sacral Center is defined, and you’re a Generator or Manifesting Generator, this. This means that lifeforce energy is fixed within you. You’re consistently generating energy – creating it. It's significantly amplified when you’re doing what you love to do, to the point where you’re creating so much energy that you have enough of it to share with others around you, especially non-Sacrals, like me – Projectors, Manifestors, and Reflectors.
I’ve mentioned this in past episodes, but I find it so cool with the Sacral Center that those who have it defined know when enough is enough.
They know when they’ve had enough to eat, enough to sleep, enough exercise – they know their limits. As someone who struggles with not knowing when enough is enough for me, I think it's so cool to have this inherent nature in you.
Those of us with undefined Sacral Centers - Projectors, Reflectors, and Manifestors, wish we had consistent access to that Sacral energy, but rather than feeling like we got the short end of the stick, we can view our Undefined Sacral Centers as a lifelong invitation to be mindful about our energy and how we choose to use it.
I’ve had people slide into my Instagram DM’s with questions, and they comment that because they have an Undefined Sacral center, they think they don’t have any Sacral energy, but that’s not true.
We’re sensitive to absorbing and amplifying energy from others, but we must remember that it’s borrowed energy. It’s inconsistent and comes in ebbs and flows. Eventually, it runs out, so how we balance it is critical so we don’t deplete ourselves.
If we don’t balance our borrowed energy and make space for rest, we experience stress, burnout, fatigue, and exhaustion because just we don't have the energy we need to sustain ourselves.
If you’d like to hear more about the sacral center, I've done a handful of episodes on it:
Episode 183 on Sacral types – Generators and Manifesting Generators Episode 185 on the four motor centers, of which one is the Sacral Center Episode 191 on how learning about the Sacral Center as a non-Sacral shifted my relationship with exercise and working out – this from someone who struggled and suffered from over-exercising in the past. Episode 192 – on the Sacral Center's role in changing my relationship with food
Now that we’ve had a recap of the Sacral Center, I’d like to get into some of its nuances, so today, in this episode, we’re talking about Gate 5, which is in the Sacral Center.
If you have a casual interest in Human Design, perhaps what you know you learned from Instagram. Maybe you’ve even looked up your Human Design chart to know your Type and Strategy, maybe even your Authority. You might even know what your Profile Lines are.
But if you want to get into the nuances of your design, start looking beyond that. One place to start is with your active gates. What active gates are in your design? What hanging gates are in your design? What channels do you have?
Today I want to talk specifically about Gate 5.
Gate 5 is in the Sacral Center, and although undefined in my Human Design, I do have four active gates there. It’s a gate that I’ve spent more time observing how my daily life reflects than other gates in my design because Gate 5 is the gift of timing.
It’s about having an innate sense of the natural rhythms of your life. It’s the gift of having a sense of timing that might differ from the rest of the world’s timing.
Two episodes ago, in Episode 245, I talked about letting go of the “shoulds” and the “half to’s” – the things we feel obligated to do because it's what others – our families, friends, employers, and society expects of us. That episode was about not following what everyone else is doing but honoring your desires by following your Strategy and Authority.
And Gate 5 is about knowing the best timing for things to happen for you in your life. What’s your internal clock telling you are the best times to do things?
According to society, and a few overstepping individuals in my family, at my age, which is now in my 40’s, I “should” be a homeowner that’s married with kids.
If you know me in real life, you know the idea of that shudders me – it’s so not for me. Homeownership is not a thing for me, and neither are kids. But according to society, I should feel guilty about this. I should worry about who will take care of me when I’m old. I had a relative tell me that. According to society – and this relative - I’m a disappointment, a person to feel sorry for.
I promise you, I 100% don’t feel sorry about my life or regret it. I’ve lived my life exactly how I wanted it to be and done things according to what I felt was the best time. There have been moments in my life where I told myself that right now is the time to “do nothing” and see what happens. And in those times, the timing always worked out for the best.
In hindsight, it makes sense now that I know about the gift of Gate 5. The more I learn about Human Design, especially my Human Design, the more reaffirming it is to me because my approach to life has been pretty aligned with my design.
So, Gate 5 is about having a solid sense of your rhythm of life that doesn’t have to fit into the timing and schedule of the rest of the world. When we try to do things according to the timing of others, it’s a disserve to ourselves and a disservice to others.
Gate 5 is about creating habits that support our rhythm and flow – our divine timing, honoring what our internal clock senses.
So, if you think about it, Gate 5 is about patience and trust. It’s about being patient, waiting for YOUR correct timing, and trusting yourself to know when that time is.
So, Episode 245 was about letting go of the “shoulds” and “have to’s,” and Episode 246 was about building trust. Can you see the progression of this conversation? It didn’t start intentionally, but it kind of worked out that way. I like that my gift of Gate 5 had a hand in it.
I’ve been thinking about Gate 5, daily habits, patience, and trust, for a long time – it’s been a long period of self-observation with and without judgment.
Waiting and trusting my inner sense of timing has helped me learn to follow my Splenic Authority.
I’ve done a lot of reflection, observation, and experimentation with it – and the experimentation lends itself to my 3rd Profile line of gaining wisdom through trial and error – experimentation. This is how all the different components of Human Design come together.
Through my experiences, I’ve honed in on what's good for my health and well-being during this period. Things that were good for me ten years ago aren’t ideal for me now, and things that weren’t relevant a decade ago are so important now. It’s all about timing and understanding the right timing - what I need to support my well-being.
Remember, Gate 5 is in the Sacral Center, and the Sacral Center is about lifeforce, creativity, and growth - it's not by chance that Gate 5 is a part of the Sacral Center.
