Deep within you and me, within each of us, hides our most natural smile. We already carry this smile with us from birth and babies often radiate this pure smile, which should not be confused with the "social smile" that we learn. Did you know that the healing power of your inner smile is a source of deep transformation? For both yourself and others!
The inner smile is silent and effortless
The inner smile can clearly be seen in the eyes of babies and younger children (or as in the photograph below when they are sleeping) before they have fully developed their ego or opened themselves up to challenging imbalances from ancestors. In adults, it is harder to see this pure inner smile as many of us have hidden it under layers of our personality and various tensions, which suppress this smile. Despite that, it always continues to exist within us!
What happens in you when you encounter the smile of the sleeping baby in the photograph?
If you try, you might notice that you start smiling automatically. It's almost hard not to smile back. This happens because we receive a direct reminder from the person smiling at us that we ourselves have this source within us. We can also often feel a warm wave of love washing up from somewhere within our inner heart area. Time may even be experienced as if it has briefly stopped or that everything in our world has just melted into love in an instant.The same effect can occur in a meeting with an animal.
It's like the sun when it comes out from behind a dark cloud and lights up your world. Your body feels warm, loved, and accepted, as if you have been embraced from within yourself ((M. Winn).
The healing power of the inner smile
-a state of being rather than doing
The power of the inner smile consists of a pure unconditional acceptance and has the ability to melt away all fear and resistance within us and outside of us - yes, this love that flows forth is that powerful. This was something I was strongly come to experience. Will share my story below.
The source of the smile can be found neither in our physical heart nor in our second heart where our social outer smile resides. Instead, it is hidden deep within a third heart, a cosmic heart according to Daoism. The smile comes from a primordial source within us that Daoism refers to as Yuan shen; in other words, it can be described as the life force behind the soul, or the intelligence that guides the soul, much like nature. Unlike the outer smile, the inner smile requires no object to begin smiling. (like the sleeping baby shows). The healing power of the inner smile is a pure state of being rather than doing.
The inner smile helps us reach deep into the hidden, silent levels of our deep core in a way that mantras, visualizations, breathing techniques, movement practices, or empty-mind meditations cannot reach. It is not easy to specifically embrace our true nature and feel it in the body.(M. Winn).
From the little to the sublime possibilities
According to Winn, our inner smile has unlimited potential. For example, we can smile at our food on the plate to raise its frequency energetically, which helps the body to more easily digest its life energy. We can communicate with nature or animals through a smile or help others through emotional transitions. It is a practice of inner alchemy! The same as we know with Reiki. I use the inner smile in my Wuji-gong dance, as it is naturally a part of that form. In chi kung, the inner smile is an absolute foundational practice.
Smiling to my organs
Since last spring, I have been practicing, among other things, using the inner smile towards my organs and all parts of my body to dissolve stagnations in the life flow and thereby support purification and healing. On the third day, when I directed the smile to my organs, I could feel them smiling back. It was an amazing experience. The lungs had one vibration, the heart another, and so on - they were different voices with their own stories! It was also then that I discovered which organs were a bit tired and didn't really smile back. Thus, I directed a bit of extra love to them with the smile, and after a while, they responded by starting to smile back. By simply smiling at our inner selves, we will discover that we receive an energetic response, as if they are thanking us for showing appreciation for everything they do for us. Without a doubt, this is one of my most fascinating alchemy practices. Maybe it will be yours too?
Process of dying
What we may not directly know or think about is that the inner smile can also be used as support for others who are in the process of dying. I had such an experience and it expanded my understanding of the enormous transformative power of the inner smile. When I shared my experience with my teacher colleagues in Wuji-gong, another experience of a similar nature related to coma emerged. This led to us using the smile in a group to support a baby who was in a coma. The results were beyond words. I will share more about it, as well as the other person's experience, in a new post.
