On Discovering and Amplifying Awe

 

A walnut tree on a recent walk

I've been doing walks with Jennie every day to catch up on how our days went and talk about family challenges.  And I've been doing a walk in the middle of work almost every day.  My mind is doing different things during the walk.  Sometimes, I'm thinking about the day, sometimes I'm noticing (and taking photos) of trees, sometimes I'm listening to a podcast or audiobook. 

Gretchen Reynolds writes in "An 'Awe Walk' Might Do Wonders for Your Well-Being" about a study that examined if there were benefits from having a specific mindset while walking.  The experiment asked participants to take a 15-minute walk once per week and to take on a receptive mindset, open to novelty and awe.

“Basically, we told them to try to go and walk somewhere new, to the extent possible, since novelty helps to cultivate awe,” says Virginia Sturm, an associate professor of neurology at U.C.S.F., who led the new study. The researchers also suggested that the walkers pay attention to details along their walks, Dr. Sturm says, “looking at everything with fresh, childlike eyes.”

 They emphasized that the awesome can be anywhere and everywhere, she says, from a sweeping panorama of cliffs and sea to sunlight dappling a leaf. “Awe is partly about focusing on the world outside of your head,” she says, and rediscovering that it is filled with marvelous things that are not you.

When I did my "haiku a day" experiment, I preceded each haiku with a walking session where I wrote 10 sentences of things that I noticed.  I tried to make a sentence with concrete description and action.  Not just "the leaves are red" but "some rust colored leaves, almost detached, on the maple flap fitfully in the breeze." This was a kind of walking that helped me focus on details and "marvelous things that are not" me.  Would I describe it as "awe"? Pre-"awe"?

As part of the experiment, the walkers completed a daily online assessment of their current mood and how they felt during their strolls.  The awe-walkers sense of well-being was different than the control group.  They "felt happier, less upset and more socially connected."

Not surprisingly, they found that the awe walkers seemed to have become adept at discovering and amplifying awe. One volunteer reported focusing now on “the beautiful fall colors and the absence of them among the evergreen forest.” A control walker, in contrast, said she spent much of a recent walk fretting about an upcoming vacation and “all the things I had to do before we leave.”

I think that my "normal" workday walks are like the "control walker" -- fretting about all the things.  I need to more normally become adept at discovering and amplifying awe.

This also makes me think more about "building an inventory" of the Middle Seasons: 10 sentences of noticings a day, for 10 days of each Middle Season.