The Surprising Science of Awe
By: Tracey Chester, Director Sd Pain, Trauma Inst.
Tags: Trauma, Chronic Pain, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Surfing

What is true Awe?

Jupiter and Mars are aligning tonight and will be visible from the night sky by the naked eye; a once in a millennia occurrence.

At the dog park tonight, as has been my habit of late, I looked up and watched these two planets move closer and closer . For the last few weeks these planets have been hanging in the sky, close together, and are moving towards its finale on Monday night when both planets will be perfect “conjunction” alignment, visible by the naked eye.

Photo by Deborah Byrd in ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS | January 15, 2018

In other years past, not 2020, this might not have captured my attention and imagination as it has tonight.

Before 2020, I was busy, I was stressed. 2020 is much different. It has asked so much of us, as individuals, as a species. We are literally at a crossroads of protecting our own survival. The earth will survive climate change, and has done so for billions of years. Humans similar to us only made an entrance 130,000 years ago. That seems like a long time but it’s not. It’s hard to conceive of these units of time; Tom Hickson is a friend of mine; he also happens to be a Geology Professor at University of St. Thomas. He shared his last lecture for his geology 101 Course and put the words together to teach his class of young students about their lifetimes, and what it means to be a human in 2020. His case strove to put time into perspective. He compares our lifetime to 3 inches of movement, in what would be a walk across the the USA. Even then I STILL can’t quite comprehend it.

In 1226, The humans that lived here in San Diego were part of a story. The story like so many others, of assimilation, of one tribe wiping out another. It started here as far as we know around 10,000 BC. These were the “original” San Dieguito peoples, referred to as the La Jolla population . Over the next 9000 years Tribes changed, cultures assimilated, or wiped out, languages changed but we do know in fact that there were humans just like us right here, in 1226, our kids studied them all in 3rd grade, my daughter kept up an interest of these and other peoples, so much so that she is about to graduate from NYU, with a Bachelors in Anthropology.

In 1226, there was probably an “elder” woman my age, who would have been gazing at this in wonder as I am now.

Once, in another lifetime it seems, I was a young woman geologist. I worked and thought in terms of millions of years. hundreds of thousands of years at a minimum. We considered anything measuring in the 10s of thousands of years to be just a small footnote to the last 4.543 billions of years.

This year, 2020 has been undeniably awful. I look up at these planets, to remember just how small I am. How 2020 is just one year of billions of years earth has been around.

It’s hard to conceive of these units of time, these thousands and millions and billions of time and it always have been. To do so, my brain has to open up and imagine. I’ve been making sure to finding moments like this so often lately, as I contemplate what this planet will look like in 20 years, the life span of a very old cat. This isn’t much time, not even a millisecond of a whisper of the span of humanity, much less the earth.

This feeling I’m describing of trying to open up my brain to imagine to wonder, has a name to it. Awe. We overuse the word awe, to the point that we don’t ponder its meaning. This is awesome That is awesome, a movie, a song, a triumphant play on the football field. And these are moments of awe, don’t get me wrong.

But true AWE is a mysterious and complex emotion. There is a neurological science to experiencing AWE. According to Summer Allen, PhD,

“Awe experiences are self-transcendent. They shift our attention away from ourselves, make us feel like we are part of something greater than ourselves, and make us more generous toward others”.

According to Allen, philosophers and religious scholars have explored awe for centuries, while it remained mostly ignored by psychologists until the early 2000s. Since then, there has been growing interest in exploring awe empirically. This has led to so many discoveries about the nature of awe, at the same time, also raising many questions still to be explored.

Allen goes on to describe what I think are frankly, the most exciting possible treatment for mental health, in his White Paper prepared for the John Templeton Foundation by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

“ The experience of awe is accompanied by a host of physiological, psychological, and social effects. For example, studies have found that feelings of awe can be accompanied by heart rate changes, “goosebumps,” and the sensation of chills, and there is some evidence that awe may even decrease markers of chronic inflammation. ”

As a clinician, who specializes in trauma and chronic pain, and a person who suffers from both, this description is what first grabbed my attention about awe. This explained my love, my need to be outdoors in nature or to listen and play music, to look up into the sky.

To me, it boils down to thinking of awe in essence as our brains generating certain chemicals, and new pathways; these complicated connections create changes in our brain. We are being brought to another level, we are seeing outside ourselves. This is true mindfulness.

