26 Apr How expanding your awareness calms your nervous system (and why “awe walks” work)

Expanded awareness is one of the simplest — and most underrated — tools for nervous system regulation. It takes seconds, requires nothing, and has a direct physiological effect. Here’s how it works and why I’m obsessed with it.

I’ve long been fascinated by this concept of ‘expanded awareness.’

Fundamentally, most of us walk around in a chronically narrowed state of awareness — tunnel-visioned, locked onto whatever we’re doing or thinking about. When your awareness is contracted like this, you’re essentially living on railway tracks of habit. You can’t get off the track because you’re so tunnel-visioned. (Like you, looking at your screen right now.)

Expanded awareness is what happens when you stop doing that narrowing.

It’s so simple, almost suspiciously simple. Like right now, I can ask you to become aware of the space above you, and the space around you.

Let go of your attention on these words and on the screen, soften your gaze, and let your awareness expand as far as possible in all directions.

If you notice something shift when you try that, even subtly, that’s expanded awareness.

Another way I love doing this is by using sounds.

Notice the furthest away sound that you could hear in any direction.

Let your sense of hearing radiate outward, searching out these distant sounds and following them for a few moments.

(It’s less about hearing the actual sounds, and more about the expanding of your hearing—if there was a sound in the other room, could you hear it? If there was a plane overhead, could you hear it? Shoutout to Michael Ashcroft, Alexander Technique teacher whom I learned these specific cues from.)

Go ahead and close your eyes, and do that for just a few seconds.

We have the ability to expand and contract our awareness and once you start playing around with this, it’s such an interesting sensation. I find it hard to explain but it has an extremely powerful effect on me. I guess it’s soothing?

In a way that’s not surprising. This expansion is a direct signal of safety to your nervous system. If you were in any kind of danger, you would be honed in on one single thing: the threat. By consciously allowing your awareness to be open and wide, you’re basically letting your nervous system know that you’re safe. Heart rate can drop. Breathing can slow. Tension can release.

This is closely related to how your eyes can shift your nervous system state — the visual system and awareness system are deeply connected. Softening your gaze is one of the fastest ways to move from sympathetic activation to a calmer state.

Awe walks: the research

Then I recently heard a Huberman Lab episode with Dr. Dacher Keltner, on how to cultivate more awe in our lives. He spoke about a study they did where they instructed older adults (75+) to go on an “awe walk” for 15 minutes, once per week, for 8 weeks.

The perceptual instruction was simple:

While walking, look at small things and look at big things.

Move from singular to plural. From detail to pattern. From narrow to expansive.

For example:

Look at one cloud, then look at the whole pattern of clouds. Just slow it down.

Or look at trees. Look at the light on the trees, and look at points of light and then patterns of light. Look at the leaf, the branch, the entire tree.

Or if you walk by a playground. Listen to one laugh, and then listen to the whole symphony of laughter of kids.

It’s the same perceptual move as I was describing earlier: deliberately toggling between narrow and expanded.

What awe does to your brain and body

The results from the study are remarkable.

More positive emotions, less daily distress, and — this one is so cool — reduced physical pain.

And the more the study subjects searched for awe, the more they found it. Which makes sense. You’re training a perceptual habit.

What I find so interesting is what’s happening physiologically. Broader research shows that awe reduces activation in the default mode network — the part of your brain responsible for self-referential thinking, rumination, the endless mental chatter. And it increases vagal tone, which is basically your nervous system’s ability to shift into a calm, recovered state.

So you’re getting a double hit: less mental noise AND a direct down-regulation signal.

Keltner mentions that 6 years after the study, they’re seeing better brain health outcomes. Isn’t that incredible?

It’s also connected to interoception — the more attuned you are to your body’s internal signals, the more you notice these subtle shifts in state. Expanding your awareness is essentially training that same perceptual muscle from the outside in.

For me, it feels as if when my awareness is expanded, I’m more directly aware of the world around me. I’m more able to be responsive to it. I feel less overwhelmed by the thoughts, the rumination, the urgency. It feels less all-encompassing.

There’s more openness. More perspective. More softness.

I’m also just amazed by our brain’s ability to do this, so seamlessly, so effortlessly (and not gonna lie, a bit saddened by the world we live in where we completely lose touch with these abilities.)

I’m definitely adding this “awe walk” to my repertoire of tools with clients, along with the “nasal walks” (walking only nose breathing, very calming!)

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