(Authentic) Smiling (Practice)

On January 6th I held an Insight Timer Live event called “(Authentic) Smiling (Practice)” with the description: Revel in the power of real life smiles discussed virtually (for 15 minutes or longer perhaps). I invite participants to share smiles and experiences as I relate a somewhat brief formal practice of smiling on near-daily walks a couple of years ago. I share my experimental experiences with smiling practice in real life; address the authenticity part, and give practice ideas.

Transcript

In today's event,

I've taught entitled authentic smiling practice.

And the description is,

Revel in the power of real life smiles discussed virtually for 15 minutes or longer perhaps.

I invite participants to share smiles,

Experiences,

As I relate a somewhat brief formal practice of smiling on near daily walks a couple years ago.

So first off,

You know,

My standard disclaimer,

The things I'm going to mention here,

Some or maybe even all of this isn't right for everybody.

So you have to use your own discernment.

You can use this as a reference point for your own consideration of things that may occur to you to try or things you've heard other teachers talk about.

So I'll be talking about my experience,

Like I said,

And then authenticity part of this,

And then I'll be giving some practice ideas to.

So I first heard I was inspired about this.

I heard about this.

It's been several years ago and I couldn't find the talk that I heard it by from a quick search.

But it was Andrea Fella.

It's the name of the teacher who did this years ago.

And she was just talking about her experiences of smiling in everyday life and breaking it down from a Dharma perspective.

So if it's winter now where you live,

You might want to file this file this away for a different time.

And,

You know,

Kind of the most obvious thing around this,

Maybe for some this time we're in,

Is that smiling is different now if you go out in public.

So you can use this for future reference or reflections on the past if you can't practice this in everyday life as much right now.

So I visited places that ran the gamut from people that aren't wearing masks hardly at all during this whole entire thing,

Kind of more in rural areas in Missouri,

Maybe in other places,

To where there's constant and persistent wearing of masks just about pretty much everywhere.

And,

You know,

There's places just around this metropolitan area of St.

Louis where it varies to from nowhere wearing a mask to if it's recommended and required.

So those two things are slightly different.

And these change from time to time,

Even within places and around certain people.

So one thing you can do,

Though,

Is if you're still in public spaces,

Like I did this on my walks.

A lot of public spaces obviously don't have mask requirements.

From my own personal experience,

This is a few years ago before all this started,

And I always experienced a lot of joy and well-being at this part in my practice.

So this really was kind of inspiring for me.

And there was a desire and encouragement to do this.

And along with my tendency to push limits,

So kind of testing things,

Doing experiments in public,

You know,

Still following rules and laws and whatnot.

And so what I would do is I would just,

Part of it anyway,

Was just a brute force amping up of smiling at everybody.

So I would go on daily walks,

Would walk around a park,

Which is probably about,

It's a block,

But it encompasses other blocks around it.

Oh,

I don't know,

Maybe five,

10 blocks.

It took about a half an hour to walk around.

And we did this during a time when it wasn't too busy or too light,

And it was just starting with this intent,

Constantly bringing to mind,

I'm going to smile at everybody I meet.

Whether they look like they've just had the worst day ever,

Or they want to sit and tell you their life story for hours and hours.

And so right away,

The responses I get,

You can imagine,

Right?

Sometimes it wasn't in alignment with my mood,

More than likely it was,

I was in a pretty decent state starting off.

So where my mood was in alignment with smiling.

But,

You know,

Sometimes the circumstances and environment really didn't call for this,

But I went ahead with it anyways,

As an experiment.

Part of it was smiling at everybody.

And then there was another portion when I would just say hi or hello or greet everyone that walked by.

And,

Okay,

This was intense,

Especially for someone who's pretty much been an introvert most of their lives.

And what you're doing is you're deliberately drawing attention to yourself to solicit a response,

Right?

So this is really interesting for me anyway.

And then also it's difficult for avoidant types too,

Right?

If you've got a tendency to avoid things,

Just in personality or in general in life,

It can be a challenge as well to do something like this.

So the responses I got were everything from friendly,

Smiles back,

Some people would even stop and chat for a little bit.

