Inner Smile Meditation

We have been doing quite a lot of meditation with the inner smile recently in classes, please find below a brief meditation on the inner smile that can be integrated into your daily routine easily:

The expression on our face is always an indicator of how we are feeling (unless we are deliberately trying to hide how we feel). When we are happy and relaxed, our face becomes relaxed and open. When we are tense or unhappy our face becomes tense and serious. Consciously generating the energy of a smile is a very simple and powerful way of helping to transform difficult and negatively charged energies in our body and mind by sending the energy of our smile to them.

Here is a simple form of this exercise:
Firstly, sit in a comfortable meditation posture, breathe and relax.
Direct your attention to your face, consciously relax all the muscles in the face from the forehead to the bottom of the chin.
Raise the corners of your mouth up a few millimeters, so that your facial expression becomes that of a half smile. Feel the energy of this smile spreading through out your whole face.
Now feel the energy of your inner smile gathering within your third eye area (between the eyebrows), once it has gathered there feel it flowing backward into your brain, head and neck areas. As you send the energy of your smile to your brain and other parts of your head and neck, feel them smiling back to you.
Now smile down into your heart, lungs and other areas/organs in your chest. Feel them filling with the light and energy of your inner smile, see and feel them smiling back to you.
Now smile down into your abdominal organs, liver, stomach, digestive system, pancreas, kidneys, sexual organs and so on. Feel the light of your inner smile filling them with light and warmth. Feel them smiling back to you.
Now send the energy of your inner smile out to your limbs, hands and fingers, feet and toes. Feel all the cells of your body filled with the energy of your inner smile, feel your whole body smiling back to you.
Conclude by spending a short while sitting with the feeling of well being that has resulted from your practice of smiling.