Inner Smile 
Inner Smile Meditation
The Inner Smile is a true smile for all parts of the body that will produce a high grade of energy that can heal. A genuine smile transmits loving energy to our organs and glands, which has the power to warm and heal. The Inner Smile has a close relationship with the thymus gland, the seat of the life-force chi energy. When we are under emotional stress, the thymus gland is the first to be affected. It produces T-cells which recognize abnormal cells and destroys them.
Taoist sages say that when you smile, your organs release a honey-like secretion that nourishes the whole body. When you are angry, fearful or under stress, toxic secretions are released that blocks the energy channels and settles in the organs. Smiling into your organs causes them to expand, become softer and moister, and more efficient.
The practice begins in the eyes. The eyes are linked to the autonomic nervous system and are a primary organ that receives emotional signals. By relaxing your eyes you can relax your whole body and free your energy for the practice.
INNER SMILE
PREPARE: Lie down or sit with sit bones at the edge of your chair: men should allow scrotal sac to hang free. Right palm on top of left with tongue placed on palate or near the teeth.
Relax the forehead and picture a radiating smiling face in front of you. Feel that smiling energy in your eyes and allow that energy to flow to the midpoint between the eyebrows letting it flow into your nose and cheeks. Relax the facial skin, going deep inside the face muscles. Let it warm your whole face like sunshine. Let it flow into the mouth and lift up the corners of your lips.
As you go through the meditation, place your hands on each organ and smile down on them.
BEGIN: Smile into your neck and throat. Think of your neck like a turtle’s neck – let it sink down into its shell and let it rest from the burden of holding up your heavy head. Smile into the front part of your neck, the throat where the thyroid and parathyroid glands are, feeling it open like a flower blossom.
Let the energy of the smile flow down to the thymus gland, the seat of healing energy. Smile down into it until you feel it start to soften and moisten and grow bigger like a flower bulb that gradually blossoms. Feel the fragrance of warm energy and healing chi flow out and down to the lungs.
As the smiling, fragrant, warm and healing energy enters every cell of your lungs, thank your lungs for their wonderful work in supplying oxygen to and releasing carbon dioxide from the body. Inhale and exhale through your nose. Know that through your lungs you connect to the universe of plants and water that supply your oxygen and recycle your carbon dioxide. Feel your lungs soften and become spongier and moister as they tingle with their energy. Become aware of any depression, sadness or grief you feel. Feel the connection of the plants and water and know that you are not alone. Continue to breathe deeply as your feelings of sadness and grief eases and makes way for the seeds of courage and confidence to grow.
Let the smiling energy and the cultivated courage and confidence flow into your heart – the seat of love, compassion, joy and honest respect. Move your tongue and connect the awareness of your tongue with your heart. Become conscious of any impatience, cruelty and anxiety you may be harboring. Find the seeds of the nature of your heart, love, joy, and honor and feel the heart blossom. Let your smile energy fill your heart and thank your heart for its constant and essential work. Feel it open and relax as it works more easily with gratitude, pumping its fragrant warmth of love, joy, compassion and honest respect to all the organs, beginning with the liver.
Turn your consciousness to your eyes and place your hands on your liver at the bottom of the right side of your rib cage. Look inwardly at your liver, sensing any anger and resentment that you may be holding. Thank your liver for its complex and integral role in your digestion: the processing, storing, releasing and detoxifying of all food and emotions that enter into your system. Find the seeds of the nature of your liver, tenderness and kindness, and mix them with the courage, joy and compassion you have nourished, letting them fill your liver until it is full and overflows out to the kidneys and adrenal glands.
As you place your hands on your kidneys, just inside the lower part of your rib cage in the back on both sides of the spine, become aware of your ears. Listen to your kidneys. Notice any fears and insecurities you may be holding. Thank your kidneys for their work in filtering your blood, excreting waste products and maintaining the balance of fluid in your body. Smile into your adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys for producing hormones that provide you with energy to run or stand and fight. Then look for seeds of the nature of your kidney, gentleness and calmness, and smile on them with the courage, joy, love, and kindness you have cultivated. Once you have grown these, bask in their nature until they overflow and feed them to your pancreas and spleen.
As you place your hands on your pancreas located to the left of your center above the naval and your spleen located at the bottom and left side of your rib cage, become aware of your mouth. Thank your pancreas for producing enzymes for digestion and insulin to regulate your blood sugar. Thank your spleen for producing antibodies and removing your dead blood cells. Feel them grow softer and fuller. Be aware of any worry or panic you may have. Find the seeds of the nature of your spleen/pancreas, fairness, freedom and justice. Grow them with the joy, courage, love, kindness, and gentleness you have cultivated and let them fill your spleen and pancreas. When you are ready, feed them to your reproductive organs.
