The Power Of A.W.E. With Jake Eagle

On September 11, 2023 I spoke with researcher and therapist Jake Eagle about his background, work & transitions, various research & studies, transcending our everyday reality, better connections due to the prosocial emotion of awe, (the lessening of) external validation, the awe of nature, the positive & negative notions & fear and wonder of awe, sensorial awe, conceptional awe, interconnected awe, awe’s energized & play-like state that can release tension, how awe works physiologically via cytokines & inflammation reduction, awe spectrums ranging from numb to grandiose, how even though meditation practice provides more benefits the a.w.e. technique is considered a shortcut to transcendence via elevating consciousness by going from safety consciousness through heart consciousness to spacious consciousness, calming the nervous system & changing perspective, perception language, praise & blame, how to do the technique of A.W.E. [Attention, Wait, Exhale / Expand], polyvagal theory, etc.

Transcript

Wholeness,

Welcome.

This is Josh Dippold of Integrating Presence.

And today I've got Jake Eagle with me.

Jake,

How's it going today?

It's good.

I'm happy to meet you.

Likewise.

And what I usually do at the beginning of these,

If people aren't familiar with the format,

Is I throw it back to the guest and say,

Who is Jake Eagle and what does he do?

A small question.

So,

Yeah,

My name is Jake Eagle.

I have been a psychotherapist for the past 30 years and was in private practice in Santa Fe,

New Mexico.

And then about six and a half years ago,

My wife,

Hannah,

And I moved to the big island of Hawaii.

So that's where I am now.

And since we moved here,

I have been doing less private work,

Private counseling.

And I got involved in a large research project at the University of California,

Berkeley,

For two reasons.

We did it during the pandemic and we were very interested in seeing if we could help people that were on the front line of healthcare because they were under unbelievable stress.

They didn't have a lot of resources,

They didn't have any time.

So we were trying to figure out how could we help them.

Before that,

I had been teaching a course and Michael was a participant in that course.

And in the course,

We were asking,

I was asking people to meditate as part of the program,

About 10 or 15 minutes a day.

And what shocked me was how few people were willing to do that.

They just said,

I don't have 15 minutes a day.

And so I asked people if they would do what at the time I called a micro meditation,

Which was 30 to 60 seconds.

And it was just an idea that I threw out.

And what happened is that I track results.

Before I teach a course,

I always do certain survey instruments.

And then when it's over,

I do the instruments again.

And what I saw in the measurements is that the people who were doing these,

What we were calling micro meditations,

They were getting results that were comparable to the people,

The few people who were meditating 15 minutes a day.

And Michael was in the course,

He was a mindfulness instructor,

As well as a physician.

And he and I both got very curious,

How could these people get such great benefits doing these brief meditations?

We ended up calling it micro dosing.

And we recognized that what people were accessing when they were micro dosing,

Was the emotion of awe,

They were experiencing awe.

And so then we got very curious about what is the emotion of awe,

Which has been studied for about 20 years.

And there was a researcher,

Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley,

Who kind of did the original research in early 2000s,

Exploring what the emotion of awe can do for people.

So we reached out to him.

He was very interested in our work and the results we had gotten.

And after I taught my first course,

Michael and I did a couple of pilot projects,

And we continued to see people getting these great results.

And so then Dacher helped us facilitate putting on a large study through UC Berkeley.

And the results were so good.

There's something about this that's really captivating people's attention.

And I think it's three things.

Accessing awe is a really delightful experience.

You feel good when you access the emotion of awe.

And our definition of awe is that it's an emotional experience where we're in the presence of something that allows us to transcend our normal experience of reality.

We go beyond our everyday,

What I would call autopilot existence.

The second reason this has been so popular is it only takes 10,

15,

20 seconds,

Which is pretty remarkable.

And then the third thing is that awe is called a pro-social emotion.

So when we access awe,

We're much better able to connect with other people.

So that's one of the significant benefits.

And it seems to make people very receptive to doing the practice.

So anyway,

There's a little bit of a long story,

But that is what I've been doing for the last four years.

We had a book that came out just early in 2023,

And now we've gone on and we've done another research project at UC Davis.

We're still waiting to get the results,

But that's where we wanted to see if the emotion of awe could help people who are suffering with long COVID.

Because long COVID is a really tough,

Tough illness,

Disease,

And Western medicine so far has not come up with great strategies.

So we were invited to participate in a study and see if our approach to mindfulness could help people who are dealing with long COVID.

We're waiting to get the results on that.

We'll have them very soon.

