The Moment Everything Gets Quiet
You know the feeling. You are standing at the edge of a canyon, or watching the sun melt into the ocean, or staring up at a cathedral ceiling that seems to stretch into infinity, and for just a moment, your thoughts go completely silent. Your shoulders drop. Your breath slows. Something shifts inside you that you cannot quite name.
Scientists can name it. They call it awe, and over the last two decades, researchers have begun to understand that this emotion is not just a pleasant bonus of being human. It may be one of the most powerful tools we have for protecting our physical and emotional health, and particularly the health of our hearts.
What Is Awe, Exactly?
Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt first formally defined awe in 2003 as the feeling that arises when we encounter something vast, something that challenges our existing understanding of the world. It is the emotion that makes us feel simultaneously small and connected to something much larger than ourselves.
Awe-inspiring experiences can come from many sources:
- Natural landscapes like mountains, oceans, storms, and starry skies
- Works of art, music, or architecture that stop us in our tracks
- Acts of extraordinary courage or moral beauty in other people
- Scientific discoveries that reveal the staggering complexity of the universe
- Religious or spiritual experiences
- Even a single flower opening, if we are paying close enough attention
What all of these have in common is that they push us beyond our ordinary frame of reference. And it turns out, that push does something remarkable to our biology.
What Happens Inside Your Body When You Feel Awe
Research from the University of California, Berkeley has produced some of the most compelling findings on awe and physical health. In a landmark study led by Dr. Dacher Keltner, participants who reported higher levels of awe in their daily lives were found to have significantly lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are proteins linked to depression, heart disease, diabetes, and a range of other chronic conditions.
To put that in plain language: people who regularly experienced awe had less inflammation in their bodies. And chronic inflammation is one of the leading drivers of cardiovascular disease.
The study also found that awe was the single strongest predictor of low cytokine levels, outperforming other positive emotions like joy, pride, contentment, and even love. That finding surprised the researchers themselves. Of all the good feelings a human being can have, the one that most powerfully reduces the biological markers of disease was the one you feel standing in front of something beautiful and enormous.
The Nervous System Connection
Awe also has a measurable effect on the autonomic nervous system, which governs our fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest responses. When we experience genuine awe, studies show that our heart rate slows, our breathing deepens, and our body shifts away from the stress response and toward the parasympathetic state, sometimes called the rest-and-digest mode.
This is the same physiological state that meditation, deep breathing exercises, and yoga are designed to produce. And sometimes, all it takes is looking up at the right sky at the right moment.
Awe and the Vagus Nerve
Some researchers believe awe may activate the vagus nerve, the long wandering nerve that runs from the brainstem through the heart and into the gut. The vagus nerve is a central player in regulating inflammation, heart rate, and emotional resilience. Strong vagal tone, which is essentially a measure of how well this nerve is functioning, is associated with better cardiovascular health, greater emotional regulation, and even stronger social bonds.
When people describe the physical sensation of awe, they often mention a tingling or chills, a sense of expansion in the chest, or feeling moved to tears. These responses are consistent with vagal activation. In other words, beauty may be doing something deeply physiological, not just poetic.
Awe Shrinks the Ego (and That Is a Good Thing)
One of the most fascinating psychological effects of awe is what researchers call the small self effect. When we experience awe, our sense of individual self temporarily shrinks. We feel less preoccupied with our personal worries, our to-do lists, our grievances and ambitions. We feel more connected to the larger whole, whether that is nature, humanity, or the universe itself.
This is not just philosophically interesting. It has measurable health benefits. Studies have linked the small self experience to reduced anxiety, lower levels of narcissism, increased generosity and prosocial behavior, and greater life satisfaction. People who feel awe regularly tend to be less stressed, more patient, and more willing to help others.
In a culture that tells us to be more productive, more ambitious, and more self-focused, awe is quietly radical. It reminds us that we are part of something bigger, and that awareness is genuinely healing.
You Do Not Need a Grand Canyon to Feel It
One of the most encouraging findings in awe research is that you do not need to travel to remote or spectacular locations to experience its benefits. Researchers have coined the term everyday awe to describe the small, ordinary moments that can trigger the same emotion if we approach them with the right kind of attention.
Consider some of the moments participants in awe studies have described as genuinely moving:
- Watching a murmuration of starlings shift shape across a winter sky
- Listening to a piece of music that suddenly hits differently than it ever has before
- Looking at a photograph from the James Webb Space Telescope
- Watching a child figure out something new for the first time
- Standing in a forest and noticing the way light filters through the leaves
- Reading a sentence in a book that feels like it was written just for you
Dr. Michelle Shiota, a psychologist at Arizona State University who studies awe, suggests that the key ingredient is not the scale of the experience but the quality of our attention. Awe requires us to slow down, to actually look, and to let what we are seeing register fully rather than rushing past it.
Prescribing Awe: What the Research Suggests We Should Actually Do
Given the evidence, some researchers and clinicians are beginning to talk seriously about awe as a component of preventive health. Here is what the science suggests about how to build more awe into your life intentionally:
1. Take an Awe Walk
A 2020 study published in the journal Emotion found that people who went on weekly awe walks, specifically walks where they set the intention to notice something vast or wondrous, reported significantly greater positive emotions, less daily distress, and greater feelings of social connection than those who simply took regular walks. The awe walkers also smiled more in photographs taken during the walks, and showed more presence and focus on what was around them rather than on themselves.
2. Seek Out Music That Gives You Chills
That physical sensation of chills or goosebumps when you hear a piece of music is called frisson, and it is closely related to awe. Research suggests that music-induced awe may produce many of the same physiological benefits as other awe experiences. Making time for music you find genuinely moving is not indulgent. It is arguably health-promoting.
3. Look Up More Often
Literally. The sky is one of the most reliable triggers of awe available to nearly everyone, and it changes constantly. A few minutes of cloud-watching, star-gazing, or watching a sunrise does not require a plane ticket or a vacation day.
4. Spend Time in Nature, Even Brief Time
Research consistently shows that even short periods of time in natural settings reduce cortisol levels, lower blood pressure, and improve mood. You do not need wilderness. A park, a garden, or a tree-lined street can be enough if you are paying attention.
5. Consume Art That Challenges You
Visiting a museum, watching a film that genuinely moves you, or reading literature that expands your sense of what is possible are all legitimate awe practices. The arts have always existed partly to give us access to this emotion. Use them for exactly that purpose.
A Small Shift With Large Consequences
It is easy to dismiss the suggestion that looking at something beautiful is good for your heart. It sounds soft, or perhaps too simple to be taken seriously alongside the usual advice about diet, exercise, and medication.
But the science is building, and it is pointing somewhere genuinely important: the quality of our inner emotional life has measurable consequences for our physical health. The emotions we cultivate, seek out, or avoid do not stay contained in our minds. They travel through our nervous systems, our blood, our cells.
Awe, it turns out, may be one of the most underrated medicines available to us. It costs nothing. It is accessible almost everywhere. And it has a way of reminding us, precisely when we need it most, that the world is much larger and more astonishing than whatever problem we happen to be carrying.
So the next time you feel the pull to slow down and look at something beautiful, do not fight it. Science is now on your side.