Why Your Smile Is Your Secret Superpower

We are taught to keep smiling from childhood. We smile a lot in general when we are children. But as we grow the smile fades out. This is generally involuntarily or unknowingly done. We should look at the benefits of smiling so that we can change our facial expression whenever we feel that we are capable enough to change it.

Biological Benefits

There are a lot of biological benefits like the facial stress is released, good hormones get released and lot others. Here you can find the top three with references:

1. Happy chemicals get released: When you smile, your brain releases dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Dopamine makes you feel happy. Serotonin fights sadness and stress. Endorphins work like natural pain medicine. [1]

2. Stress hormones go down: Smiling reduces cortisol, which is a bad stress chemical in your body. Studies show smiling can reduce cortisol by up to 32% [2]

3. Your heart gets healthier: Smiling lowers your heart rate and blood pressure. Even fake smiles help your heart beat slower and reduce stress. [3]

Spiritual Benefits

Apart from the bodily benefits that we get, we also heighten ourselves spiritually. Our spiritual well being is very closely tied to breathing patterns. And the breathing patterns becomes awesome when we smile.

Smiling meditation benefits include deeper breathing and better focus during prayer. Also, it is easier to do naam jap on each breath when we are smiling. I have tried multiple expressions for doing naam jap and have found this one to be the most effective. We can keep tongue at the root of our upper jaw which again helps us to focus better.

The spiritual power of smiling helps us feel more grateful and peaceful inside.

Social Benefits

When we smile, then the surrounding around us want to smile too. We send some positive waves (visible form) to the society. A smile can make someone's day. There is no use of making long faces.

Smiling is contagious because of special brain cells called mirror neurons. When people see you smile, they automatically want to smile back. This creates a chain of happiness around you.

We should keep smiling no matter what is the situation.

Conclusion

We must smile all the time. We should take it as a challenge to smile throughout. This will be beneficial for us biologically, spiritually and socially. Even the science of smiling health effects proves that both real and fake smiles help our body and mind feel better.