I have a practice that I follow just about every morning.  Sometimes I forget and, when I do, I find I feel drawn to do it as soon as I remember.  This practice risks sounding a bit “fluffy”, but it has supported me for quite some time now.  When I wake up in the morning, as soon as I become aware of being awake, I greet the day and smile.   I spend a few moments smiling as I acknowledge the gift of a new day.  I smile because I’m alive and breathing.  I smile . . . just because.

I find that as soon as I smile – a real smile, not a forced one – my body-mind experience settles into a grounded and comfortable state of being.   The immediate feedback I get from just smiling got me to thinking about how powerful it is to shift our physical experience in order to create a different psychological experience.   It also reminded me of long-ago research – which I don’t remember clearly now – that showed that smiling uses particular muscles in the face that, when engaged, bring with them a lighter mood.

As I walked through Central Park one morning, I felt some sadness around the edges of my experience and noticed that I needed to share some smiles.  I didn’t understand specifically why I was sad.  I just noticed the feeling and the body state that accompanied it.  As soon as I started to smile at people I passed along the way, something shifted in me and the sadness melted away, step by step, smile by smile.  My body responded spontaneously, as well, and I stood straighter and walked a bit more energetically as I went along my way smiling.  As a person who has always sought to understand the meaning behind moods and feelings, it has been both liberating and useful to discover that I can shift my state of being physically without having to necessarily understand what’s going on internally.

As I’ve shared in prior experiments, the venerable Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, talks about “mouth yoga”, his way of describing the practice of smiling.  For this week’s experiment, I invite you to play with “mouth yoga” and notice what happens for you when you take the time to smile.  Start with the morning practice of welcoming the day with gratitude and a smile, even if you’re struggling with difficult problems in your life.  The practice here is to notice any psychological and physical shifts that come with smiling.  There’s no need to explore any meaning behind your smile.  It’s a physical act, as well as an internal choice, to allow your body to live into the smile and then to notice what happens inside yourself.

If you find you have mixed feelings about greeting the day with a smile, that’s fine, too.  In fact, you might explore what happens when you go ahead and smile anyway, even if you don’t feel like smiling.  I find that those are the times when the shift in physiology can make a big difference.  Of course, there will be times when a smile won’t do it for you, so notice those times, as well.

As always, there’s no right way to do this experiment, no right place to arrive.  There’s just another opportunity to explore your internal experience and the power of choice.  Please remember to bring along curiosity as your companion, and to allow judgment a bit of a rest as you play with smiling.