But then there was also rejections,

Kind of subtle hostility,

And a lot of indifference.

You know,

That's kind of commonplace in life is indifference.

That's okay.

And then noticing just with the opposite and same sex.

So it was interesting to smile at someone we're attracted to,

Right?

And then maybe that intensity level was higher when we got a smile or when I got a smile back or whoever's practicing this.

Maybe it's you get a higher,

We get a higher level of,

I don't know,

Oxytocin boost or the rejections higher when we feel attracted to someone's smile and it's kind of indifference or even rejection or whatnot.

And then with the same sex,

It was like,

Okay,

You're smiling too,

I'm smiling to a guy that I've never met before.

You know,

It's really weird.

So what I would do at that point would be like kind of give a nod with a smile,

Nod the smile.

And then this eventually turned into,

You know,

Getting these responses so much intense.

So there would be some times when it was still kind of reeling from the responses that I got from the smile and then somebody would come up right away and then I would have to kind of shelve that response or reaction or what was processing and then just put that aside real quick and then smile again to the next person.

And sometimes it just kept building and building.

But other times there were stretches when I would walk by and,

You know,

Nothing would happen.

So the response I got from the other person,

From me smiling at them,

It dissipated.

So it wasn't as intense.

So it depended on the frequency of people stopping by.

And so eventually this turned into using discernment.

And this is the wiser thing.

If somebody is looking like they're down on their luck and having a horrible day,

Sometimes smiling at them could actually help.

But other times it could just make it worse.

Or you could have somebody that's completely stoic.

It's going to be a flat line response pretty much no matter what.

It's going to be hard to get some kind of benefit to them or benefit back from them with smiling.

So sometimes it might not be worth the energy to bother them.

So you can kind of intuit when to smile,

Who to smile to under what circumstances.

That's the wiser thing that came out of this for me.

Okay.

So now the authenticity part of sending and receiving.

This notion of authenticity.

When I'm going into this practice formally,

It's not really as authentic as it really could be.

It doesn't really apply to that as much I wouldn't think.

Now,

Many of us I'm guessing can discern when something's authentic and when it's not.

Maybe some of us would like to be more authentic than we are right now.

But we've all pretty much can discern when something's authentic or not.

Right.

And at least if we haven't,

We can discern it in others.

If we can't really feel like we're being authentic,

Then we could,

We know it when we see it.

Right.

And then even if you think you can't,

We can look at interactions with small children and pets.

Pets aren't really going to lie for the kind of love they draw forth and give.

Seems pretty authentic.

Now you get perceptions of,

Like I was saying earlier,

Fake enforced authenticity.

I mean,

Sorry,

Fake enforced versus authentic,

Either from myself or others.

This is an interesting thing too.

How much was I reading into what's really fake enforced and what's really authentic for me and others that brought up a lot of doubt?

Are they real,

Are they being authentic or is this the level of authenticity that they have access to in this moment?

It's probably the wiser thing I picked up on.

Some people are just fake all the time.

Some people are fake enforced under certain circumstances,

Certain conditions and causes.

So it's really hard to,

Challenging for me to determine a lot of times,

You know,

The level of authenticity depending on so many different things.

And so doubt would creep in a little bit on that when I didn't realize that there's so much going into authenticity or can and there's different gradations of it.

So I'm kind of on the fence about this fake it till you make it thing.

I can see it both sides where if you don't try it at all,

You know,

How are you going to change or become more authentic?

On the other hand,

It's just like,

Well,

Does more fakery encourage support condition and bring about more fakery?

I don't know.

I can see it both ways depending on certain things.

You know,

Even in these beauty pageants or I don't know if they're called beauty pageants anymore like Miss America.

I don't know if it's still the same way,

But years ago I heard these stories where they put Vaseline on their teeth so that they could smile easier,

Right?

And this goes into also genuine niceness at various levels and kindness.

So I think we all pretty much know what kindness means.

It's just kind of like dignity,

Giving dignity,

Honor and respect.

This is basic human kindness,

Which I feel is kind of the only rule in life.

