Smile with your liver
In Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love her spiritual teacher in Bali encourages her to lighten up a bit by smiling with her liver while meditating. He says: “Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.” Let’s try to do the same for five minutes every day this week.
HOW-TO: Get settled in a comfortable seated position and close your eyes. Notice how your body feels, notice the flow of your breath, then take a mental note of the state of your mind. Then bring your attention to the right side of your body toward the bottom of the ribcage. This is where your liver lives. Take few breaths focusing on that area and then imagine your liver smiling. Continue to smile with your liver for the next 5 minutes.
OPTIONAL: Spreading the smile throughout the body
Once your liver begins to smile, imagine that smile spreading to other organs in your body, until your entire body community begins to grin happily.
I would like to share my smile posture: gently extend the right side of your mouth to your right ear – as you hold it there – extend the left side of your mouth to your left ear – take this smileasana with you throughout the day and pass it on to everyone.
everyone loves the smileasana!
🙂
I love this suggestion. I find it even more beneficial when I breathe, to also imagine the position of the liver underneath the diaphragm, and my diaphragm encouraging the liver smile to deepen as it draws down on an inhalation. Liver smiling is definitely infectious as it spreads easily through the whole body. Thanks Olga.
I love this visual, Robin! Our organs gotta be very kind to each other as they coexist in such tight quarters 🙂 It sounds similar to the image of the lungs hugging the heart with every inhalation.
That’s a great visual too! I’ve mentioned ‘smiling with your liver’ to a few people now and I’ve found that even the suggestion brought smiles. Someone even mentioned that they’d been partying heavily the night before and could feel the ‘smile’ giving their liver a lift hahah! Little do they realise that it more than likely does 🙂
Thank you for reminding the importance of smiling! I don’t know about my liver, but my face muscles really do need smiling. It is natural way to get the jaw relaxed and the tongue into the right place.
Looking forward for your new challenges!
Agreed! I remember the times when smiling was my natural default facial expression, so I believe it can be again!
I love this!
Mantak Chia has a whole system about smiling into your internal organs. 🙂 I always incorporate his teachings with your amazing sequences Olga! <3 Much love.
Thank you Sandra! I never heard of Mantak Chia but I will definitely check it out! Sounds delightful.
Oh, I just looked on-line and he is coming to Portland in May! Now I will definitely check it out! 🙂