Well,

Lovely.

And that's exciting as well,

I guess.

For continuity's sake here,

I want to go back,

And if it would be appropriate,

The class that you two met at,

Our course,

Could we say what that was?

The basic story is that when I was in Santa Fe doing my work,

Life was great.

I was very happy and productive and felt good.

We moved to Hawaii,

And I kind of semi-retired,

But I still was looking to do some work.

However,

When we moved to Hawaii,

My work with private clients pretty much disappeared.

I kind of expected I'd be working with people,

But that didn't happen.

And I had been the chairman of the board of a small company in New Mexico,

And that went away.

And I found myself pretty unhappy.

And it was shocking because here we are,

I'm with my wife,

We're living in Hawaii,

But I'm not happy.

So I developed a process called Thrilled to be Alive.

It was a 21-day program,

And that's the course I taught,

Where I was inviting people to look at themselves and their lives from a different point of view.

Excuse the telephone,

It'll stop ringing.

Do you want me to wait?

No,

It's up to you,

Yeah.

Okay.

So I was teaching this course that you pair up with a partner and you focus on things in your life that would encourage you to be thrilled that you are alive and that you're having the experiences you're having.

And the course was very well-received,

And it helped me come out of my own,

What I would call mild depression.

And that's why I was sharing it with other people and I was doing it online.

That's the course that Michael joined.

And it relates to awe in the following way.

Part of the reason that I was struggling is when we moved to Hawaii,

I was no longer getting the external validation that I was used to.

And I was really having a surprisingly hard time with that.

How does that relate to awe?

When we experience the emotion of awe,

There's a tendency to feel connected to something beyond ourselves.

It's bigger than self.

And so the sense of self that we have tends to diminish.

And as it diminishes our attachment to our ego,

Our reputation,

Our status,

All of that diminishes as well.

And so that was really helpful for me to stop looking outside of myself for validation and to connect with something at a much deeper level.

And that was my experience,

That's why I was sharing it with other people.

And at the time,

I didn't really understand a lot about awe,

But ultimately the two connected.

Well,

Let's jump into awe itself.

It's interesting,

I've never considered it as an emotion before.

And clearly the way you described it,

At least that portion of awe is clearly an emotion.

I'm sure it probably even goes beyond that.

It can be experienced on other levels like an intellectual level,

A mental level,

Maybe even a psychic level,

Physical level perhaps,

I'm not sure.

But yeah,

The raw visceral ness of awe can strike as an emotion.

I'm thinking some of the more external experiences of all I have is in nature.

That's obvious.

I think that's one that everyone can immediately connect with,

Just these grand vistas or just sitting and contemplating how nature comes about and does what it does.

It has its own inbuilt intelligence and how sometimes we or some humans think that they can ultimately control nature.

Maybe I'm going a little bit too much on a tangent here,

But what I see a lot of times in nature is that it's such a huge powerful force.

And this is just a theory,

But it seems like because of that huge power,

Man wants to control it.

And so,

They will do things like maybe cut down forest or micromanage parts of the Earth in the way they want to see it.

And I think some of that is helpful and not helpful.

But at the end of the day,

Nature is going to do what it wants.

I don't think we can ultimately control nature.

There's a lot of people doing a lot of things to manipulate parts of nature,

But the all portion of it is amazing.

So,

The emotional aspect of all as it relates to nature,

Has this historically been considered an emotion?

You talked about a Dacher-Kelty.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing the name right,

But I guess really briefly,

What did he draw on when he was doing his work?

And why was he interested in this?

And what else is there to say about this as an emotion and how most people already know how to connect with all?

And then maybe we can transition into what your work has added to it or entered into it in maybe a novel way.

Yeah,

Well,

Dacher was looking to,

Dacher-Kelty,

Excuse me,

Was looking to do a thesis when he was a grad student and he ended up focusing on the subject of all,

The emotion of all.

So,

He did kind of the groundbreaking research.

This is,

I think,

Back in 2003.

And he recognized that all traditionally had been perceived as both positive and negative.

So,

There was the fear aspect that could evoke all,

And then there was the wonder that you're talking about when we go out in nature.

What we do is we think of them really as different emotions.

They both arise from something that is generally extraordinary,

But our focus is on the positive.

What is the all that induces a state that is generative and healthy and constructive and pro-social?

And what you described was interesting because you're talking about nature,

And that is the primary way people access all.

We call that sensorial all.

It's all that we experience through our senses when we're in an environment that wakes us up.

