Person admiring the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) (Getty Images/Marco Bottigelli) Everyday before leaving for work, Danny Brown would set up a time-lapse in front of his window to capture the day outside while he was in the office. When he got home, he could witness all that he missed while he was locked into the computer during the work day.
“It was a grand shift in perspective that created a need to change my way of thinking,” Brown told Salon in a phone interview. “For me, that change was from a daily experience to this almost overview effect — like nature kept going today, while I was focused on the expense report … or this cold front moved in and I didn’t even notice.”
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Eventually, Brown left his office job so that he could return to school to study that feeling, where it came from, and whether it has the power to heal the body and mind.
“I realized the feeling I was getting from the time-lapse and what I was tapping into was awe,” Brown said.
The feeling of awe can wash over you when watching the sunset or standing next to a gigantic redwood tree. It can arise when watching your child take their first steps or even when holding a loved one’s hand as they pass. Defined as “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder,” awe is not inherently positive or negative but a complex emotion associated with meaningful experiences by everyone at some point in their lives.
"You have to attend to the experience — it has to matter to you in some way."
Awe occurs when we experience vastness, which could be triggered by something perceptual like walking through the Grand Canyon, or something conceptual like understanding a big idea with widespread implications, said Dr. David Yaden, a Johns Hopkins associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, who studies altered states of consciousness. Experiencing that vastness is ultimately about recognition: recognizing our own smallness to the world around us or, perhaps, recognizing ourselves […]
What makes the psychedelic experience so healing? It could be “awe”
