WHEN WAS YOUR LAST AWE-GASM? How wonder can benefit our minds and bodies

It can be difficult to really let ourselves experience wonder, but if you open yourself up to it, you’ll feel the mind – and body – benefits, says Nikki Osman

Some facial expressions are best left in your childhood. Pulling the edges of your lips with your fingers into a wide clown-smile, say, or sticking out your bottom lip in the direction of a parent. But recent research suggests there’s one expression worth resurrecting: face turned upwards, eyes open wide, lips forming a perfect ‘O’. It was the face you pulled the first time you played in the snow, toasted a marshmallow and learned that the big blue thing is the ocean. The emotion responsible for your features taking on this particular formation? Awe. Researchers have credited the feeling with everything from increasing creativity to reducing inflammation, but it’s the impact that awe could have on your mental health

that’s blowing the minds of scientists studying it. Recent research suggests it could reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression and even PTSD. Yet I suspect it’s been a while since you experienced true awe. While it’s up for grabs for grown-ups – you can find it standing on top of a mountain or watching the sun sink below the horizon – the propensity for thrusting your phone in front of amazing things makes it harder to access.

‘While children have an innate ability to live in the moment, adults find it more challenging,’ explains Dr Disa Sauter, associate professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Plus, it’s not enough to put yourself in front of an awe-inducing experience. ‘You have to be present enough to allow it to overwhelm you,’ Sauter adds.

‘I felt it twice yesterday,’ says Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘I took five minutes to study the changing colours of the sky during an incredible sunset. Before that, I watched a two-year-old running across a wooden bridge over a stream.’ Saccharine, perhaps, but it’s worth parking the cynicism. Professor Keltner coined the first scientific definition of awe 16 years ago, and he’s since dedicated his career to studying the emotion. He and his co-author, Professor Jonathan Haidt, posited that in order for an experience to go from average to awesome, two conditions have to be met. The first is vastness: ‘Anything that’s larger than the self or the self’s ordinary frame of reference,’ he explains. The second condition is ‘an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures’ – that is to say, it’s the feeling you have when you can’t quite get your head around something.

Awe has physical symptoms, too. Your biological reaction to it begins in the autonomic nervous system, which encompasses the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, and serves to regulate heart rate, blood pressure and fundamental stress reactions. ‘When the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, your heart begins to race and your cortisol spikes. When your parasympathetic system kicks in, it has a calming effect,’ explains Dr Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. ‘The interesting thing about awe is that it can trigger both systems at the same time, leaving you with an intense feeling of bliss amid a profound sense of arousal.’ One of the few other experiences to trigger both systems at once is an orgasm.

In a bid to measure the mental health impact of awe, Dr Newberg studied participants attending a spiritual retreat, putting their awe-inspired brains under magnetic resonance imaging. ‘When people label their feelings as spiritual, the notion of awe is one of the terms frequently used,’ he explains. Dr Newberg found that beyond reducing the physiological signs of stress, it can actually change your brain. ‘We saw changes in the levels of dopamine and serotonin – the neurotransmitters involved in feeling good and reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Our findings suggest that eliciting awe in a spiritual context can positively influence your mental health.’

Researchers believe this is just the tip of the awe-berg in terms of what this emotion can do for you. Much of Professor Keltner’s research has focused on the impact of awe on social skills – not your ability to make small talk with stampcollecting Steve at a dinner party, but your altruistic instincts. In one study, people who watched a nature video that elicited awe described themselves as feeling more connected to people in general. In another, standing in front of a dinosaur skeleton made people more inclined to describe themselves as feeling part of a group. When Dr Sauter’s team studied the brains of people watching a video of a waterfall, they found less activity in the area of the brain that deals with self-referential processing, which is the area that lights up when you’re thinking about yourself. ‘This suggests that awe is a prosocial emotion, a personal feeling that serves to bind you to others,’ she explains.

Nature is a major trigger for wonder and has been proven to support good mental health, and Professor Keltner’s team is currently testing this theory. They took a group of war veterans and at-risk inner-city kids white water rafting in a bid to induce awe. Their findings reveal that awe – as opposed to other positive emotions, such as joy, pride and contentment – delivered the greatest boost to wellbeing. In fact, one week after the study, participants reported a 29% reduction in PTSD symptoms. The team are now trialling ‘awe walks’ as an intervention for depression. So, how to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary? ‘Our research suggests that everyone is capable of experiencing awe, so it’s about creating opportunities to feel it,’ says Dr Newberg. ‘If you want to have an awe-inspiring experience in nature, take hikes, swim in the ocean, go to the mountains and keep going back.’ To better understand what it is that takes something from everyday to awesome, Dr Newberg recommends carrying out a values exercise. ‘It’s a little meditation whereby you ask yourself, “What are my inner values?” Write down whatever pops into your head, then see how an experience – be it a spiritual retreat or a bucket list holiday – changes those values.’ Still not getting any? It isn’t enough to sightsee, you have to ‘sight-feel’. Dr Newberg cites the example of Stonehenge: to some, an awe-inducing example of mysticism while, to others, it’s just a bunch of rocks.

The difference, he explains, is immersing yourself in the experience. ‘The last time I was there, I found myself wondering how it’s been here for thousands of years and how that connects us through history,’ he explains. ‘By truly immersing yourself in the full experience of a place, you increase your chances of inducing an awe experience. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but you can increase your chances of feeling it by keeping an open mind, creating opportunities to feel it and living in the present.’

So put your phone down for a moment – what you see might just blow your mind.

‘IT ISN’T ENOUGH TO SIGHTSEE, YOU HAVE TO “SIGHT-FEEL”’