Now,

What's unique about our approach,

And this is what's really new,

Is we were inviting people to access all in the ordinary.

You don't need to go sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

You don't need to go to the moon and look back and see the earth.

You can do it when you're making a cup of coffee.

You can do it when you're sitting in a traffic light.

You can do it when you hug your partner in the morning,

When you pet your dog,

Right?

All the time,

All is available.

If we wake up to the things that we value,

Appreciate,

And find to be amazing,

And those are around us all the time.

Now,

The second thing that you mentioned was contemplating nature,

And that's a different kind of all that we call conceptual all.

That's the all that we access through our mind and the amazement that we can have with a thought or an idea or a new concept.

So there's sensorial all,

Then there's conceptual all,

And then the third way to access all is called interconnected,

And that would be where you take an extra 10 seconds when you're hugging your partner or,

Again,

Petting your dog or connecting with another human being in a way that really is rich and meaningful.

So those are three different ways to access all.

In all three cases,

We have the same basic physiological response,

And the physiological response is very unique in that it's not a completely relaxed state,

A completely parasympathetic state that our nervous system goes into in traditional forms of meditation.

It's a slightly energized state.

So think of it more as how you feel when you're playing.

That's a quality that awe has within our nervous system.

So it wakes us up.

It's good for our reducing anxiety.

In our study,

We demonstrated that it reduced depression,

It reduced loneliness,

It reduced sensations of physical pain.

And one of the reasons that's true is because it's altering our physiology.

And there was a study done,

And I think it's 2015 or 18,

It was published in the journal Emotion,

And they determined that the emotion of awe actually can reduce inflammation within our body.

And inflammation,

As most people know,

Is part of pretty much all disease.

It involves inflammation.

And so the ability to reduce inflammation has significant physiological and emotional benefits.

And all of this is happening every time we access awe.

And so what we do,

And go ahead.

No,

Please finish.

Yes.

I was just going to say that what we do with our practice,

Which again,

Takes 15,

20,

30 seconds,

Is we ask people to do it three times a day.

Now,

Sometimes people will do it more than that,

Which is great.

But the idea is that imagine that you wake up in the morning and your nervous system is like a loose spring.

And then as the day goes by,

Each time you have to deal with something challenging,

The spring gets tighter and tighter and tighter.

And by the end of the day,

We're wound up pretty tightly.

When we access awe,

We're releasing the tension on the spring.

We're releasing the tension and we're resetting our nervous system.

And so if we can do that in 20 seconds,

Literally takes no time,

Right?

20 seconds,

15 seconds.

Why not try it?

Well,

Maybe I'll ask you here in a little bit how we might do that.

And if you're willing to share this practice with us.

There's a lot of things though that I want to pick up,

Or several things I would like to pick up on too,

And maybe working backwards here.

So how does this trigger this effect that it reduces inflammation?

How does a practice then have a physiological effect like this?

I mean,

I'm assuming that there's lots of chemicals involved here or something like this that releases,

But it just amazes me so much how there's certain words and actions and cognitive processes will then translate all the way down to pain relief,

Right?

I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with inflammation,

But the process leading up to how that works,

I think maybe might be a little more complex.

Well,

I'll do just a kind of a simplistic version of it because you can go pretty deeply into the physiology,

But our bodies produce something called cytokines,

Which are small proteins,

And they are a signaling system throughout our entire body.

And again,

On a simplistic level,

There's two kinds of cytokines.

There's threat cytokines,

Which produce inflammation,

Produce a response when there's threat or damage to our physical being.

And that response is appropriate and necessary at times,

But it should be an acute response that's short-lived.

The problem is because we're feeling in our culture,

Many people are feeling threatened much of the time,

We get into a chronic state where the threat cytokines continue to work through our system and we stay in an inflamed state.

You can think of that inflamed state as both physical as well as emotional.

When we access awe,

We produce a different kind of cytokine that has been referred to as safety cytokines.

So when we feel safe and nurtured and comfortable,

Then our body sends different signals throughout our body,

Throughout affecting our immune system.

And now we are shifting our physiology,

No different than when you sit and meditate for 15 minutes.

You alter your physiology,

You alter your brain,

But we found a way to do that in this very,

Very brief practice.

And there's a particular cytokine called interleukin-6,

And that is what's responsible for inflammation.

And when people access awe in the study done in 2015,

They measured that the levels of interleukin-6 were lower as a result of people accessing the emotion of awe.

So that's why we see a reduction in inflammation.

And this is not our research,

This is prior research.

