The Present Professional

039 - Michael Amster on The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout and Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity and Purpose—in Less Than 1 Minute Per Day

March 30, 2023 John Marshall & Tony Holmes
The Present Professional
039 - Michael Amster on The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout and Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity and Purpose—in Less Than 1 Minute Per Day
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

We're thrilled to welcome mindfulness researcher, doctor, and co-author of The Power of Awe, Michael Amster, M.D., to the show today to introduce you to a practice that will help you "overcome burnout and anxiety, ease chronic pain, find clarity and purpose—in less than 1 minute per day".

Michael walks us through the method live and the simplicity of implementing it in your daily life. He also introduces us to the profound results of their research that you will not want to miss. You will be in A.W.E. of the profound impact a 1-minute practice can have on your mental, emotional, and physical health.

If a prolonged meditation practice or implementing mindfulness practices in your life has been difficult for you, Michael and his co-author Jake Eagle, LCP, have an answer. The A.W.E. method will create profound shifts for you individually and on a societal level as we share it with our friends, colleagues, and loved ones. So, this is your calling. Share this episode with at least one person that will benefit from the practice.   

Purchase The Power of Awe, follow their guided meditations, and join their courses HERE (https://thepowerofawe.com/)

We're incredibly grateful for their work and thrilled to share Michael and Jake with The Present Professional community. Check out their online presence below.

The Power of Awe: Website, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
Jake Eagle: LinkedIn and Website
Michael Amster: LinkedIn 

Start putting these insights into practice, and let us know what you're experiencing with them. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for future episodes. Connect with us below!

Visit our WEBSITE  and work with us directly to bring the topics from this episode and more into your life and the lives of your people.

Other ways to connect:
The Present Professional | Instagram
Coach John Marshall | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook
Coach Tony Holmes | Instagram | LinkedIn

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of the community! Together, we're Producing Present Professionals.


00:00 John You're listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development. To change your experience of life and work with every episode. 

00:20 Tony So tune in, grab your notebook, and let's go! Let's go!

00:27 John Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today we have a special guest with us, Michael Amster, author of The Power of Awe. Now, we're so excited to share this work with you guys today. And I was talking to Michael before this call about how much I respected the ease at which you can step into this practice on your own. And as fellow mindfulness practitioners, yoga practitioners, and instructors, that it's something that is very close to our hearts and something that is the foundation of not just a foundational part of our lives, but it's a foundational part of our businesses and the mission and what we hope to create in the world. So we are excited to share that with you guys. This method to, on the book, overcome burnout and anxiety, ease chronic pain, find clarity and purpose in less than one minute per day. And it's something that I say about mindfulness practices in general, is that, you know, it's about that practice of returning, like coming back to an awareness of where your attention is. And however many times you do that, even in a seated meditation practice is like doing one rep. And as you do that throughout your day, you're just moving that to a macro scale. And I believe that in this book, the all method, it gives you a really sound formula to be able to incorporate that into your life and into your day to day. So before I continue rambling on how much this is, I feel this is meaningful to you guys and to someone that's just stepping into a mindfulness practice. I want to give Michael a moment to introduce himself, give you guys a little bit more on his background and introduce you to the concept and the power of all.

