A Journey to Awe with
Professor Dacher Keltner
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”
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We aim to minimize the environmental impact of ROAR AFRICA travel and purchase carbon credits equivalent to all our emissions, contribute to wildlife conservation and invest in the communities that host us.
A Journey to Awe with Professor Dacher Keltner
There are places in Africa where silence expands and beauty unfolds slowly… the hush before sunrise, the flick of an elephant’s ear hidden in tall grass, and the sudden stillness that stills something in you, too. For those who have journeyed into the continent's wild spaces, this feeling is familiar: the moment your breath catches and your skin prickles with goosebumps – and the sense that nature doesn’t just heal but restores something essential within us.
Nature’s ability to produce these soul-stirring, visceral emotions, long championed by ROAR AFRICA, is now echoed by science. The work of Professor Dacher Keltner, UC Berkeley psychologist and author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, shows that awe is not fleeting or decorative or simply a beautiful experience, but a biological necessity. It soothes the nervous system, lowers inflammation, softens the ego and connects us to something far beyond ourselves.
Let awe take root
A Journey to Awe brings Professor Keltner’s profound insights into their most natural setting: the wild. Set within the rewilded landscapes of Segera Retreat, the journey offers a rare opportunity to explore awe in the unfiltered beauty of the natural world. At Segera, guests will encounter awe through what Professor Keltner calls its “pillars,” three of which – nature, moral beauty and collective effervescence – are made real in every encounter with the land and the wildlife.
To deepen the experience, a handpicked team of expert practitioners will gently guide guests back to presence. Through movement, stillness, somatic awareness and energy work, they will help create the space that awe requires. Awe does not arrive on demand and it is only when the body softens and the mind quiets, that something profound can enter.
And at the center of it all is Professor Keltner himself, his presence and teaching not only illuminating the science behind awe but offering a new way of seeing the wild and of course, the self.
A sanctuary for the senses
The wild, uninterrupted
When the world moves as one
Guardians of the wild
“A recalibration of the soul”
Professor Keltner’s groundbreaking work has put language and science to what I’ve instinctively known for years: that nature is our nurture and in the wild places of Africa, where the silence is deep and visceral, something ancient in us begins to heal. The goosebumps we feel in the presence of the wild are, in fact, awe. Dacher’s research reveals that it is not an indulgent or ephemeral emotion, but essential, physical, even. Awe calms the nervous system, quiets the ego and reconnects us to something far greater than ourselves.
If, as Dacher says, we are suffering from an “awe deficit” in our modern, digital lives, then this retreat is the antidote. It is a return to what matters most, not in theory, but in practice. Our world of constant digital chatter, pings and distractions will be replaced by birdsong, beauty, silence… and it’s in this quiet that the world opens – we open – to awe.
To walk through Africa’s wilderness with Professor Keltner, to hear the science behind what your body already knows, is to awaken to the sublime. This is a journey about coming home, to the earth, to awe and to yourself.
To enquire about joining A Journey to Awe with Professor Dacher Keltner, kindly contact welcome@roarafrica.com
Founder and CEO, ROAR AFRICA
A Journey to Awe
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