The official name for Human Design Gate 51 is The Gate of Shock. But I call it The ThunderBolt because its primary action is to have radical faith in life and trust that each and every moment, even the most horrific ones, are gateways into divine love.
About Human Design Gate 51 – Gene Key 51
Archetype Name: The Thunder Bolt
In Action: have radical faith in life and awaken through shock
Keywords: shock, awakening, being powerful, and Unconditional Love
Download All 64 Human Design Gates Cheatsheet (for free!)
Official Gate Name: Shock
Human Design Definition: The ability to respond to disorder and shock through recognition and adaptation.
Core Theme: To be first at something.
Bodygraph Center: Will center and connects to the G center via human design gate 25.
Tropical Sign: Aries
(Want all of the correspondences and keynotes for the gates of your incarnation cross? The Human Design Map is for you.)

The Energy Spectrum of Human Design Gate 51
All energy in the Human Design chart exists on a spectrum of potential.
On the “positive” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 51 is the energy for Initiating awakening through the shock of unconditional love. In its highest frequency, gate 51 believes life is trustworthy because of it’s curveballs (rather than in spite of them) and practices radical faith that every moment, even the most horrific ones, are gateways into Divine Love.
On the “negative” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 51 is the energy for using shock to hurt others, pushing people’s buttons, and deeply traumatic life experiences. These are all indicators of losing faith in life/the Divine and ignoring the calls to awaken.
If you don’t like the results that the “negative” side of the spectrum is creating in your life, you can raise the frequency of Gate 51 with a number of boundaries, practices, and tools.
(I cover the practices for the gates of your incarnation cross in the Human Design Map.)
The most important thing to raise the frequency of gate 51 is to process your feelings and emotions, of even the most traumatic events, as a way of accessing the gifts of every situation.

My personal contemplation of Human Design Gate 51 (Gene Key 51)
I have gate 51 (line 5) in the conscious earth of my incarnation cross.
And to say that I know the energy of Gate 51 really well would be the understatement of the century.
I once had a therapist tell me that people with stories like mine jump off bridges. An astrologer told me that they’d need a stiff drink to read my chart. And an “Intuitive Human Design Expert” told me that I should just call it quits, collect unemployment, and play video games for the rest of my life.
As a child, I witnessed things you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. I’ve experienced things no human should have to experience. And I often feel like I’ve lived hundreds of lifetimes in this one incarnation.
I could truly go on for days about the various shocks I’ve experienced. That isn’t to say that I’ve had a “worse” life than anyone else. I don’t really find those types of judgments useful.
But, I do share it to demonstrate that working WITH the energy we actually have, instead of using it against ourselves, is the greatest contribution we can make to the world.
It took me many, many years to understand that, and it is what I teach my Human Design Map clients every single day.
For the first part of my life, I didn’t know how to deal with the shock and trauma. And, like so many in my generation, no one helped me process my experiences in a healthy way, and I was often dismissed as being “too sensitive” or “dramatic.”
By high school, I had developed an eating disorder, and by my mid-twenties I was strung out on drugs.
The pain was too much to bear.
That began to change during my first Saturn Return.
One of my brothers, Ronnie, died in a car accident at the age of 25. My other brother, Bryan, has since unexpectedly died as well.
Both were powerful spiritual awakenings in my life.
But when Ronnie died, the sheer shock of it cracked me open in a way that I can’t explain.
It is like I finally surrendered to the beautiful disaster of life on Earth.
Suddenly, I had a deep understanding that life will always be full of plot twists and that I can either keep using them against me or for me.
I wouldn’t have said it quite that way at the time. I’m not even sure I would have seen it as such a pivotal time in my life.
But my life was never the same after it.
By my early 30s, I was in much-needed therapy, recovering from the eating disorders, completely sober, in a healthy relationship with my husband, and starting my business.
It was a winding road, of course, and I learned a metric fuck ton along the way.
I went on to become a master energy healer and coach. I developed my signature energy healing method, and eventually surrendered to the call of teaching others about their Human Design.
(I teach my signature healing method inside the Human Design Map portal.)
As gate 51 shows us, I let the shocks wake me up.
But, of course, awakening is an ongoing process. After we integrate one thing, a new layer is revealed, and that is exactly what happened when I was 36.
I “accidentally” learned that my dad isn’t actually my biological father.
My parents had kept this secret from me and had no intentions of ever telling me the truth. The pain was complex and deep. I felt relieved, angry, hurt, and confused.
The way I experienced the shock was completely different, though.
It hurt like hell, but I understood immediately that it was for my awakening. I knew that I would come out the other side with a more embodied experience of Grace, forgiveness, and gratitude.
True to my design, I was stable and grounded by the shock. I know that sounds like a paradox. But it is 100% true.
It is such a paradox because we often believe that shock must equal suffering.
But like all beliefs, it’s optional to see life that way.
I now realize that spiritual awakening actually requires shock.
Shock cracks our hearts wide open so that we can receive the wealth of unconditional love (gate 25).
Even in the midst of our deepest suffering, even in the face of our ugliest shadows, and even when we can’t wrap our minds around whatever is happening.
It is always happening for us, not to us.
And there is nothing more beautiful than that. When you are ready to have your heart cracked wide open, purchase your Human Design Map and then join me in the portal. Let me shock the fuck out of you when I hold space for and love even your gnarliest parts.

Now it’s your turn to contemplate Gate 51
When you stand in the truth that the gifts of gate 51 are always available to you (whether it’s defined in your chart or not)…
How has life shocked you?
Are you willing to feel the pain of those shocks? Are you willing to love yourself and life through it all?
What if you believed it was all happening FOR your awakening?
Are you willing to transmute the pain of life into Gold?
I encourage you to take some time with these questions. Take them out into your world and let their answers reveal themselves to you. Intend for deeper levels of clarity about gate 51.
And, if you have gate 51 in your Human Design Incarnation Cross, be sure to check out the Human Design Map where I go super deep into each gate of your cross.