Emotions on Fire

Mars through the Solar Plexus Gates in 2026

Here’s your call to track Mars’ movement through the Human Design Solar Plexus gates and see what you discover about Mars and about yourself! Dates are Pacific Time and may vary slightly based on your location.

Gate 49 | February 16 - 23 (Need)

Gate 30 | February 23 - March 2 (Desire)

Gate 55 | March 2 - 9 (Passion)

Gate 37 | March 9 - 16 (Need)

Gate 63 | A Head gate!

Gate 22 | March 23 - 31 (Passion)

Gate 36 | March 31 - April 7 (Desire)

37/40 Nodal Season | December 22, 2025 - May 13, 2026

37-40: Ratchet Wave, Need, Acceptance → Rejection, Tension and Touch

*To preface this work, I’m not a licensed therapist, nor am I an expert in somatics. The thoughts I share here stem from over seven years of experimenting with the Human Design System, asking questions, researching answers, testing practices, and structuring explanations. My experiences and perspectives may differ from yours, and that’s okay!

Mars in Gate 49

Mars is currently transiting Gate 49 (February 16 - 23), and, while I normally wouldn’t take the time to write something like this about a Mars transit—they generally only last about seven days—the current cosmic context has inspired an explanation.

The explanation, in fact, isn’t actually about Mars in Gate 49. By the time I finish this and you read it, Mars will likely have moved on to the next gate in the wheel. However, my experiences over the last few days and the stories that others shared with me are what drew my attention to what Mars is doing now, and will continue to do for roughly the next seven weeks.

But before I get into that, let me set the scene! It’s important to know what else is happening in the transit program before I share the significance of what’s going on with Mars.

The Channel of Community

As some may already know, the lunar Nodes are in the 37/40 opposition. They’ve been there since December 22 of last year and won’t complete their transit of these gates until May 13th.

The 37/40 is one of the three oppositional pairs in the Rave Mandala that also forms a channel in the Human Design BodyGraph—the Channel of Community, Design of a Part Seeking a Whole (37-40). It’s a Tribal channel, with the keynote Support, that connects the Will Center to the emotional Solar Plexus (eSP), and it will be defined for all of us for the entire nodal season.

As a Tribal emotional channel, the 37-40 produces a Ratchet wave—an emotional wave that ratchets up, then calms down, then ratchets up—again, and again—until it reaches a point of explosion and resets. This wave is driven by Need, which moves us between emotional states of acceptance and rejection. When our material and emotional needs go unmet, our nervous system responds, and muscular tension builds in the body.

Although this tension can sometimes be mediated through touch, rest, and other emotionally regulating behaviors, as well as through communal activities like singing, dancing, and sharing a meal, it’s not uncommon for us to let it build in our bodies to unsustainable levels, where the body then releases it for us through an explosion of emotion. The sneaky thing about this wave is that each time it ratchets up and then releases, we feel like we’ve come back down to baseline, to neutrality, but often we haven’t.

Have you ever had the experience of a loved one reaching out to touch you in a tense moment, and something in your body made you want to push them away or pull back? This is the rejection impulse of the ratchet wave in action. When we reach points of heightened tension, it’s common to feel anger, resistance to touch, or the need for rest and space.

On the other side of things, have you ever had the experience of feeling super warm and affectionate with someone in the moment, and then realizing later that you made a commitment you can’t keep or gave more than you had to give? When we’re in the emotional high of the ratchet wave (acceptance), it’s common to forget our boundaries and be overly affectionate or generous. However, this shouldn’t be mistaken for fawning or people pleasing.

The Difference Between Acceptance and Fawning

Luis Mojica, one of my favorite somatic educators, explains that a characteristic of people-pleasing and fawning is the incongruency between what we feel and what we’re performing. In other words, we might feel internal constriction, like tightness in our stomach and stress in our bodies, while simultaneously performing niceness and agreement.

If you’re unsure of whether you’ve experienced an acceptance high or fawning, you might ask yourself these questions from Luis: “Am I doing the opposite of what I actually feel?” “Is one part of me constricting and another part performing?” If your answer is yes to either of these, then it’s more likely fawning or people-pleasing than an emotional high.