02:29 Michael Well, thank you so much, John and Tony for welcoming me to your show today. I'm just thrilled to be here. We were chatting before we started today about your mission and what you guys are up to. And I just feel such a resonance and a connection. Really I'm in awe of what you guys are up to and the good work you're doing. So thank you again for bringing me on the show. Yeah, I'd love to share a little bit about my background. I'm a medical doctor. I'm a pain management specialist. I live out in California. And similar to John, we were talking about, I'm also a trained yoga teacher and been a student of mindfulness for about 30 years and first became a student when I was in my undergrad education and I started to have panic attacks when taking examinations. I was one of these kids who always wanted to be a doctor since he was a little boy. I mean, I just always could see myself doing nothing else but practicing medicine. I just loved playing doctor as a kid and it was always an admiration of the ability to heal and help people. So going through high school and then into college, I just saw the stakes got higher and higher with every further exam I had to take and I started really freaking out and my monkey mind took over when I would be in examinations and I would like just completely my brain would shut down and panic and fear that I was going to fail. And so I did my first Vipassana, which is a form of Buddhist meditation retreat in college, and it really changed my life. You know, I just got to see my mind in a way that I'd never had any idea of how it operated and worked. And the practice, I continued after the retreat and it was something that I was able to take with me through medical education and as doctors, we keep taking exams. Like the exams never stop. I still have to take board exams every 10 years. It's just like a long process. And I was really fortunate to have a lot of incredible mentors in my path. My medical school at UC Irvine actually had a mindfulness meditation group for med students and residents and really was able to develop and deepen my practice. And as a pain management doctor, I've been teaching mindfulness for probably 20 years now to my patients. I lead these chronic pain groups and teach people how to use mindfulness to help manage their depression, anxiety, their chronic pain, and saw a lot of really incredible benefits over the years. But started noticing over the years that people really struggle with continuing to practice. Like they would dabble in it and they'd find some benefit. But then it got hard to find the 20 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day to have a sustained practice. And I was taking a class that my co-author, Jake Eagle, he's a psychotherapist in Hawaii. I've known Jake for about 16 years and he's a really incredible teacher and leads a spiritual community. It's called Live Conscious. You can find him on the Internet at liveconscious.com. And he's just a very wise man with and his wife also teaches with him and he's teaching a class. And he had the participants do 10 minutes of meditation a day. And a lot of people were like, I don't have the time to do that. And so Jake and I had a conversation about what if we create these micro meditations where you could take them on the go? You could have equally profound mindfulness experiences, but it only took 10 to 15 seconds to do. So I flew out to Hawaii where Jake lives and we started to investigate what would be that ideal mindfulness practice that would bring you to that state of profound presence, a peace of a sense of expansiveness. You know, in Buddhism, they talk about this idea of the state of nirvana, which is the state of awakeness, that transcendent state where our mind slows down, time expands. We feel like oneness with all life or the universe. And that's really the goal of people's practices is to get to that transcendent state. And I'll be honest, like I practice intensely. I've done a lot of 10 day retreats. I got trained in a two year program at a place called Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. I did many extensive long retreats and I only dabbled and had experiences of that just temporarily for moments here and there. After like 10 days of practice and just like finally get a taste of it. And really, you know, what I realized is from when we came up upon this awe method, it was really what we did was we came up with a technique that brings you to that transcendent state for some people in five to 10, 15 seconds. So it was when I was in Hawaii with Jake and his wife and Hawaii for all of you seeing pictures or been there, you know, Hawaii is filled with awe. It's extraordinary awe, right? These incredible rainbows and oceans and the mountains, the colors, the flowers, the food, everything about it is so awe inspiring. But it actually wasn't in the extraordinary awe. But I had this moment where I was making pancakes one morning for Jake and Hannah and I poured the batter and I just stood there and brought my full attention to watching these pancakes cook. And I think like most people, I know Tony, you've got a young kid, but when we pour pancake batter, we're off multitasking, right? We're making sausage, pouring coffee, orange juice. Like we don't sit there and watch our pancakes cook. We never give our full attention to it. It's just like we pour and go. And I mean, think about most of our lives are like that, right? We just dabble our attention for a few moments on something and then we're off doing something else. So I had this really transcendent experience making these pancakes this one morning, just because I was fully present. And I experienced awe, like this profound awe. In fact, I would call it an orgasm. That's like the extreme level of awe, like when your body experiences those chills and tingles, which we all can relate to. We've had those moments where it is an orgasm. Like for Tony, I'm sure when your child was born and you got to hold them for the first time and life's meaning and purpose kind of all fell into place as being a new dad. I had that when my daughter was born. I know what that's like. But I had that level of an experience just making pancakes. So from that, Jake and I dissected down like, well, what is the ideal profound practice that brings you to that full nirvana state? And what we came up with was this awe method. It's this three-step process. And we use the word awe, A-W-E. We broke it into an acronym. And I know we'll talk a little more about that today, but it's this three-step process that gives you that sense of profound presence and awe. And the beautiful thing is I'm a medical doctor, I'm a scientist. And we partnered with UC Berkeley at the Greater Good Science Center where they've done 20 years of research on the emotion of awe. And we tested our methodology with hundreds of patients. And we know it works. And I'd love to talk about that research too when we have a chance.

09:40 John  Wow. Yeah. Wow.

09:44 Tony I want to comment real quick because I read through the book as well. And one of the things I saw that Jake said in the preface was he asked himself a powerful question. And the question was, am I thrilled to be alive? And that is such a powerful question to ask yourself every day. And I just have to know, how did you all incorporate that piece of, am I thrilled to be alive into the awe method? Because that is such a powerful question to start with in your practice. I mean, you talked about Hawaii, I've been there. I loved it.

10:19 Michael  Yeah, that's a great question. So there are actually two separate things. So Jake lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for about 30 years. And he moved to Hawaii I think about five, six years ago. And he really disoriented himself when he left his old community and where he was known, he had a reputation, they had a whole bunch of friends. And he's like, here I am in Hawaii in this beautiful place. They built their dream home. Him and his wife have a phenomenal relationship. And he really was somewhat lost and disoriented. And so he actually came up with this idea of asking himself, am I thrilled to be alive every day? And then just asking that question focuses our mind on the topic. And so then throughout the days, looking for things that he's thrilled to be alive about. So that's actually, I guess that was the seed that was planted because I was in that course. He taught this thrilled to be alive course. It was like a, I think a month long course where it met on Zoom for about an hour a week for four weeks. And the purpose was really to try to find that level of awareness and consciousness of being thrilled of your life, which is really a, it's a gratitude practice is what it comes down to. It's about looking for the things in your life that you are grateful for and appreciative of. And the ah method is really something that is different. I mean, ah and gratitude, there's a connection to them, but they're really different emotions. Yeah. So the ah method doesn't involve like having to be thrilled or grateful. It's a different practice. What's beautiful about the ah method is really, it doesn't involve any thought. When you're starting to learn the practice, it does take thought because you're trying to master these three steps. They're like training wheels. But what happens is, and we know this from our studies with hundreds of participants, is that eventually you start to develop spontaneous ah. So if you guys just took 21 days and started practicing this ah method three times a day, what will happen is your lens of how you see the world will radically start to change and you'll start to be in awe all around with just going to for a walk down your street with your dog or like changing your kid's diaper. You'll have an awe moment. Like it's just ah, ah will arise. It just spontaneous like effervescently comes into your being when you start to look for it. 

12:43 John Wow. And I love that you separated those feelings, right? Those, that experience, whether we're talking about gratitude or awe. And that brings me to a part later in your book that's also related to some of the things that, you know, we discuss at humessence as well as some other episodes that we have here. And it was how it relates to those three levels of consciousness that you mentioned in the book. And, you know, when I, when I looked at the three levels of consciousness and moving from that more survival state and that's the safety state of it, then moving into the heart and where the grad where gratitude is, you know, being appreciative for where things are and appreciative of just the day to day and developing that practice and then into spaciousness where awe, awe lives. And so I wondered if rather than them being separate, if they were building blocks to one another based on that three levels of consciousness model that you had in there.

