The Inner Smile Meets the Whispered Ah – Uniting Heart and Presence in Everyday Practice
Jamee Culbertson integrates Taoist practices, Alexander Technique, and spiritual healing for transformative experiences. She is a Senior Healing Tao Instructor teaching Tai Chi, Qigong, and Taoist Meditations with the Universal Tao Boston School of Taoist Practices. Jamee is a teacher trainer certifying teachers in both disciplines.
This article explores two time-honored practices, the Taoist Inner Smile meditation and F.M. Alexander’s Whispered ‘Ah’ exercise. Both offer gentle, powerful pathways to grounded liveliness through breathing and soft inward directives. Both traditions begin with a smile.
The Taoist meditation, called the Inner Smile invites us to access golden light from the universe and bring it through the third eye into the brain. This evokes a loving smile directed inwardly. This warm smile is then directed with love toward the internal organs, the digestive system and the nervous system. This can harmonize our energy and bring emotional balance. It’s all about love, self love.
The Whispered ‘Ah’ exercise born from the Alexander Technique, encourages a gentle smiling awareness in the eyes to invite an easy in and outflow of breath for ease and balance throughout.
Together, these practices show how an inner smile and mindful breath can dissolve tension, nurture lasting calm and tap into joy!
‘Smiling into the eyes’... what it really means
A smile that includes a brightness in the eyes is genuine. If you see someone smiling without a brightness in the eyes it seems fake. Smiling that includes the eyes is genuine, it’s a gesture of receptivity, ease or delight. Smiling with the eyes can change facial tone, jaw, and the quality of breathing. This gentle shift invites a wave of calm offering a quiet return to center.
The eye sockets sit slightly forward and above the atlanto-occipital (A/O) joint, the delicate meeting point where the skull balances atop the first cervical vertebra (C1, or atlas). This joint is essential for head poise and spinal freedom. Though the eyes and the A/O joint aren't directly connected anatomically, bringing awareness to the relationship of the eyes, brain, and skull can subtly influence this crucial junction.
Smiling activates "feel-good" neurotransmitters
Smiling has a powerful effect on the brain and body when it's a spontaneous expression of joy and even when it's consciously chosen. Your brain releases:
Dopamine: Enhances mood and motivation.
Serotonin: Helps regulate mood and social behavior.
Endorphins: Natural painkillers that promote a sense of well-being.
Oxytocin (sometimes): Especially in social smiles, this "bonding hormone" increases trust and connection.
Smiling also engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and recovery (the "rest and digest" mode). Even a slight, intentional smile can help trigger this shift.
Engages mirror neurons
Have you ever spontaneously smiled because someone smiles at you? Or when you smile first. When others see you smile, mirror neurons in the brain activate, causing them to smile too. This creates emotional resonance.
Mirror neurons are specialized brain cells that fire both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing the same action as if your brain is “mirroring” their experience. This can build rapport, empathy, and social cohesion.
F.M. Alexander’s breath of presence: The whispered ‘ah’
The Whispered ‘Ah’ is an invitation to release the breath without force, without performance. This quiet practice begins with a smile in the eyes before and during the breath. A brighter tone in the eyes is key, it sets the way for everything that follows. Think of smiling with the eyes as a kind of inner signal of joy you can tap into so the smile arises naturally. This can signal safety to the nervous system and help the whole body respond with more ease.
To practice the Whispered ‘Ah’, once you evoke a smile in your eyes, inhale. Now exhale 'Ah' as a whisper. “Ah” on the out-breath, letting the jaw open easily, the air leaving you naturally. There's no need to shape or push. Simply allow the exhalation from your mouth to flow out. Keep the eyes soft, the jaw easy, the neck free. Relaxing your tongue can help to release the jaw and neck muscles. Keeping the eyes open let the quiet smile in the eyes remain, gently shining through the breath. When the exhalation is finished simply close your lips.
The Whispered ‘Ah’ helps to reset your whole system. It brings you back to a calm ease supporting balanced coordination that the Alexander Technique nurtures.
Encourages effortless, natural breathing
Softens habitual tension, especially in the neck and jaw
Integrates voice with whole-body coordination (mind-body unity)
Prepares the voice for easeful, expressive speaking or song
In Alexander’s work, smiling into the eyes is a profound inner cue, an essential first step for the Whispered ‘Ah’. It’s a gentle invitation to openness and presence.
