How to Take an Awe Walk, and What It Might Do for You

An awe walk is an ordinary walk with one small change: you go out looking for things that make you stop. A tree that has started to turn, the size of the sky over a field, the way low light falls across a wall late in the afternoon. It takes no kit and no extra time, and there is some gentle research suggesting it might leave you feeling a little lighter.

The idea was tested by Virginia Sturm and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, in a study published in the journal Emotion in 2020. Healthy older adults took a 15-minute walk outdoors once a week for eight weeks. Half were simply asked to go for a walk. The other half were given a short description of awe, that feeling of being in the presence of something vast that you cannot quite take in all at once, and encouraged to look out for it as they went.

The awe walkers reported more joy on their walks, along with more of the warm, outward-facing feelings such as gratitude and compassion, and their everyday distress eased over the weeks. The effects were modest and it was a small study, but they grew rather than faded. The other group, who were out walking too, did not show the same shift.

The most memorable detail is in the photographs. Everyone took a selfie on each walk. Over the eight weeks, the awe walkers gradually took up less of the frame and let more of the landscape in, and their smiles became broader. Sturm describes this as the 'small self', a healthy sense of proportion between you and the bigger world around you. Not smaller in a diminishing way, just a little less at the centre of everything.

It is not only a Californian finding. In February 2026, the University of Derby's Nature Connectedness Research Group shared research on Forestry England's wellbeing trails in four of the country's forests. Moments of beauty, awe and wonder showed strong links with better mental wellbeing, a sense of physical vitality and a feeling of escape from everyday demands. Noticing, it seems, does a lot of the work.

To take one, pick a route you already know. The walk to the shop counts, and so does once round the block. Leave the headphones in your pocket for this one. Walk a little slower than usual and try to look as if you have never been there before. Look up, because most of us walk looking at the pavement. Look far, to the end of the street or the line of a hill. Then look close, at the moss on a wall or the veins in a fallen leaf.

Early autumn is a generous time to try it. The light is lower and warmer, the first leaves are turning, and the evening sky does something different most days. You do not have to find anything spectacular. A spider's web with the dew still on it counts. So does a flock of birds settling on a roof, or the moment the streetlights come on.

Some people like to take one photograph at the end, of whatever made them pause, rather than of themselves. Others say nothing and just notice. There is no right way to do it, and a walk where nothing much happens is still a good walk.

When you cannot get out, you can borrow a little of the feeling indoors. Choose a wide environment in Create Your Zen, a mountain or the open road, layer a quiet sound under it such as bird song or a distant stream, and give yourself a few minutes to look at it properly rather than past it. It is not the same as being outside, but it is a kinder few minutes than another scroll.

An awe walk will not fix a hard week, and it is no substitute for proper support if you are struggling. But fifteen minutes of paying attention, once a week, is a small thing to try this weekend. Go the usual way, and look for what you normally walk straight past.