Inner Smile Meditation | Cultivate a Loving Presence Within
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Inner Smile Meditation: Cultivate a Loving Presence Within
Our relationship with ourselves is shaped, little by little, by the way we meet ourselves internally, and today’s meditation is a beautiful practice for bringing more warmth, kindness, and softness into that relationship.
Because the truth is, many of us have spent years meeting ourselves with some combination of pressure, criticism, vigilance, or correction. We pay attention to ourselves when something feels wrong. We notice the places where we’re struggling. We try to understand our patterns, heal our wounds, regulate our nervous systems, and figure out how to feel better.
Of course, there’s a place for all of that. But over time, the quality of attention we bring to ourselves becomes part of our relationship with ourselves too.
And this is part of what I find so beautiful about the Inner Smile.
What Is an Inner Smile Meditation?
The Inner Smile is a practice that comes from the Taoist tradition and involves gently turning the warmth and energy of a smile inward toward the body.
It’s such a simple idea, but I love the experience of it. A smile can carry a feeling of warmth, friendliness, kindness, connection, gentleness, even love. And when we turn some of that energy inward, we get to explore what it feels like to experience those qualities inside ourselves.
In this Inner Smile Meditation, I’ll guide you through my own approach to the practice, weaving the Inner Smile together with somatic awareness and imagination so you can spend some time really experiencing and connecting with the loving presence you cultivate.
The Way We Meet Ourselves Shapes Our Inner World
I think many of us can relate to having an internal voice that is quick to notice what needs work.
Even our healing can sometimes take on this quality. We turn inward, looking for the wound, the pattern, the trigger, the dysregulation, or whatever else might explain why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling. And without meaning to, we can end up approaching ourselves with a kind of constant monitoring and evaluation.
The Inner Smile offers us a chance to practice bringing a different energy into that relationship.
We can turn our attention inward with warmth.
We can spend a little time feeling what kindness is like in the body.
We can allow ourselves to experience a softer inner presence that isn’t immediately asking us to change or figure anything out.
And the more experiences we have of meeting ourselves with warmth, kindness, compassion, and care, the more those qualities can begin to become part of the relationship we have with ourselves.
Cultivating a Loving Presence Within
As we cultivate more warmth and kindness inside ourselves, those qualities can begin to feel like something we can actually connect with and draw from. There can be a real sense of inner support in discovering that compassion, softness, and care are experiences we can access within our own bodies.
In today’s meditation, we’ll begin by cultivating the Inner Smile and noticing how its energy feels in your body. From there, I’ll guide you into a deeper somatic experience where you can connect with that loving presence and discover what it has to offer you.
It can be a deeply grounding and regulating practice, and a beautiful way to cultivate more warmth, softness, compassion, and connection within yourself.
And if you’d like to keep exploring this work, I have a whole Embodied Self-Love series that goes much deeper into how we can create a more loving relationship with ourselves through the body. I recommend beginning with Meditation for Secure Attachment With Yourself, one of my most popular practices and a beautiful exploration of how we build a more secure, loving relationship with ourselves over time.
Listen to the Inner Smile Meditation now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - The Way We Meet Ourselves Shapes Our Inner World
03:18 - Guided Inner Smile Meditation
25:53 - Conclusion and Reflections
How was that Inner Smile Meditation for you?
How do you feel now? And what did you realize?
Please let me know in the comments!
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And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head, and into your more embodied and authentic self. 🩷🩷🩷
Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: Embodied Self-Love Series, RIM® Exercises, Self-Compassion Exercises
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
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