BITESIZE | Do This Every Day to Feel Less Stress, More Joy and Boost Your Physical & Mental Wellbeing | Dr Dacher Keltner #591

0:00Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by AG1, a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years. So, why might you consider bringing AG1 into your life? Well, there are many reasons, such as enhanced gut health and support for your immune system. But one of the main reasons, I would say, is to help you with your energy levels. Now AG1 contains a blend of different nutrients including B vitamins, vitamin C and magnesium which can help reduce tiredness and fatigue and give you a boost in energy. And unlike caffeine, these nutrients actually work with your body's natural energy systems and don't have a negative impact on your sleep.

0:47Right now, during the month of May, AG1 is offering my listeners a brilliant deal. Your first month's subscription will be only£59, saving you£20 off the regular price. On top of that, you'll get a free welcome kit, a shaker bottle, a scoop, five travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3 and K2 drops. You can see all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 340 of the podcast with Dr. Daka Keltner, professor of psychology and author of the book, or The Transformative Power of everyday wonder.

1:42Now, Dacher has spent decades studying the science of happiness. And in this clip, he shares how experiencing awe can transform our physical and mental well-being and why one of the ways we can access this best is through something called collective effervescence. If I think about the common problems that exist medically, a lot of them are related to inflammation, the immune system, stress, the amygdala, the threat response part of the brain being overactive, right? And you have just beautifully explained that awe can buffer us against those, can be an antidote to many of the problems and things that we're suffering from in the modern world.

2:30So I agree with you, awe is critical. Every time I teach a large group of people about happiness, I'll have a mom come to me especially post-pandemic and they're like you know my 17 year old son is in real deep distress and what do i do and i turn to the science of happiness and i say man find some social connections get them outdoors you know get give them a way to find meaning or reflect on life and now awe you know awe helps your immune system reducing inflammation helps your cardiovascular system activates vagal tone, reduces activation in the amygdala, a threat-related region in the brain, helps you think more clearly and more creatively, makes you feel like you have less stress in life.

3:15For 75 years old and older, it makes you feel less physical pain, right? I could go on. I mean, these are all studies where five minutes of awe, five minutes gives you that suite of benefits that I think are comparable to anything you can do. No kidding. And we didn't know that. And now it's starting to spread, right? Just to be thinking about where are those five minutes of awe? Yeah. You've really broadened out my perception of what awe is. Honestly, like if someone had said to me before reading your book, when do you experience awe? I probably would have said in nature. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But one of my favorite chances was the one on collective effervescence.

3:57One of my favorite terms. I discovered it a couple of years ago. There's a New York Times article on collective effervescence. Yeah. I thought, wow, what a cool term. I'd never heard of that before. And then when I open up your book and it's like, oh, you've written a chapter on this, right? So it's one of those categories of all, right? What is it? How can people experience it? And why is it so beneficial? Thank you for calling attention to that. It was something that emerged in our studies, very hard to study scientifically, collective effervescence, but it emerged as just a surprising way to find awe.

4:37That is a term that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim coined when he was trying to figure out, like William James did and others, what is the core subjective feeling of religion. And he called it collective effervescence. And it's when you start moving in unison or you're synchronizing your movements. Think of a ritual in a church, clapping, cheering at a football game, dancing together, doing rituals before a basketball game, collective movement. Then you start to realize collective movement makes you have a shared consciousness. So you're all thinking about the same thing. The religious figure leading the ritual, the football players on the pitch, the movements at a concert, the band singing, and you're all cheering, a political speech.

5:29And then emotion starts taking over where people are like, I got this rush of chills. I was crying. I was almost ecstatic. I was feeling like I was one with everybody around me. And that's collective effervescence, which is movement, attention, shared attention, and then this electric feeling that moves over you that makes you feel like you're united. One of the amazing things about thinking about these as contexts of awe, which they are, is this allows us to find the deeper meaning in these wonderful venues. There are studies that suggest your football team is almost on par with a church. It gives you that much meaning and sense of community and sense of history, right?

6:16Following music and going to musical venues. I love the work on sort of spontaneous forms of collective effervescence that people observe, like pedestrians moving through streets and being at festivals or farmer's markets. I was just with my daughter, Natalie, at a farmer's market, and it felt there was collective effervescence. We were all moving together, getting the street Indian food, sharing it in a park. That was awesome. And so this framework of awe starts to allow us to see the richness of these common venues of awe that we can enjoy. A couple of examples that have come to me in doing this work.

