Attempting to provide an academic definition of awe, social psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathain Haidt wrote: ‘Two appraisals are central and are present in all clear cases of awe: perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation, defined as an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures.’

people who regularly feel awe are more likely to be generous, helpful, altruistic, ethical and relaxed.

In order to endure, to survive trauma or even just to stay afloat when life threatens to suck us under, we need to know we are not alone.

Today, scientists are trying to measure awe by goosebumps. (Only cold, adrenaline or strong emotion are more likely to cause goosebumps in a human being.) In an increasingly awe-deprived culture, when we are more likely to get lost in our screens than in the woods or public galleries, when we hedge our children’s explorations with our anxieties and

we should force ourselves out of gyms and off machines and into the natural world, knowing, or hoping, that we may stumble upon awe.

when dwarfed by an experience, we are more likely to look to one another and care for one another and feel more connected.

A sense of community can also make us more resilient, not only improving our current state of mind but also protecting our mental health in the future.

a theory put forward by co-author Michael Tipton: ‘If you adapt to cold water, you also blunt your stress response to other daily stresses such as road rage, exams or getting fired at work.’

We spend a lot of time in life trying to make ourselves feel bigger — to project ourselves, occupy space, command attention, demand respect — so much so that we seem to have forgotten how comforting it can be to feel small and experience the awe that comes from being silenced by something greater than ourselves, something unfathomable,