But what we saw in our research was a reduction in pain,

Which suggests that yes,

There's probably a decrease of inflammation.

I see.

Now,

Just to wrap this up on the inflammation,

From what I understand,

There's certain times when certain types of inflammation can actually help the healing process,

And then certain types that can not do that,

Right?

Exactly,

Right.

So if you sprain your ankle,

You're going to have some swelling,

That's inflammation.

It's actually a protective mechanism.

It is part of the healing process.

It's very constructive.

The problem is when we get into that kind of state and we stay there for an extended period of time,

Then we can actually do damage to our body if we stay in a state with chronic inflammation.

Okay.

Now,

You mentioned the effects that this has and the different types.

I imagine this is on a spectrum too,

Right?

Yes.

In all spectrums.

So I can imagine that on one end,

We have people that are so numbed out that,

I mean,

You could go and park them in front of the Grand Canyon or bring them to Niagara Falls or have the most amazing things happen.

And for whatever reason,

I mean,

This is the extreme version,

Right?

They're numbed out,

Right?

Maybe they've had too much sensory input and nothing really does it for them anymore.

They're so desensitized to so many things,

So much exposure from the internet,

Or who knows,

Maybe trauma or something like this,

Although that doesn't really play out.

Although,

Yeah,

Trauma is a whole other thing that I'm not trained in.

And a lot of my things don't apply to trauma because it's a whole entire different beast.

But on the other end of the spectrum,

I think maybe we have what could be overly grandiose,

Right?

I mean,

This is probably quite rare,

Just like the numbed out,

But can have people maybe,

Oh,

I don't know,

Delusions of grandeur or extreme fantasies or something that's interfering with one's life,

Something like this,

Right?

But for the most part,

I guess that's at least one line of the spectrum.

And I don't know if that's vertical or horizontal,

But so what would you say about this as on a spectrum,

Right?

Well,

There's two aspects to it.

So sort of take the average person that's in the middle of the spectrum.

They can experience that is very mild,

Just kind of sweet and relaxing,

Or they can experience that is very dramatic and intense.

And we call that orgasmic.

And that's where a person is accessing the emotion and they're literally feeling chills in their body and energy moving in their spine.

The more one practices,

The more likely they are to have that kind of an experience,

But it's not always the case.

The other question you're asking about is people who are more or less prone to experience awe.

And you're absolutely right that there are people who are either numbed out or they are so used to extreme stimulation that it's hard to wake their nervous system up,

Right?

It's hard to get them off of autopilot essentially.

What we've found is that different people respond to the different ways of accessing awe.

So nature seems to be the most reliable way for people to wake up to awe.

The next most common is interconnected,

That even when you're dealing with somebody who's pretty numbed out,

If you can connect with them on a deep personal basis,

That seems to be the way that we get through the barrier where people essentially are protecting themselves through the defensive mechanism of shutting down.

If we can reach those people on an emotional level,

We can help them experience awe.

And then the conceptual awe is most constructive for people who are sometimes very emotionally guarded.

But when they access awe through their intellect,

That's acceptable,

That feels safe,

Right?

And so we find different ways of getting there.

Yeah,

Go ahead.

Yeah,

And I just love this as an exercise to the conceptual awe and something as simple as mindfulness of eating,

Right?

It's just amazing to just consider and contemplate,

Well,

There has to be a Sun there and what a big mystery just the Sun is,

The right conditions of soil and water.

Then there's the farmer that had to plant it and maybe they had to go and find the seed and the mystery of germination.

And then of course,

Then there's cultivation and there's planning.

And then once that's done,

Then there's the shipping off to maybe it gets stored or processed.

Then there's maybe people even speculating on crops and on and on it goes to the delivery,

To the people that stock the shelves and then going to the supermarket or the market,

A farmer's market and then getting that and then cooking and then making all the flavors.

And then we live on this stuff,

It animates,

It helps animate whatever this is.

And just all these causes and conditions that have to come together,

It's just,

In a way,

It's mind-blowing and it's awe-inspiring,

Something that we just take for granted pretty much every day.

Yeah,

That's beautiful.

The deeper we look at just the things we take for granted every day and deeply probe into them,

Even if we're not really capable of that,

Someone is and someone can,

With the right charisma or the right way of putting things,

Can really bring the ordinary to life.

And it does seem really encoded in just about everything we do if we spend the time to just look a little bit deeper.

A lot of times our perceptions,

Oh,

That's a coffee table,

I don't need to know anything about it,

I know everything there is.

Well,

Yeah,

If we consider it that,

Right?

