Why Awe Is Anti-Aging Medicine
Episode Length: 21 minutes
The Mirror Doesn't Match
Hi everybody. Today, I want to talk about that weird, uncomfortable feeling that you get when you look in the mirror and you don't really recognize the face that you see there.
I know when it happens to me, I'm like, "What? Who is this person?" I just can't somehow believe it, because the person that I feel myself to be inside isn't matching the face that I see in the mirror. Does that ever happen to you?
When it started happening to me seriously, I got involved in looking for research about how to live so that this disparity between what I see and what I feel inside could come closer together. Because as I approach my 70th birthday this year, it's very important to me to hold on to life, to hold on to that feeling of aliveness. I call it Radical Aliveness.
Radical Aliveness isn't probably just going to stumble on you. It's a way of life, it's a lifestyle. And so everything that I find in terms of research that helps me understand how to cultivate this Radical Aliveness is what I want to bring to these videos.
Discovering Awe
This week, I had an amazing, really amazing experience with a book called Awe (A-W-E). And you know, "awesome"—that word has really diminished the beauty and the value of the word awe, because people say "awesome" about French fries and where you went for breakfast this morning. "Oh, awesome."
No. I mean, I wish we could quit using it that way, because "awesome" used to be a word that really stopped the scroll, so to speak. When something was truly awesome, it was worthy of our attention, and it meant something.
And these researchers at UC Berkeley have found out that not only does it mean something to the mind, to our thoughts, it means something to our bodies. And that's why I'm here, because if you want to begin to align your biology with your feeling of Radical Aliveness inside, this understanding of what awe is is a really powerful tool to put in your toolbox.
Two Doorways to Awe
Let's dive in. There are two kinds of experiences that open us up to awe.
The Material World
The first is to comprehend—take in deeply—something in the material world, the world around us. Walking in a forest, running along a beach, hiking up a mountain, smelling the coffee, smelling the roses that are blooming in the rose garden, feeling soft, furry things on your skin.
If you really stop and have these experiences, it's awe-inspiring, because the ability to perceive the physical world through our senses is an amazing gift. And we take it for granted, friends.
All you have to do is look at a little kid, and little kids will teach you everything you need to know about awe, because they are not jaded to the world yet. Everything is like, "Wow! Wow! Wow!" And a day in the life of a little kid may have 20, 30—I don't know—countless experiences of awe and wonderment.
And what does that awe and wonderment do? It releases beautiful oxytocin hormone, DHEA (which is a growth hormone), and calms the heart rate, brings the heart into heart coherence, which is a very specific state of regulated, even steady heartbeat. That means that your nervous system is calm and peaceful and receptive, and all these little pieces say to your body, "You're safe."
And when your body is safe, it doesn't have cortisol and adrenaline and the hormones and chemicals that produce stress. Because stress uses inflammation, and inflammation is what really is the main problem with biological aging.
So it's very important to begin to live in this condition of harmony and flow and rightness with the world.
Moral Beauty: The Surprising Discovery
The UC Berkeley researchers found that there was actually an even more powerful way to experience awe, and that is in the noticing of goodness and kindness between people. Whether it's something awe-inspiring that someone has unexpectedly done for you, or that you witness something being done between two people and you're just an observer—this is actually the most common source of awe that people in these studies reported.
So it's not that the Grand Canyon and the Northern Lights and mountaintops don't count, but there's something actually very available in your daily life that will trigger this awe response if you become sensitized to it.
Even something as simple as a young man helping a disabled person with their groceries at the grocery store. This is not an earth-shattering experience, but the sense of wonderment that somebody would stop and take a moment out of their busy life and do a kind act for a person in need does trigger this feeling of wonder. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that wonderful?
A Global Experience
This study was done at UC Berkeley in 26 countries. So this is not even just the American culture that we're talking about. This is a global experience. And because it's been documented in 26 countries, we can know from that that this is a common denominator, that people all over the globe share the ability to be in awe, in wonderment.
The researchers called this kindness between people "moral beauty." And that's an interesting term, right? Because beauty is something that inspires awe. And they named this ability of one person to do a kind act for another "moral beauty."
