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Inner Smile Meditation

Inner Smile Meditation

Your Inner Smile is glowing golden inside of you all the time! All you have to do is become AWARE of it, and a magical thing happens: you begin to sense how it fills you with bliss, awakens your positive qualities as well as your own potent healing energy.

You may like to hold Hansi Mudra (also in a blog post here) while you practice this meditation. Find a comfortable way to sit with your spine lengthened for five or more minutes.

  • Begin to sense your breath without needing to change it in anyway.
  • Feel a few natural breaths in your belly. Notice a few breaths in your chest and heart-space.
  • Become aware of your breath already moving and flowing through your whole body.
  • Now imagine an Inner Smile in your belly. With each breath feel your inner belly smile expanding and alive within you.
  • Become aware of the Inner Smile in your heart-space. Notice your breath expanding the smile in your heart, awakening compassionate love and self-love.
  • Feel the Inner Smile within every cell of your whole being. Trillions of Inner Smiles glowing golden in synchrony with each other. Like you are a tuning fork harmonized with the divine – Bliss, Healing energy, and every Positive Quality Bhavana – fills and radiates through you.
  • Pause to sense your radiant Inner Smile. Universal Inner Smile that shines through all beings.

  • With a few quiet breaths, send your Inner Smile out to someone you love. Send your Inner Smile out to someone you are having a difficult time with. Send your Inner Smile to all beings.
  • Stay here for as long as you like. Keep this feeling of Bliss as long as you can, even when you gently begin to deepen your breath, softly open your eyes, and move into what comes next.

 

Inspired by an amazing and inspiring teacher Lilian LePage.

 

 

Hansi – Inner Smile Mudra

Hansi – Inner Smile Mudra

“My Inner Smile awakens the Bliss that is always present.”

I love how the pinky fingers are like the uplifted corners of the mouth as in a smile in this mudra! You can rest the backs of your hands on your lap; or with elbows at your waist float your hands chest height; or try Hansi Mudra in yoga postures like Warrior – Virabhadrasana or Bridge – Setu Bandhasana.

Practicing Hansi helps me to remember that not only feelings of bliss, but also positive qualities are always within me, no matter what else is going on in life, or how I may feel one moment to the next. This strengthens knowing one’s True Self.

Compassion, Empathy, Unconditional Love, Joy, Contentment, Kindness, Connection, Trust, Openness – to name a few of the unending positive qualities that are always within us, and underlie everything else. Practicing Hansi ‘waters your good seeds’ as Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh likes to say, allowing you to feel and act from the higher states of being.

Hansi Mudra:

  • instills a positive mood
  • brings breath to chest area stimulating the thymus gland
  • supports the immune system
  • can help release tension from the jaws
  • reveals inherent positive qualities within

 

Begin with 5-10 natural breaths and increase the number of breaths weekly to your practice.

These mudras and information provided are modified from Mudras for Healing and Transformation by Joseph and Lilian LePage, Integrative Yoga Therapy.