Dropping the expectation of what I “should” be doing has helped me better understand what it means to “be in the moment.” We often hear people talk about “being present” and “living in the moment,” and honoring our divine timing is how we do that - appreciating and embracing who we are right now, where we are right now, what we're doing right, and what we have right now.
When we’re able to do this, it frees us – it brings independence, freedom, and empowerment; free from obligations and expectations of others; free from being reliant and dependent on others, and it validates ourselves – our inner sense and our confidence in being able to trust ourselves.
I recently had my 15th anniversary at my full-time job, and I thought that after 15 years, one would think I’d be higher up the corporate ladder. But the thing is, I have yet to have the desire to climb the corporate ladder. For the past 15 years, I’ve been here to do the best job, but I have yet to feel the urge to jump into a higher pay grade or middle management. Sure, there may be more pay or glory, but it hasn’t been worth the extra scrutiny or pressure (Undefined Root Center here).
At least in my company, it's well understood that the higher your pay grade, the more the company owns you. The work-life balance boundaries become cloudy and blurred, and that’s not the life I want.
Now I want to make the point that just because something doesn’t meet your inner sense of divine timing right now doesn’t mean it won’t later. Who knows – maybe in another ten years, I’ll have climbed the corporate ladder and own a home somewhere. Those things just haven’t been part of my divine timing.
And when we’re able to honor our divine timing, we're able to live with freedom. We're empowered and able to live without fear. We just need to have patience and self-trust.
And when we have those things, it deepens how much we value, appreciate, and love ourselves; we hold ourselves in high regard with compassion and, hopefully, appreciation – self-respect.
I’ve found that honoring my sense of timing strengthens my relationship with my Splenic Authority. The Splenic Authority is about having an inner knowing, and when you’re able to quiet things down and “hear” that inner knowing, that’s how you’re meant to make decisions.
So, by honoring my divine timing according to the natural rhythms of my life and practicing patience, I'm developing self-trust and strengthening my ability to follow my Splenic Authority.
What does this look like when it comes to daily rituals? Daily rituals are simply our daily habits, and our daily habits are what curate our lifestyle and, ultimately, our health.
Just because something is a gift doesn’t mean that it’s always expressed most healthily. This is true for every part of Human Design. We may have a Defined Throat Center, which means we have a consistent way of speaking, but if we’re consistently spewing out negativity, it’s not the healthiest expression of that energy.
So, what does this look like when it comes to Gate 5? If Gate 5 is about having patience and trusting our divine timing, an unhealthy expression of this is impatience and ignoring our inner sense of timing.
It's forcing things to happen, doing things according to other people's timing - doing things and not following my inner sense of when is the right time for me.
I'm a Projector, so my Strategy is to “Wait for Invitations.” So, with Gate 5, I’m doing a lot of waiting around here, and when I’m impatient, it disrupts my natural rhythm. I’ve experimented with this plenty and can confirm that things just don’t work out for me this way.
It creates inner tension - anxiety, and stress which then affects my nervous system. It affects my breathing; I start to overthink things and control everything, which is simply a lack of trust in myself.
So, if you think about it, impatience is bred from insecurity. It's bred from a lack of trust, making us overthink everything, and nothing good ever comes from overthinking. Overthinking is the antithesis of Human Design.
Long-time listeners know that my story to where I am today started with overtraining. For years I trained for endurance events - half marathons and marathons. Training requires sticking to a very rigid and regimented training schedule. There were days that my body desperately screamed for rest, but I didn’t listen to my body; I didn’t trust the cues that my body screamed at me. I was impatient because I had performance goals I thought I wanted, which ultimately led to a total breakdown of my body – adrenal depletion, IBS, insomnia, I could go on and on.
So, one way I use the gift of Gate 5 is by managing my workouts – what workout should I do today? What does my body need today? It even led to the decision not to have a gym membership for the first time in 18 years.
These days, I use Apple Fitness Plus. For $80/year, I get kickboxing, strength training, HIIT, Pilates, Yoga, Dance, Cycling, Running, meditation, and more, with new workouts uploaded every Sunday night. I can do them anywhere – at home, at the park because all I need is my phone.
So, every day, I designate time on my calendar to work out and ask my body and mind what it wants to do today. I’ve released the self-imposed expectations of a training schedule and intuitively listen to my body’s timing of what it needs on a given day.
Some days, what my body or mind needs is to rest. So, this is just one way I’ve come to practice the gift of Gate 5 and honor my inner clock, my divine timing.
It’s releasing the “rules” of not eating late at night. It's letting go of what my plate “should” look like. Some days I can intuitively sense that my body needs extra protein, so I might have some marinara meat sauce without pasta or rice or any type of carbs, and it's okay because it’s what my body needs right now.
It's letting go of all of these things that don't fit into the world’s timing and expectations and doing what I sense my body needs right now, at this moment, listening to what the internal clock tells me what the best timing for me is to do things.
And this is the gift of Gate 5.
So, as we’re still in this goal-setting mode that many people do at the start of the new year, I hope these perspectives that I’ve shared over the past few episodes, whether you have Gate 5 in your Human Design or not, I hope you can look at things differently than maybe you might have before.
And if you don't have Gate 5, other aspects of your design can provide you with insight, like your Strategy and Authority.
Admittedly, this episode was a tangent. Still, I hope you find it helpful, especially if you’re curious about how we’re conditioned and doing the work of de-conditioning. Gate 5 has been influential in my journey through this process.
Has there been a gate in your design that has been remarkably insightful for you? Come on over and share it with me. Leave a comment on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/247 or over on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
As always, thank you so much for being here - I appreciate your time and your attention. I hope you have a great day, and I'll see you right back again next time. Bye for now.
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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