The Science of Glimmers: How small moments of joy and wonder can trigger our own happiness and well-being
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
—Mary Oliver
If you’ve ever read this blog before, you understand that my ideas about teaching and education are often conflated with my deep interest in the ways that we humans can impact our own happiness and well-being. Imagine my delight a few months ago, when I encountered a video on TikTok that had a name for a thing that I have practiced regularly for years and that I believe has had a profoundly positive impact on the way I experience the world: Glimmers. Hmmm, the name’s a little cute for my taste, but the idea is interesting—and the more I looked into how glimmers might actually work on our central nervous systems, the more interesting the idea became.
Most of us understand triggers to be those external stimuli that elicit an intense and unwanted emotional and/or physical response. A trigger can be an image, a song or any sensory sensation that provokes an extreme and involuntary response in our autonomic nervous system, often understood as a fight, flight or freeze response. Despite some widespread controversy around trigger warnings in education circles and not just a little bit of eye-rolling in others, there is ample scientific evidence that triggers are, in fact, real and often manifest in negative ways that can limit a person’s ability to function, as well as their general happiness and well-being.
As you might guess, the term glimmer (coined by Deb Dana, in her 2018 book, Polyvagal Theory in Therapy) refers to those stimuli in our environment that evoke an involuntary positive response in our autonomic nervous system. Similar to triggers, glimmers can also be images or songs or small sensory moments, but instead of making us feel terrible, they make us smile—make us feel good. A glimmer might happen when you notice a beautiful sunrise on your drive to work or when a stranger holds the door for you on your way into the grocery store. Glimmers are not necessarily the important events or milestones in our lives, but rather, the small unplanned pleasures—those micro-moments that make us sigh with wonder or chuckle with delight or feel just a little bit more peaceful or happy.
Despite what one of my students termed a dumb name (and honestly, I feel that) the concept of glimmers is simple and charming and probably for this reason, has become pretty popular on social media in recent months. As it turns out, though, there is some pretty compelling neuroscience to frame these ideas and one concept, in particular, seems to provide a meaningful perspective from which to consider how the concept of glimmers may be more than just a passing TikTok trend.
Polyvagal Theory was introduced by Dr. Stephen Porges in 1995 and basically explains how human beings respond to information from their environments through the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system and more specifically, through the vagal nerve system. The vagus nerve (from the Latin word vagary, meaning wandering) is the tenth cranial nerve that connects our brains to most of our important organs, including heart, gut, liver and lungs. It is a long and winding system of nerves, running from the brainstem to the abdomen and is the primary nerve supporting the autonomic nervous system. The vagus nerve works by first reading information from the environment and then interpreting it in a process called neuroception. This neuroception cues activity in either the sympathetic (via the dorsal vagal system) or in the parasympathetic (via the ventral vagal system) nerve system which then sparks involuntary sensory and motor functions. Those involuntary actions include breathing, digestion and heart rate, as well as more complex functions such as immune response, stress response and mood.
In this neuroception process, the vagus nerve responds to external stimuli in a number of ways: When the vagus nerve perceives danger, it activates the dorsal vagal system and the body goes into an involuntary response often referred to as a fight, flight or freeze. In this state, a person’s heart rate may increase and they may feel a sense of panic, anxiety, helplessness or outright terror. These triggers spark people to avoid, retreat or fight against the stimulus; In extreme situations of perceived danger, people can become immobilized, frozen or entirely shut down.
Conversely, when the vagus nerve perceives safety, it activates the ventral vagal system, and the ensuing state of peace and pleasure creates an involuntary human response in which a person is more apt to engage effectively with that environment. In this state, people often feel a reduced heart rate, steadier breathing, and a relaxed overall mood. They are also more likely to experience joy, empathy and positive social engagement, as well as both a capacity and a desire to learn and experience new things.
Although these two distinct response patterns seem relatively simple, in his Polyvagal framework, Dr. Porges emphasizes the ways that neuroception and vagal responses are intertwined and sometimes overlapping: “Although neuroception is a powerful mechanism capable of shifting autonomic state, it is dependent upon the individual’s current autonomic state and historical flexibility to move back and forth among states (i.e., resilience). A more resilient individual will have a neuroception biased towards detecting cues of safety, while a less resilient individual will have a neuroception biased towards detecting threat.”
What this suggests to me is that our neuroception is not a fixed response, i.e., we don’t always respond in one specific way to one specific stimulus throughout our lives. If this is true, maybe then, we can create conditions in our own perception that make it easier to activate our ventral vagal system or even to massage our neuroception. And, this, I think, is where the idea of glimmers becomes most interesting.
Once again, the words of my favorite poet and philosopher, Mary Oliver resonate and her poem at the beginning of this post provides a surprisingly relevant framework to consider this concept of glimmers. How do we arrange our lives so that we regularly come into contact with things that astonish us? Make us feel wonder and awe? Make us feel safe and calm? Make us feel love? How do we not only seek out and find these things on a regular basis, but is there a way to incite them? Furthermore, if these small moments of grace and wonder do, in fact, calm our central nervous systems, cue our feelings of safety and joy—and maybe even stave off stress and disease—how do we learn to quiet our minds so that we can pay close attention to them? Finally, how do we take stock of them? Prioritize them? And maybe even lift and celebrate them in a way that lets them know that we see them and that they are always welcome here.
Further Reading
Polyvagal Theory: How our Vagus Nerve Controls Responses to our Environment:
What is the Polyvagal Theory?https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory
The Complex Construct of Well-Being and the Role of Vagal Function:
Glimmers: How to Trigger Feelings of Joy and Safety:
Anatomy of the Vagus Nerve:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780124103900000287
The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Deb Dana, 2018
