Word-Of-the-Week #987: Awe
July 6, 2023 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #987: Awe
Awe – an overwhelming feeling of wonder; often inspired by something majestic or powerful.
Did you take an “awe walk” last week? Were you able to just sit and soak in the fireworks and festivities on the 4th this week?
This week features the last half of NY Times writer Jancee Dunn, “An ‘awe walk’ can be found right in your own neighborhood. Looking for wonder, one step at a time, can be key to helping you restore, heal, connect.”
To Recap: Decide on a place
You can pick somewhere you’ve never been, Keltner said, adding that you’re more likely to feel awe in an environment where the sights and sounds are unfamiliar — a local park or trail you’ve never visited, a new neighborhood in your city or town, a body of water if you live near one. Or you can travel to a familiar spot and imagine that you’re seeing it for the first time, he said.
- Pay attention to your senses
Heading outside hoping to be awed can seem daunting, but try not to put too much pressure on yourself, Keltner said. Instead, he said, just be open.
Take in the sights, sounds and scents that usually escape your awareness but have the potential to raise goose bumps. When something catches your attention, “stop and pause and feel,” Keltner said.
Sense the wind on your face. Touch the petals of a flower. Tune into the sounds of what Rachel Carson, the American marine biologist and the author of “Silent Spring,” once called the “living music” of “insect orchestras.”
Keltner often gives his students an assignment: to simply notice the sky. His students examine the colors, clouds and how the vista can change in an instant. “They’re blown away,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘I haven’t looked at the sky in years.’ ”
- Start small
When you’re on your walk, get in the habit of pausing and homing in on a detail — a ripple on a lake, an ant moving industriously through the grass — then, slowly expand your field of vision. The shift in focus to vastness can sometimes inspire awe, Keltner said.
Or pan from the ground to the sky. If you’re in a city or the suburbs, he said, fix your gaze on a window or doorway, and then move it up. (Until I tried this exercise, I’d never noticed how many building rooftops in my town had statues and carvings of animals, human faces and even gargoyles.)
What Keltner calls “part to whole” focusing can apply to people, too. If you’re in a crowd, start with one person and zoom out to take in the whole system of human activity, he said. “Walk by a pickup basketball game, and you’ve got enough humanity for a Shakespearean play,” he said.
I’m an early riser, so I’ve started taking awe walks at dawn. I watch the sky change from violet to orange to fuchsia and have seen a small colony of bees wake up and start to work. I even discovered a nest of baby robins, lodged snugly in a juniper bush two blocks from my house. Now I walk there every morning and listen to their faint, reedy chirping.
Like Keltner’s strolls with his daughter to the cedar tree, seeing the nest every day sustains me, somehow. I feel a twinge that the robins will leave soon. Until I find another wondrous sight to delight me, I’ll keep walking — phone stashed, eyes and ears open.
This week focus on experiencing awe! How easy is it for you to “stop, pause, and feel” the sights, sounds and scents around you? When was the last time you watched the sunrise? I made it a point to totally change up my 4th experience this year. I spent time with friends and watched the fireworks from an entirely new place that was up close and personal. 😊 Definitely awesome for sure!
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Word-Of-the-Week #924: Awe
April 21, 2022 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #924: Awe
Awe– an overwhelming feeling of wonder; often inspired by something majestic or powerful.
When was the last time you saw something jaw dropping? How often do you spend time outdoors in nature? Do you remember the last time you felt an electrifying emotion?
“Feeling Awe May Be the Secret to Health and Happiness” comes from the Parade article by Paula Spencer Scott. She writes, “The hike, in a narrow box canyon, wasn’t going so well. Stacy Bare and his brother were arguing, for one thing. High sandstone walls hid any view, even from the 6-foot-7 Bare. After a second Army deployment, in Iraq, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): drinking too much, suicidal and struggling to find his way forward. What am I doing with my life? What does it mean to be at home, a veteran, anyway?
The trail led to a ladder. “We climbed up, still shouting at one another,” recalls Bare. “Then we looked up and wham!”
The towering slabs of Druid Arch rose up, a sunset-hued Stonehenge in the middle of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. The men’s jaws dropped. They laughed. They hugged. What were we even arguing about? Bare recalls thinking.
