Inner Smile Meditation
The Inner Smile is an ancient Daoist meditation, a practice of turning the warmth of a light-hearted smile inward – to illuminate your organs, your bones and your cells.
It sounds simple. It is. And once it transforms how you feel in your body, there’s no going back.
Try on a frown and notice how quickly you begin to feel worried, heavy, maybe your breathing even starts to feel a little restricted.
Now smile and watch the feeling tone in your body transform completely. You might even notice yourself sigh gently as the body responds to the comfort of the hormones released as you smile.
Smiling sends biofeedback signals to the brain which increases the production of endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin and reduces stress hormones like cortisol.
The Inner Smile is like bathing in a sea of happy chemicals so you feel lit up from the inside out.
In Daoist psychology, each organ carries its own emotional and energetic signature. In the west we already sense this with the heart, which we associate with love. But the lungs, the liver, the spleen, the kidneys – they too hold their own virtues, which we develop by shining the light of our awareness on them through this powerful meditation.
The Inner Smile Meditation is hands down, my favourite Daoist meditation.
I initially got hooked on it when I learned it in a little yoga studio in Portabello in Dublin six years ago and I have been practicing it ever since.
The positive impact of bringing loving awareness to my body never fails to amaze me. It induces such calm and compassion so quickly.
What can I say, it works!
le grá
Freddy