This article is part of SELF’s 2024 Guide to Getting Outside, an editorial package that explores the connection between nature and well-being through the lens of awe. SELF will be publishing new articles for this series throughout October. Read more here.
A few months ago, I found myself hanging out by the side of the highway in New Jersey—a generally uninspiring situation. I was visiting Cape May on a press trip with the folks at FeatherSnap, who had put together a bird-watching tour of the area. The brand’s lead ornithologist, Maria, had scoped out several exciting locations for us that week, and the most unexpected of the bunch was nestled along the Route 52 Causeway leading into Ocean City’s welcome center.
The wind was whipping and the sky, threatening to drench us any minute, mirrored the dull grays of the roads, sidewalks, and bike paths around us. But Maria was beaming as we walked just a few feet from where we had parked. There, in the most unassuming spot, was a stretch of lush trees, supporting a collective of big, beautiful wading birds: feathery white ibises, elegant egrets, stocky yellow-crowned night herons, and a slender little blue heron (all lifers for me!). As I observed them from our elevated viewpoint—resting, nesting, flying out to the coastal marsh surrounding us—a familiar bliss flooded my senses: I was in complete awe.
I’m no stranger to seeing a lot of cool birds in confined spaces. I do most of my birding in New York City, where more than 200 species pass through Central Park each year. But that day at the rookery (the term for the nesting area of a big breeding colony), I couldn’t comprehend the sheer number of giant birds I was looking at. I turned to Maria and fired a bunch of questions: Is it common for different species to nest together? Do they do this for protection? How long will they stay here? In my head I contemplated, Wouldn’t it be nice if humans acted more like this?
Awe has a funny way of igniting a childlike wonder in us, often acting as a “gateway to every other resilience practice,” Jeff Thompson, PhD, a research scientist focusing on awe in the department of psychology at Columbia University in New York City, tells SELF. In his work, he explores how awe might connect to your curiosity or creativity, for example: “Say you’re walking through the park: You see these humongous trees and you start wondering, How old is that tree? Can’t trees be over a hundred years old? That means it’s more than three times my age. Then you might start thinking, what was it like in this park 80 years ago? It just gets you out of your head.”
Awe is hard to describe because there’s no feeling quite like it.
Awe isn’t exactly the same as joy or gratitude, nor does it totally align with humility or hope. Amazement and wonder are probably the closest comparisons we have to awe, but scientists explore them as distinct emotions, Jennifer Stellar, PhD, an associate professor of psychology who researches awe at the University of Toronto Mississauga, tells SELF.
She views awe as a generally positive thing, but notes it can be complex, sometimes conjuring feelings of disorientation or even fear (say, when you encounter something unsettling and a bit beyond your grasp). “Awe is an emotion you feel toward a thing or person that is so extraordinary, it almost defies comprehension,” she says—and it often changes or challenges how you view the world.
Dr. Thompson thinks about it similarly: “Awe is an ordinary response to something extraordinary.” Consider the feeling of relative smallness you experience when you gaze at something vast—like where the ocean meets the sky, an eclipse in totality, or a mountain range lined with bright yellow aspens. But he also points to the flip side of that framing: “It’s an extraordinary response to something ordinary.” That could be a droplet of water clinging to a rose petal; the afternoon light dancing along your bedroom’s walls; the Japanese maple slowly shedding its leaves in your yard, sprinkling the earth with fiery red confetti—each scene a striking little miracle.
Nature is one of the strongest pathways we have to awe, but it’s not the only meaningful way in. “Even a beautiful skyscraper, a feat of human ingenuity, can elicit awe,” Dr. Stellar says. You can also embrace the sublime at a concert or museum, during a mindfulness meditation or spiritual ceremony, or in the throes of a psychedelic experience. Admiring other people—say, your partner who just gave birth, or your grandparents when they tell stories about living through the Civil Rights Movement—can evoke a mystified reverence too.
