How Travel Rewires Your Brain and Body

Wonder isn’t a luxury—it’s a lever for real change. We trace the quiet path from a single sunset or museum hall to the deep shift you feel when you come home from a trip and realize your mind, mood, and body aren’t quite the same. Drawing on the science of awe and years of solo travel coaching, we break down how novelty, vastness, and meaning work together to rewire attention, dial down rumination, and open space for gratitude and connection.

You’ll hear how nature’s big canvases—mountain ranges, star-splashed skies, ocean edges—create instant perspective, and why human-made marvels like Machu Picchu and the pyramids spark the same wide-open feeling. We talk about awe in cities and art galleries, in music that lifts the chest, and in small spiritual moments that make time feel deep. Along the way, we translate research into simple practices: a daily awe pause, choosing a “vastness anchor” for each destination, slowing your pace by 20 percent, and keeping a one-line reflection that turns fleeting wonder into lasting change.

We also explore what’s happening under the skin. Awe is more than emotion; it’s whole-body. From brain networks lighting up to the calming shifts in breath and heart rate—and even potential immune benefits—these moments act like micro-reset buttons. Whether you’re planning a big trip or staying close to home, you’ll leave with a toolkit to find awe on purpose and let it do its quiet, healing work. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review telling us the last moment that truly awed you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Travel Feels Transformative
• 0:30 Meet Cheryl and Today’s Focus
• 1:02 Defining Awe and Its Science
• 2:41 Novelty, Uncertainty, and Awe
• 3:36 Nature’s Vastness and Wonder
• 6:32 Awe in Art, Music, and Spirit
• 8:15 Brain Activation and Slowing Down
• 10:10 Personal Shifts and Gratitude
• 12:10 Machu Picchu, Pyramids, and History