Regardless of which planets are defining it, the function of the 37-40 is to bring our awareness to our emotional and material needs—where they’re being met, and where they are not.

Some examples of these sorts of needs are: touch, recognition, companionship, rest, reciprocity, affection, trust, food, shelter, space, and safety.

As we ride the waves of the 37-40 and feel the tension build and release in our bodies, we have the potential to be emotionally moved to negotiate, bargain, and make agreements in our relationships and within our community, in an attempt to have our needs met and to meet the needs of others.

This is the emotional landscape we are all in until May 13th. And now, Mars is moving through the Solar Plexus gates and coloring this landscape red.

Mars through the Active ESP

If you know the Human Design Rave Mandala, you know that all of the emotional Solar Plexus gates (except for Gate 6) are together in the wheel, in a sequence that spans from 18°51’ Aquarius to 28°15’ Pisces. To bring this back to where we started, Mars is currently in Gate 49, and Gate 49 marks the beginning of this sequence.

So, wow! We all have defined emotional centers, and now Mars will be moving through every stream of the Solar Plexus, activating a new realm of emotionality with its fiery energy every 7 days. Week by week, Mars will color a different emotional stream with its energy—it will activate Sensitivity with Martian Need, Emoting with Martian Passion, and Feelings with Martian Desire.

If you don’t know much about the planets, here’s a little primer on Mars. Mars energy awakens in us the parts that want to take action and get things moving; the parts of us that initiate, fight, defend, protect, and separate. Under the influence of Mars, we are more likely to be impulsive, self-centered, direct, decisive, aggressive, reactive, assertive, passionate, and combative. Mars brings heat, inflammation, friction, urgency, and the desire for action.

Mars moving through the Solar Plexus gates in the design of someone unaware of its influence may look like heated emotions, impulsive consumption, emotional reactivity, love-bombing, ghosting, cutting off relationships, making unrealistic promises, emotional decision-making, and defensiveness. This is why it’s important to understand the transit program.

Putting the Pieces Together

“The Nodes are my kind of alien. That is, they’re not solar. They have nothing to do with the Sun/Earth and the Sun/Earth movie. They don’t. They’re a counterpoint to the Sun/Earth. They are a window to the Cosmos. They are a line of geometry that connects us far beyond this solar cell, connects us to the geometry of the totality. It is along this geometry that all things move. The Nodes are magical. When you look at Sun/Earth, Sun/Earth says — I, I, me, me. It’s all alone. But we do not exist in isolation.” (Ra Uru Hu)

I want to bring us back to the Nodes and start putting these pieces together. The Human Design Cosmology, as told by Ra Uru Hu, says that the lunar Nodes deliver information to our solar system from the stellar field beyond. Whereas the Nodes in our natal charts tell us about our individual trajectory for this lifetime, the transiting Nodes (in relation to the planets) show us where we’re at in our collective trajectory and what’s needed as we move forward on a global scale.

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What I want to give you to play with is the idea that every transit that occurs within a particular nodal season is pushing us to evolve and expand in the direction of the transiting North Node, and to review, integrate, and release in the direction of the transiting South Node.

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This nodal season, the North Node is in Gate 37—Family, the Gate of Friendship, and the South Node, which is always exactly opposite the North Node, is in Gate 40—Deliverance, the Gate of Aloneness.

With the Nodes forming the Channel of Community, we are being collectively moved this season to change how we show up in our bonded relationships and in community with others. Theoretically, this means that every transit we experience during this time will contribute to the direction of that work.

With that in mind, here’s a suggestion to explore:

Mars moving through the eSP during the 37/40 nodal season pushes us to take the initiative to evolve and expand our emotional capacity to meet people with compassion, kindness, and sensitivity, even when our emotions are heated. It pushes us to learn to hold heated and passionate emotions in our bodies as we work together to negotiate our needs and the needs of others within our tribal relationships and communities.

The Astrological Context

Gate 37 is a Pisces gate in the emotional Solar Plexus Center. The North Node in Pisces directs us to remember that we are in this together and that we can find common ground across our differences. Here, the North Node pulls us toward affectionate gestures, emotional sincerity, compassion, and friendship—things that support the bonds and functions of community. With the North Node in the eSP, growth happens as we lean into connection and expand our capacity to feel.