Our perceptual faculties here,

As our perceptual faculties expand,

The more access we have of seeing things in different ways.

Yeah,

Just one other quick example that's from a meditation teacher I like,

Like a singing bowl or meditation bell.

Well,

That's what most people think of it as,

But I somebody could have a joke and wear it as a hat.

Someone could be chewing tobacco and use it as a spit tune,

Or plant a flower in it,

Use it as a bowl.

So what we normally think is just something,

We already know it,

Simple and plain,

And then we write it off.

Well,

Not necessarily,

It doesn't have to be like that,

Right?

Yeah,

What you did is just a beautiful example of how you access conceptual awe.

You take that piece of food that's on your table that you take for granted,

And you trace it all the way back to the origin,

Starting with the soil and the rain,

Etc.

And when we take the time to do that,

It is an awe-inspiring exercise.

And it's as simple as what you just did.

I mean,

Listening to you,

For me,

It wakes me up.

I wake myself up when I hear that journey that the food goes through before I consume it,

And then even after.

Yeah,

So that's a great example of conceptual awe.

Well,

Beautiful.

So let's tap into this.

Well,

Actually,

Before we do that,

You're also a meditation practitioner.

And so how does this play into your own practice?

And I mean,

Maybe where does it fit in on the spectrum of different types of meditation practices?

You know,

The common ones,

Or maybe like a Samatha practice,

This more of a concentration practice coming back again and again to an object.

Of a Pasana practice,

Well,

People have a lot of different definitions of a Pasana.

Basically,

Clear-seeing.

Some people define it as very simple.

There's a huge,

Long methodology and processes.

And then there's kind of practices that are more of awareness-based practices,

Right?

Noticing what's noticing.

You know,

Being aware of what's aware.

And so how does this fit into all that?

And then I wanted to ask another meditated-related question after that,

If you don't.

.

.

Well,

A couple of things.

So as full disclosure,

I'm a terrible meditator.

I've always found meditation to be very,

Very difficult.

I'm highly auditory,

And it's really hard for me to stop the internal dialogue.

So awe was a relief to me.

It was a short way to quiet my mind.

And the more I do it,

Ironically,

The better I've gotten at my sitting practice.

I don't know if I can explain why.

All I know is that since doing an awe practice,

I'm much more relaxed on the cushion.

And so it's been a compliment for me to my sitting practice.

As far as where it fits into mindfulness,

I think it's in the awareness realm.

We're enhancing our awareness.

And the practice we use is very simple.

We're asking people to notice things that they value,

Appreciate,

Or find to be amazing.

All of that's based on awareness,

Right?

Beautiful.

That's the starting point.

Yeah.

Very cool.

And so now what might you say to detractors who say,

Well,

Isn't this kind of bypassing,

Right?

Is this like a shortcut?

I think it was said that this is known as maybe perhaps a shortcut to transcendence,

But are we missing anything?

And then maybe how this plays into,

You're probably familiar with this notion in meditation practice of sudden awakening and then gradual awakening,

Right?

And how does it play into that or if that's even significant?

I think that when we use awe,

And it's actually,

I think it's the first line of our book.

We said we were embarrassed that we kind of think we stumbled onto a shortcut to transcendence.

And both Michael and I have been longtime meditators.

He's very good at meditating.

I haven't been,

But we've been doing it for years.

And neither of us really believe in shortcuts,

But we actually think we came upon one.

And what I really mean by that is that when I experience the emotion of awe,

It's a shortcut that elevates my level of consciousness.

I go from what I refer to as safety consciousness through heart consciousness into what we call spacious consciousness.

It's a state of no words and no sense of time.

There's an emptiness and an expansiveness to it.

And I can go there in 10,

15 seconds with very minimal effort,

If any.

So I think that's what we mean when we say a shortcut to transcendence.

It is not the same,

I think,

As what longtime meditators talk about in terms of their experience.

There are additional benefits from a rigorous meditation practice that awe does not provide,

But it is a very quick and easy way to have those moments where we reset our nervous system and perspective,

Change our perspective.

Very cool.

So let's lead into this with how to do this with how it was discovered in the first place.

I mean,

Like,

Was there an aha moment,

A breakthrough?

Was there a lot of trialing on different techniques and one of them stuck?

Or how did it actually come about to develop the technique?

It came about,

I think there were probably three steps.

First,

I was teaching a course and people were having these great results.

And I just started to write down what people were saying about their experience.

