When stress narrows the world, attention tends to fold inward. The inbox, the symptom, the replayed conversation: each becomes larger because the mind has little room for anything else. Awe walks try to reverse that movement. The evidence suggests they can soften distress and increase positive emotion, but they are a small psychological practice, not a substitute for treatment.
A small emotion with a large frame
Awe is not just liking a view. Psychologists usually describe it as the feeling that arises when something seems vast and difficult to fit into our usual mental categories. That vastness can be physical, as in mountains or old trees, or social and moral, as in watching unusual courage or kindness. A 2022 review in Perspectives on Psychological Science argued that awe may affect health through several linked routes: changes in physiology, reduced self-focus, greater social connection, a stronger sense of meaning, and shifts in how people process the world.
That makes awe interesting for stress because stress often does the opposite. It tightens attention around threat, bodily discomfort, deadlines, or social judgement. The promise of an awe walk is modest: it gives the nervous system a structured chance to look outwards. It does not ask someone to deny the problem. It asks them to notice that the problem is not the entire field of view.
What the awe-walk study actually tested
The best-known awe-walk trial was small, but unusually concrete. In a randomised study published in Emotion, 60 healthy older adults took weekly 15-minute outdoor walks for eight weeks. Half were asked to orient their attention towards awe during the walk; the control group walked outdoors without that instruction. Participants also took photographs and reported their emotions during the study.
The awe-walk group reported more awe during the walks, more joy and prosocial positive emotion, and greater decreases in daily distress over time than the control group. Their photographs also showed an increasingly smaller focus on the self and broader smiles. Importantly, the study did not find significant changes in anxiety, depression, or life satisfaction from baseline. That distinction matters. The intervention changed the emotional texture of ordinary days; it did not behave like a clinical treatment.
Why looking outwards may help
One reason awe has attracted researchers is the idea of the small self. In plain terms, awe can make personal concerns feel less total for a while. That does not mean the concerns are trivial. It means attention is temporarily reorganised around something larger, more complex, or more beautiful than the usual stress loop.
This is close to what many people intuitively seek from a long view, a cathedral ceiling, a night sky, or a piece of music that changes the room. The science is still young, but it is not only poetic. The same 2022 review described awe as a candidate pathway for mental and physical health because it may reduce self-preoccupation and increase social orientation. Those are plausible mechanisms for a stress practice, especially when stress is driven by rumination rather than immediate danger.
Still, plausibility is not proof. Awe is hard to dose, hard to blind, and hard to separate from the benefits of walking, daylight, nature exposure, novelty, and expectation. An awe walk bundles all of those together, which is useful in real life and messy in research.
The clinical evidence is newer and narrower
A more recent trial tested awe in a much more specific group. A 2025 randomised clinical trial in Scientific Reports delivered an online awe intervention to adults living with long COVID. Compared with the control group, participants in the awe intervention showed lower stress and depressive symptoms and higher well-being. The study did not find a significant difference for anxiety.
That result is encouraging, partly because chronic illness can make stress feel bodily and inescapable. It is also easy to overread. The trial was small, the sample was specific, and the intervention was not simply “go for a walk and feel wonder”. It used synchronous online sessions and was tested in people with long COVID, so it cannot be casually generalised to every stressed adult.
The most useful reading is restrained: awe practices may have a measurable effect on psychological well-being for some people, including people under chronic strain. They are not yet a stand-alone therapy, and the evidence is not strong enough to rank them beside CBT, medication, or structured trauma treatment.
Where an awe walk fits
An awe walk is best understood as a low-risk attention practice. It sits closer to mindfulness, nature exposure, and gratitude than to psychotherapy. For someone with ordinary work stress, caregiving strain, or a mind that keeps returning to the same problem, it can be a way to interrupt the loop without pretending the loop is imaginary.
The practice may be especially useful for people who dislike formal meditation. There is no requirement to sit still, close the eyes, or monitor the breath. The instruction is simpler: walk slowly enough to notice scale, pattern, age, movement, sound, or light. A city version might involve architecture, clouds between buildings, public art, or the choreography of a crowded station. Nature helps many people, but it is not the only route.
There are also limits of temperament. Some people find awe easily; others feel little from scenery but a great deal from music, mathematics, religious ritual, or human skill. That is not failure. The point is not to manufacture a particular feeling on command. It is to create conditions in which attention has a chance to widen.
What this means in practice
- Try one 15-minute awe walk this week, preferably somewhere safe enough that you do not need to monitor traffic or your phone constantly.
- Before you start, choose a simple prompt: look for scale, age, intricacy, movement, or something you do not fully understand.
- Walk more slowly than usual. The intervention is about attention, not step count or cardiovascular training.
- Keep the phone away unless you are taking one deliberate photograph near the end. Constant recording pulls attention back towards performance.
- After the walk, write down one sentence about what felt larger than your own concerns. Do not turn it into a productivity exercise.
- If the practice increases distress, rumination, dizziness, or panic, stop and use the support strategies already recommended by your clinician.
What we don’t know
The evidence for awe walks is promising but thin. The older-adult trial was small, and the participants were healthy. The long-COVID trial was also small and tested a structured online intervention rather than a public-health prescription. We do not yet know the best dose, how long benefits last, who responds most reliably, or whether awe adds benefit beyond walking outdoors with gentle attention.
There is also a measurement problem. Awe is subjective, and people may report improvement because they expect the practice to help. That does not make the effect meaningless, but it does make careful controls important. Future studies need larger samples, active comparison groups, and follow-up beyond the immediate intervention window.
For now, the honest claim is modest. Awe walks are a plausible, low-cost way to shift attention and soften daily distress. They belong in the toolbox, not at the centre of care.
The next time stress makes the world feel small, a brief walk with deliberate attention may help widen it. That widening is not therapy. Some days, though, it is enough to make the next hour easier.
Photo: henriette_00 on Pixabay.