The power of awe

Want to improve your life? Go do something awesome.

So says this WSJ article: Feeling Awesome: Studies Find An Emotion Has Myriad Benefits.

Awe is not the only emotion that heals....but it is one of the most awesome.

The feeling of awe and experiences that inspire it, benefit us in ways from stronger health to improved relationships, making us more generous and more humble. Awe increases empathy so we recognize another person and respond with concern. Awe makes us more willing to connect authenticallywith others.

Awe is an emotional response to something vast. It challenges and expands our way of seeing the world. It might be triggered by nature, art, a significant event. We’re just not likely to find it on a treadmill at the gym...

People report having three awe experiences a week on average. Not just lucky people: most people, just like you and me. Polett Villalta, a 39-year-old Web developer, on Hallandale Beach, Fla. paralyzed from the chest down since the age of 12, considers her first deep scuba dive to be one of the best experiences of her life. My friend Nancy is a doula and birth coach who experiences awe at the birth of every child, including her own which she was moved to share by live streaming on the Internet three years ago, during which thousands tuned in and experienced shared awe. My son Zach dreams about watching Northern Lights in Alaska. Our teacher Aimee finds it awe-inspiring to work with homeless or needy people here in Trenton and abroad, as she witnesses their resilience. I  experience constant awe on every trip to Italy - in fact in Italy they named it Stendahl's Disease: a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of beauty you encounter in the art and in the scenery in places like Tuscany, Rome, Lago Maggiore - in short from tip to toe. Awe may help fight depression, experts theorize. Awe may help reduce inflammation.

Researchers asked 119 undergraduates to rate how often they felt seven positive emotions including awe. Those who reported feeling awe the most had the lowest levels of inflammation markers in their saliva. The study didn’t examine the link between awe and depression, but past studies have found heightened inflammation in people with depression.

Maybe we could host awe interventions.

Awe is powerful because it takes us out of our own heads. Awe minimizes our individual identity and attunes us to things bigger than ourselves

Each and every hot yoga class has the possibility to open you to unexpected moments of awe.

When you can suddenly feel the weight of your body lift; when you feel or realize you no longer feel that old familiar pain in your back; when you feel a true connection to everyone in the room with you.

These are all awe-inspiring everyday occurences I hear from our students in hot yoga and, after 16 years of practice, I still experience myself. It's one reason I still look forward to teaching and practicing.

It's just one of the many things that makes it awesome to be a hot yoga teacher and studio owner.

Simply writing about a past awe experience can be awe inspiring. Thus, I am completing with awe my book The Blissful Warrior: Living the Paradox of Peace and Passion for Today's Empowered Woman. They say you write the book you were meant to live. Maybe living with awe is also meant to be, it makes you feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And that is an awesome scheme indeed. Because it's true: we're all busy. Overworked. Maybe even underappreciated. Biut that's no reason to let ourselves be underwhelmed by the everyday, especially when every day holds the promise of awe.It becomes a habit to look at the world through the lens of "I can't".

Saying "I can", and believing it and acting as if you can indeed,  creates the space for awe-inspiring solutions and experiences. This is a main ingredient in an awe inspiring life.

      

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Comments

[Becky]

I will look at my new "awe" moments differently after reading this