A friend sent me this a few days ago, and I thought I’d post so that everyone can enjoy…
It’s a lovely, gentle way of appreciating something …that never, ever asks us for anything.
‘Gratitude is a great virtue and source of happiness. Each person has servants working for them throughout every day of their life — the five organs, stomach, intestines and spine. We generally don’t thank them but curse when ‘my ticker’ goes wobbly. Then see a medic, pop a pill and hopefully take the ticker for granted again. This is stupid. It helps reduce life to a mundane level.
The Inner Smile Exercise is an ancient Taoist exercise without theology. It just needs explanation and practice. The smile is a powerful energy to communicate and normally produces a response. Gratitude and appreciation are due to the main organs that work silently and unceasingly to maintain health considered in the widest sense.
In Chinese philosophy and traditional medicine — acupuncture and herbal — body, mind and soul are considered together and the five frontal organs are seen as equal aspects of the soul. The divisions in western thought seem artificial and gross. Thus essential virtues have manifestations in body, mind and spirit. The quality of the lungs is primarily courage, of the heart peace, of the liver kindness, the spleen concentration and the kidneys will. The negative qualities for each are respectively weakness, hate, jealousy, worry and fear.
The exercise of a few minutes daily treats the body in three planes. The front contains lungs, heart , liver (on right half above and have below rib cage) and spleen (on left below rib cage) and kidneys (on either side of spine below rib cage). The mid-plane is throat, alimentary canal stomach, intestines and bladder. The rear plane consists of the golden spine from top of neck to coccyx.
A real smile is produced by thinking of a loved one. If taken to mid-skull from around eyebrows, it can be taken down midline to lungs. Thence to heart, liver, spleen and kidneys. There is no code about how gratitude is expressed, words. smile or nod. It is a simple exercise and the mind tends to wander. So be it. A thought can intervene and it is rare to complete the whole exercise in under five minutes, twice a day, without wandering. The smile attracts a smile back from the organ if nothing is forced. There is no template.’
(Thank you too Malcolm.)