From fear to inner peace in the moment of death
-with the support of the inner smile
The man in front of me lies in a coma, very ill, while his wife are by his side. I know that it is soon his time to leave this earthly life. I go deep into the innermost part of my heart and activate the eternal inner smile, which makes him wake up. Our eyes meet and he communicates to me that he feels scared, whereupon I once again activate the smile from my inner self. Then I see him break into the same smile and a beautiful golden light surrounds him. I feel in the same moment that the fear he had is now melting away.
Now we leave the coma and his wife. I follow him to a vast ocean. The man speaks incessantly with great excitement about his work life and I listen while keeping my focus in my heart and smiling. We stand in the middle of the water and a first wave gently washes by. The next wave that comes, I know, is his moment — a wave that will carry him onward to where his soul is meant to go now. The man seems unaware and talks happily on and it makes me happy that he is happy and peaceful. I stand on the side as the wave sweeps in and from one moment to the next, he transforms into a beautiful golden-colored hummingbird and I watch as it flies away upwards. Amazed by what I saw, I return to his wife who is sad and now the grief begins to ache in my chest as well.
I wake up and realize that I am dreaming. For a long time I lie wide awake this morning, struggling to process the dream. Who was the man? What had just witnessed? The rest of the day my entire being was touched.
Two weeks after my dream
One evening when I had just gone to bed to sleep I experienced a tremendous energy activity starting in my crown chakra. The feel vibratingly high and it is completely impossible to fall asleep. I lie awake for three hours while it works in me and it's among the most powerful things I've experienced in a long time. It feels like a part of me is at work, somewhere else, while I lie awake in my bed. For a moment, a feeling arises that it is my dream playing out now because the feeling in the dream was similarly intense and high. A day earlier, a friend of mine had just told me that a close relative of her had gone into a coma. I'm wondering if maybe this is when that person passes away. I then let go of all my thoughts and try to sleep, because I am in the middle of a teaching weekend in Reiki and would prefer to sleep so that I am alert the next day.
Not until a little after three in the morning does the feeling go away and I fall asleep. In the morning, I receive a message from my friend that the person in a coma passed away last night, shortly after three o'clock, with his wife by his side. I get a little shiver and as a week goes by, I can't stop thinking about my dream.
I ask my friend if I can describe the appearance of both the man and his wife whom I met in a dream a few weeks earlier. I am allowed to, and I pull out every detail I remember about their appearance, clothing and bits of both their personalities. The more I describe, the more my friend's hair stands on end - "it's as if you're describing them", she says. Then she sends photographs and I immediately see that it is the two I met in my dream. I feel a deep gratitude for the moment I got to share with that fellow traveler, a peaceful transition, from here to something new.
How can you reach into the inner smile?
There are a few different ways to activate the inner smile. One way is to imprint on your retina a memory of someone (perhaps your own child or a baby you met) who has given you this smile. Just seeing it in front of you can make you start smiling now. We can also find pictures of others smiling from this source, print them out and just sit with them in front of us, because smiles are contagious. Buddha is an example that shows us the inner smile.
Another way, which I learned in Wuji-gong, is to rest the tongue against the palate with the tip of the tongue just behind the front teeth. This reconnects the contact to your Higher Self (your authentic/true self). You may have noticed that babies always have their tongue up there behind their "yet-to-be-visible front teeth". They are in pure contact with their source. As we get older we gradually lower our tongues and many of us forget our inner source.
Then place a gentle smile on your lips while simultaneously bringing your awareness down to the heart area. With training, you may experience it as if a fountain of warm love is flowing up from your inner self (heart) and the source feels inexhaustible! The challenge is to maintain in the smile. At first, we might notice how we get caught up in our thoughts after just a few seconds. Go back down to the heart and put on a gentle smile again to your lips. Practise ... and practice!
Every time someone smiles at you from their inner smile, or you smile at them, or we direct the smile inward to ourselves, a wave of love is sent out that completely conveys acceptance to everything and everyone it reaches. This form of love can support deep transformation and take us to a new level of ourselves! /Sanne
*M. Winn. 2003. Way of the Inner Smile, Self Acceptance: Tao Path to Inner Peace.