They’d been awestruck—altered in an instant by an electrifying emotion that scientists have only recently begun to study. You didn’t see Awe as a character in Pixar’s hit film Inside Out. But new studies show that it’s a dramatic feeling with the power to inspire, heal, change our thinking and bring people together.
WHAT IS AWE, ANYWAY?
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or beyond human scale, that transcends our current understanding of things,” says psychologist Dacher Keltner, who heads the University of California, Berkeley’s Social Interaction Lab. A pioneer in the study of emotions, he helped Facebook create those new “like” button emojis and consulted on Inside Out.
In 2013, Keltner’s lab kicked off Project Awe, a three-year research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation that has spawned more research on the topic than in the previous three decades.
You might recognize awe as that spine-tingling feeling you get gazing at the Milky Way. The dumbstruck wonder you feel as your newborn’s hand curls around your pinkie. Niagara Falls! Cirque du Soleil! Fireworks! The Sistine Chapel! The national anthem sung by someone who knows how!
“People often talk about awe as seeing the Grand Canyon or meeting Nelson Mandela,” Keltner says. “But our studies show it also can be much more accessible—a friend is so generous you’re astounded, or you see a cool pattern of shadows and leaves.”
This week’s focus is finding awe in your life. Do you remember the last time you had an overwhelming feeling of wonder? Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? Or experienced the beauty of Yosemite? When was the last time you admired a beautiful sunset, a full moon rising, or took time to just look and marvel at the stars?
Stay Tuned…next week Part 2 follow up.
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Word-Of-the-Week #654: Awe
February 16, 2017 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #654: Awe
Awe– an overwhelming feeling of wonder; often inspired by something majestic or powerful.
When was the last time you saw something jaw dropping? How often do you spend time outdoors in nature? Do you remember the last time you felt an electrifying emotion?
“Feeling Awe May Be the Secret to Health and Happiness” comes from the Parade article by Paula Spencer Scott. She writes, “The hike, in a narrow box canyon, wasn’t going so well. Stacy Bare and his brother were arguing, for one thing. High sandstone walls hid any view, even from the 6-foot-7 Bare. After a second Army deployment, in Iraq, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): drinking too much, suicidal and struggling to find his way forward. What am I doing with my life? What does it mean to be at home, a veteran, anyway?
The trail led to a ladder. “We climbed up, still shouting at one another,” recalls Bare. “Then we looked up and wham!”
The towering slabs of Druid Arch rose up, a sunset-hued Stonehenge in the middle of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. The men’s jaws dropped. They laughed. They hugged. What were we even arguing about? Bare recalls thinking.
They’d been awestruck—altered in an instant by an electrifying emotion that scientists have only recently begun to study. You didn’t see Awe as a character in Pixar’s hit film Inside Out. But new studies show that it’s a dramatic feeling with the power to inspire, heal, change our thinking and bring people together.
WHAT IS AWE, ANYWAY?
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or beyond human scale, that transcends our current understanding of things,” says psychologist Dacher Keltner, who heads the University of California, Berkeley’s Social Interaction Lab. A pioneer in the study of emotions, he helped Facebook create those new “like” button emojis and consulted on Inside Out.
In 2013, Keltner’s lab kicked off Project Awe, a three-year research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation that has spawned more research on the topic than in the previous three decades.
You might recognize awe as that spine-tingling feeling you get gazing at the Milky Way. The dumbstruck wonder you feel as your newborn’s hand curls around your pinkie. Niagara Falls! Cirque du Soleil! Fireworks! The Sistine Chapel! The national anthem sung by someone who knows how!
“People often talk about awe as seeing the Grand Canyon or meeting Nelson Mandela,” Keltner says. “But our studies show it also can be much more accessible—a friend is so generous you’re astounded, or you see a cool pattern of shadows and leaves.”
This week’s focus is finding awe in your life. Do you remember the last time you had an overwhelming feeling of wonder? Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? Or experienced the beauty of Yosemite? When was the last time you admired a beautiful sunset, a full moon rising, or took time to just look and marvel at the stars?
Stay Tuned…next week Part 2 follow up.
I LOVE feedback! Join my Facebook community on my FUN-damentals Fan Page.