The Power of Smile

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I believe that wellness is the foundation of beauty and anything that will help us attain and maintain wellness will be a wellspring of beauty.

Smile is an alchemy for wellness, beauty, happiness and love.

Beauty is one of the most abundant reality in nature. It is also something that is a passion of every woman, especially young women; and many are spending hundreds and thousands to be beautiful and to maintain beauty.

But nature endowed us with priceless yet freely available power that can bring both beauty and wellness - the power to smile.

Smile indeed is a powerful gift which when constantly used creates the kind of beauty that is beyond conventional physical beauty but a manifestation of the loveliness of the whole person.  Thus we can see women who are not exceptionally beautiful by common standard but radiates in their individual person an aura of beauty that captivates us by their radiant smile.

What is in smile that makes a person beautiful and attractive? The French physician Guillaume Duchenne, while studying the physiology of facial expressions, discovered that there is a smile that is not real smile and could be distinguished from genuine smile by the kind of muscles involved during the act of smiling.  Genuine smile involves tightening movement of the muscles around the eyes and the cheekbones and the muscles at the corners of the mouth. The inauthentic smile involves only the movement at the corner of the mouth.

The motivating factor for genuine smile is happiness. Genuine smile indicates real happiness. And the feeling of happiness is induced by brain chemistry, particularly the chemicals serotonin and dopamine.  But the more amazing scientific fact is that genuine smile induces automatic  production of these feel good chemicals by the brain.  From the practical point of view, smile can be used as a proactive tool to feel good and happy.

Not only that, smiling can be used to improve one’s experience of life and in particular to increase the perception of beauty in the eyes of the beholder. Studies made showed that  the perception of smile conveys  friendly attitude, interest and desire to communicate and causes likewise in the other person the release of happiness chemicals and infuence them emotionally to experience good feelings which in turn influence their perception of the attractiveness of the smiling person.

But how can one induce geneuine smile in one’s self.  Positive thoughts and imagination of pleasant things are the powerful tool that create genuine smile.  Remember how at various times you find yourself smiling for a mere remembrance of a beloved person or a plesant experience in the past? Indeed it is well and good for us to heed the advice of Paul in his letter to the Philippians:

 “. . . whatever  is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about  these things.”  (Philippians 4:8, RSV).

There is much more you can learn about the power of smiling, indeed there is a secret science on smiling and this is intensively written about by Elan Sun Star in Smile! The Secret Science of Smiling

 Watch this You Tube on smile and health.

What do you think about the Power of Smile? I will be glad to hear your comment,  reaction, experience or any additional contribution/insight about Smiling. Please feel free to do so.