Scientists Have Found Experiencing This 1 Surprising Emotion Each Day Can Have Huge Health Benefits

Did you know that feeling awe can not only change the way you see the world, it can actually improve your health?
That’s what Dacher Keltner determined after spending over 20 years studying the emotion.
The professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the 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 how he became one of the world’s foremost awe researchers and what he’s learned while examining its affects on our minds, bodies and outlooks.
“Awe is particularly hard to describe with language,” Keltner told us. “In fact, a lot of people are like, ‘it’s ineffable. It’s beyond words. You can’t put rational, symbolic thought to it.’ And I disagree.”
The psychologist, who served as the scientific adviser on the Pixar film “Inside Out,” defines the emotion as “the feeling we have when we encounter vast mysteries.”
“The core meaning of awe as you’re feeling it come over you, is being connected to something larger than yourself,” Keltner said. “You go to a concert, you’re with a big, throbbing, massive people and you’re dancing and sweating and then the music makes you suddenly feel awestruck and you’re like, ‘God, I’m part of this — whatever this is in this moment of musical reverence that is bigger than me.’ How important that is for human beings to be connected to things larger than ourselves.”
Music is one of the “eight wonders of life” that Keltner identified while studying awe around the world.
“We got these stories of awe from 26 different countries, in people’s own words — Mexico, India, Brazil, Poland, really different countries,” he said. “And it took us a long time to figure out like, where do I find awe? What we found — and this aligns with a lot of philosophical literatures — is what I call the ‘eight wonders,’ which are moral beauty — other people’s kindness and courage; collective movement — you’re in a yoga class together, you’re dancing, you’re at musical or sporting event; nature; then music; visual design; spirituality. And then the interesting ones are the less intuitive ones, one of which is ‘big ideas.’ People feel awe about big ideas. Like, God, when I first read Karl Marx’s Economic Theory of Consciousness, I was just like, ‘I can’t believe it. This guy can explain thought patterns and class struggles.’ So I was awestruck by that. And then life and death — the life cycle makes us feel awe … it propels us to try to understand this great mystery of life.”
According to Keltner’s research, moral beauty and nature appear to be two of the most powerful of the wonders.
“Taking in the kindness and courage and strength and [the] overcoming that people are capable of just knocks people out and it’s everywhere, right?” he told us. “And then nature … it’s so profound what nature does to your mind and body.”
In fact, Keltner’s studies show that experiencing awe via any of the eight wonders can improve our health.
“One region of the brain is deactivated [when we experience awe] — the default mode network. That is where all the self-representational processes take place: I’m thinking about myself, my time, my goals, my strivings, my checklist. That quiets down during awe,” he explained.
Then our vagus nerve — “the big bundle of nerves starting in the top of your spinal cord that helps you look at people and vocalize — is activated, which, “slows our heart rate, helps with digestion and opens up our bodies to things bigger than us.”
Keltner also discovered that experiencing awe lowered inflammation, helped alleviate anxiety and pain, and triggered “the release of oxytocin, the ‘love’ hormone that promotes trust and bonding.”
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For more from Dacher Keltner, visit his website and check out his latest book, “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.”
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