7:00One is singing together. There are all these singing groups out there. Yeah. And when I give talks on all, someone always comes up with tears in their eyes, like, you've got to study choirs because it's all collective effervescence, right? And, you know, a lot of the, it's interesting, a lot of the informal help your body movements like yoga, 20 million people practice yoga in the United States and a lot of it's collective effervescence. You're doing motions together. Your attention is shared and you start to feel this joy. Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing that. One of the things that I've been, I guess, concerned with a little bit for a while, you know, a lot of people are struggling to find that sense of community.

7:43And one of the things I said literally a few days ago at one of my talks was, look, what do you like doing? Okay. Someone said yoga. I said, okay, you like yoga. One of the big problems over the last years is that because of some of the restrictions, a lot of this stuff has gone online. I know. So let's take yoga as an example. For many people, a phenomenal practice that helps them physically, mentally, emotionally. And a lot of people now in our bid to save time and be more efficient, we go on the Zoom class. We do a 10, 15 minute YouTube video. And again, that can have a role. But I say, listen, if that's you, sign up for a class as well.

8:28Do 10 minutes a day on YouTube. Sure. That's great. But make sure once a week you sign up and you go to the class because, you know, that's one of the tips I give people who are struggling with loneliness is, you know, what hobby do you have? What passion do you like? Is there a local class? Go there. You'll meet other people like you. So it's a very clear message throughout your book that one of the powerful qualities of awe is that it takes us outside of ourselves to something much bigger and greater. Wow. You've just spoken to a very important empirical question. Does solitary activity on Zoom compare to collective activity of the same thing?

9:09We know in the education world, it does not. And Zoom classrooms for most people are a disaster. You need the collective mind and so forth. Yeah, I love your recommendation, Rangan. Jane Goodall, all she thought and chimpanzees, it is the beginning of our sense of spirit because it allows us to be amazed at things outside of ourself. and the central challenge of the mental health crises of today is too much self-focus. Yeah. And we're not going to find awe with Zoom and smartphones where we're, you know, we got to get with other people. You know, I was with a minister a couple of weeks ago, Malcolm Clemens Young, a remarkable mind, and he said, you know, and I suspect this is true of a lot of the domains that you refer to, you can pray by yourself, but there's something about praying with people who are praying with you together.

10:09He said, and there's a lot of spiritual traditions around that, playing ping pong with other groups of people, doing dance together, doing yoga together. There is no substitute. And the answer for that is awe, that it makes you realize your collective, like Jane Goodall said, and you said, I'm amazed at things outside of myself. But what I will take note of, Rangan, is a lot of our 20-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 30-year-olds feel that viscerally, right? And a lot of collective things are starting to emerge again. And game nights are really popular where you play with actual games with people physically present, listening to vinyl albums, right?

10:52Where you get back to that ritual of listening to music together. So it's too strong to take out of our experience and I think it's coming back. So, but critical for us to think about. But one of the really exciting things about awe is it's easy to practice. It may not sound like it, but it is. So when I teach healthcare providers, which I do a lot of, one of the things they do is they say, I only have 20 minutes for lunch because, as you know, they work very hard and they're busy. But I'll go sit in the garden. I'll go on a walk with my colleagues when I have this next conversation. or we will share awe stories in a huddle.

11:35And you can do this anywhere, right? These are little three to five minute shifts in how we do things, be it eating or sharing a nice quote or an awe story from work that are easy to do and bring us some of the benefits of awe. You've done some studies, I think, on something called an awe walk. Yeah. So tell us about that. And there are thousands of people leading awe walks around the world right now, which makes me really grateful. Yeah, you know, that study begins actually with the great British tradition of walking and the Brits walk in spectacular ways, you know. And then Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant writer, did this book on wandering and just how much we derive meaning from walking.

12:21And she called it, she really talked about it in terms of awe. Like when you walk, your body is moving through space, but you feel like you're part of the environment, the path, et cetera. and a tradition. And so in our study, we had people who are 75 years old or older, which is an age in the United States where people start to feel more anxious and depressed because people are dying around them. And so we just, once a week, they went out and did an awe walk. And I love this because it's really simple. Go to someplace that's a little mysterious and look at small things like this rock on your table and vast things like your whole studio, right that's all they did and they did it once a week for eight weeks we had a nice control condition a vigorous walk condition and our 75 years old participants in the all walk felt less distress they felt more awe over time and we had them take selfies out on the walk and their selfies the self gets smaller and starts to fade off to the side and they're taking in more of the environment.

