Awe is the feeling of encountering vast mysteries that transcend our current knowledge and understanding of the world. It is the feeling and the practice in appreciating the moral beauty of others, nature, the arts, and it is rooted in a spiritual understanding of life.
In this new, paradigm-shifting workshop, we will uncover the latest scientific understandings of awe. By engaging in evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches to the mind, and using narrative and cultural approaches to the meanings of awe, we will begin to tease out where awe lives in our own minds and hearts and how to cultivate it more deeply in our lives.
Together, we will discover a number of practices to cultivate awe in our own lives and how to deepen one’s relationship to it. We’ll travel by way of reflective writing, using expressive writing principles and models from Contemplative Studies.
During our time together, we will:
Join us for this incredible opportunity to refresh your heart and mind in the incredible natural setting of Esalen and Big Sur.
Dacher Keltner is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. His research focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality.
Mollie McNeil, PhD, is a published writer and has lectured in the English departments of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Mills College, and De Anza College. She currently teaches a variety of creative writing classes at the Modern Elder Academy and in various Bay Area workshops.
Esalen Institute
55000 Highway 1
Big Sur, CA 93920
US: 1-831-667-3000
info@esalen.org