And I wasn't really familiar with awe,

Although I had read Michael Pollan's book,

Which is,

I think,

Called How to Change Your Brain,

Change Your Mind.

The book is about using psilocybin to advance people's well-being.

And in that book,

He refers to awe repeatedly.

So I was aware of it,

But had never really thought much about it.

Like you,

I didn't really even think of it as an emotion until I got into this work.

So we started to realize people were describing awe.

Then Michael flew out here to Hawaii and spent a week with me and my wife,

Who's a very strong meditator.

And we would meditate,

We would go on walks,

We would do a variety of things to see if we could stimulate this experience of awe.

And we're in Hawaii,

So it wasn't hard to do.

But then one morning,

Michael was making pancakes and he had a moment of awe while making the pancakes.

And that's when we had this epiphany,

Which is,

We don't need to go out and look at some amazing vista.

We don't need to go climb a 60-foot tree to have this experience.

We can have it in the ordinary.

Sorry about the phone ringing in the background.

We can experience awe in the ordinary.

And that was really the turning point where we realized if we can help people access awe,

No matter what's going on around them,

We've really taken this work and made it accessible.

And that was our goal.

So what did he see in those pancakes?

There weren't mushrooms in there,

Were there?

No,

I'm just kidding.

There weren't mushrooms in there.

No.

He talks about watching this liquid turn into a solid and that every time he'd ever made pancakes before that,

He was multitasking and he never paid any attention to what happened.

But he watched this liquid turn into a solid and then he realized we were going to consume that solid and enjoy eating it.

And kind of like you did before,

It just blew his mind.

And he came to the table and he served Hannah and me the pancakes.

And he said,

This is so astounding if you stop and just contemplate what happened and what we're doing.

And we all got it.

We're like,

Yeah,

This is amazing.

It really is.

And one of the things that I've heard that I just kind of blew off,

But the more I sit with it and realize that it said that the most profound thing we'll ever do is talk to another human being.

And on the surface of it,

It doesn't seem like anything because access to people is just so abundant these days.

But I think if drawing on,

I think,

Terence McKenna,

First I heard him say,

We're like these upright apes with certain amounts of hair and we're making these little mouth noises.

And we understand each other by making these little mouth noises.

Language in itself is just kind of mind blowing.

Not only how did it originate,

But our word choices of all the huge vocabulary some of us have,

And it just comes almost spontaneously,

The word choices.

I don't have to think,

Okay,

Now what word am I going to choose next?

Of course,

A lot of it's habit or however all this works with linguistics and stuff,

But it is really quite amazing trying to learn a foreign language now.

And that is an interesting process.

I'll just leave it at that.

So how would you guide,

You're welcome to address that,

But then,

And if you'd like to just explain the process to us of how to do this.

I'll just say one thing about language because that's my background is in linguistics.

And my wife and I were fortunate 20 some odd years ago to meet a couple,

Their names were John and Joyce Weir,

And they developed their own language model called Percept or Perception Language.

And Percept is a way of using language to shift from thinking and talking about the world as if it's doing something to us,

To seeing ourselves as the actor,

To seeing ourselves as creating everything,

Including our emotions.

So instead of saying,

For example,

You make me angry,

I would say,

I anger myself.

Now it sounds very subtle.

It's like,

Yeah,

Whatever.

But it's actually a huge distinction.

If I start realizing that whatever emotional state I'm in,

I'm creating.

And it's also a language where you stay in the present tense.

You only talk about what's going on now.

So if you did something to me three weeks ago,

Or I perceive it that way,

Instead of going back and talking or arguing about what happened,

I would stay in the present and talk to you about how I'm making myself feel right now in this moment,

Because that's the only thing we can change.

We can't change what you did or didn't do three weeks ago.

But if I tell you how I'm constructing meaning in the moment,

You can address that.

So it's a very powerful way of subtly altering language so that we empower ourselves.

So I appreciate what you said about language because it is,

If you stop and think about it,

It's just extraordinary,

Right?

It really is.

Let me pick up on that really briefly because I saw in your bio where you are into neuro-linguistic programming.

I don't know how deep we want to go into this.

I'm not too familiar.

Let's just address this,

The percept language.

And this is a really important thing I feel,

Especially for individuals like me who tend to blame other people for how they're feeling a lot of times,

Right?

Or how I'm feeling.

So whether it's true or not,

If I'm in a habit of blaming someone for,

You make me feel like this,

Just switching that 180,

Whether it's true or not as an exercise and just as an experiment and see how it is,

I think that's brilliant.

