Molecules Of Emotion
In Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, molecular biologist and neuroscientist Candace Pert offers a wealth of information on how thoughts and emotions affect our physical health and well being. As it turns out, the biochemicals associated with positive mental-emotional states act as internally-generated medicine: nourishing, protecting and healing our physical bodies in all variety of ways. On the other hand, biochemicals associated with harsh or negative mental-emotional state tend to be associated with a toxic or imbalanced internal environment. So it’s obviously to our advantage, health-wise, to generate uplifting thoughts and emotions.
And what better to generate and express positive, wholesome and health-giving feelings than a smile? We may take smiling for granted: considering it as something that happens — or doesn’t happen — quite naturally. But yoga and meditation teachers from a variety of traditions have understood the potentially profound power of this simple gesture, not only as an expression of health and happiness; but also as a tool for consciously creating health and happiness.
From A Healthy Person, Happiness Shines Forth
B.K.S. Iyengar — one of the yoga tradition’s most influential teachers — offers this pearl of wisdom:
“Healthy plants and trees yield abundant flowers and fruits. Similarly, from a healthy person, smiles and happiness shine forth like the rays of the sun.”
Here Mr. Iyengar is pointing out to us the primary “symptom” of a skillful yoga practice. When we’re on the right track, he is saying, our experience will more and more be that of an all-pervading happiness. Whether this happiness comes in the form of joy, bliss, ecstasy, rapture – or just a subtle underlying current of satisfaction and deep contentment – it very likely will express itself naturally as a smile.
Such happiness, born from deep within, tends effortlessly to share itself, in the manner of the sun “sharing” its rays. Paramahansa Yogananda — another esteemed ambassador of the yoga tradition — expresses this insight in the form of a beautiful aspiration:
“Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.”
Sending Smile-Energy To Your Muscles & Bones
Mantak Chia — well-known teacher of Taoist Yoga (aka Qigong) — joins in with this reminder of the benefit of maintaining a gentle inner smile, i.e. of making it a habit to send smile-energy inwardly to our bones, muscles, cells and organs – until the whole “republic” of our body becomes a single smiling “society” —
“Living with an inner smile is to live in harmony with yourself.”
Yoga Of The Mouth: The Power Of A Smile
But what if we’re not in the mood to smile? What if we’re feeling grumpy, sad or agitated? Isn’t putting on a smile, in such circumstances, a bit disingenuous? Here’s the playful and insightful answer offered by the renowned Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh:
“To meditate well, we have to smile, a lot … I always say that a smile can be a practice, a kind of yoga practice: Yoga of the mouth. You just smile even if you don’t feel joy and you’ll see after you smile that you’ll feel differently. Sometimes the mind takes the initiative and sometimes you have to allow the body to take the initiative. Sometimes the spirit leads, and sometimes the body can lead.”
So next time you’re feeling a bit cranky, or just out of sorts, give it a try – this “yoga of the mouth” – and see what happens. Try not to think of it as being a “fake smile” or a “social smile” or a “manipulative smile” – but rather as a subtle and potent form of yoga practice: a truly empowering tool for transforming – in a sublimely positive direction – the terrain of your human body-mind.