Instant Feel-Good Factor: the Power of the Mindful Smile

Intentionally adding the mindful smile to your day could make your day a whole lot better. Here’s why: when we smile, a burst of endorphins is released in our brain.

The process is as follows: when a nice thing happens to us and our brain feels happy, endorphins are released and neuronal signals are transmitted to your face to trigger a smile. But there is a positive feedback loop where the act of smiling stimulates our reward system in the brain and further increases the happiness level. We can start this feedback loop anytime simply by consciously smiling (regardless of what’s happening).   

(And by the way, research has also found that smiling is contagious – so if you don’t feel like smiling, just be with someone else who smiles.)

So mindfully choosing to smile at strategic times can be really useful in helping us to tune into some warm feelings when we might otherwise be feeling stressed or worried. Not surprisingly, smiling lowers your blood pressure and heart rate and reduces anxiety.

And as a tool when meditating, it’s really useful. The trick is to do it mindfully.

Next time you sit down to meditate, try this:

  • As you sit there feeling your breath, bring a gentle half smile to your lips. Don’t force it – just a relaxed, natural smile. Only smile as much as you can authentically do it – no big grins, unless you’re feeling super-happy! The size of the smile can be as small as you can manage at that moment.
  • Then really notice what impact it has on your body. Do you feel any different in your heart space or in your head or anywhere else?
  • Sit with the smile for a while and really feel into it. Chances are that the smile has lightened your mood and softened your meditation.

The question is: with mindfulness meditation it’s important to honour whatever emotions or thoughts are there and learn to be with the difficult ones (as well as the pleasant ones). So why do smiling meditation (or loving kindness meditation) to feel better? 

Most of us (in Western countries especially) need to relearn how to be self-compassionate.  It seems that the natural happiness and self-acceptance you see in small children gets worn out of us as we become teenagers and adults.  Most of us have a critic sitting on our shoulder, at least some of the time, telling us everything we’ve done wrong. Smiling meditation and loving kindness or self-compassion practices overcome and rebalance this negative influence.

The other main reason to do smiling practice is because it helps us get out of our heads and into our hearts. The head is full of busy thoughts but the heart free of thoughts is peaceful, spacious and calm. Need I say more. :-)

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