Learning From Children
You don't need anything really other than the ability to comprehend life in order to have these awe-inspired moments. But here's the thing: adults have tended to get desensitized to it.
Like I said, our kids and our grandkids are the best teachers if we have kind of drifted far away from the ability to know awe and wonderment. Find a way to spend some time with some little kids and then pay attention. Don't scroll on your phone when you're with them. Spend time with them. Look at the world through their eyes, and you will see things that you wouldn't see on your own, I promise you.
The Science: Inflammation and Aging
A little bit about the science for the science nerds—I'm kind of a science nerd. I don't like to come here and talk to you about things that don't have a research base.
The inflammation connection: the gerontologist's cytokine is a marker of "inflammaging"—another new word. Inflammaging. Not a good thing, folks. You don't want to inflammage. You don't want to have a physical body, a biology that is inflamed all the time.
And when you think about it, that is really a common condition. People live in an inflamed state. They're fearful, they're anxious, they're frustrated, they're angry, they're bitter, they're resentful, and they walk around churning their biology in these chemicals that inflame them. Literally, your tissues, your joints, the connective fascia, the muscles—they experience this inflammation. And this excess accelerates aging.
And that's why, or it's at least one big reason why, the woman or man in the mirror is not how you feel inside. Or sometimes, I guess it can be, because if you're filled full of resentment and anger and you look in the mirror, you will see that on your face. And that's one reason that people stop looking at themselves in the mirror.
I can tell you from having started to talk about looking at yourself in the mirror, that people on the whole don't tend to want to do it. They don't want to see what's in the mirror. And that's because it reflects how much you are living in this inflamed state, and it's very uncomfortable to acknowledge.
My Personal Experience: Grief and Aging
This really happened to me last August when my mother died. Overnight, I aged 10 years.
And luckily, as I've learned to live with my grief and feel a connection with my mother on a different level, the grief has become actually a part of a way of honoring my relationship with her. And I have learned how to allow the grief to move me into that feeling of, "Oh yeah, she's still here. We're still connected." That heart-to-heart connection isn't going anywhere.
And so no longer is that terrible shock of losing her showing on my face. But I'm telling you, the day after she died, it was horrific and it was scary, and I could see right then how consciousness—the way that we are thinking, the awareness that we are living in—is reflected on our face.
So if you're not happy with what you see in the mirror, that's a very direct indicator to you that you need to do some alignment work with what's inside and what's showing on the outside.
And this is measurable. Your emotional state will change your inflammatory profile. That's powerful, right?
What Awe Does to Your Brain
Here's what awe does to your brain: it quiets the default mode network. I like to call this the "aging default."
If you don't take ownership of your awareness and how you use it, the aging default will run the show, because the neural pathways of the brain are much more responsive to the negative emotions than the positive. And you know that's because it has survival value. Back in the day, when we were being chased around by the famous saber-toothed tiger, we needed to really get right on it when there was a problem.
But in our modern-day life, we don't have saber-toothed tigers. And so the things that trip us into that system are, you know, like traffic and road rage and interpersonal conflict that's not resolved properly.
This inflammation is measurable, but when you live in this state of awe, this default network is quieted, and it gives room for this other experience that's more transcendent. And as I already told you, that's when these youthing hormones and youthing chemicals begin to flood the body.
Finding Your Proper Place
In a way, this feeling of awe diminishes you in the grand scheme of important things. Your own little concerns find a more reasonable place in the grand scheme of the whole wonder of what we're doing here and what's available to us and the opportunities of being human.
And what are you going to keep your focus on? Are you going to focus on what you want to experience, or are you going to keep your focus on what you do not want to experience?
And sorry to say, friends, most of us keep our focus on what we don't want. And you know what happens when you focus on something? You get more of it—not because there's more there, but because this is another part of the way that the brain is designed. What you put your attention on expands in your awareness.
And so when you focus on anger and bitterness and resentment and fear and anxiety and all those negative things, you see more things to be afraid of. You see more things to be angry about. You see more things to resist.
And one thing about awe: there's a "go with the flow" kind of energy to awe, because you recognize that you're just like a little grain of sand seeing the enormity of the universe. And from that point of view, there's no reason to try to control anything. And there's an acceptance of what's so.
