Episode Length: 21 minutes

The Mirror Doesn't Match

Hi everybody. Today, I want to talk about that weird, uncomfortable feeling that you get when you look in the mirror and you don't really recognize the face that you see there.

I know when it happens to me, I'm like, "What? Who is this person?" I just can't somehow believe it, because the person that I feel myself to be inside isn't matching the face that I see in the mirror. Does that ever happen to you?

When it started happening to me seriously, I got involved in looking for research about how to live so that this disparity between what I see and what I feel inside could come closer together. Because as I approach my 70th birthday this year, it's very important to me to hold on to life, to hold on to that feeling of aliveness. I call it Radical Aliveness.

Radical Aliveness isn't probably just going to stumble on you. It's a way of life, it's a lifestyle. And so everything that I find in terms of research that helps me understand how to cultivate this Radical Aliveness is what I want to bring to these videos.

Discovering Awe

This week, I had an amazing, really amazing experience with a book called Awe (A-W-E). And you know, "awesome"—that word has really diminished the beauty and the value of the word awe, because people say "awesome" about French fries and where you went for breakfast this morning. "Oh, awesome."

No. I mean, I wish we could quit using it that way, because "awesome" used to be a word that really stopped the scroll, so to speak. When something was truly awesome, it was worthy of our attention, and it meant something.

And these researchers at UC Berkeley have found out that not only does it mean something to the mind, to our thoughts, it means something to our bodies. And that's why I'm here, because if you want to begin to align your biology with your feeling of Radical Aliveness inside, this understanding of what awe is is a really powerful tool to put in your toolbox.

Two Doorways to Awe

Let's dive in. There are two kinds of experiences that open us up to awe.

The Material World

The first is to comprehend—take in deeply—something in the material world, the world around us. Walking in a forest, running along a beach, hiking up a mountain, smelling the coffee, smelling the roses that are blooming in the rose garden, feeling soft, furry things on your skin.

If you really stop and have these experiences, it's awe-inspiring, because the ability to perceive the physical world through our senses is an amazing gift. And we take it for granted, friends.

All you have to do is look at a little kid, and little kids will teach you everything you need to know about awe, because they are not jaded to the world yet. Everything is like, "Wow! Wow! Wow!" And a day in the life of a little kid may have 20, 30—I don't know—countless experiences of awe and wonderment.

And what does that awe and wonderment do? It releases beautiful oxytocin hormone, DHEA (which is a growth hormone), and calms the heart rate, brings the heart into heart coherence, which is a very specific state of regulated, even steady heartbeat. That means that your nervous system is calm and peaceful and receptive, and all these little pieces say to your body, "You're safe."

And when your body is safe, it doesn't have cortisol and adrenaline and the hormones and chemicals that produce stress. Because stress uses inflammation, and inflammation is what really is the main problem with biological aging.

So it's very important to begin to live in this condition of harmony and flow and rightness with the world.

Moral Beauty: The Surprising Discovery

The UC Berkeley researchers found that there was actually an even more powerful way to experience awe,