Hi and welcome back it's savvy psychologist. I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and I'll help you

meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

This week, let's start with a question.

What does standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, looking up at the Sistine Chapel, and Caitlin Ohashi's perfect

ten viral gymnastics floor routine have in common? Well they might bring a tear to

your eye without knowing exactly why.

In their own way, they are each entrancing and sublime,

and they all live you saying, wow, a telltale sign

of a little-known emotion called awe. Now, awe doesn't have to be rare. The birth of a child is a great example of something that happens worldwide 250 times a minute, but still inspires awe. Neither does awe have to be sparked by the natural

world. Man-made structures like the Taj Mahal, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Great Wall of China all also inspire awe. And awe doesn't even

have to come from something physical, a virtuosic performance, amazing athletic achievement, and of course, religious and spiritual experiences can all be awesome.

But no matter where it comes from, awe is a mysterious, can't quite put your finger on it emotion.

It's more complex than the peanut butter and jelly of sad, mad, and glad, and if awe were

a pizza, it would be loaded with a lot of very different toppings, including morality,

spirituality, and aesthetics. But even if awe is hard to describe, like jazz, you know it, when you experience it.

And when awe is particularly strong, we are humbled by its presence and feel graced or fortunate.

Aw is transcendent, shifting your attention away from yourself and making

you feel part of something larger. Humanity, the Earth, the universe, or a higher power.

Now, in the journal Cognition and Emotion,

psychologists, Dr. Dacker-Keltner and Jonathan Hate

took a stab at describing the two fundamental components of awe. Now one of the

requirements was perceived vastness and here vastness might refer to physical

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