Scripps Sunday #51
I listened to Kelly Corrigan's podcast the first week of January (you can listen in here) and she shared about an article she read about the power of awe. I typed out a few quotes for you from the podcast and then inserted the article that she was referring to from The New York Times.
How a Bit
of Awe Can Improve Your Health
Experts say wonder is an essential human emotion — and a salve
for a turbulent mind.
By Hope Reese / New York Times/ Jan. 3, 2023
Awe can mean many
things. It can be witnessing a total solar eclipse. Or seeing your child take
her first steps. Or hearing Lizzo perform live. But, while many of us know it
when we feel it, awe is not easy to define.
“Awe is the feeling
of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding
of the world,” said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of
California, Berkeley.
It’s vast, yes. But
awe is also simpler than we think — and accessible
to everyone, he writes in his book “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and
How It Can Transform Your Life.”
While many of us associate awe with dramatic,
life-changing events, the truth is that awe can be part of everyday life.
Experiencing awe comes from what Dr. Keltner has called a “perceived vastness,”
as well as something that challenges us to rethink our previously held ideas.
Awe can be triggered from moments like seeing the Grand Canyon or witnessing an
act of kindness. (About a quarter of awe experiences are “flavored with feeling threatened,” he said, and they can arise, for
example, by looking at a lion in a zoo or even gruesome videos of genocide.)
In his book, Dr.
Keltner writes that awe is critical to our well-being — just like joy,
contentment and love. His research suggests it has tremendous health benefits
that include calming down our nervous system and
triggering the release of oxytocin, the “love” hormone that promotes trust and
bonding.
“Awe is on the
cutting edge” of emotion research, said Judith T. Moskowitz, a professor of
medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
in Chicago. Dr. Moskowitz, who has studied how positive emotions help people
cope with stress, wrote in an email that “intentional awe experiences, like
walks in nature, collective movement, like dance or ceremony, even use of
psychedelics improve psychological well-being.”
So what is it
biologically? Awe wasn’t one of the six basic emotions — anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness — identified back
in 1972, Dr. Keltner said. But new research shows that awe “is its own thing,”
he said. Our bodies respond differently when we are experiencing awe than when
we are feeling joy, contentment or fear. We make a different sound,
show a different facial expression. Dr. Keltner found that
awe activates the vagal nerves, clusters of neurons in the
spinal cord that regulate various bodily functions, and slows our heart rate,
relieves digestion and deepens breathing.
It also has
psychological benefits. Many of us have a critical voice in our head, telling
us we’re not smart, beautiful or rich enough. Awe seems to quiet this negative
self-talk, Dr. Keltner said, by deactivating the default mode network, the part of
the cortex involved in how we perceive ourselves.
But, Dr. Keltner said, even his own lab
experiments underestimate the impact of awe on our health and well-being. If we
can see these biological responses in experiments, he said, “just imagine what
happens when you are watching a baby being born, or you encounter the Dalai
Lama.”
Sharon Salzberg, a
leading mindfulness teacher and author, also sees awe as a vehicle to quiet our
inner critic. Awe, she believes, is “the absence of self-preoccupation.”
This, Dr. Keltner
said, is especially critical in the age of social media. “We are at this cultural moment of narcissism and
self-shame and criticism and entitlement; awe gets us out of that,” Dr. Keltner
said. It does this by helping us get out of our own heads and “realize our
place in the larger context, our communities,” he explained.
The good news? Awe
is something you can develop, with practice. Here’s how.
Pay
attention.
In 2016, Dr.
Keltner visited San Quentin State Prison in California, where he heard inmates
speak about finding awe in “the air, light, the imagined sound of a child,
reading, spiritual practice.” The experience changed the way he thought about
awe. So Dr. Keltner teamed up with two other
researchers to enlist people across America and China to keep
journals about their awe experiences. He found out that people were having two
or three of them each week.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I
can just take a breath and look around.’ It doesn’t require privilege or
wealth; awe is just around us,” he said.
When William B.
Irvine, a professor of philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio,
wants to feel a sense of awe, he turns to science. “Science is everywhere, all
of the time,” he said. An alluring object or part of nature, for example, is a
“piece of an incredibly beautiful puzzle.” We often just think of the piece
instead of the big picture, he said, “and that’s a pity.”
But once we think
about the context, about what went into its creation, awe will follow.
Focus
on the ‘moral beauty’ of others.
One of the most
reliable ways to experience awe, Dr. Keltner found, was in the simple act of
witnessing the goodness of others. When we see others doing small gestures,
like walking an older person across the street, we start feeling better and are
also more likely to perform good deeds.
However, goodness in others is often overlooked,
Dr. Keltner noted. “Our public discourse and academic discourse sort of forgets
about how much good people can and want to do,” he said.
Ms. Salzberg,
whose forthcoming book includes a section about awe, also believes in the
importance of this interpersonal wonder. She recommended paying attention to
your neighborhood bus driver or grocery clerk, looking for those daily moments
of kindness. If we notice those around us who are “dedicated to goodness or
having a better family life than the one they were raised in or to being good
to their neighbors,” she said, we can strengthen our sense of awe.
Another tool to experience
awe, Dr. Keltner said, is to spend time learning about inspiring people. Research suggests that watching videos of people
like Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, can trigger awe.
“Remind yourself of
what they’ve written. Have quotes of them, have photos of them,” he said. “Make
them part of your life.”
Practice
mindfulness.
Distraction, Dr.
Keltner said, is an enemy of awe. It impedes focus, which is essential for
achieving awe.
“We
cultivate awe through interest and curiosity,” Ms. Salzberg said. “And if we’re
distracted too much, we’re not really paying attention.”
Mindfulness helps
us focus and lessens the power of distractions. “If you work on mindfulness,
awe will come.” And some studies show
that people who are meditating and praying also experience more awe.
“Awe has a lot of the same neurophysiology of
deep contemplation,” Dr. Keltner said. “Meditating, reflecting, going on a
pilgrimage.”
So spending time
slowing down, breathing deeply and reflecting — on top of their own benefits —
have the added advantage of priming us for awe.
Choose
the unfamiliar path.
Awe often comes
from novelty. So gravitating toward the unexpected can set us up to experience
awe. Some people do this more than others, a personality trait that experts
have called an “openness to experience,” Dr. Keltner said.
We can work on
developing this openness through everyday choices. Choose a restaurant you
don’t usually visit, take a different route to work or check out some music you
aren’t familiar with.
In his book, Dr.
Keltner wrote that people who find awe all around them, “are more open to new
ideas. To what is unknown. To what language can’t describe.”
Hope Reese is a journalist who writes for Vox,
Shondaland, The Atlantic and other publications.
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