Smile.

Yes, right now, just try it on your face.

Notice how you feel right now.

For me it’s instantly softer, more joyous, more at ease. Right. Now.

As we teach in Laughter Yoga, just the simple act of intentional smiling and laughter sparks the feel-good neuro-transmitters in the brain. You immediately feel more connected, happy, and pleasured.

Who doesn’t want more of that?

Spring Equinox is here today,
Tuesday March 20th, 2018
at 11:15 am CT.

Especially in the northern climes, like Minnesota where I live, spring helps us smile again!

On Sunday, I hosted a Tea & Poetry Gathering. Just hearing the spring-themed poems that welcomed “rushing rain,” “wild spring,” “this earth is our heaven,” “buds bursting on the trees,” “the encouragement of light,” the “frolic,” and the invitation to the heart to “rave on” helped my bodysoul “step into spring.”

Spring always invites us to start fresh, to begin again, to welcome the new green life awakening deep within.

Why not use this natural, seasonal impulse to re-fresh and re-source our lives instead of waiting for a crisis to do it for us?

We can re-orient in so many different ways. Today, I offer just a few:

• Try my new gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free Breakfast Muffins recipe for a simple, healthy start to your day.
• Try on the Smiling Practice below, that you can do anytime in your day, to choose new, fresh, yummy life!

Smiling Practice

“Sometimes your joy is the source
of your smile, and sometimes your smile
is the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For more awareness, close your eyes, but this can be done with them open or closed.

Let a smile start on your lips–draw the corners of your lips up toward your ears slowly. Notice how, if you let it, the smile naturally broadens and widens, taking up more of your face. Feel how it resets and refreshes your brain. Take a few breaths here, sensing your body.

Now smile into your heart–start at the center of your chest and imagine the smile spreading out from there, up toward your breasts (or pecs) and all the way to your shoulders, filling your chest with this joyful, easeful energy. Breathe in and out, sensing and feeling.

Now smile into your belly–from your pubic bone, let the smile widen out and up toward your hip bones. Imagine bathing all of your lower belly organs in this goodness and well-being. Breathe, feel, and sense…

Breathe into all three Centers–Belly, Heart, and Head, starting in the center–pubic bone, center of chest, lips–and let the breath spread the smile in each Center, filling you up with yumminess. On the inbreath, breathe the smile into being, on the outbreath, release any efforting. Stay here, smiling, breathing, sensing, and feeling as long as you choose, and then bring this sweet moment of awakening to your true nature back into your day.