13:48 Michael Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll share a little bit about the three levels of consciousness model for your listeners. So sort of a new idea for them. So this is really the life's work of my co-author and friend, Jake Eagle. So him and his wife, like I shared, they've been leading this spiritual community called Live Conscious and they've over the years have led incredible retreats. I mean, I've, I bet I'm a bit of a retreat junkie. I'm guessing, John, you are too, you know, we love going on yoga retreats and mindfulness retreats and because they're so healing and transformative. It's like you can do a year of psychotherapy and growth, emotional spiritual growth in a matter of a week, you know, and instead of one year, it's just like, it's a, it's an opportunity to grow yourself on steroids. So yeah, so Jake and Eagle, Jake Eagle and Hannah have come up with this model over the years of study and understanding of human development and human consciousness. And so there's these three levels and it's a, it's a wonderful model, I think, to live your life and look at, because you can ask yourself at any time, like, well, what level of consciousness am I in? And the power is with this model is that depending on what level of consciousness you're in at any given state in time, it colors the way you see the world, but it also then impacts how you react to different stimuli that happen. So if you look at the general model of psychology, it's what's called the stimulus and response model. So, you know, let's say, for example, you're driving your car down the highway and somebody cuts you off and they're kind of rude, maybe even give you the finger. And then there's a slight gap of time and that's where mindfulness comes in, right? We're trying, mindfulness is to look at that stimulus and response and try to become aware before we respond. Well, we respond by maybe giving the guy the finger back, cutting them off, that's where road rage comes in. But if we're in a different, and that's where, that's when we're in our normal everyday level of consciousness and in the model, they call that safety consciousness. And that's, there's nothing wrong with this, by the way. I mean, we all live our lives day to day in safety consciousness. We're going to work and we're productive and we're raising our families and we're cooking and we're shopping. We're most of the time living in safety consciousness. I mean, there's different sort of three tiers where we break it up in a little bit more detail, but even when we're driven, motivated, we're focused on our careers, I mean, that's within the realm of safety consciousness. When we're sort of in that fight or flight response, that's within the realm of safety consciousness. So if we're at a heightened level of consciousness and the next level up is what's called heart consciousness, and that's the state of gratitude. So when we have a gratitude practice, and if I just think right now, what am I grateful for as I woke up this morning? And I focus on that, immediately my level of consciousness changes. And right now I'm thinking about my partner and my daughter and our dog. And I'm out in California, we just had a big storm last night and I'm living in a home where I'm dry and warm and sheltered and so much to be grateful for. Immediately you can probably even hear my voice has changed a little bit because it's brought me to a heightened level of consciousness. So if I go back to that original example of someone cutting me off on the highway and I'm in a state of heart consciousness where I've felt gratitude and I brought that into my daily level of awareness and consciousness, I'm going to react differently to the guy. I'm in a more what's called pro-social state and we'll talk about how awe is the ultimate pro-social emotion. But pro-social emotions are the positive emotions of gratitude, generosity, of compassion, of patience, of openness and wonder, and looking at the world with open eyes. So immediately I'm just going to react differently to someone and when I'm in a state of heart consciousness. And then the next level up is spacious consciousness. And that's where awe is in. And accessing awe is a way in which we can get into spaciousness. Spacious consciousness is the space of that level of consciousness where contemplative spiritual practices lie. Like when we're doing prayer or meditation, like chanting mantras, going to you know church or like we go hiking and we see an incredible vista and we experience that level of awe of spaciousness where time expands or stands still, where we're fully present, where we experience connection to all life, to all beings. That's that transcendent state of nirvana. And then when we're in that state, I mean if you think about when you're in that state and if someone were to cut you off on the highway, you'd just be like, yo bro, like peace out. We're like one and the same. We're here on this planet together. Like here we are in this blue ball out in the Milky Way galaxy, you know, surrounded by billions of galaxies and a universe that's 17 billion years old that continues to expand at the speed of light. Getting cut off on the highway doesn't matter anything at all. Like in the big picture of the grand scheme of all life in the universe and the planet. And that's what when we're in awe and we're in that level of spacious consciousness, like all these mundane things that we stress ourselves out about like at work and with our families and relationships with people, like they don't matter. I mean, it's not like they're not important, but they have a different level of gravity and intensity. And then we can really, we just arrive at life with an open heart and a sense of generosity and compassion. And we know from 20 years of social science research and psychology research, mostly at UC Berkeley on the emotion of awe, that awe is like really the most powerful of all positive emotions for not just our emotional health, but also our physical health. So yeah, I'd love to share more about the research too. And it's just so unbelievable because I think we've kind of, researchers thought and people thought that awe is like the Gucci bag of emotions, meaning that, yeah, I'd really like to have one, but I don't need it. It's like kind of an option. Well, actually we're wrong. You know, awe is perhaps the most fundamental of positive emotions for our overall health and wellbeing.

