Awe-inspiring walks and miracle-seeking can improve health

Dacher Keltner has made it his mission to fill our lives with more reverence.

He has spent the last two decades exploring awe, which he says is different from joy or fear, and how experiencing that awe can have positive effects on our bodies, our relationships with others, and how we see the world around us see us around and interact with her.

Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Greater Good Science Center, recently chatted with us — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — about his work , particularly about why we should try to add more reverence to our lives and what will happen if we do.

“It’s amazing! It tells us so much about the development of the human nervous system,” Keltner, the author of “Awe: The New Science Of Everyday Wonder And How It Can Transform Your Life,” told us. “A region of the brain is deactivated [when we experience awe] — the default network mode. This is where all self-expression processes take place: I think about myself, about my time, my goals, my aspirations, my checklist. This calms during awe.”

Awe activates our vagus nerve. This is “the large bundle of nerves that starts at the top of the spinal cord and helps you look at people and say sounds,” Keltner explained, and it also “slows our heartbeat, helps with digestion, and opens our bodies to things bigger than.” we.” .”

“Awe also cools down the inflammatory process,” Keltner said his studies have shown. “It’s part of your immune system that fights disease, and we want it to be cooler, not always hot.”

So how do we experience more awe? Keltner, who served as a scientific advisor behind Pixar’s “Inside Out,” said it could be as simple as an “awe walk,” as he calls it.

He and several of his colleagues studied this experience to learn more about awe and what happens when we feel it.

″[The study involved] So people who were 75 years old or older start to worry and become depressed about the end of their life [and you’re experiencing] more body pain,” Keltner said. “The control condition – they went for a walk once a week. In our state of “awe-inspiring walk” we said, “You know, while you’re walking, go to a place where you might feel a little childlike wonder, and look around – look at the little things and look at the big things and just follow that sense of mystery and wonder.’ That’s all we asked of them.”

Keltner explained that feeling awe and wonder on a walk (or anywhere else) can be as simple as stopping and noticing the world around us – from something seemingly small like a newly bloomed flower to something as large as you Sunset that stretches across the entire sky. Other sources of awe include what he calls “moral beauty” – experiencing other people’s kindness, goodness, or generosity – or listening to music, looking at art, and thinking about big ideas, all of which can occur during a ” “Awe walk” happens.

Keltner said they found “three really cool things” when they compared the control group’s results to the “Awe Walk” group.

“In eight weeks [of the study], [the ‘awe walk’ group] began to feel more and more awe. So when we look for awe, we find more of it, which I think is really important. … These people – 75 years old or older – experienced less pain and suffering over time. Chronic pain and pain as we age are serious. It just shocks the consciousness, and here was a little technique that gave them some peace of mind.”

The scientists also documented what Keltner calls “the disappearance of the self.”

“Every week we had [the study participants] Take a photo of yourself and what we found was: [those in the study who were going on the awe walk] Start moving to the side [of the] Photo. They somehow disappear! What that tells us is their awareness: They’re not thinking about, “Okay, there’s my face and I’m going to get it perfectly in the photo.” They’re more interested in the larger scene that they’re a part of, and they’re losing out on it the overview of ourselves, and that’s important – that’s important for focusing our attention on things outside of ourselves.”

Ultimately, Keltner argues that the more awe and wonder people of all ages experience, the better off they will be.

“It [creates] “An amazing cascade of physiology that we can find almost every day and that is very good for us,” he told us.

We also talked about what Keltner calls the “eight wonders of life,” how awe can act as an antidote to narcissism, and more.

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