The Power of Awe

STRENGTHENING YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM THROUGH WONDER

A 5-part course with Dacher Keltner,
Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley

Journey with world-renowned awe researcher Dacher Keltner as he shares the science, the practice, and the biology of wonder.

Five teachings. Five guided practices. One of the world's leading emotion scientists.

Start the Course

Rooted in 25 years of peer-reviewed research on awe

AWE is The Medicine For This Moment

You live in a time engineered to overwhelm your attention, and your nervous system is doing exactly what it was built to do: respond to everything.

Awe interrupts the stress loop. In this course, you'll hang out with world-renowned emotion and happiness researcher Dacher Keltner in his kitchen as he guides you through the transformational power of awe. Dacher's research spans 30 countries, and publication in the world's leading psychology and health journals. What he found is that awe is a trainable emotion that reliably pulls attention out of the churn, calms the mind, steadies the body, and connects you back to the natural world and to each other.

Awe is not rare, and it is not reserved for grand experiences. It's available in a single leaf, a stranger's act of kindness, a piece of music, the sky at dusk. And its effects on the nervous system — measurable, replicable, significant — are among the most compelling findings in modern emotion science. We created this course to help you find awe in your everyday life and reclaim your nervous system.

Begin Your Awe Journey

WHAT THE AWE RESEARCH
ACTUALLY SHOWS

Awe is measurable medicine for the nervous system and the science behind it is unusually robust.

Across decades of peer-reviewed research, brief encounters with awe have been shown to:

Elevate vagal tone and calm the body's stress response
Reduce inflammation
Quiet the self-focused, ruminating mind (the default mode network)
Deepen feelings of connection to others and to life
Improve long-term markers of brain and physical health

In one study, a single 15-minute awe walk per week, for just eight weeks, decreased stress and pain, and increased focus, compassion, gratitude, and joy, compared to people who took the same walks without the awe orientation. Same walk, same fifteen minutes. The only thing that changed was where they put their attention.

This is not a small thing.

This course comes direct from the researcher with over 25 years of dedicated work. When Dacher Keltner teaches you this framework, he isn't summarizing a trend. He's sharing what he knows firsthand.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Whether you're a busy and craving calm and connection, feeling anxious about the state of the world, or someone who suspects there's another gear you haven't found yet — this course was made for you.

If the idea of “practicing awe” sounds a lot like going offline and dissapearing into a grand vista, here's what Dacher wants you to know: Awe is available in your kitchen, in your backyard, in your community. Awe isn't passive. It sharpens your attention, clears mental clutter, reduces chronic stress and markers of inflammation, and boosts your immune system. Cultivating awe is about recovering the clarity that makes you feel alive.

This is For Me

WHAT YOU'LL EXPERIENCE

Five modules. Each one pairs a short teaching with a guided practice you can return to again and again. Think of it as sitting down with Dacher at his kitchen table as he invite you in to a new corner of the science, and a new doorway into your own experience of awe.

Module 1

The Science of Being Moved

What is awe, and what does it actually do in the body? Dacher opens the science — vagal tone, inflammation, the default mode network — and then guides you to find awe right where you are, right now.

Module 2

The Eight Wonders of Life

Drawing on thousands of awe stories gathered across 30 countries, explore the eight universal sources of wonder — and begin writing your own awe journal to discover where awe lives most naturally in your life.

Module 3

In Awe of Others

The most available source of awe may be other people. Witnessing courage, kindness, or humility in someone else moves us toward our own best selves. A guided meditation invites you to honor someone who has shaped you.

Module 4

Nature as Nervous
System Medicine

From birdsong to the color green, from phytoncides to open sky — explore the specific, science-backed ways nature lowers stress, reduces inflammation, and restores the body. Then return, through guided visualization, to a place in nature that has moved you.

Module 5

The Awe Walk

A simple, evidence-based walking practice — guided by Dacher in real time — that turns any walk, anywhere, into an opportunity for wonder. The research is striking. The practice is remarkably simple.

Conclusion

Your Personal Awe Pathway

A closing integration to help you carry what you've learned forward — and build an awe practice that fits your actual life.

MEET YOUR GUIDE

Dacher Keltner

Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Dacher Keltner is one of the world's foremost researchers on the science of emotion. He worked with Pixar to help tell the story of emotions in the movie Inside Out, he helped inform the creation of the emojis, and he's the leading scientist in the transformational power of awe. His research spans 25 years and 30 countries. His book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, brought that science to a wide audience.