20:08 John  Wow. Well, I'd love to hear more about that and hear, and for our listeners to hear more about that as well. The, it's, I've talked about this in previous episodes, it's like your view, you know, when you see, when you see the problems or challenges or whatever's happening in life right in front of you. And that's the only thing that you see. And that's where your spotlight is, you know, or you able to open up to that more spacious floodlight consciousness. And it's still there, but you're able to see the horizon, but you're able to see what's beyond your vision, the greater, the greater picture of things. And it's not that it makes that problem person thing physically smaller or remove it from the equation, but it's just a small piece of your overall awareness, which contributes to your mood, your overall, your consciousness, your health, your wellbeing. So I wanted to parallel that to some of the other concepts that we've brought up in, in the show and you know, just how we're all beautifully talking about the same direction and whichever one resonates for you, you try it on as a listener. So any of the things that we bring, any of the things that are mentioned here, you try it on what works for you, you move forward with it, tweak it, make it your own. And so as we're talking about, you know, what they can tweak and make their own, let's, let's get into the method itself. I'll let you go ahead and introduce the all method to the listeners and then we can get into a little bit more of the research backing that once they have the practice.

21:52 Michael  Yeah. And I'd love to share just a little thought in response to what you shared, John, about, and the way we think about it, Jake and I is what's going on in the foreground versus the background. So quite often we're just so focused narrowly because we're, we're self absorbed as humans. I mean, we're just, we think that we have an objective sense of reality, but we don't. I mean, our, what we see through our eyes, what we're thinking, feeling the thoughts that go on our head, they're not universal. Those are just our little thoughts. And what does, and when we're in awe or we're in that level of heart consciousness or in spacious consciousness is that we are no longer just focused in zeroed in on a very small slice of reality. We're actually opening up to the vastness of, of all life, of the universe, of all creation. And when we do that, you know, we, we change our level of consciousness. So I really love that you really picked up on that. And that's really the power of what this model does. So yeah, the awe method. So it's a, it's a three step process and we use the word awe, as I said, A-W-E, and we break it into three steps. And I'm mindful that when people listen to podcasts, they're mostly driving their car. So I don't want to give someone right now, as you talk about this and lead you through one, that mindfulness experience, like I don't want someone to get in a car crash because they had such a profound awe experience. So I want to just send people to our website at thepowerofawe.com where we do have free guided meditations and we have a lot of resources on our website, as well as an online course. And also there's the book. So if you want to really dive in to the deeper aspects of the method, that's the place to go. And we have 30 extended awe practices that are really transformative. I mean, there's one of them is about giving a hug in the state of awe. And I've heard from people that have done that practice, like they've, they come back and say, that's like the best hug I've ever had in my entire life when I applied this method to the hug. So there's, there's a lot of good juiciness in our book and on our website as well. So the practice in a nutshell. 

24:08 John We'll share links to all of that in the show notes guys. So, you know, following up from the show, you'll have links to the books, links to the website, just so you can follow up on everything Michael just mentioned. Sorry. Go ahead. 

24:18 Michael Oh, it's great. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that with your community of listeners. Yeah. So the practice in a nutshell, so A is the first, first letter in awe and it stands for attention. And so what we're asking you to do right now, and, and we can have a moment of awe together, you know, as I'm talking right now. So let's, let's, let's sort of do this as a practice. So I want you to bring your full undivided attention to something that you value, you appreciate or find amazing. And so it can be something in the room you're in right now. It could even be a thought or a memory. It could be someone from your past that maybe is longer here. It could be someone who's currently in your life that you value or you appreciate. You find them amazing. And so you just hold that in them, in your level of awareness for a cycle of a breath or two. And then the W stands for weight. And so the weight is really where you gift yourself that full undivided attention for just a cycle of a breath or two. And you know, when you're walking with someone and they hold the door open for you and they're waiting for you and that you go through, like you're doing that for yourself, you're gifting yourself that, that love, that care of giving yourself the opportunity to really wait for yourself and being in that glow of that thing that you're in awe of. And then the E stands for two things. Well, one is a deep exhalation. So you want to give yourself a longer exhalation than your inhale. And if you think of even the sound of someone saying, ah, like, ah, that's a longer exhale out. And when we take a longer exhale, what we do is we stimulate our vagus nerve. And our vagus nerve is the master computer of our parasympathetic nervous system. It's part of that autonomic nervous system that keeps our heart beating, our blood pressure regulated. Like we can be asleep at night and our physiology completely keeps working without even being conscious. And that's what this part of the nervous system that we stimulate when we have an awe moment is that rest and repair state. And then the E also stands for expansion. And what you're letting happen is this moment that you've focused on, that you brought your full undivided attention to, you want to let that expand inside of you. And it's sort of maybe somewhat of an energetic thing, but you let it get bigger than you. You let it go out through your extremities and fill the space around you. And one of the things that happens when you have a moment of awe, and this is how we scientifically define a moment of awe, is that there's a sense of vastness, expansion. And it expands your sense of identity, expands your sense of self, your egoic self expands. And so what you're doing, you're really letting that facilitate and that happen when you have an expansion. And often you'll feel tingles or chills on your extremities because you're letting that energy has to go somewhere and it extends out through your body, your physical body. So that's kind of the practice in a nutshell. What happens is we think of them in many ways as it's the training wheels. In our research, we ask people to practice just three times a day, which once you get it down, it takes about 15 to 20 seconds, about a cycle or two of a breath. And we followed them for 21 days in a structured program and saw really profound benefits in terms of people's mental and physical health. Just practicing really in total for about a minute a day.

27:40 John  Wow. Well, I'll let you comment Tony, but I just, I feel like I was going through the practice as we were mentioning it and it felt very nice.