Feeling awe benefits your health, often in ways you might not expect.
When I got back to my hotel room after our time at the rookery, I felt a stillness settling within me: My brain was no longer whirring (its default mode) and my jaw, shoulder, and upper back muscles—areas where I hold the most tension—felt a little looser. I was tired (we had also spent the morning at a state park and nature reserve) but it was the “good” tired that often precedes a deep, restorative sleep. I’ve noticed these effects every time I spend a day outdoors, regardless of whether I’m meandering through an urban park or climbing a rocky trail in the deep forests of Upstate New York. I’m simply a calmer person once I’ve had my nature fix.
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Physiologically speaking, the body’s response to awe “resembles a sort of freezing,” with the actual goosebumps to prove it, per a 2021 review of research. (In fact, compared to other emotions, awe can make you feel like you have more time, increasing your patience, rooting you in the present, and possibly even sparking a willingness to give up your hours to help others.)
The slow-down it triggers in your body can translate to a host of mental and physical benefits: Studies have shown awe can reduce your “fight or flight” response, boost levels of the “feel-good” hormone oxytocin, improve your vagal tone (a clinical measurement that offers insight to your heart function and how your body reacts to stress), and potentially reduce inflammation (a well-documented precursor to chronic health issues like autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular problems, as well as certain mental health conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder). Of course, awe can’t fully eliminate any one chaos agent in your life, Dr. Thompson says, but it does give your system a much-needed break and potentially a better ability to handle stress in the future.
Some evidence suggests that awe might sharpen your thinking too. For instance, an older study published in the journal Emotion found that people who were induced to feel awe were not as easily persuaded by “weak” arguments compared to folks who thought about something neutral. And a more recent string of studies found that people with a “disposition to experience awe” in everyday life also tend to have “a more accurate understanding of how science works”—this association wasn’t seen in other positive emotions like pride, joy, or amusement.
Then there’s awe’s “weird ability to redirect our default focus on ourselves and direct that attention toward other people,” Dr. Stellar explains. By nature, we think about ourselves a lot (thank you, mighty ego!), but awe “temporarily diminishes that self-focus.”
For example, when your eyes trace the stars and the darkness between them, you might start to think of yourself as an itty-bitty speck of dust in an incomprehensibly big universe; at the same time, perhaps that’s the very thing that makes you feel intertwined with the world around you, including other people (who also probably feel pretty damn small when they look up). That humbling thought pattern is what makes awe a unique “prosocial” emotion, both Dr. Thompson and Dr. Stellar emphasize. These blips of astonishment remind and encourage you to act as a piece of a greater whole, facilitating optimism, generosity, and altruism. “If you see yourself as connected to others, in this web of life, you’re probably more likely to care about somebody else when they’re suffering, or help them if they need it,” Dr. Stellar says. (A study done on the UC Berkeley campus backs this up: People who spent time in a grove of 200-foot eucalyptus trees reported feeling more awe and helped pick up more pens when a researcher “accidentally” dropped a box of them compared to folks who merely stared at a basic large building.)
This is one reason why Dr. Thompson exposes people to the “awe stories” of others in his research. He likens experience-sharing to an “upward spiral of well-being”—you feel good when you share a profound moment with someone, and when they mirror a similar sentiment back to you. And that just keeps the positive vibes going. Dr. Thomspon says the deepening of connection he’s documented from this simple practice, sometimes between strangers, is “wild and beautiful…and science too.”
You don’t have to do big things to feel this big emotion.
The good news is that you don’t have to trudge through a “moderate” hike or anxiously navigate narrow mountain roads to reap the benefits of awe. “Experiences of awe are not determined by how much money you have in your bank account,” Dr. Thompson says. “Awe is accessible to everyone, everywhere, if we’re open to it.” You can often dial in from home: “Even watching something like Planet Earth works pretty well to elicit awe,” Dr. Stellar notes.
Here are three little ways to seek it, notice it, and make it a part of your everyday life:
Don’t underestimate the power of a “micro awe.”
