Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Just a soft smile and a few minutes of breath can shift your mood, lower stress, and deepen your sense of connection.
How To Do This Practice:
- Settle In: Find a comfortable seat, rest your hands gently, and soften your gaze or close your eyes.
- Breathe and Soften: Take a few slow, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth, relaxing your face, jaw, and neck.
- Form a Gentle Smile: Let a soft, effortless smile form at the corners of your mouth. Think of something or someone that makes you smile.
- Turn the Smile Inward: Imagine that smile radiating inside your body, through your face, throat, and chest.
- Send the Smile Through Your Body: With each breath, guide the smile to your heart, lungs, digestive system, and spine, acknowledging and appreciating each part.
- Close Gently: Let the smile spread throughout your whole body, take one final deep breath, and slowly open your eyes, carrying the smile into the rest of your day.
Today’s Happiness Break Guide:
DACHER KELTNER is the host of The Science of Happiness podcast and is a co-instructor of the Greater Good Science Center’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Related Happiness Break episodes:
Take a Break With Our Loving-Kindness Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/2kr4fjz5
A Meditation on Original Love: https://tinyurl.com/5u298cv4
Embodying Resilience: https://tinyurl.com/46383mhx
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
Are You Remembering the Good Times: https://tinyurl.com/483bkk2h
Make Uncertainty Part of the Process: https://tinyurl.com/234u5ds7
Why We Should Seek Beauty: https://tinyurl.com/yn7ry59j
Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod
We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
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Transcription:
I’m Dacher Keltner, welcome to Happiness Break, where we take a few minutes to guide you through science-backed practices that can bring more joy, connection, and ease into your day.
Today, we’re exploring the Inner Smile Meditation, a practice rooted in Taoist traditions. This technique invites us to soften our facial expression, deepen our breath, and direct a warm, gentle smile inward toward our body.
In a now-famous study, psychologist James Laird discovered something fascinating—when people were unknowingly made to smile, they consistently felt happier. And when they mimicked a frown, their mood shifted toward anger.
More recent studies have confirmed this effect: holding a subtle smile can shift our emotional state, lower stress, and even help us feel more connected to the world around us.
This practice of interoception invites ease and a deeper sense of connection within.
Let’s begin.
Find a comfortable seat. Rest your hands gently in your lap or next to you. Close your eyes if that feels comfortable, or soften your gaze.
Now take a deep breath in through your nose and slowly exhale through your mouth.
With each ensuing breath, allow your face to soften, your jawbones, the back of your neck.
Now, bring your attention to your face. Let a gentle, effortless smile form—not a forced grin, just a soft, subtle lift at the corners of your mouth.
Maybe think of someone or something that makes you smile.
Feeling the corners of your lips gently turned upward.
Hold that smile, allowing your jaws and head to relax even more.
With your next inhale, direct this inner smile toward your heart. Imagine your heart, circulating blood, and nourishing your body with each beat.
Rest in that smile for a moment.
Now, gently guide the smile to your lungs. Feel them expand and contract. Bringing in fresh oxygen with each expansion, fueling every cell in your body, keeping you balanced and healthy.
Now move the smile down to your stomach and digestive system. An area that holds so much tension. As you focus here, acknowledge how your body supports you by processing and releasing what no longer serves you, helping you feel lighter and more at ease. With each breath, invite a sense of relaxation to this area, allowing it to soften and release tension.
Let this inner smile continue flowing through you, wrapping around your entire body. Feel the ease, the lightness, the simple joy of being here, in this moment.
Take one more deep breath in through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth.
When you’re ready, bring your awareness back to the space around you.
Gently Open your eyes, if they were closed, and look around you with that smile.
Thanks for taking this Happiness Break with me.