27:54 Tony You know, one thing that I read in the book was how people had said that they didn't have enough time to meditate. And as I went through the one minute or so with you just now, the biggest difference I picked up on was the weight piece. When you talked about the weight and how giving yourself that chance, like if someone was opening the door, you're opening the door for yourself or holding the door for yourself. That piece right there is what I think is missing. I think a lot of people don't experience that when they have their own self meditation or they're going through their own meditation practice, even for myself. I meditate pretty much every day and I never give myself that opportunity to wait on what I have recognized as I want to be most present on. So I just as experiencing with you just now, I have my eyes closed. I was going through the guide of meditation with you in that piece right there. It just stuck out to me so much. And I wonder if in your research or in your practice, if anything for that particular part of the awe method has done something for people where they can now have or they feel like they have more time to meditate? Because saying that you don't have 10 minutes, I'm like, really? It's just 10 minutes. You got to 24 hours. But I hope that maybe if they go through the awe method, they start to find more time as it expands in the practice for them.

29:15 Michael  Yeah. Well, what happens when this is you bring up a good point is what we saw in our research is that the more times a day that you microdose and originally we actually were calling our body of work microdosing mindfulness, which we were thinking just have these microdoses of mindfulness throughout your day and that cumulatively they'll have the same benefit of let's say a more structured 10 minute practice or a 20 minute practice. And we decided to use the terminology of the awe method. It just really fit better and people don't associate with psychedelics than they do with microdosing. But yeah, it is a practice that it feeds on itself because what happens and what's different than a traditional mindfulness practice. I mean, I love extended mindfulness practices. I think they're great. But a lot of times, let's say you'll sit for 20 minutes and you'll have struggled to keep your mind focused. Maybe you had a rough moment earlier in your day and your mind keeps going back to replaying that memory and you're like, okay, I got to come back to the present moment. I'm trying to quiet my mind, trying to come back to my breath. And your mind goes back to ruminating over that story of what happened earlier in your day. Or maybe you're anxious about something that's going to happen later in the day. So your mind is always jumping around to the past or the future, but it struggles to be in the present. And often I didn't find and my patients say, I don't find a reward. I don't feel good necessarily after trying to practice for 20 minutes a day. I don't see the benefit. What's so nice about an awe experience is that instantaneously you get a reward. It feels good to be in awe. That 15 seconds that John and you just had of experiencing awe, I can tell you both, it changed your level of consciousness. Even if it was just for a moment of time, you experienced some sense of spaciousness and then you get the reward of feeling good because when we're in awe, we feel good. It's a very positive emotion to experience. I'm really loving this idea of waiting. I never thought of it as well with mindfulness before. I didn't have that perspective and I appreciate you pointing that out, Tony. I've been really playing a lot with that idea lately. I'm a medical doctor. I'm a pain management specialist. So I work with people in chronic pain all the time and I was actually just in clinic yesterday and I was really conscious to be as patient with my patients as possible, just waiting. People that were having a hard time walking, offering them a hand, helping them get up and down off the table, helping an elderly patient put on their shoes. And it brought me so much joy in waiting. Most of us, we're so busy. We're multitasking. We're like, okay, well, while that patient's going to put on the shoes, I'm going to check my phone for my messages or get on my email or something. But what a gift, not just for them, but a gift for myself too. Yeah, I just think that what's happened with our wired connections to technology all the time, we've lost the art of waiting. Yeah, I think it's such a gift to wait. But that's what happened when I had that epiphany making pancakes, was because I waited. I just really was present with pancake making. We can find awe everywhere. It's endless. Awe is our birthright to be found, especially for you, Tony, with a little one-year-old. Those little guys are machines of wonder and awe. They are taking on the world and every day they're growing and expanding their level of consciousness and their skills are developing. It's the ultimate source of awe and wonder is looking at little ones and how they live and experience the world. Yeah. And then what's so awesome, what we also know from our research is that awe is contagious. And what I mean by that is when I share a moment of awe with you, it inspires you to have awe. When we share our awe with others, we stimulate awe in them. Just sharing stories of awe can stimulate an awe experience for somebody. On our website, we have what we call the moment of awe page. And so people can post their moments of awe. You can read other people's moments of awe. And it is really awe-inspiring to see how people live and be in the world and what they find awe-inspiring as well as what inspires you. And sharing your awe is a gift for other people.

34:01 John I'll say a little bit about my experience with just going through the method there with you. And what that felt like to me was taking of values and gratitude practice to a new level of experience. Not just bringing it up intellectually. I am grateful for this. And so my girlfriend came to my mind there when you first asked who of something someone that you value that inspires you that awe moment. And I immediately thought of her dancing last weekend, twirling around, smiling, just beautiful. And to sit and wait in that to really experience it, instead of just saying, I'm grateful for her and our relationship. It was like a specific moment. It was when I'm really looking at her like, wow. And then to give myself the gift of reveling in that and waiting in it, that felt like it really amplified that sense. And then to incorporate it with the physical body and the breath and the exhales and really let it set into a parasympathetic state of my nervous system. Wow. And now it's like, then the expand part felt like now that I've embodied that feeling, that I've taken that vision, that feeling, that value and brought it into my physiology. And now I feel like the expand part happened organically. Once it was there, as above, so below, everything outside of me got that same glow. And once I experienced that and we kept talking about it, I thought about the moments when she looks at me and she's like, what? And I'm like, I'm just looking at you. And just going through that practice reminded me of other times when I'm in awe in the moment with her. And it's like, hey, what's going through your mind? I'm like, I'm just here and just really appreciating what's going on right now. Just feeling this. So that experience gave me a structured moment to some of the moments that I experienced with her in person and as we move through our life. And yeah, I love how everything is tying together, gratitude, mindfulness, awe, the stimulus and response period and that pause. And it's just really powerful. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the benefits that you're seeing and some of the, you mentioned physical, mental, and emotional health, like some of the things that's coming up in the research. What can our listeners expect to experience in themselves from this practice?