13:27So they're just aware of what's, they're amazed at things outside of themselves. And so, you know, you put that together with a lot of the data on just walking outside to find awe is so good for you. And it's easy to do anywhere. Yeah. It again, speaks to this, this, this kind of through line, which is it takes us outside of ourselves. It connects us to something much greater than our individualistic, potentially ego-driven existence. Yeah. All seems to be the perfect antidote to everything we're struggling with today. Yeah. Which a lot of it is simply inward focus, me, me, me. I think it actually really helps us connect with life, connect with something bigger.

14:10You know, remind us of our insignificance, really, in this kind of ego-focused world where there appears to be more and more people exhibiting narcissistic traits. Yeah. this is the power of awe wherever you experience it isn't it that actually it takes you out of yourself you know thank you for that summary you know rangan um if one of the things you can take from this book is there are these eight wonders that hint to us that they're big things to be part of music and life and death and moral beauty and just you know when you feel law just ask yourself what am i part of here you know and it usually points you towards um it makes you realize like, I'm just a small thing that actually is okay.

14:54That's actually true. But I'm part of something really large, like fellow humans, an ecosystem or something about culture. And we need that today. Like you said earlier, a lot of the health challenges come out of this internal individual focus that has just blown up today and all moves us towards the things that are amazing outside of ourselves. And I think if you look at the broad trends that we've been noting in our largely globalized Western European cultures, and now increasingly throughout the world, it's self-focused, it's individualistic, it's more materialistic. We forget the systems that people were part of, the families and the culture.

15:35And it's awe-inspiring to reflect on that. It really is. And of course, nature is a really good way to access that. What is it? The definition you put in the book was, or is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know what your experience has been going around the world talking about this, but you show that yes, nature is one way to experience all, but there's eight ways that you've defined. So I came to the conclusion that, oh wow, awe is around me every single day and possibly every single interaction if I can train myself to see it.

16:18Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, thank you for bringing into focus, I think, the two biggest surprises that blew my mind. You know, we, I too, like awe is nature, you know, or Western European. And then I thought, ah, I know the spiritual traditions, awe is spirituality and mysticism. And so we gather these stories from 26 countries all over the world. And awe comes to us through eight paths, which I call the eight wonders. And I'll just quickly, the moral beauty of people, their kindness and courage. I teach medical doctors. And once they think about this, they think, wow, I just gave a patient a terminal diagnosis.

16:56And they held my hand and said, thank you for what you do. That's moral courage and beauty. nature, collective movement, you know? And what I love about this is like sports fans, like Arsenal fans, or, you know, they're like, I love, sports are almost spiritual and that's because of awe. And then you get to the culture ones, which are music, visual design, and spirituality. And then the two Rangan that really caught me off guard, epiphanies, big ideas, like, you know, wow, the web of life, that's the central idea in evolution. right that darwin was blown off the map by we're all part of this what he called a tangled bank of life we're all interacting different species and then the final one life and death you know that you know rangan when i started teaching awe eight ten years ago to audiences with people over the age of 55 there would always be a hand that would raise and the person would say you know i felt awe holding my sister's hand when she died you know and just looking at that mystery feeling it and so lo and behold around the world we really get into a state of awe thinking about life and death we all have our pathways to awe and i think the eight wonders are useful and we can all understand other people's pathways when cast within this broader framework of what humans find in awe one of the questions i had yeah around or daca is Let's say the Grand Canyon, right?

18:32Yeah. You could put 10 different people in the Grand Canyon. And yes, you would hope that everyone would feel awe, but some people possibly wouldn't, right? So it's not the environment that is creating the awe. It's our approach to that environment, right? Yeah. That's so important, Rangan, to bring this into our focus here. and I think there are wonderful insights to be gleaned from those eight wonders of life we talked about. You know, we started to find, if you ask people like, where do you tear up and get the goosebumps and cry and feel awe and wonder? And humans are remarkably varying. It's just a fundamental truth about who we are.

19:21And for some people, it's busy cities and the stream of pedestrians. and other people, it is sitting by trees by themselves in the quiet. And for some people, it's classical music. And for other people, Michael Pollan just, you know, when he interviewed me, he's like, I was just at a pussy riot show and I felt awe, you know, punk rock. For some people, it's wild art. For other people, it's still life's, right? We're all varying. And music's a great case study of that. And I think our audience should be asking this question of themselves, which is think of a time when you last got goosebumps and teared up at a piece of music.

20:00And most people have had that kind of experience and that will bring you benefits. And that's one of the mysteries to me of awe is we find it in such unique ways, but also universal ways, right? And I would encourage our listeners, you know, awe sounds sublime and ineffable or hard to find. It's very easy to find. There's everyday awe and wonder. Just go get it, you know? Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest? If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email.

20:47It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.