Put the Power of Your Smile on Steroids

young-girl-smiling.jpg

Do you know that there is a prescription-free drug that could:

  • lower your blood pressure,

  • boost your immune system,

  • is a great pain killer and tranquilizer,

  • and also one of the best anti-depressants,

  • increases endurance,

  • makes you conquer any period of stress with ease,

  • is equivalent to eating 2,000 chocolate bars without you getting nausea or fat,

  • and has absolutely no side-effects (besides happiness, joy and some more things to keep you from being depressive)?

I recently came across a great article on SharingSuccess.tv called "The power of laughter".

There have been some phenomenal studies on the power of laughter - and I highly advise you to follow this advice. But its little brother - “The Smile” - although much quieter than the big brother "Laughter" has some enormous powers, and if you use it in a way that you never have learned before can be even 1,000% more effective than the way it is normally used.

You can let your whole body shower with a smile and connect with the whole universe. Read on how to put the power of smiling on steroids.

Getting a Smile Feels Great

Getting a smile warms the soul. We all now how good it feels to receive a friendly smile. We feel accepted, appreciated, cared for and even loved. Of course there are different levels of smiling, and we recognize the difference of a smile by a friendly waiter and a smile by our loved ones. Yet even the anonymous waiter who gives us a smile like every other customer can make us feel really good, if we sense his smile as being genuine.

Giving a Smile Feels Even Better

Whenever you smile at someone, you at the same time smile at yourself. Your subconscious doesn't know and doesn't care whom you're smiling at, all it recognizes is that you smiled (and the way you smiled) and releases chemicals to the body.

Smiling is one of the best and fastest ways to trigger some amazing changes in your body in record time:

  • it will make your breathing much deeper and calmer in a few seconds, also the volume of your breathing changes

  • it tells the body that everything is okay and to turn off the pumping of adrenaline into the body

  • it lowers your blood pressure

  • it boosts your immune system

  • it releases endorphins, natural painkillers, and serotonin

  • it releases tensions in your abdomen

  • it increases your endurance

  • it increases your (body) satisfaction

  • it will lift up your mood, makes you satisfied and experience happiness in just a few seconds.

  • It is not only a sign of happiness - but it can also produce happiness.

  • It lessens the stress of problems, increases the ability to solve problems and extends lifespan. It also lessens the effects of negative information that we are constantly bombarded with, such as the Daily News. Try reading your news with a smile. It will change your perception.

  • It lifts the moods of those around you causing people to treat you with joy and happiness.

  • One interesting research on the benefits of smiling discovered it has the same effect as eating 2,000 chocolate bars. (Now that's got to be good for you!)

A study suggests that people with a physical inability to smile (because of muscle paralysis, or some sort of muscular condition) are more prone to being depressed than people with general problems of facial motor control. (VanSwearingen, et al, Aesthetic Plast Surg Nov-Dec 23:416-23 (1999))

What Is a Genuine Smile?

A genuine smile is not coming from the mouth. It is coming from your whole body. People know that a smile of only the mouth is a fake smile. And your body knows it too. One of the best signals to differentiate a fake smile from a genuine smile is looking at the eyes. Are they smiling too?

So if you want to really smile at someone or yourself, don't start the smile from your mouth. Start it from your eyes, and let the mouth, your face and then the rest of your whole body follow.

Trigger Function of a Smile

A smile is one of the best ways to refocus your mind and body in times of turmoil. Whenever you feel stressed or don't know what to do next, or are angry at someone. Just start a smile, coming from the eyes. Even if you think this will be difficult in some situations, your subconscious doesn't know the difference in situations, if you send the right body signals. That is if you start your smile from the eyes, then the mouth and then your face, it will send out the same chemicals as usual. And these chemicals will instantly change your perception of the reality and will calm your mind.

How to Heal Yourself and Connect on a Very Deep Level With the Universe?

But you can even take this a step further. You can turn this into one of the most powerful healing meditations I know.

  • Go into your meditation zone (using whatever method you use - doing some deep breathing and some countdown from 10 to 1 will be enough).

  • Put a smile into your eyes, your mouth and your face. Don't make it a big grin. A slight one felt in the eyes is good enough.

  • Then sense that smile from your face going inwards, inside your body.

  • Send that smile to the top of your head into every root of your hair.

  • From there, let it expand downwards through your whole body. Let it expand and touch every organ and every cell of your body.

  • You might imagine this smile, being filled with love and gratitude, combined with white light, floating your whole body like an inner shower of light and smiling.

  • Imagine every cell and organ that you touch with that loving, nurturing inner smile will smile back at you.

  • Once you are through your whole body, sense your whole body, every organ and every cell smiling back at you, while your expanded inner smile starts to even expand beyond your body. Let that smile fill every other part of you - your mind, your soul and your spirit.

  • Sense that now every part of you is filled by that ever-expanding smile and that every part of you is smiling back to you. Everything is filled with love and joy through that gesture of smiling.

  • Now let that ever-growing smile expand beyond yourself. Let it fill the room, the city and reach out into the universe. Let your smile touch the universe and let the whole universe with all its atoms, molecules and parts that are built from it smile back to you.

  • Then let that smile transcend the barrier of time. Let it go into your past and fill every situation (even the painful ones) with its light and love. If you can't fill an episode with a smile, it is ok. Do as good as you could. Next time it might be easier.

  • Then let that smile go into your future - see your future, your goals, and ambitions filled with that smile and love, and enjoy in that feeling.

  • Feel that you are connected through this shared universal gesture of smiling with everything in the universe.

  • Rejoice in this feeling.

  • Once you decide to come back, you leave that smile expanded as it was and focus yourself on your body.

  • Come back to the here and now, taking three deep breaths, slowly stretching your body and then open your eyes.

  • Now put a big smile on your face and say "Thank you" to every cell and every part in the universe.

Also, you can teach yourself to trigger this state with every smile, so that from now on your smiles will act as ever-increasing drugs of happiness to you - showering your whole body with more of that good stuff.

This is one of the most powerful meditations I know. It will make you feel terrific and will increase all the above-mentioned benefits.