From The Archives: The Power of Awe: Overcoming Anxiety, Disconnect, & Depression By Using The Divine Feminine Gifts Of Awareness, Stillness, & Bliss In Microdoses Throughout Your Day

What I found interesting at one point in your book, you speak about, and maybe it was your predecessor, the person you said who was a prominent researcher, maybe it was him that had spoken with somebody.

And I just remember a quote in the book was that somebody had said, awe is nothing really to research because it's sort of a luxury thing that we can't really use as data to determine whether or not people aren't going to use that.

It's not significant enough.

Yeah, that was another researcher in Arizona who said at the time that awe was like the Gucci bag of emotions.

It was something might be nice to have, but you don't need it.

And then what we discovered is actually that's really not true, that awe is not a luxury, it's actually a very significant positive emotion that affects us physiologically and psychologically, and it works in many unique ways.

I'll give you a couple examples.

Awe has been demonstrated, and this isn't our work, but people who did this in 2015, demonstrated that when you access the emotion of awe, you will reduce the levels of inflammation in your system, which is huge because of course all disease involves inflammation.

And so if we can get people to shift their nervous system into a state where inflammation markers go down, then that's going to help them heal and recover and experience greater wellbeing.

Absolutely.

And then it, so in turn, it must also reduce stress because we know that stress is one of the number one producers of cortisol and, and inflammation and disease in our body.

And it makes sense because when you think of awe, I know all of us have experienced it.

And it usually, for me, it's a sense of total peace, something, it might be very ephemeral, a short moment, but it just is something that you say, wow, that there's something big, there's something I feel connected to this.

I feel in awe of this.

And it's a remarkable moment.

And just as you said, it actually is extremely important.

It's not luxury because, again, I think it's something that we've lost touch with, which is that we are on this earth to experience awe and magnificent and to revel in the wonder that is this planet that we find ourselves on.

I couldn't agree with you more.

And I find interesting as you try to describe, it's almost as if you can't find the words.

Do you notice that? Yes.

And it's a fascinating part of it because awe takes us into a state of consciousness where there actually are not words.

It's a nonverbal state.

And in our culture, that's very unusual.

So people talk about gratitude as an example.

And we have a lot of words and we can describe gratitude and we can talk about it with other people.