After practicing yoga for a while you will realise that a certain amount of energy has actually shifted within your mind.
This means that even though your regular yoga practice seems to exclusively focus on the physical body, the effects are far-reaching and influencing your whole mental processes.
This is because by understanding how the flows of energy dance in your body and knowing that the body and the mind are like buddies hand in hand in a similar process of conscious living, you have actually influence thoughts, feelings, and mental energy as a whole.
As a result we cold say that practicing physical yoga regularly becomes a mental practice which in many ways is similar to meditation.
While meditation only focuses on the mind and the heart, yoga involves the physical body as a support.
The influence yoga has on your mental state is uplifting as much as it uplifts the energy flows within the physical body.
Yoga will also make you more conscious of what is occurring within your body and your mind and by giving you the ability to observe these states will also make you more capable to actually transform any weakness or lethargy state into an upward moving flow.
A simple smile is already an uplifting pose.
Meditation does a similar effect on the mental and the physical body but focuses more on the mental part.
It will put a smile on your mental state.
It will uplift your mind simply by making you an observer of your thoughts.
In meditation you learn to consciously observe your thoughts and kindly ask them to leave.
Basically you operate as though a vacuum cleaner would be dusting your mind and refreshing it with the breeze of a breath from the heart.
Did you ever notice how monks or people who meditate a lot seem to have a constant smile on their face? They actually have a smile on their face and that is because they have a smile in their mind and their heart.
It is easy to smile and modern life tends to carry away simplicity to replace it with some kind of plastic accessories.
A pure smile is a smile from a calm mind and meditation is your ally on that practice.
meditation will help you align your energy flows between the mind and the body into an harmonious balance that will eventually put a smile on your body, your mind and your whole being.
Learn to meditate as a start for a smiling practice.