The inner smile meditation: Spiritual and energetic dimensions
In many contemplative traditions (like Taoism and Buddhism), smiling inwardly is a practice. Smiling inwardly toward the organs or energy centers is said to harmonize Qi, cultivate gratitude, and soften inner resistance bridging the subtle bodies and the physical brain.
The Inner Smile Meditation fosters self-love and compassion by directing a warm, inward smile toward the body. Self love is a basis for anything else that follows. The Inner Smile Meditation helps us access golden light from the universe to harmonize the internal bodily systems. This loving golden light nourishes the major organs, the digestive system and the nervous system sequentially.
The practice is associated with the five elements found in Chinese medicine; metal, wood, fire, water, and earth which correspond to key organs: the lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, and spleen. Each organ has it’s own vibration that can be understood as a sound during exhalation. Each sound is expressed for profound rebalancing and healing during the Six Healing Sounds practice.
By softening inner tension and releasing excess heat, the Inner Smile helps restore balance throughout the system, supporting physical vitality, emotional ease, and mental clarity.
Whispered ‘ah’ and the heart sound: A dialogue between traditions
The “Ah” in the Whispered ‘Ah’ closely mirrors the Heart Sound in Taoist healing traditions, one of the Six Healing Sounds. The heart sound is pronounced softly like a gentle sigh “Haaa…” This sound is used to release excess heat from the heart. It helps to calm emotional intensity, cool heart fire, and nourish the spirit. Practiced regularly, it supports emotional clarity and balance especially useful in moments of anger, anxiety, or agitation.
This cooling exhalation melts restlessness, releases heat, and soothes the fire within. Impatience dissolves. The spirit rests. The heart remembers joy without demand, love without clinging, clarity without force.
The heart sound and qualities of the heart
Aspect | Details |
Element | Fire |
Season | Summer |
Visualization Color | Red |
Emotions to Release | Impatience, arrogance, cruelty, hatred, restlessness |
Emotions to Cultivate | Joy, love, compassion, openness, inner peace |
Organ Pairing | Heart (consciousness & spirit) and Small Intestine (discernment & clarity) |
Sound | Haaa |
Together they whisper and smile
Here, two age old traditions, the Alexander Technique and Taoist meditation meet naturally. One smiles with the eyes, the other with the heart. Yet both invite the same quality of quiet and gentle allowing. Neither seeks to fix; instead, each opens a doorway to balance and calm. Breath supports the integration of flesh, bone, and spirit into coordinated, attentive presence.
Their sounds, the Whispered ‘Ah’ and the soft Taoist Heart Sound “Haaa”are combined as a gift given to yourself.
From the West comes the Whispered ‘Ah’: breath released from a smile, the body reunited with itself.
From the East flows the Heart Sound: “Haaa…” cooling the fire, easing fever, settling the spirit into a calm clarity.
In the Whispered ‘Ah,’ breath becomes spacious–a quiet companion, not a task.
In the Heart Sound, breath becomes medicine, a cooling stream for emotional heat.
Though born in different worlds, the performance halls and studios of the Alexander Technique, and the moonlit temples and inner alchemy of Taoist practices these breathing and smiling gestures share a common language of presence.
We are reminded that breath is not a tool to control, but a bridge to awareness. The smile is not a mask, but a key that unlocks ease and connection.
Together, they whisper softly:
Let the smile begin in the eyes.
Let the heart receive it.
Let the breath come and go like tides without grasping.
A smiling reflection
In this quiet union of smile and sound, we rediscover ourselves not as roles or habits, but as presence itself as clear, kind and alive.
Breath dissolves the barriers between thought and body, habit and freedom. Presence is not something to chase, but a welcome home where body, mind, and spirit rest as one in quiet harmony. If you are curious about the Inner Smile meditation please contact me directly. I’m happy to send you a recording of the meditation. Just sit back and allow yourself to be guided.
For more information about learning the Alexander Technique and/or Taoist Inner Alchemy please visit here or visit this link.
Read more from Jamee Culbertson
Jamee Culbertson, Senior Instructor, Teacher Trainer
Jamee is a Senior Instructor at the Universal Tao Boston School, teaching Tai Chi, Qigong, and Taoist meditation. With nearly 40 years of experience, she integrates Taoist practices, the Alexander Technique, and spiritual healing. She is an internationally certified Alexander Technique Instructor and teacher-trainer at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Jamee has taught at Harvard University, Mass General’s Home Base program for veterans, and community wellness events like Rosie’s Place. Her work blends ancient wisdom and modern techniques to support healing, balance, and self-awareness.