Step one is to pin down what gives you that feeling of transcendence: Is it the thunderous bass of a rock show? The bold brush strokes of an impressionist painting? The spindly vines and shaggy leaves of an overflowing vegetable garden? Or how about the first time you smell autumn in the air each year, equal parts crisp and nostalgic? “Open your definition of what an awe experience can be,” Dr. Thompson says. “If you’re having a hard time, think smaller.”
Take an example from a study Dr. Stellar conducted, in which she and a team of researchers asked participants how often awe showed up in their daily lives. She was curious about the folks who reported feeling a lot of it: “What are these people doing? How can they possibly be experiencing this much awe?” she recalls. When they asked these folks to get more granular, she was delighted by one answer in particular: “This woman wrote about pouring cream into her coffee and watching it swirl, making this beautiful pattern as it mixed in. And I was like, ‘Man, I just pour cream into my coffee and gulp it down.’”
It’s not that different from the idea of romanticizing your life. And you don’t even need to change your routine to relish what Dr. Thompson calls “micro awes.” If you go for a walk every day, for example, give yourself a goal of observing three things on your route that you hadn’t paid much attention to before—say, the architectural details of a building on your block, the moss creeping over the iron gate of your local cemetery, or a willow’s branches gently swaying over the pond in your neighborhood park. “All these little moments of awe build up to a greater sense of well-being,” he says. “Be open to those moments. They are there if you allow them to be.”
Get into your feelings with someone.
Again, awe helps us feel a little less isolated, a little more part of something. You can go out of your way to encounter it with another person, sure, but you can also just talk about it. Let this example from my conversation with Dr. Thompson inspire you: Before he was a scientist, he spent 20 years working as a detective in New York City: “My head’s not stuck in the clouds. I’ve seen the reality of the world,” he says. “Awe reminds me that the good is out there every day. Even while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, seeing the sunrise in my rearview mirror would put me a little bit more at ease.”
I felt comfortable enough to share a similar memory with him: “I remember being in the car with my mom when I was younger. She looked at the sunset, smiled, and held out her hand as if she was going to scoop something up and said: ‘The sun looks like an egg yolk, like I could just hold it in my hand.’ She doesn’t share her emotions a lot, so in that moment, she was so human to me. And it was really special.”
There we were, two people who had met just 15 minutes prior, swapping stories about the sun from the most intimate corners of our minds—which checks out, according to Dr. Thompson: “Awe makes a good memory that much more vivid.” Once you start opening up about the snippets that have stuck with you, it becomes contagious. “Awe starts with you but don’t let it end with you,” he says. “Share it with other people.”
Give awe its own space in your wellness routine.
To foster more of this magic in your life, you need to be intentional about it just like any other habit that’s good for you: In the same way that you might carve out time to exercise, cook a nutritious meal, or get enough sleep, adding “feel a little amazed by something” to your to-do list might transform the way you think about self-care.
But Dr. Stellar notices a lot of resistance from folks who feel like they’re too busy to stop and smell the literal roses. “These little moments can be missed if you’re on your phone, multitasking too much, stressed and rushing,” she says. “I’m not saying that awe is as important as exercise, but they are different pathways toward mental and physical health. So you need to cultivate them. I think we have an unbalanced perspective on the benefits of these positive emotional experiences, so we tend to let those go first.”
So whether you lean on a grounding technique to stay present when awe hits, block off 15 more minutes of leisure time in your schedule, or try different forms of journaling to solidify what you’re noticing, the key is to be “thoughtful about protecting awe-inducing moments,” Dr. Stellar says. “Then when you happen to find yourself in one, slow down and give yourself a chance to experience it.”
Related:
- How to Practice the ‘Leave No Trace’ Principles While Enjoying Nature
- 19 Creative Ways to Get a Little Self-Care Outside
- Why Having a Little Hobby Is So Good for You, According to Science
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