Indeed, Stargazing is practiced by many, as a form of meditation. Mark Westmoquette, author of Mindful Thoughts for Stargazers — find your inner universe and the recently released Mindful Universe, has a rare insight into both the science of stargazing, and its meditative effects.

“I began to see how the tools of mindfulness could equally apply to stargazing, and how it could be a very mindful activity,” he explains.

“During periods of worry and anxiety, when you find yourself lying awake at night, the familiar constellations and the slow wheeling of the heavens can be a reassuring source of comfort,” says Westmoquette. “Looking up at the stars can become a silent retreat into wonder and awe. I find that considering the enormity of space and time and the existence of our tiny planet within that, always helps put my personal worries into perspective.”

This science of awe, has taught me to cope with my own trauma by seeking out these moments as often as I can. Like everyone I get busy I forget. Absorbed with my own problems. My worries.

But if I stop and make myself look up, my mood perceptively changes.

I also experience awe when I surf, when I look at an amazing sunset at the beach, when I look at an unbelievably beautiful rock formation, or a tall building. I feel it when I watch a spider craft a web, when I listen to the Beethoven’s 9th symphony, when I meet an inspirational person. The list goes on and on,and varies with everyone.

The science of Awe and its application for healing trauma is just beginning to become formally accepted. There is a new modality I have been immersing myself in this summer since joining Groundswell Community Project. Groundswell, is a research-based surf therapy non-profit organization that offers a variety of surf therapy programs for intersecional communities of women, overcoming various forms of trauma and its effects. has built. Groundswell is research based, firmly in the neuroscience of being near water.

A newly branded surf therapy facilitator at Groundswell, I take a moment

Natalie Small, LMFT, the founder of Groundswell created a therapeutic structure to what many surfers knew intuitively, that playing in the ocean generates similar changes physiologically. Groundswell’s surf therapy curriculum is grounded in positive psychology, somatic and arts-based therapy modalities and mindfulness practices. She bases her program on the neuroscience of the brain, specifically what is known as our “blue minds”, as coined by Wallace J. Nichols, Ph D in his best seller “Blue Mind, The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In , On or Under Water Can Make You Happier and Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do.”

While surf therapy, is not yet considered a legit mode of therapy by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, it is on its way thanks to organizations like Groundswell and there membership within ISTO (International Surf Therapy Organization). Together they study surf therapy and its effects, partnering with scientists at UCSD, amongst other research institutions.

Everything about surf therapy makes sense, as it is its own unique form of awe and how mother ocean is so much a part of it. The awe of the turn, the cutback, the subtle balance shifts, hanging ten, the feeling of flying on a wave. As surfers we look to the sky often, we notice the moon and think about the tides. We think abut our ocean every day one way or another, keep track of swells, conditions. Our ancestors did the same thing. These humans who stood here in 1226, the last time this happened, were the original sea-farers, and we have a few Archaelogcal sites to prove it. In our hubris, the white man pushed them inland away from their bearings.

Tonight, at the dog park, other than this rare planetary occurence, other things are happening,

Sylvia, who has a Vizlsa named Vince, tells me her niece is birthing a baby right this moment. We contemplate this as we gaze at the planets together.

20 yards away a dog has just caught and killed a gopher, he is domesticated, but his instincts kicked in when this brave little gopher stuck his neck out just one too many times. Everybody has a reaction. You’d think we were on a wildlife safari.

I have been noticing this gopher these last few weeks -thinking he was just a bit TOO brave. I knew the end he had in store. Still I have been pulling for him (I know he’s a vermin but I can’t help it, I antrhopomorphise ; that’s how overly empathetic i am). My dog could have got him several times, but he was too chicken .

I realize now that i’ve been following his short life in some small way the last week or two. I have pictures even. of my dog hunting the gopher. so when I see this dog shake him to death, I feel a little sad.

His short life has completed its cycle, and I got to witness a bit of it.

Time is different for all species, I realize I have been on this bench in this park for some 20 years since we moved here. Faces have changed, dogs have come and gone. Friendships have been made. I raised two children during this time, I loved and lost 2 dogs and watched other dogs grow old with them. I went back to school and started a new career as a therapist. I realize now, sitting for 20 years, at these fixed coordinates, I have developed a sense of navigation from the stars.

Our paths in life are measured in time. Time is a universal, it defines us. Tonight I am in awe of all of it.