But what makes this course something special isn't just his credentials. It's the way he teaches. Dacher is warm, generous, and deeply human — someone who has lived with these questions for decades and brings them to you not as a lecture, but as a conversation. As an invitation.

Dacher doesn't just tell you what the research says. He walks you through it in a practical, five-part framework, teaching you the science, guiding you through the practices, and showing you the way back to something you already know how to feel, just more often, and more consciously.

Think of this as a seat at his kitchen table — a real conversation, offered to you directly.

CHOOSE YOUR PATHWAY

Two ways to begin. Both rooted in the same science, the same commitment to your wellbeing.

THE POWER OF AWE
STRENGTHEN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM THROUGH WONDER

$99

Your entry point into the science of awe. Intimate, self-paced, and immediately practical.

Elevate vagal tone and calm the body's stress response
Reduce inflammation
Quiet the self-focused, ruminating mind (the default mode network)
Deepen feelings of connection to others and to life
Improve long-term markers of brain and physical health
5 video teachings with Dacher Keltner
5 guided companion practices
A closing integration session: Your Personal Awe Pathway
Bonus: additional readings, a daily awe journal practice, and your Awe Signature reflection

Enroll for $99

CALM & CLEAR: NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION FOR THE MODERN WORLD

$749

Launching this fall. A 6-week course that goes deep across every dimension of nervous system regulation, with some of the world's leading teachers as your guides.

Featuring: Judson Brewer, Eve Ekman, Dacher Keltner, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Sharon Suh, and more.

Increased capacity under stress
Reduced inner critic
Expanded sense of agency
Complete 6-week curriculum with 40+ teachings and practices
Circle course platform with easy-to-use, accessible modules
Practices, guided meditations, and related readings and videos
Peer group community access on Circle throughout the course
Certificate of completion
Lifetime access

If In Awe opens the door, the Full Nervous System Course takes you all the way through it.

Calm & Clear: Nervous System Regulation for the Modern World

A best-in-class course for a moment that needs it

Launching this Fall, Calm & Clear; Nervous System Regulation for the Modern World, a full 6-week course that serves the skill sets most needed to meet this moment. We've brought together leading voices in neuroscience, habit change, mindfulness, somatic practices, awe, breathwork, and more.

Featuring habit change researcher Dr. Judson Brewer, Atlas of Emotions researcher Dr. Eve Ekman, Compassion, kindness, gratitude expert and head of Science for the Greater Good Science Center Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Trauma-informed healing, and mindfulness meditation expert Dr. Sharon Suh, and more. The course covers the core pillars of nervous system health and translates the latest research into practical, daily tools. All of these experts are leaders in their field as well as incredible teachers and practitioners. We call them unicorns because they don't just research these topics, they live to teach them.

Embodied, joyful, and science-backed, the course is built on the Circle course platform, which means you can connect with peers who are on their own journey of calm and ease.

Meet Your Teachers

DACHER KELTNER

Awe Researcher and Professor, University of California Berkeley

Sharon A. Suh

Professor and Mindfulness Teacher, Seattle University

Emiliana Simon-Thomas

Science Director, Greater Good Science Center

Eve Ekman

Emotion Scientist and Teacher, Greater Good Science Center

Judson Brewer

Psychiatrist and Neuroscientist, Brown University

FAQ

Most nervous system content draws on general wellness principles — some well-sourced, some not. This course is built entirely on peer-reviewed research by the scientist who conducted it. Dacher Keltner isn't interpreting the field. He is the field, when it comes to awe.

Five core modules, each pairing a short teaching with a guided practice and reflection prompts. You can move through it in a single afternoon or spread it over several weeks — it works either way.

None at all. The practices are simple, accessible, and designed to meet you exactly where you are.

A quiet space to watch and listen — and, for the awe walk, the ability to step outside, even briefly.

Yes — all five practices are designed to be returned to again and again. That's the point. Awe, like any practice, deepens over time

THE AWE COURSE IS OPEN

According to the research, awe available to you in every moment. The question isn't whether it's there. It's whether you're present enough to percieve it.

Find out what 25 years of science has to say about what wonder and awe can do for your nervous system, your mind, and your life.