Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.
This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and forcing a big cheerful face on a bad day usually backfires. The small version is honest: it releases the mouth and jaw and lets the rest of you catch up if it wants to.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'urge one another to steadfastness and compassion' (Quran 90:17). Compassion is something to be practised and passed on, and a softened face is usually where it starts.
ثُمَّ كَانَ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَتَوَاصَوۡاْ بِٱلۡمَرۡحَمَةِ
and to be one of those who believe and urge one another to steadfastness and compassion
Qur’an 90:17read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A Cochrane review of non invasive approaches to wellbeing in lung cancer found the evidence too thin to recommend most complementary methods, which is the usual state of affairs for very small and very cheap practices. Nobody has trialled a half smile. Here the absence of evidence is mostly an absence of study, so judge it by whether it does anything for you.
Rueda JR, Solà I, Pascual A, Subirana Casacuberta M. (2011). Non-invasive interventions for improving well-being and quality of life in patients with lung cancer.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Your face and your mood run in both directions, so easing one can ease the other.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
You choose what to work on and how big a piece of it. A sore shoulder, a low mood, the belief that you are too much: all of them are allowed, and so is starting small.
Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.
Hands on your belly, breathe so that it moves, and listen. A gurgle down there is a real sign that you have stopped bracing.