Now,

I wonder if the next step is just dropping subjects altogether,

A me and a you,

And just saying,

It doesn't accord with the English language so much,

But there's feelings of anger right now.

It doesn't have to be.

Now,

And then there's the next thing of,

Well,

Who's responsible for this?

I'm a big advocate of taking self-responsibility.

Do I need to blame anyone,

Including myself for what's happening?

Can it just be,

This is an experience happening.

I can take responsibility for it,

But I don't need to pin a blame on anybody.

I don't feel,

It's a real interesting thing.

And I love talking about,

I don't do this as much,

But talking about emotions because they can't be right or wrong and they can't be argued with either,

Right?

And it helps us all communicate as well,

Right?

Because people can really connect with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What you're saying is beautiful.

And I agree with you completely.

One of the constructs within percept language is that there is no blame or no praise,

No blame and no praise.

You take that out of the equation,

It changes the tone of a conversation dramatically.

It also makes it easier for the person like you to take responsibility for however you make yourself feel.

And sometimes people will say,

Well,

Make myself feel sounds kind of heavy.

But if you take the blame away,

It's simply an experience and it's a temporary experience.

That's another aspect of percept that all experiences,

And I know you're familiar with this,

All experiences are temporary.

All emotions are temporary.

And so we release our attachment to them.

We realize that I'm doing this to myself.

You're not doing this to me.

You could say something and I might get upset,

But if you said exactly the same thing to my wife,

She wouldn't get upset.

So how can I hold you responsible for making me upset?

I can't.

I'm doing this to myself,

Right?

It's really brilliant.

And then this is,

I tell people,

This is kind of a crash course in psychology.

By the Buddha,

These worldly wins,

These eight worldly wins are vicissitudes.

And one of them is praise or blame.

The other ones are gain and loss,

Pleasure and pain,

And fame and ill repute.

And these forces,

They drive the lives of most people.

I would say the terminology is uninstructed worldlings,

Which is,

I think,

Very accurate.

It's not demeaning or anything.

People are at the mercy of these forces constantly unless there's some kind of training or at least education,

I feel.

So yeah,

These are very important points.

So now,

How might that relate to this practice of awe,

Though,

Too?

Can it tie into that?

Yeah.

So I'll try and connect the dots.

So we have a model where we represent there's three levels of consciousness.

One is safety,

Which is where we are most of the time.

That is the one where language is most important.

That's the one where we're trying to reach agreements and set boundaries and make sense of the world.

And so that's where how we use language is very significant.

We then go to the next level,

Heart consciousness,

Which is basically a gratitude practice.

People are generally familiar with that.

A gratitude practice typically involves a fair amount of thinking.

We're saying and communicating things to help ourselves feel grateful.

If we go beyond that,

We go to spacious consciousness and we've accessed a state where the words and the thinking drop away.

That's where awe resides.

Because when we really access a state of awe,

I don't have words.

I actually can't convey to you exactly what I experienced.

And trying to is often a mistake in my opinion.

It's reductionistic.

Don't try to explain it,

Just allow yourself to have the experience.

So,

Yeah.

No,

I totally agree.

And a lot of times it can do a disservice and pull me out of it,

Right?

Now,

Later on,

Some of the beautiful poets and artists,

They can point at it,

But we realize that the finger pointing to the moon,

You know,

The classic Zen saying is not the same thing as the moon.

But yeah,

A lot of times if we're going to do it in language,

It could only be like in poetry and works like this where it doesn't do it directly or try to explain it linearly,

You know,

And how we would,

You know,

Mansplain or whatever.

Right,

Right.

Yeah.

And then I guess the last thing and probably we'll wrap up with it is the how-to.

And the how-to is very simple.

It's a three-step process.

We took the word awe,

We turned it into an acronym,

A-W-E.

The A,

I kind of talked about,

It's where we place our attention on something we value,

Appreciate,

Or find amazing.

And you can look around and do that,

Or you can think of a concept,

Or you can think of a person you love deeply and give that your full undivided attention.

The W stands for waiting.

And waiting,

In my opinion,

Is deeply undervalued in our culture.

And so,

If you think about you're going to enter into a building and somebody waits and holds the door for you,

You just think about how nice that is,

What that feels like.

It's a certain regard that we have for another person.

Well,

In the awe method,

We're waiting for ourselves.

We're just giving ourselves space.

And during that space,

That's when the mind,

The default mode network in the mind,

Quiets down,

Because we're giving our full attention to something we appreciate.

We're waiting and experiencing this quiet state.

