DID YOU EVER TRY INNER SMILE MEDITATION?
February 16, 2022
Its a beautiful way to star or finish your day by honouring and giving thanks to your body. The inner smile meditation is a popular Taoist practice in which we smile inwardly to each of the major organs of our body, activating the energy of loving-kindness within us. This is easy to do and will require only 10- 30 minutes.
Step by step instructions:
- Begin by closing your eyes and relaxing your whole body. You can be seated or lying down on your back. Breath slowly and smoothly, letting go on the exhalation.
- Smooth facial muscles and focus attention on the third eye, the space between your eyebrows.
- Recall the feeling of inner joy. You can visualise a peaceful scene, a puppy or an ocean waves.
- Gather this feeling behind your eyes and watch it internally as it travels down your body.
- Let the smiling energy flow like a sweet stream of honey down your nose to wash over your lips.
- Raise the corners of your mouth slightly in a gentle inner smile. Feel how this soften your eyes.
- Place the tongue behind the teeth to connect the energy circuit for the entire practice.
- Relax your jaw.
- Swallow your saliva and feel your throat open and relax as you smile to your voice box. Thank them for giving you the power of balance and speech.
- Visualise your thymus like a blossoming flower and smile to it with thanks for strong immunity and healing energy.
- Visualise your brain. With couple of exhales see if you can relax it. Smile to your brain and thank it for all the work that itโs doing for you.
- Let the smile radiate to the happiness centre of your heart. Feel your heart soften and fill with red love nectar. You can also say Haaw to release negativity. Send a smiling love letter to your open heart. Thank it for giving you compassion, kindness, joy and good circulation.
- Gather the loving energy from the heart and spread it to your lovely lungs. Sense every cell relax. Thank them for oxygenating your body.
- Smile to your liver. Release anger and resentment with the sound Shhh. On the smiling inhalation absorb kindness, forgiveness and acceptance. Thank the liver for its role in assimilation, metabolism and purification.
- Send pure smiling streams to your stomach, pancreas and spleen. Visualise these organs basking in a golden yellow light as they relax to release worry and anxiety while exhaling the sound Huuuu. Thank the organs for maintaining healthy digestion, immunity and blood sugar levels.
- Keeping your body relaxed, send the loving smile to the kidneys. Visualise them like deep blue ears, releasing fear and stress from them whilst exhaling the sound Choo. Thank them and the adrenals for filtering blood, balancing water and increasing stress resistance. Strong kidneys also give us the willpower to act on our convictions.
- Smile to your orgasmic sexual area. Fill it with a tender loving energy, appreciating the pleasure and power it gives you. Thank it for producing hormones that nourish the mind and body.
- To finish smile up your spine, washing the whole body with golden nectar flowing from each vertebra through the nervous system, bone marrow, bones, muscles, skin and hair.
- The smiling waterfall rises to your crown showering your whole body in smiling ecstasy.
- Allow the energy to flow back down behind your eyes and pool into your naval.
โSickness starts from negative emotions settling in the organs. The inner smile breaks this cycle. It removes the cause and symptoms of disharmony by transforming destructive emotions into positive energy.โ
Mantak Chia, Taoist Master