Christopher Bergland | Psychology Today
This Psychology Today blog post is phase six of a nine-part series called “The Vagus Nerve Survival Guide.” The nine vagal maneuvers featured in each of these blog posts are designed to help you utilize your vagus nerve in ways that can reduce stress, anxiety, anger, egocentric bias, and inflammation by activating the “relaxation response” of your parasympathetic nervous system. Recently, “self-distancing” has also been found to improve vagal tone (VT) as indexed by heart rate variability(link is external) (HRV).
Dacher Keltner(link is external) is founding director of the Greater Good Science Center(link is external) and professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Keltner has played a pivotal role in putting the vagus nerve in the spotlight as a physiological driver of human compassion, selflessness, and magnanimity. He’s also a pioneer when it comes to studying the psychophysiology of awe.
Keltner describes awe most simply as, “Being in the presence of something vast, beyond current understanding.”