But when we get into niceness,

To me,

If that's being genuine,

That's just icing on the cake of kindness.

But then we have this inverted feeling of kindness.

But then we have this inverted kind of niceness like,

Okay,

Kind of a condescending,

I'm just going to be polite,

But I don't really mean it.

Really kind of insidious reversal inversion thing to the point where people get turned off by niceness because of that.

But I would say you can tell if it's authentic and genuine or not.

Right.

Okay.

And then another big thing,

If you're smiling and people is that coming from the head or the heart?

Usually this is it doesn't come from the head unless you're kind of like the practice I was talking about where it's kind of a it's a formal,

More of a formal experiment or practice where you just have to do it all the time just to see what it is.

But usually when we smile in everyday life,

It comes from the heart.

Right.

Okay.

So now I guess I'll transition into ideas for practice.

First off,

When we're considering something like this,

People maybe get turned off by something like that.

It's totally understandable.

I would say how much of this actually comes from real danger when we're considering not doing something like this.

How much real danger is involved?

How much real danger can be sensed versus how much of this is negativity bias around certain things that have happened to us in the past where unknowns have been come into play.

So usually when something's unknown,

Then we don't have any reference point for anything.

And then we look at,

Oh,

These because of negativity bias,

We these certain things negatively dangerous things have happened to me in the past when there's been unknowns around.

And so we don't focus on the good things that have come around unknowns,

Too.

But then also,

You know,

We can sense it to real danger sometimes.

So we can imagine this practice if we haven't done it before,

And then we can compare it to reality.

So we can kind of think about what might this be like and just use our imagination to experience results.

But then we can use as a reference point for the actual reality of what happens when we do this.

Tara Brach is a kind of a famous psychologist and Dharma teacher,

And she talks about this inner smile.

So this is kind of a formal practice you can do in sitting.

Imagine imaginary smile from the heart,

From the hips and the head.

And you can just notice the effect on that.

Areas of this for practice are strangers.

You can do it on walks,

Public transportation,

Maybe even restaurants where you sit down,

Grocery stores,

Maybe even Zoom.

You can mix and match these.

But we can do a receiving practice,

Too.

So the questions,

Who would and wouldn't you want to smile at?

And who would and wouldn't you want to smile at you?

And how would you take this?

And so what about getting unexpected smiles?

And then,

Of course,

We can notice smiling either to others or receiving our emotions,

The thoughts,

The state of mind and the felt bodily experience in ourselves and others before,

During and after smiling or receiving a smile,

Whatever that experience is,

Kind of like how long does it last?

How long does it stick around?

How long does it stick around?

So some of the things that I experience is kind of a warmth and a joy,

But also,

Like I said,

Rejection,

Suspicion,

Judgment or thinking.

Maybe people are thinking,

Well,

What do they want?

Why are they smiling at me?

Why are certain things like maybe they're thinking or I'm thinking,

Well,

Why can't I smile back?

Why can't they smile back?

Human kindness,

You know,

Maybe some people will reflect on human kindness then.

Of course,

Suffering and compassion.

So we see responses from people that will elicit even more kindness in this or compassion for what they're going through if they kind of scowl or ignore or reject or whatever.

So that can be compassion for ourselves and them,

Too.

And for everybody who's had that experience,

We can notice the ups and downs of responses in their durations before the next smile.

I've mentioned that before,

Just kind of notice all these ups and downs of what happens and how long they last.

When discerning who to smile to,

Maybe we don't have to go to the extreme I mentioned about smiling to everybody,

But can we have the confidence and conviction and invite allowance and make a resolve for smiling to occur naturally,

Naturally more often?

And then,

Of course,

There's can do this in a formal sitting practice,

Too,

Is actually just feeling the smile related parts of the body.

So into the muscles around the jaw,

Maybe there's a relaxation or tenseness around the muscles of the eye,

Lips,

Cheeks.

Sometimes the forehead gets going inside the jaw muscles here,

Too.

And appreciate you all being here.

And may you be blessed with a lovely,

Smiling,

Uplifting,

Joyful day,

Evening,

Afternoon,

Good night,

Wherever you may be.