Awe Might Be the Wellness Practice We’re Missing

There are moments when the world becomes so beautiful, vast, or unexpected that we forget to check our phones.

Maybe you’re standing at the edge of an ocean that seems to go on forever, walking into a beautiful building that immediately makes you look up, listening to live music, or watching the sky change color somewhere new. It can even happen over dinner, when you look around the table at people who were strangers a few days ago and realize you don’t want the night to end.

For a few minutes, the list running through your mind gets quiet.

You aren’t thinking about what needs to happen next because you are fully present for what is happening right now.

That feeling has a name.

It is awe, and maybe it deserves a more intentional place in the way we think about wellness.

Wellness has become very good at giving us things to do.

We count our steps, track our sleep, drink our water, take our supplements, meditate, stretch, and try to get enough protein. All of those things can support our well-being, but feeling alive is part of wellness too, and sometimes what we need is to feel wonder again.

What Awe Actually Feels Like

Awe happens when we experience something that feels bigger than our everyday world. It catches our attention and makes us pause because, for a moment, what is in front of us becomes more interesting than whatever was happening inside our heads, at our jobs, or in our daily lives.

Nature gives us plenty of those moments, but so can music, art, architecture, cultural traditions, spiritual experiences, and even witnessing another person do something extraordinarily kind.

Researchers have actually studied this feeling, and awe has been associated with less focus on ourselves and a greater sense of connection to other people.

When you are standing in front of something magnificent, your inbox suddenly feels a lot less important, and sometimes that little bit of perspective is exactly what we need.

Routine Can Make Our World Feel Smaller

Most of us have become very good at moving through the day efficiently. We check messages, work, handle responsibilities, make decisions, take care of people, and finish one thing while already thinking about the next. Even our downtime can become another opportunity to stare at a screen.

There is nothing wrong with routine because we need it, but when our days become too predictable, it becomes easy to stop noticing what is around us. We stop looking at the light coming through the window, barely hear the music playing in the restaurant, and drive the same streets without really seeing them.

Awe interrupts that pattern by giving us a reason to look up and pay attention. For women who spend so much of their lives planning, caregiving, building, working, and solving problems, there can be something freeing about simply witnessing something beautiful without needing to manage it, improve it, or figure out what comes next.

Travel Makes Wonder Easier to Notice

One reason travel can feel so good is that it makes it almost impossible to move through the day on autopilot. You don’t know exactly what breakfast will taste like or what is around the next corner. You haven’t memorized the streets, so you find yourself looking up at buildings instead of walking past them. You hear different languages, notice how people gather, and pay attention because so much of what surrounds you is new.

Think about the last time you traveled somewhere and thought, I cannot believe I am here. Maybe you were looking out over a coastline, walking through a market, or finally seeing a place you had only known through photographs.

Maybe it happened over dinner when the food, conversation, music, and setting all came together so perfectly that you knew you would remember that night for years.

Those moments tend to stay with us because travel gives us the opportunity to experience the world outside of our usual frame of reference. We enter communities with histories, traditions, customs, and rhythms that existed long before we arrived, and we are reminded that our way of living is only one way of living.

Being somewhere different can also give us enough distance to look at our own lives differently. A problem that felt enormous at home may not feel quite as consuming, a decision we have been circling may become clearer, or we may realize how long it has been since we felt curious, spontaneous, or genuinely excited about something.

Sometimes travel simply reminds us how big the world is and how much of it we still have left to experience.

Nature Has a Way of Putting Things in Perspective

There is a reason so many of us feel different around the ocean, in the mountains, beneath a sky full of stars, or surrounded by trees. Nature gives us a sense of scale that can be hard to find in our everyday environments.

The ocean does not care about the email you forgot to send, the mountains are not impressed by how productive you were this week, and the sun is going to set whether you finished everything on your list or not.

When so much of our lives revolves around what we can produce, accomplish, organize, and control, there is something comforting about spending time somewhere none of that is required.

The tide continues whether we finished the list or not, and sometimes we need that reminder.

Art and Culture Can Do the Same Thing

Wonder doesn’t only happen somewhere quiet. Some of our most memorable moments of awe can happen in the middle of a busy city, when a painting stops us in our tracks, a dancer makes us wonder how a human body can move that way, or a historic building makes us think about all the people who stood in the same place hundreds of years before us.

That sense of discovery is also what gives travel depth. There is a difference between simply seeing a destination and taking the time to experience it. When we engage with the art, food, music, history, traditions, and people that shaped a place, we come home with more than beautiful photos. We understand a little more about the world than we did before we arrived.

Adventure Brings Us Back to the Present

Awe isn’t always peaceful.

Sometimes it arrives while your heart is beating a little faster because you are boarding the boat, taking the hike, trying something you have never done before, or exploring a city where you still have to check the map every few blocks.

Those experiences demand our attention in a way that everyday life often does not.

Adventure reminds us that we are still capable of being surprised, while also bringing out parts of ourselves that we may not use very often at home, including our curiosity, spontaneity, flexibility, and willingness to say, I’ve never done that before, but let’s go.

There is something good about meeting that version of yourself again.

You Don’t Need a Passport to Experience Awe

Travel makes wonder easier to notice, but we don’t have to cross an ocean every time we want to experience it. We can explore somewhere in our own city we have never been, finally visit the museum we keep saying we are going to visit, buy the ticket to a live performance, watch the sunrise, take a different route home, or sit outside long enough to actually see the sky change.

The practice is not necessarily about doing something extraordinary. It is about paying attention long enough to notice when something ordinary feels extraordinary.

When something moves you, let yourself stay with it for a minute before immediately reaching for your phone. The picture can wait.

Why We Choose Places That Make You Look Up

This is part of why we are so intentional about where we go with OMNoire.

We want to take you to places that make you stop for a second and take it all in, from landscapes that seem almost unreal to cultures that invite you to experience the world differently and moments that remind you just how much there is still to see.

Awe is not only about seeing something beautiful. Sometimes it is about seeing yourself in that beauty too, because there is something powerful about standing on the other side of the world and realizing, I belong here too.

For us, there is another layer to these experiences.

As Black travelers, there is something meaningful about seeing ourselves in places around the world and knowing that we belong there too. We get to experience the beauty, luxury, adventure, culture, and wonder the world has to offer, including the places we may have once only seen in magazines, movies, or on someone else’s Instagram feed.

We deserve the luxury resort and the private island, the safari at sunrise and the table overlooking the ocean. We deserve the castle in the countryside, the tiny restaurant down a cobblestone street, the boat ride where everyone gets quiet because the view is that beautiful, and the simple pleasure of walking through a new city with nowhere we need to be.

We belong in all of those places.

That belief is part of the reason we choose the destinations we do. We want you to experience places that stir something in you, make you curious, and remind you how expansive the world is and how much of it is ours to experience.

Wellness can look like rest, movement, connection, laughter, or trying something for the first time. It can also look like standing somewhere breathtaking, taking it all in, and thinking, Wow. I’m really here.

That is why we keep choosing places that give us something to marvel at, something to discover, and another reminder that this big, beautiful world belongs to us too.

There is still so much to see. We hope you’ll see some of it with us.

Explore our upcoming OMNoire retreats.