Smile

It’s Valentine’s Day, named after St Valentine of Rome, who died on 14^th Feb 269 AD.  In today’s culture, it’s a day to celebrate all the warm and loving emotions between people.  Not to mention the pressure to buy chocolates, cards and flowers!   My husband and I laughed a lot together as we each tried to smuggle our red-enveloped cards out from their secret locations as we got up and into our morning routine.  We laughed and we smiled.  Those big genuine smiles that spread all the way over your face and up and out through your eyes. 

A smile is a wonderful thing.  Did you know that we have 42 muscles that we can use to express ourselves through our face?  And did you know that there are 19 different types of smile?  And that the big genuine warm and full-hearted smiles have a name?  They are called ‘Duchenne Smiles’, named after the French anatomist, Duchenne de Bologne in 1862.  All smiles require the big muscles of the face to lift the corners of the mouth.  But the genuinely happy ‘Duchenne smile’ also has the eyes involved, as the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes contract too.  So those lovely wrinkles around the corners of your eye are a good sign that you are often happy, feeling the enjoyment of life.    

 So no matter what your relationship status is today, you can choose your own experiment in the use of the many types of smiles and choose to give someone a big full hearted and full face ‘Duchenne smile’.   And I would bet that it will create a big full face ‘Duchenne smile’ in reply.   I am going to be a bit more intentional letting out some more ‘Duchenne smiles’ as I go about my day.  Let me know in the comments below, how you get on, if you decide to give it a try.  Happy Valentines!