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and check again to be sure you have a smile on your face. Sense your eyes and let them relax back into their sockets. Feel as though your smiling breath is entering your body through your eyes and face and going back toward your pituitary gland, hypothalamus, and other parts of your brain (Figure 33). As you breathe in this way, you may feel that you are somehow becoming more conscious of your brain and its processes. Let your smiling breath go all the way to the back of your brain, in the area of the cerebellum. Sense that your whole head is beginning to expand and contract with your breath. Then let your smiling breath flow slowly down your spine, vertebra by vertebra, to your tailbone.

7 Collect and absorb the energy

Now, as you inhale, sense your abdomen expanding with the spaciousness of your smiling breath. Sense the warmth and energy in your abdomen. As you exhale, do so gently through your mouth. Keep most of your attention in your abdomen and allow the comfortable, spacious sensation that you have there to spread simultaneously into all your organs, tissues, and bones. Once you feel that your awareness of this process is strong enough, you can add one more element to this practice. As you exhale, you can not only sense the “smiling energy” being absorbed into your organs, but you can also sense any inner tensions or toxins going out with the exhalation. As you gain proficiency in this practice, you will discover that it has enormous power to energize you and support your well-being.

Figure 33

As you practice the smiling breath, it is important to remember that its purpose is not to turn you into a smiling automaton. Its purpose is twofold: first, to help you make conscious contact with your own physical and emotional being, and second, to help free up your energies from unnecessary tension and negativity, from any area in yourself where you are “stuck.” As you undertake the practice, check frequently to be sure that you still have a smile on your face. Eventually, after several months of practice, you will be able to bring about some of the same results with just the slightest sensation of an inner smile. This will allow you to practice the smiling breath in the midst of the stresses and conflicts of your daily life.

7

CIRCULATING THE VITAL BREATH

Where our breath goes, our attention can also go.

By learning how to breathe naturally—

that is, by learning how to breathe vitality

into every corner of our being—we not only

promote the expansion of our inner consciousness,

but we also stimulate the healthful,

harmonious movement of substances

and energies throughout our bodies.

Our health and well-being depend on the constant and harmonious movement of energy, of chi, throughout the whole of our organism—energy that Taoists believe comes not only from food and air, but also from nature and the stars. From the flow of blood and lymph, to the movement of the cerebrospinal fluid, to the flow of nerve impulses and the firing of synapses, to the continual release of hormones and enzymes, to the reception of perceptions and impressions through our inner and outer senses, a healthy organism is one in which the movement of substances and energies continues unimpeded as needed through the various tissues, organs, nerves, vessels, and channels of the body. A blood clot, for example, can result in a stroke and instant death. Congested lymph nodes can promote disease. A “pinched” nerve can result in the loss of movement or sensation. Unnecessary tension in our muscles and tendons wastes energy, reduces our organic sensitivity, and contributes to the build-up of toxins in our organism.

THE NEED FOR NEW IMPRESSIONS

What’s more, if we begin to observe our psychological life, we see that it functions analogously with and in close relationship to our physical life. Rigid beliefs and attitudes, as well as excessive emotionality (whether positive or negative), can be as dangerous to our well-being as plaquefilled arteries, since they can dramatically alter or impede the overall flow of our