I must have been around 10 or 11 years old the winter I realized how vast the universe was.
A storm tumbled through our town leaving eight inches of snow in its wake. The next day the temperature warmed enough to rain and then rapidly dropped below zero, transforming the top inches of snow into a thick layer of ice—a hardy crust that you could walk on top of and not break through. For adults this was probably a pain in the butt, but for us kids it was a magical playground.
It only took one stupidly fast and uncontrollable run down the hill in our back yard for my brother and I to realize how treacherous the situation was. Normally we could maneuver our sleds into a controlled landing by dragging one or both arms in the snow, like a rudder, and easily avoid crashing into the pine trees lining the bottom. But with the ice there was no dragging, only careening, our tiny faces slapped with pine needles before an unceremonious and sudden encounter with a tree trunk.
We also realized we couldn’t make it back up the hill, everything was so slippery. We had to chip hand holes into the ice with sticks to create anchors so we wouldn’t slide to the bottom and have to start the climb all over.
Eventually we ditched our sleds and created a new game. We covered the ice in a grid of hand holds. Starting at the top of the hill, snowsuit stomach down, we launched ourselves. There was enough momentum that you could grab onto a hole and change your direction, spinning around a few times before catching another. Kind of like if Plinko were etched into the side of a hill, with kids bonking around instead of a giant coin.
It was such fun we stayed out well past dinner time. My brother was the first to get tired and go inside. I stayed out to do a few more runs.
By this point it was dark, the night crisp. Halfway down the hill I flipped over and looked up. The spiral arm of the Milky Way slashed across the inky sky, stars twinkling in every direction.
The warm light from the living room spilled down the hill, its meniscus stopping just short of where I lay sprawled. We had been learning about space at school (Jupiter was my favorite planet) and I knew that each point of light dotting the sky was incredibly far away.
So far away that what I was looking at might not be there any longer, the distance between us like a time machine turning the clock back a millennia. I had the sudden realization I was looking into the past.
Everything inverted.
I understood how small I was, and how alive. I felt the cold of the icy snow and the familiarity of the backyard I knew so well—the oak to my right and maple to my left, the pine trees lining the bottom of the hill, and the little nook behind them where we buried beloved pets. All of us there under the vast canopy of time and space, the night quiet and perfect. I could see my breath as I gazed into the vastness of space, completely mesmerized.
I was in awe.
A Brief Detour into the Body
For the last few months I’ve been designing an offsite for leaders around somatic resilience practices. The central theme is that the body is essential to our well-being, but in order for it to serve in its full function, we have to be able to feel it (not just think about it) and understand what it is saying.
The body is the first to sense when we are moving into unhealthy behaviors (to name a few: working too much, being in activated states for too long, pushing through, “leaning in”, you know the drill…) and sending signals to slow down. But when we have been in prolonged states of “grinding” our biology works against us.
In order to grind we have to push our body into “survival mode”, at least neurochemically. Prolonged states of stress pump cortisol into the bloodstream so we can keep going, which reinforces activation of the nervous system. This process necessarily numbs our ability to feel what is happening in our body so that we can keep going, and also happens to be a recipe for burnout.
When we’ve been pushing for so long, disconnected from the felt-sense of what the body needs and wants, it can be hard to find real rest, the kind that actually begins to restore a baseline of normal functioning.
The Awe Shortcut
In my research I’ve come to learn that awe is rather unique when it comes to human emotion. It can act as a short cut for dropping the body into a restorative, expansive state. When awe is activated our thinking mind gets quiet, creating space to reconnect to something much greater than ourselves (which happens to be really good for us).
Let’s be clear, I’m not saying awe is a panacea that will fix everything, but it deserves some attention for at least cutting through the bullshit of our ego for a short bit of time.
No other emotion can do this. Most emotions can be experienced in any state our nervous system is in—restorative where we feel the fullness of an emotion without editorializing, modulated where we both feel and analyze, or dysregulated where the emotion takes over and pushes us into fight or flight mode.
But not awe! Awe generates a state of relaxation, an absence of thinking, and the feeling of being completely in the present moment. You cannot experience dysregulation and awe at the same time.
This matters because these days we’re all pretty activated by the uncertainty of the world. Our nervous systems seem perilously and persistently close to the edge, making it damn hard to find enough restoration to feel truly nourished and resourced (infinite scrolling and social media are decidedly not restorative activities).
So you can meditate a bunch, go on wellness retreats, drop yourself into a sensory deprivation tank or… just experience awe. You don’t have to go far—opening up to wonder and listening to your favorite music, spending some time in nature, or getting down with amazing art are all ways to connect with awe.
Try it Out
Here’s an easy one you can start doing right now: every day, for the next two weeks, commit to taking a 15 minute walk. Focus on being completely present and seeing everything “new” as if from a child’s perspective. As Kai Sky recommends, “Imagine something that gives you joy. Got it? Now go and be like that all day long. (Yes, it is that simple…).”
I also recorded a short, guided meditation you can use to connect with a past experience of awe to use as a resource. Over time, the image or memory may fade, but the imprint of the somatic state will remain.
