Okay, so take a few moments to settle yourself in a way that feels alert, you're sitting

upright, but primarily do a kind of scan to make sure you're comfortable.

So right from this start, take care of yourself.

As you come into stillness, just briefly scan and sense if you have in some way tightened

the last few moments or hours or whatever, any part of your body that just by noticing

some of the muscular ice cubeness can be dissolved.

And then just pausing enough to sense your intention through this guided practice.

And if you can get in touch with your own sincerity about connecting and awakening hard

energy, in both the Buddhist and the Taoist traditions, one of the levels of loving

kindness practices with the body itself and the image of a smile is often used to help

the nervous system, the muscles, the body come into a state of ease, receptivity.

You might imagine the sky that's around us, filled with the curve of a smile, that it extends

through the sky up into the heavens, and that that openness and that curve and that receptivity

can fill the mind, letting the image in the curve of a smile spread through the eyes.

You might sense the corners of the eyes, lift it up a bit, see if it's possible to soften

the eyes, let them be like orbs floating in a pool of water, the brows move,

seeing a slight smile at the mouth.

Tick-not-hon describes this as smile yoga, because it really does communicate to the nervous

system some ease, let the inside of the mouth smile also, jaws relaxed, now again smiling

into the eyes, sensing the mouth and a slight smile, and then smiling into the heart area,

imagine and feel that curve of a smile spreading through the heart and the chest.

Imagine the smile coming from the inside out, from deep within, in a cellular way, the space

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