The Tao of Natural Breathing (17 page)

Based on my own personal experiences, I believe that a sustained smile, especially a smile directed toward one’s own organs and tissues, triggers the release of beneficial chemical substances from the remarkable pharmacopoeia that is the human brain—chemicals that can have an immediate healthful impact on the body. When I described the process of the inner smile to neuroscientist Candace Pert, and asked her if she believed that it could produce substances beneficial to the body, she replied “Absolutely.” In going further into the question, she pointed out that peptides “modulate feeling,” and she suggested that as we are “feeling,” as we are “focussing on” an organ, as we are “paying attention to the autonomic circuitry” involved with it (curcuitry which is composed mainly of peptides), “we have the potential to regulate the organ.”
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COMBINING THE INNER SMILE WITH SPACIOUS BREATHING

When the inner smile is combined with deep, spacious breathing to create what I call the “smiling breath,” the effect can be even more powerful, since breathing can also influence the production of beneficial chemical substances in the organism. In the same conversation referenced above, Pert told me that one possible mechanism for the power that breathing has to alter our emotions and chemistry may be through the production of neuropeptides. She pointed out that the center that controls breathing is located at the fourth ventricle of the floor of the brain—the same location that also secretes many neuropeptides. And she suggested that by consciously altering our breath we may be able to influence which neuropeptides are released.

However one explains its power, the inward-directed smile is, experientially, like a beam of energy, of sensing and feeling, that guides the spacious breath deeper into the organism; and the spacious breath is like a carrier wave that transports the energy of the smile into all the organs. The “smiling breath” is for me a fundamental practice of both self-awareness and self-healing. The sensitive, relaxing energy field that it produces helps me observe by contrast the unhealthy tensions, attitudes, and habits that undermine my health and vitality. What’s more, the practice helps to detoxify, energize, and regulate the various organs and tissues of my body, and thus helps not only to strengthen my immune system but also to transform the very way I sense and feel myself. The following smiling breath practice is based on my own experiments with combining certain elements of Mantak Chia’s inner smile practice with what I call the spacious breath.

PRACTICE

To prepare for this practice, sit quietly for several minutes with your eyes closed. Sense your whole body simultaneously, including any tensions and emotions. Let these tensions and emotions begin to settle, like impurities in a glass of water. Don’t stir them up by thinking about them. Include your breathing in your sensation of yourself. Then open up each of the three main breathing spaces through spacious breathing. Sense your whole body breathing.

1
Sensing and relaxing your eyes

Sense your eyes. Gently rotate, or spiral, them several times in each direction. Then stop and let them relax back into their sockets. As Mantak Chia points out, “The practice of the Inner Smile begins in the eyes. They are linked to the autonomic nervous system, which regulates the action of the organs and glands. The eyes are the first to receive emotional signals and cause the organs and glands to accelerate at times of stress or danger (the “fight or flight” reaction) and to slow down when a crisis has passed. Ideally, the eyes maintain a calm and balanced level of response. Therefore, by simply relaxing your eyes, you can relax your whole body and thus free your energy for the activity at hand.”
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2
Let the sensation of relaxation turn into a smile

Figure 31

Once you feel that your eyes are relaxed, let the sensation of this relaxation spread through your whole face, even into your tongue and into the bones of your skull and jaw. Now visualize someone you care about smiling at you. Let their smile enter you, and smile back at them (
Figure 31
). Sense how your eyes and face relax even more. If you are unable to conjure up an image that makes you smile, then simply smile intentionally. Just turn up the corners of your mouth, raise your cheeks, and do the best you can. If you can maintain this effort for several minutes, you will soon find yourself smiling quite naturally.