The Milky Way and the starry sky, the vastness of the universe, the kindness of seeing someone do a good thing or a kind thing for another person—it puts us in our proper relationship with the cosmos.
And when you feel that, then it's not so difficult to trust that maybe life is unfolding as it should, even if it's not unfolding in a way that's pleasing to you. But if you begin to get the idea that it's unfolding as it should, and that there are possibilities that are coming toward you through this unfoldment—now what are you focused on?
"Oh, well, let me see what these opportunities are. Let me focus on what's coming toward me that's a gift from the universe."
And when you begin to get gifts from the universe and you feel like your life is miraculous, what do you know then? "My life is a miracle. I could be over there, and instead, I'm right here, and this is a good place to be."
And when your body gets that message? Oxytocin, DHEA, wonderful chemicals that feel good.
Eight Doorways to Awe
A deeper level of this is that we have emotions that hijack our ability to be in this state of awe. And that's going to be a topic for another time, because I think I've already been talking here for a while. But just to say that there are ways to really become conscious of how it is that you are navigating life and places where you are giving up your power to what I call "emotional hijackers." Very important.
Awe has multiple access points—many ways to find yourself in awe. You don't have to find it in nature if you're not an outdoor person. You can find it by looking around at the interactions of people, and that's an exciting thing. You don't have to be spiritual. It can come through art. It can come through music. It can come through the creative aspect of humankind.
You can go to a museum and be awestruck by the beauty of things that you find there. And isn't it amazing that most museums have something for everyone? There's no need to only find one kind of picture. At most museums, there's sculpture and all the things, historical museums—there's just a rich world to be explored, and you can find your way into awe.
So there's:
1. Moral beauty
2. Nature
3. Music
4. Collective effervescence (this is another really cool phrase out of this study)
Have you ever, for example, done a drum circle? Now listen, if you haven't ever done a drum circle, you might want to check this out, because it is more exciting than you can ever imagine. The feeling of just a beat that is being ripped on by a bunch of people sitting in a circle—I'm telling you, that is fun stuff. I've done it myself, and now note to self: I need to go find one of those nearby, because it's been a while and it's really, really fun.
There's also:
1. Spirituality
2. The fact that life does have an endpoint, and whatever is beyond that—awesome, whatever it is, it'll be awesome
3. Epiphanies, realizations, insights
Oh, this happens to me a lot. I'm one of those people that's always kind of poking around inside myself, looking for where are these barriers to the bliss of life, the way that it is. And these insights are just like, "Wow, I can't believe I didn't know that about myself," and how exciting that is.
What You Can Do: Take an Awe Walk
What you can do: take an awe walk. If you're a nature person, go out and really just be with your environment.
You know, like one time—I love to tell this story—when my grandson was three years old, we went on a walk, and he collected five little pieces of pea gravel, and we played all afternoon with those little five pieces of rock.
Now, I guarantee you I would have missed those. But boy, you know, there's a lot of gravel because I live in a rural area, and out of all the gravel out there, he found these five special stones. And the fun that we had with them—it could have been infinite. It seemed like it would just go on forever.
Your Invitation
So in whatever way that works for you, dedicate some time this week to letting the world take your breath away. You know, kind of dust off the lens that's clouded and become jaded to all the rush and the this and the that of life, and let yourself really experience awe.
And then come back and tell me in the comments what happened. How was it? Are you going to be an "awe freak" like me? Because I'm into it now. Now that I know what's possible, I'm not going to let this avenue get closed up again.
So that's my comments for you today. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you're uplifted. I hope you're awestruck. Frankly, wouldn't that be cool if my excitement about this could be communicated to you, and I could give you the gift of opening up these beautiful pathways for using yourself?
So come back and see me again. Much love. Bye for now.
Resources Mentioned
1. Book: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner (UC Berkeley)
2. Research on awe and inflammation (IL-6 cytokine markers)
3. The concept of "inflammaging" and biological aging
Connect With Kristin
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3. Learn more about Radical Aliveness and consciousness-based age reversal
