Experiencing awe can help us slow down and connect to the world around us. So how can we harness the power of this feeling? Host Dacher Keltner leads us in a colorful meditation to bring about awe.
Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Practice:
- Please find a space, either inside or outside, where you can take a moment and pause and look slowly at a scene in front of you.
- Settle into a pattern of deep breathing and ease. Really focusing on how that pattern of inhalation and exhalation relaxes your body and slows your heart rate down.
- Now cast your gaze over the space around you. Take in what you see in the scene in front of you.
- You may shift your attention to colors present in the things around you or step back and get a sense of the scene in a more holistic way.
- Notice the variations and differences in the various colors in your visual field.
- What feelings do the colors evoke in you?
- Now, gently close and then open your eyes and notice how you feel.
Today’s guests:
Dacher Keltner is the host of the Greater Good Science Center’s award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness and is a co-instructor of the GGSC’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
More episodes like this one:
How Awe Brings Us Together
https://tinyurl.com/bdhy4sj5
How Music Evokes Awe
https://tinyurl.com/mpkww4j9
Happiness Break: Awe for Others, With Dacher
https://tinyurl.com/3ptwh66j
Feeling the Awe of Nature from Anywhere, with Dacher Keltner
https://tinyurl.com/4r7rjaxf
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Episode Transcript:
Dacher Keltner Welcome to Happiness Break, where we take a little break in the day and try practices shown to help us cultivate things like connection, compassion, and resilience.
I'm Dacher Keltner, and this week we're tapping into an emotion that is near and dear to my heart: awe, the feeling we get in the presence of vast things that challenge our understanding of the world.
As you may know, my research for the past ten years has found that these brief moments of awe make us feel small, humble, less stressed, more connected to other people, and kinder, even when we experience awe by ourselves. Awe brings out the better angels of our nature.
We can practice cultivating feelings of awe through all of our senses. Today, we're going to focus on sight. And more specifically, the awe of colors.
So please find a space, either inside or outside, where you can take a moment and pause and look slowly at a scene in front of you. Maybe you might step outside the front door and look around you at the leaves of trees, the colors of clouds, or the sky. Or maybe stay inside, wherever you are, and look for what catches your eye in terms of captivating patterns of colors. Wherever feels comfortable for you.
Now settle into a pattern of deep breathing. Really focusing on how that pattern of inhalation and then exhalation relaxes your body, slows your heart rate down, brings a bit of ease through breathing.
Now cast your gaze over the space around you. Taking in what you see in the scene in front of you.
You may shift your attention to specific details of things, the color and surfaces on a table, for example, or trees if you're outside.
You may also step back and just get a sense of the gestalt or the whole scene at once in a more holistic way.
Now let's start to notice the colors of everything that you see. If it's outside, it might be the brown of the earth, the green, the grasses, the many greens, the blues of the sky, the whites and grays of the clouds. The grays and browns of the concrete.
Notice the many colors. If you’re inside, notice the colors of the objects around you. The walls, the color of the floor. Carpets and rugs. Objects on a table, perhaps. Notice the fine shades of color, the hues of color that you are looking at right now.
Notice the variations and differences in the different colors in your visual field.
Notice in your experience if each color has a texture to it. A temperature you might even feel in your body. A feeling or a thought that the color brings to mind.
Let your mind wander to explore whether the colors take you to different memories.
What feelings do the colors evoke in you?
Sit with those feelings and see if you can notice them in your body. Breathing into these areas where the colors seem to have shifted how you feel in your physical sensations.
Now, gently close and then open your eyes, and notice how you feel.
Take a few more deep breaths and carry that feeling with you through your day and evening.
Thank you.
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