Put The Power of Your Smile on Steroids

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Did you know that there is a prescription-free drug that can:

• lower you blood pressure,
• boost your immune system,
• be a great pain killer and tranquilizer,
• and also one of the best anti-depressants,
• increase endurance,
• make 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.

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

There has been some phenomenal study on the power of laughter – and I highly advise you to follow this advice. But its small brother – The Smile – although much quieter than the big brother “Laughter” has some enormous powers.

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

Getting a Smile Feels Great

Getting a smile warms the soul. We all know 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 is 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 who 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, and 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 tension in your abdomen.
• It increases your endurance.
• It increases your (body) satisfaction.
• It will lift up your mood – make you feel satisfied and experience happiness in just a few seconds. It is not only a sign of happiness – 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.

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 does not come from the mouth. It comes from your whole body. You know when someone is offering a ‘fake smile’. And your body knows it too. One of the best ways 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, 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 a 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 a white light.
• 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 at you. All 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 well as you can. 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, 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.

Patrick Stoeckmann