Gate 40, on the other hand, is a Virgo gate in the Will Center. The South Node in Virgo asks us to stay discerning about where our energy, labor, and support are genuinely reciprocated, and where they are not. With the South Node in the Will Center, growth also happens through discernment, wise restraint, and becoming more precise about when and how we use our willpower, whether it be to support others through physical labor, regulate our emotions in tense moments, or walk away when things get heated beyond our capacity to communicate and relate.

There’s one more thing I want to say about the Nodes in the Pisces/Virgo axis—it’s important. Even though the North Node is in Pisces, for some of us, this time will be more about applying the skills we’ve learned from our experiences in past relationships (South Node stuff) than it is about leaning into connection. If you’ve been codependent in the past and have been learning to set boundaries and navigate sticky emotional situations, now might be the time you’re called to practice using those skills and expand your capacity to sit with intense emotions without compromising your own needs as a way of soothing discomfort. The North Node transiting Gate 37 is not a permission slip to abandon yourself for the sake of connection or to sacrifice your needs for the comfort of others.

The Experiment

I’ll wrap this up with two simple practices to get you started and inspire you to craft your own experiment with these transits in mind.

A Ratchet Wave Reframe

What if it’s possible to shift the way you experience the Ratchet Wave by awakening your awareness of how it functions in you? What if observing it and reflecting on your observations is enough to make this shift happen? What if over the next couple of months it becomes easier and easier for you to notice those moments when the tension in your body ratchets up? What if you become more aware of your emotional and material needs in the process? What if the simple acts of watching, observing, and reflecting move you to meet those needs for yourself and communicate them to others? What if by the end of this nodal season, your experience of the Ratchet Wave shifts from the first image below to the second, and then finally to the third? What if there’s nothing to do, and just reading this paragraph means it’s already begun?

This is a thought experiment. There are not three versions of the Ratchet Wave in the official Human Design teachings. I’m asking you to play beyond the limits of institutionalized Human Design and see what you discover.

Get to Know Mars

Make a word cloud of Mars words. Use the ideas I’ve shared in this article, research what other people have to say about Mars, or pull words out of your own mind to make a word cloud representing Mars. Then, announce them aloud, one by one, and notice how each one lands. For example: “I am assertive,” “I am direct,” “I am impulsive,” “I am angry.” How do these statements make you feel? What comes alive in you when you say them? Where is there resistance or denial? Turn your word cloud into art—draw on it, paint on it, color it in shades of red, or cut it up and turn it into a collage!

Have a Conversation with Mars. In fact, have many! Here are some ideas, but make this practice your own. Get yourself into a meditative state and light a candle — preferably a red one. Invite Mars to join you through some creative or magical means. Then speak! Tell Mars what you’re seeing, feeling, and experiencing while it’s moving through your eSP gates. Share your Mars words and get its opinion. Ask Mars what it’s helping you to see and do during this Solar Plexus trip, and any other questions that come to mind. Close your mouth and listen. Sit quietly and see what Mars shows you. Reflect on the times you’ve relied on Martial energy to move through something. Share with Mars what it means to you and why you value it. Make requests, but be prepared to leave offerings if you do. Thank Mars for its presence in your life.

Good Luck!

The planetary program is constantly moving through us via the neutrino field, activating new gates and channels in our designs, bridging centers, configuring and dismantling constellations that awaken and inspire different parts of us to temporarily step forward and take up space in our inner world. Don’t let the transiting planets possess you. Get to know them. Get to know the hanging and dormant gates where they access your design and the parts of you that live there. Get to know yourself in all of your complex variations.

So much can shift when we are aware and watching. Regardless of your natal definition, you have the opportunity to consciously observe Mars during this time and consciously do your North Node work in collaboration with this fiery force.

This article is a glimpse into what it looks like to develop your Holistic Authority—a concept I’ve been working on for the last couple of years. If you want to learn more about this concept and do this sort of work in community with others, I’ll be running a small-group program called Keeper of the Keys at the end of March. Stay tuned for more on that!