Women place their hands about 3” below the naval midway between the ovaries and smile into the ovaries the uterus and the vagina. Men place their hands 1 1/2 “ above the base of the penis and smile into the prostate gland and the testicles. Thank your reproductive organs for making hormones and giving you sexual energy, the basic energy of life. Let love, joy, kindness, courage, gentleness, and fairness flow into your genitals.
Return your attention to your eyes again. Smile down into all the organs, releasing any tension that remains. Rub all your organs in a continuous circle with your hands, mixing this new growth all together, to create compassion in your soul.
Expansion of Organ Energies & Meridians
THYMUS GLAND: Seat of energy in the form of enthusiasm; helps to strengthen immune system.
LUNGS (Large intestine): olfactory (nose) and kinesthetic (skin) energies; good impulses. Sense of touch and feeling; increases awareness of your surroundings and ability to learn. Large intestines eliminates and releases, making you more open, physically and mentally.
HEART (small intestine): power of speech; spirit for learning, seat of joy; seat of respect and honesty. Tongue connects to the heart. Small intestine helps you assimilate; when it has a problem, it impedes assimilation and affects the heart function.
LIVER (gallbladder): visual energy; when in good order, assertive, decisive and integrate things. When weak, vision is impaired and makes it difficult to integrate what is learned.
KIDNEYS (bladder): Auditory energy; when functioning well you will be more alert and able to learn. Connected to the openings of the ears. Bladder eliminates toxic fluids and makes the blood cleaner. ADRENAL GLANDS: vitality and hot (yang) energy. If unhealthy, you become lazy and sleepy with little eagerness to learn.
SPLEEN/PANCREAS (Stomach): Gestational energy; spleen gives sense of inclusiveness, is the opening for the mouth and is involved with taste and digesting what you learn. When your stomach is in good health you are more receptive to new thoughts.
SEXUAL ORGANS: increases creative power; ability to solve problems
Bird Smile by Zaka
SUNNING
1 Pineal gland 2 Pituitary gland 3 Thyroid gland 4 Thymus 5 Adrenal gland 6 Pancreas 7 Ovary (female) 8 Testes (male)
Stand outside and face the sun. If you wear glasses, remove them. Close your eyes. Let the bright healing light of the sun shine down on your third eye, the place between your eyebrows. (Do not stare at the sun, even with your eyes closed). If you are unable to expose yourself to the sun, rub your palms together until they are warm. Once heated up, close your eyes and place your palms over them. Imagine a beautiful, bright, and warm golden color. Let its warmth and brightness penetrate your body just as if it were the sun.
Feel the warmth and let the light shine and fill your brain. Allow this warmth and the light to travel down your spine, energizing each vertebra as it travels all the way to the coccyx.
Let the light and warmth penetrate from the outer parts of the brain into the middle of your head where your hypothalamus resides. This gland is about the size of an almond but plays a very important role in linking our outside world to our inside world.
Now let this bright white healing light come down to a place just below the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland. This gland secretes the hormones that allows your body to maintain homeostasis in the body. Let the bright white healing light send its energy into the pituitary, lighting all aspects. Once you have filled these two glands with the healing white light, let it travel to the pineal gland that is located just behind the pituitary. This gland is the key to our sleep/wake cycle.
Take a breath while the light connects these three glands. Enjoy and give gratitude.
Once you are full with the bright healing light of the sun, bring it down to your thyroid located in the middle of your throat. Your thyroid sends the metabolism signals in your body. Let the bright white light ease the tension in your throat, and energize the thyroid. Breathe and stay there with the light.
Next, draw the light down to the thymus gland just below your collar bones in the middle of your sternum. This is your immune stimulating gland. Let the bright white light warm you. Breathe.
Draw the bright white light down into the adrenals located just on top of your kidneys. These glands regulate our stress coping hormones. Let them feel the peaceful and warm energy of the bright white light until it spills over to the pancreas, located just above your naval and underneath the stomach on the left side of your rib cage. The pancreas secretes hormones that allow our body to harvest its energy from the food that we eat. Be thankful for the work it does.
Lastly, let the light travel down to your sacred reproductive glands, the ovaries or the testes, and let the light shine where we summon our creative energy. Smile and breathe.
Now turn around and allow that light to come the center of the back of your head. Follow the same pattern, bringing the bright white light down the back of the body, stopping at each endocrine gland until the glands experience the full healing power of the sun.
Open your eyes. Look around you. You will find the world much sharper and richer in color.