37:20 Michael Yeah. Well, I first wanted to say, John, I just love how you described your experience of the practice. I was totally in awe of hearing you share about that. And I too really see how the practice is so powerful because it does bring in these sort of critical aspects of a mindfulness experience of bringing your full attention, the weight, which is really a gift and just being, just honoring ourself in the moment in a really profound way. And then the breath, breath is the cornerstone of mindfulness practices. It's like the basic practice is just noticing your breath and we are leveraging the power of our breath to really cultivate that sense of awe. And then the expansion and there's something powerful that just changes our level of being as physically and emotionally you can feel it. It's palpable when you experience intentionally letting yourself expand into bigger than the small self, just the physical defined self, the small ego as well. It's a very healing state, an elevated state of consciousness. Yeah. So our research, it's been a phenomenal journey for us. I was never a researcher before this awe study. Jake and I, well, after we came up with the methodology, we both decided to do some pilot studies. So in my clinical practice, I studied this on about a dozen of my patients and he did the same with his client base. And we saw some really just profound preliminary results of improvements in depression and anxiety decreases in chronic pain. And so I tracked down Dacher Keltner and he is the founder, a professor at UC Berkeley at the Greater Good Science Center, which is a center that studies positive emotions. And they're the premier center on the planet that's studying the emotion of awe. And I shared our pilot data and he was just blown away because what was really unique about what we did was that prior to us, the research on awe was all on extraordinary awe for the most part. They were having people go out in nature or watch on a virtual reality goggle set, flying over Yosemite or something. But that's not sustainable nor real, right? I mean, we wanted to help people have awe in every day, all around you. And that's where this idea of having on the ordinary and that's what our methodology is about finding ordinary awe that you can be in your home during the pandemic sheltering in place and find all around you. Or just a simple walk of walking down to your park that you might do every single day with your dog and see that in a moment of awe with the goggles, the lenses of awe, then it transforms that everyday walk into something that is just completely filled with epiphanies and amazing moments of awe. So after we shared this initial data with Dacher, the pandemic hit, and I reached out to him and said, hey, let's do an emergency study. People are sheltering in place. We have this method. We know our preliminary data works. So we recruited about 300 primary care patients that were struggling with depression, anxiety, sheltering in place, really having a hard time at the height of the pandemic. Actually, our study launched right at the time of the George Floyd riot situation going on in June of 2020. It was a really hard time. Over half the country was struggling with severe depression, anxiety, loneliness. And we also did a second study simultaneously where we recruited about 200 doctors and nurses that were on the front lines managing the COVID crisis. And they were all burning out. We know from an AMA study, American Medical Association study, like 20,000 doctors that 50% were burning out, ready to quit medicine, just really struggling. So we taught the 21-day awe method program to about these 500 people, participants, and did pre-post measurements and daily measurements. And we saw just incredible outcomes in research. And right now our papers are getting published this year, which is really exciting. But for example, a 35% reduction of depression between the two study groups. And if you know the research out there, the depression research, this is incredible. The technique that takes about a minute a day, we ask people just to practice three times a day, lower depression by 35%. This is equal to the efficacy of antidepressants without the side effects that come along with that. This is also equal to efficacy of long-term psychotherapy as well. And I think it's great that people are doing using antidepressants and psychotherapy. I mean, those are all valuable tools for managing depression and anxiety, but it's just incredible that this is so freely accessible to people. And what we think of this is actually a medical intervention, that the awe method is a tool that clinicians can teach their patients to use to help with moments of depression and anxiety and senses of loneliness. So across the board, we looked at all these different measures, which included depression, anxiety, experiences of loneliness, overall sense of stress, chronic pain and other chronic health symptoms, all decreased to a level of statistical significance. And we saw an overall sense of wellbeing that people had from being in the study and practicing the awe method every day for three times a day. And one of the really cool things I already shared a little bit about, but that one is that we know that the more times you practice throughout the day, so it's what's called a dose response, the more times you have these moments, you get more benefit. And people that struggled from other traditional practices of mindfulness, that people shared with us that, oh yeah, I tried going to an MBSR class or I've tried traditional mindfulness and I couldn't do it. Like my mind was too busy or racing. That people were able to do this because it is so effortless. It's so easy and that it can be done at any place at any time. It's a practice that you can take on the go of life, which is just incredible. It goes with you if you're in line at the airport, going through a TSA checkpoint, you can have moments of awe standing in line. You can be at a red light and have a moment of awe. You can be in line at the grocery store and have a moment of awe. You can be changing your one-year-old's diapers and have a moment of awe. I mean, this practice is just so freely available. It can just integrate everywhere in your life. It doesn't take any sitting on a meditation cushion to practice. So from that, we're doing further research, which is really exciting because of the benefit being so profound. We're doing a study right now with COVID long haul patients that 26 million Americans are suffering from long COVID symptoms of brain fog and fatigue and chronic health symptoms. This is actually a good segue at some point to talk about a little bit about the science and how awe changes our physiology and our brain and inflammation in the body, which is why we think that this will help people with long COVID as well. What were you thinking, Tony?

44:54 Tony  That could segue into what you just said. My comment was going to be how you mentioned that people have an opportunity to find the awe, but in reality, it already lives inside of everybody. It already lives inside of us. It's really the awareness that we need. My question was going to be around sustainability and how people are able to actually sustain this in their life, even if it is in the short 15-second, 60-second moments that you mentioned. But I'm interested in you talking more to the brain fog that people have experienced post-COVID or long COVID, as you mentioned. I'm curious to know where you are going with the awe method and that, but if you can maybe answer both, is how do people sustain the awe and then also what you are doing with your new research in that area?