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Have you ever returned from a trip and felt changed somehow? And you're not sure what it was exactly that happened on your trip that maybe caused this transformation. We all know that travel can transform us, but how do we articulate what happened and really what caused this change? And yes, there's some positives about getting out of our routines, and I'll get to that some more. But there's actually science behind how this transformation or change happens while you're traveling. Welcome to Solo Travel Adventures. I'm Cheryl Esh, your certified travel coach. I've been doing some research lately, really interested in understanding the science behind transformation and how travel can change you mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. And I've started reading a book called Awe by Dr. Keltner. And he basically is he's a scientist, and he talks about really, I call it the science of awe, AWE. And awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast. This is his definition that goes beyond our comprehension. Yes, it's an emotion, but it can really affect our physiology. So physiology is not just our mind, but also our body and our emotions. And to feel awe, it actually requires something novel, some novelty or something unexpected rather than the comforts and certainty practiced in our daily lives. So I believe this is partly why when we travel, we might be awestruck with something that we're seeing maybe for the first time because it's uncommon, it's uncertain. It's brought us out of this routine of our daily lives. And it's something we've likely have never seen before, maybe. And so this is one reason I can, you know, give as why uh travel presents us with many opportunities to experience awe because when we travel, it's usually someplace new, not always, but awe can present itself, you know, physically. You can see sunsets that just keep your jaw like open and you're just in wonder of the beauty of it. Think about the seven wonders of the world or the seven natural wonders or the seven ancient wonders of the world, and how remarkable a lot of those, whether they're structures or natural wonders, just how are they created? It just blows my mind often. The vastness of something too will give you that feeling of awe. And I think of sort of the vastness of whether it's a mountain range that I'm looking at or the Grand Canyon. And I just often, when I do travel, because I do like to spend time in nature, I am often awestruck because there's things that I will see that are not um maybe something I would see in my country. However, I do find myself in awe, sometimes just watching a sunset. Now, sunrises are beautiful too, but I'm not a morning person, so I don't see as many of those. So those can also be just that moment of awe. Watching that sunrise, just creation in itself gives me pause and I just reflect, and it's like, wow, you know, that God created this, this was created for us. So you can feel awe through nature, as I mentioned. Doesn't have to be. Some people find awe in art. So this could be not just physical art like paintings or sculptures, it could be in music as well. So some people, that's where they get this feeling inside of just remarkable awe. They're just awestruck. You could even have a spiritual encounter that gives you this feeling of awe. New art, when we travel, we often see new landscapes. We often, uh for me, sometimes it's just a different hike or a different walk that presents an opportunity to see new things and to reflect and just to be in awe. And I I love the fact that now, I mean, I'm sure it's been years. This gentleman has been doing research on happiness, I believe was his first book, and now he's just tapping into because this book was just written in 2023. So it's fairly new research on the science of awe, AWE, that uh we're noticing how it can affect us in our brains, right? When we are uh in that place of awe, our brains just start to light up. Apparently, he's done some research on kind of what parts of your brain do uh activate uh during those those times, those feelings of awe. And I find myself when I travel having many moments of this. And it could be wherever I'm going. And sometimes it does just require slowing down and not just running from place to place, but spending those moments, whether it is nature that makes you awestruck, or art, going to a museum to see something new, or listening to music. Maybe it's sitting out in the dark sky and seeing all the stars and just in wonder of all that's out there. And I often have my kids have even said, when I travel, I'm a different person. And I think some of this uh plays into it because when I'm traveling, I am I have a spirit of gratitude, and I often will pause and just marvel, even if it's something, I mean, like, for example, thinking about, you know, I did hike Machu Picchu that was in nature, but as I sat and looked at, you know, looked over the the cliff and I saw the actual Machu Picchu city and all the stones that they built these structures with, you just have to marvel at how they climbed up these hills, these mountains, carrying these big slabs of stone to actually build this structure. Same with like the pyramids of Egypt. You think about how did they build those? You go back whenever they were built. Like nowadays you might say, okay, well, we have cranes now, but they didn't then. And so that those things to me, when I look at even the history of something too, it brings this nature of awe to me because it's unexplainable to me. And although we have history that might explain certain things, I still marvel at all that. And I know it doesn't require us to travel to feel this. So I'm gonna encourage you in in two ways. If you are planning a trip coming up, I want you to keep in mind as you're you know taking your travels, doesn't matter where you go, even if you're going to a city, right? I I mean, I was marveling at things in Paris, and that's a big city. Take some moments and reflect and absorb and fill your mind with that feeling of awe and let it sink in because it's affecting your physiology, it's gonna affect your body, right? It's gonna also affect your brain, as I mentioned. But even physiologically, your body, uh, when we have these um, I'll just call them positive or happy kind of feelings, there's also an immune system response that is beneficial to us. So, I mean, I think about the movie that Robin Williams did and where he um made the sick patients laugh, right? And how healing that was. So, this too, you know, being out there where you uh reflect and you are experiencing the nature of all, that can also have that physical healing property, in my opinion, because it does affect your whole physiology. So go going on your trip, I want you to spend some time or make that sort of just be aware of that as you are traveling. And then if you don't have a trip planned, this is something you can practice even in your um wherever you are, in your locale, and in your everyday life, even maybe something mundane as watching the birds sitting and just marveling at how they go from bird feeder. If you have bird feeders, you're gonna see them more, or listening to their calls or their sounds, maybe just watching some flowers bloom over a course of a week and being in awe of of all that, of creation generally, and or maybe you want to go attend uh a concert that is gonna bring you that joy and that uh nature of awe to yourself. So I encourage you because this is one of I think it's kind of one of the foundations of understanding how travel can be transformative, how it can heal us, even um intentionally, yes, but uh that's not your main focus, maybe. Uh yes, there are times when we can be intentional about using a particular trip for healing purposes. Yes, and you know I'm all about that. That's part of my coaching program, but I'm just talking about a normal travel that you're gonna do, that you can incorporate that so that you come back changed and transformed just from that simple act of being in awe of whatever it is you are experiencing in your travels or even in your day-to-day life. Again, as I mentioned uh you know, before I have a coaching program, and if you want to really experience some change and some transformation in your next trip, go to hello at Cherylbeckesh.com or you can go to my website, Cherylbeckesh.com, and check into that program. I love to hear from my listeners and let's get on a call, Discovery Call, and get out there and discover the science of awe and how it can transform your next trip.