And then when we exhale,

We instruct people to have your exhalation be a little bit longer than normal,

Because at the very end of that,

We activate something called the vagus nerve.

And when we activate the vagus nerve,

Whatever sensation we have,

Whatever sensations we have in our body will be amplified.

And so,

Because I was focused on something I value and appreciate,

I've waited,

And now I exhale,

I'm going to have this,

It could be even like an endorphin release,

Where I'm marinating in these positive sensations and feelings.

That's the practice.

It typically is one or maybe two breath cycles.

It can be extended.

We have 30 exercises that are extended awe practices,

Where you can carry this through an entire experience,

For example,

Taking a shower.

And the whole experience taking a shower can be an experience of awe.

But generally speaking,

We suggest to people this is one or two breath cycles,

10,

15 seconds,

Maybe 20.

I love this.

Nobody has an excuse now of not having enough time to meditate.

So I love these brief practices,

Even these things like the three breath highway,

Right?

Just be fully present for three breaths.

But the one thing that fascinates me about this is I didn't know this,

And I was just doing this along with it and contemplating on it,

This slow extended breath.

And you're saying it amplifies whatever experience we're having?

Could you say or tell me a little bit more about how the slower extended exhale correlates into the effect it has?

So in a normal inhale-exhale cycle,

There's very minimal activation of something called the vagus nerve.

But if we push the exhale just a little bit,

It shouldn't be uncomfortable,

Then we really turn the vagus nerve on.

And when we turn the vagus nerve on,

We're pushing ourselves into a very specific place within our nervous system,

Our autonomic nervous system.

And it's that playful place that I mentioned earlier.

And when we're there,

We experience an amplification of the sensations in our body,

Whatever they are.

And that's why if you do it when you're focused on something that you appreciate or value,

It's going to be a really positive response that you have.

And it's relatively short-lived,

But it is measurable and noticeable.

And it is also something that is part of many breath practices.

It's why many of the breathing practices encourage the long exhalation.

Are there any theories why this would have extra activation on the vagus nerve?

Yeah,

There's a whole discipline around this developed by Dr.

Stephen Porges.

He created something called polyvagal theory.

And Michael and I are in a group that meets every two weeks,

And Dr.

Porges is part of that group.

So he's been a real mentor for us in terms of helping us understand what's the physiological impact of accessing the state of awe.

And if people are interested in learning about it,

Polyvagal theory is,

There's lots of material out there on the internet about it.

And it's been around probably 20 years,

And he's kind of changing the construct of how people think about the autonomic nervous system.

We used to think about it strictly as the parasympathetic rest and digest,

Or the sympathetic fight-flight-freeze.

And he's presented a more nuanced understanding of how it works,

And that's the polyvagal theory.

And I had a co-host who were doing Ask Us Anything,

Lydia Grace,

She's a body worker,

And she was really big into this polyvagal theory.

Mentioned it quite a few times,

So I probably need to get up on this now.

Well,

Jake,

Is there anything you'd like to leave us with?

Any message you'd like to leave people with?

I think the final thought I'd like to leave people with is that awe can be used in a very proactive way.

So one example is,

If I'm going to have to have a conversation with someone and I feel like it's potentially going to be tense or there'll be conflict,

I'll go and access a state of awe before I have the conversation.

And I shift my physiology,

I shift my emotional state,

And I go into that conversation in a more pro-social manner,

Which means my voice is different,

My breathing pattern is different,

I'm more available to connect.

And it makes a powerful difference to access that state before going into something that we think may be challenging.

So this is a,

It's a tool that I use therapeutically.

When people come in and they have a complaint about something,

Before I'll ask them to talk about it,

I'll say,

I want to talk about that,

I want to know more about it.

But before we do that,

I'd like to take a moment of awe.

We'll access a moment of awe,

Come back to the topic,

And their whole demeanor has shifted.

And we now have a different conversation than what I believe we would have had,

Had we not accessed a moment of awe.

So I really encourage people,

If you're interested in this,

To think of it as a tool that you can use very proactively.

And awe is around us all the time.

It's just that we have become tunnel-focused,

And awe is an invitation to widen your perspective,

And see the beauty,

And see the miracles that are around us all the time.

No matter what's going on,

Even when things are difficult and troubling,

There's still beauty,

And,

And there's still simply the miracle of being alive.

So I just really encourage people to give this practice a try.

It's very easy.

It takes no time.

Well,

Beautiful,

Jake.

Thanks so much for joining,

And may you all be blessed with the most awe-inspiring experiences.

Bye now.