3
Sense your face breathing through your smile

Now include your spacious breath in your awareness. Each time you inhale, sense the air entering not only through your nose, but also through your face and eyes. Sense your breath being touched by the smile on your face. Watch how the smile transforms your breathing. It’s as though the smile makes your breath even more vibrant and expansive. As you continue to breathe in this way you may notice an increase in your saliva. This is a good sign. Don’t swallow yet. Just keep breathing, collecting more and more saliva. Science has shown that saliva contains a wide variety of proteins, including hormones and other substances, that have digestive, antibacterial, mineral-building, and other health functions. The Taoists believe that in addition to these functions, the saliva—which they sometimes refer to as “the golden elixir”—can also readily absorb chi from our breath and help deliver this energy into the organism.
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From the Taoist perspective, the increased production of saliva can, if utilized properly, be a great aid to our overall health.

4
Smile into your organs

Now you’re going to guide your smiling breath into all your organs (
Figure 32
). Let your smile flow downward, like water, through your jaw and neck and into your thymus gland behind the upper half of your sternum. Sense the thymus gland opening and closing with each inhalation and exhalation. Then let the smiling breath go down into your heart. See if you can sense your heart relaxing as you smile and breathe into it. Then let the smiling breath expand into your lungs on each side of your heart. Can you sense your lungs expanding and contracting inside your chest? From your lungs, direct the smiling breath to your liver on the right side of your rib cage. Smile and breathe into this area. Sense the area around the liver expanding and contracting gently, and releasing any unnecessary tension. Now let the smiling breath include your pancreas and spleen on the left side of your rib cage, working in the same way that you did with the liver. Then include your kidneys, in the lower and middle back area. See if you can feel your back and kidneys expanding and contracting with each breath. Now let your smiling breath reach your bladder and sexual organs. As you breathe into this area, you may sense your whole lower abdomen opening and filling with energy.

Figure 32

5
Swallow the saliva and follow your energy downward

After completing this process, you will probably find your mouth secreting more saliva than usual. Let the saliva collect in your mouth. After collecting a sufficient amount, swish it around in your mouth several times and then swallow it at the very same moment that you straighten your neck slightly by tucking in your chin. As you swallow the saliva, you will sense a kind of warmth, a feeling of energy, leading your smiling breath downward into your body. Sense this sensation flowing slowly downward through your neck into your esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, and rectum—right down to your anus. Sense your smiling breath going through your entire digestive tract.

6
Bring the smiling breath into your brain and spine

Return to spacious breathing and check again to be sure you have a smile on your face. Sense your eyes and let them relax back into their sockets. Feel as though your smiling breath is entering your body through your eyes and face and going back toward your pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and other parts of your brain (
Figure 33
). As you breathe in this way, you may feel that you are somehow becoming more conscious of your brain and its processes. Let your smiling breath go all the way to the back of your brain, in the area of the cerebellum. Sense that your whole head is beginning to expand and contract with your breath. Then let your smiling breath flow slowly down your spine, vertebra by vertebra, to your tailbone.

7
Collect and absorb the energy

Now, as you inhale, sense your abdomen expanding with the spaciousness of your smiling breath. Sense the warmth and energy in your abdomen. As you exhale, do so gently through your mouth. Keep most of your attention in your abdomen and allow the comfortable, spacious sensation that you have there to spread simultaneously into all your organs, tissues, and bones. Once you feel that your awareness of this process is strong enough, you can add one more element to this practice. As you exhale, you can not only sense the “smiling energy” being absorbed into your organs, but you can also sense any inner tensions or toxins going out with the exhalation. As you gain proficiency in this practice, you will discover that it has enormous power to energize you and support your well-being.

Figure 33

As you practice the smiling breath, it is important to remember that its purpose is not to turn you into a smiling automaton. Its purpose is twofold: first, to help you make conscious contact with your own physical and emotional being, and second, to help free up your energies from unnecessary tension and negativity, from any area in yourself where you are “stuck.” As you undertake the practice, check frequently to be sure that you still have a smile on your face. Eventually, after several months of practice, you will be able to bring about some of the same results with just the slightest sensation of an inner smile. This will allow you to practice the smiling breath in the midst of the stresses and conflicts of your daily life.