45:42 Michael  Yeah, about sustaining awe. Really the idea behind the awe method is that it's training wheels, that we're learning to build an awe muscle over time. We think it takes about 21 days, about a three-week commitment to get to the place where you start to have spontaneous moments of awe where you don't necessarily need to have the awe method as your training wheels anymore. You're just freely riding on life and awe spontaneously arises all around you throughout your day. We think of it as building a muscle. In our book, we talk about this idea that we want to go from a temporary state where you just have this brief moment of awe and then you're back to everyday life and safety consciousness to developing this trait. It becomes a part of who you are. It becomes a new part of your behavior where you're just wired to experience awe then throughout your day. I think one thing that helps people in developing a practice is to do what's called habit stacking. What that means is that you tie in the awe practice to things you already do on a daily basis in your life. For me, for example, I love making coffee in the morning. It's such a wonderful way to start the day. I use that opportunity to have moments of awe. If you make coffee or tea every morning, use that as an opportunity to find a moment of awe in that, whether it's you becoming in awe of the fact that you can put a kettle on a flame and water boils and how that happens. Or if you grind your coffee up fresh to smell the aroma that is released from the beans being ground. I use a French press. I love looking at the granules of the coffee floating in the water. Even though it's something I do every single day, I can find a different moment of awe to behold with each day. It's like an ordinary experience, but there's awe to be found in a different way every day I make coffee. Which is really the summary of how powerful this practice is that you can go on the same walk every day with your dog to the park and see new things you've never seen before because you're opening your eyes up for awe and wonder. You're seeing light differently through the trees each day or the seasons change, so new flowers are coming up or leaves are dropping or the air is different or you notice the humidity changing or the wind is different. There's so much awe to be found. It's really helpful, like I said, you connect these ordinary things you do and you tie them into finding awe. Making coffee, maybe even brushing your teeth, taking a shower. We have a practice in our book about having a shower that is like orgasmic. There's so much there to be had sensorally when you're in a shower that you can really find awe in. Yeah, and then the second part of your question. So talking about what happens to the physiology and what happens in our bodies with awe. Yeah, so there's four main areas of where our bodies are impacted in a very positive way when we have a moment of awe. So the first is how it positively impacts our autonomic nervous system. We already talked about this as part of the core design of the awe method is that deep exhale. When we take that really long exhale, the vagus nerve, which is one of the largest nerves in the body, this master computer that starts up in the neck area and it goes all the way down towards the diaphragm along our spine. When we take a long exhale, we stimulate our vagus nerve and that creates a sense of rest and relaxation and repair to occur. And it's a complex process, but basically overall, we're starting to create an overall neurological state of rest and healing and repair to happen in our body. Secondly, when we do the awe method is we quiet this part of the brain. That's called the default mode network. And it's not actually one specific focused area, but it incorporates a lot of different real estate in the brain. And the default mode network is the part of that monkey mind, that ruminating self-absorbed part of our brain where we have many thousands of random thoughts throughout the day where we have that conversation in our head. And when we practice the awe method, we're quieting down. We know in moments of awe through brain scan studies that the default mode network area is quiet down because we're bringing our full attention to something that we're value appreciating or find amazing. And also that sense of expansion because the sense of ego, the sense of self diminishes and we feel connected to the vastness, the bigger things of all life on this planet. We feel connected to each other as humans and to God or consciousness, whatever you want to call it. Also, third thing is oxytocin is released, which is the bonding connecting hormone. So we feel connected to others. We feel connected to life and we feel safe. We feel trustworthy in ourself in that state. And then finally, this is what I think probably really the most profound impact. So I'm saving the best for last here is how awe impacts our internal chemistry with regards to inflammation and our immune system. And I mean, I'm totally in awe of this process of what happens here. And so I'll share a little bit about the background. So when life originated on earth, the earth has been at 4 billion years and the initial, the original organisms were single cellular organisms that came about a billion years ago. And they communicated with each other through what are called cytokines. There's these little protein molecules that are probably some of the oldest molecules that evolved on the planet earth, just by random chance. I mean, earth is a grand experiment that's 4 billion years old. And it's just the conditions happen where we are with the sun and the different meteors that hit the planet and that formed this planet created the ability for life to form. And so cytokines are these billion year old molecules that communicate between cells, basically whether they're safe or unsafe, like threat versus safety. Well, our bodies and all of our systems and our immune system is really based upon this billion year old system of cytokines. We have them in our own body. And they communicate with other cells that control our immune system, that the white blood cells that are talked to, they're like, okay, well, we have a threat over there, inflammation's going on over there, bringing all the fighting cells to fight off that infection. So the master cytokine is called interleukin-6 that creates the state of inflammation that raises our temperature when we have an infection that brings all the fighting cells. The problem is that we might not be under a source of real threat in terms of an infection going on. But when we're under stress all the time, when we're not sleeping enough, when we're not eating healthy, when we're living in a world where we feel like we have all these existential issues of climate change and racism and xenophobia and people don't feel safe, kids scared they're going to get shot up at school because of gun violence. It creates a chronic state of stress and actually we are pumping out elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines all the time. And AHR is actually the only positive emotion. They did this study where they taught people have different positive emotion states and then drew their blood to look at their cytokine levels. And AHR was the only positive emotion to lower these inflammatory cytokines, which has huge implications for our health because inflammation is really at the root of all chronic illness. Diabetes is a result of chronic inflammation. Heart disease is all inflammatory based. When we're chronically under stress, we're creating this damage to the heart tissue, to the vessels that cause sclerosis and inflammation that results in heart attacks and people dying prematurely. Dementia is inflammatory changes in the brain. Cancer is all inflammation that's going on. And then all the autoimmune diseases like lupus and Sjogren's and MS, I mean, these are all related to inflammation in the body. And so if you have this technique that can radically change your chemistry to create a sense of safety in the body, in the physiology, then you're changing the cascade of the development of chronic illness. And one of the things we're excited about in terms of even more future research, because right now my partner in research is at UC Davis. He's the head of cardiology research at UC Davis, Dr. Lopez. We're really interested in looking at people that have had heart attacks because we know when people have had a heart attack, their interleukin 6 is elevated. And how can the all method be brought into cardiac rehab and maybe even pre-cardiac heart attacks to prevent people from having these problems? In our book, we dedicate a whole chapter to talking about what creates healing. I mean, this is really critical stuff that we need to think about here, just big picture stuff in our world and our healthcare system, because marginalized communities that feel like they're always under threat, whether because they struggle with food insecurities or they live in neighborhoods with gun violence or they deal with racism on a regular basis, these things create chronic stress in our physiology, which then results in these high rates of diabetes and heart disease that we see in African American communities and Latino communities and other marginalized communities. I mean, this is where public health meets all these sociological factors of how our society is so challenged and broken right now. And our hope is that because the all method is contagious and in a good way, meaning that when you practice all and you share that with others, we can really hopefully elevate everyone's levels of consciousness out there in the world and start to create some deep healing that's needed. It's not like this is the solution to everything, but it's definitely one of the techniques that hopefully can radically change the state that we're in right now in this world

56:32 John Wow. I mean, all of that is so, so relevant to the state of public health. And what I love about it is how accessible it is, is, you know, we have this technique and we have access to changing our physiology right at our fingertips here. And all we have to do is put it into practice and how one minute a day can result in all of these tangible and proven results, yet we can get caught up in life yet. Maybe it's, maybe it's not a priority for folks at the moment, but it's conversations like this and work that you're doing and you know, the book that you published. So, I mean, first, I just want to acknowledge you for taking the step and doing all of the work and research and the lifelong practice that has gone into, you know, you bringing this digestible method to the masses. So I want to acknowledge you for that. And I want to implore the listeners to, if you're listening to this, to give it a try. What do you have to lose? Only things to gain. 

57:53 Michael  Well, I would, I know as we're wrapping up here, I'd love to read a little bit from our closing of our book, if that's okay, because I think it really summarizes a lot of what we've shared today. So with awe, we feel these changes as pronounced shifts in our health and wellbeing, responses, attitude, approach to people and situations, indicating that our brain cells are establishing new pathways. These shifts indicate that we're turning the typical fleeting state of awe into a trait, a part of who we are as a person. But the awe method is more than a self-help technique. And the implications of awe go well beyond personal transformation. Awe touches everything. And perhaps most telling is the effect it has on others. We're wired to attune to others' behaviors and moods. Our nervous system senses the emotions of those around us. Just as being the recipient of a warm smile can lighten our mood. When in awe, those around us feel it too. Awe is contagious. And so practicing the awe method is one not so small way we can contribute to the world. In this book, we covered how the awe method is grounded in science and that a whole body of science supports that awe changes lives. So we have a big, simple crash ending to the power behind the simple practice of the awe method. If practiced frequently enough by enough people, a critical mass as it were, everyone would experience a significant heightened shift in consciousness. Awe changes us. And when we share our awe, we change the world. How can we be in awe of someone and physically or emotionally harm them? How can we be in awe of the natural world and destroy it? How can we be in awe of life itself and not live as if every day were a miracle? In awe, the tone of every conversation from the personal to political shifts from having an agenda to being open and curious. Our conversations impact how we raise our kids, how we help our aging parents, how we treat our spouse, how we participate in community, how we mentor or supervise people, how we govern a city and how we lead a nation. We can think of no downside to practicing the awe method because awe is the light, the appreciation of nature and different cultures, the curious and open mind, the generous and giving soul, even during times of darkness. These days we need awe more than ever. So awe awaits you and surrounds you in the ordinary moments of your life. Awe awaits you and surrounds you in the ordinary moments of your life. Like the view of the stars like the view of the stars that fill the night sky, awe is free and available. All you need to do is to pay attention to what you value, appreciate and find amazing, wait and then exhale and expand into the unlimited timelessness of awe. 

01:00:48 John Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. It's truly a gift to be able to share this work with our listeners and to get to know you, to meet you and hear about all of your life's work. So again, thank you for everything that you've done and thank you for being a guest here on the present professional podcast. And listeners, I want to implore you to do one more thing, but not just take on the awe method to try for yourself, but share this with someone that you love, share this with someone you value, share this with you feel maybe someone that's struggling, someone that is stressed, just someone in your life that you might just change their whole world. So please share this episode and this method with someone that you love. And thank you guys so much for being listeners. We would love to interact with you, take any feedback and episode recommendations. Also links to the book and the websites mentioned in the middle of the episode will be listed in the show notes so you can access them there to go ahead and access and share that with your network as well. So again, check us out at the present professional podcast.com and we will catch you next time.


Mindfulness practice is beneficial
Micro meditations bring profound presence
Levels of consciousness impact perception
Gratitude practice changes consciousness
The practice of awe expands consciousness
Practice awe for mental health
The power of waiting in awe
Awe method reduces depression and anxiety
Awe practice is easily accessible
Awe method reduces inflammation
Awe can change the world
Share the awe method with others