Customer Reviews

The Inner Smile: Love, Joy and Gentleness For Your Internal Organs (Audio Cassette)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Inner Smile is a book entirely devoted to the inner smile meditation technique developed by Mantak Chia. Chia discusses some of the basics of chi and Taoist energy work and then proceeds to describe how the inner smile technique works. His perspective is that using the inner smile can be used to bring emotional happiness to the internal organs of the body.

While I think this is a good book, my main problem with it is that pretty much all of the material can be found in his more advanced books. While he does seem to go into a bit more depth about the inner smile meditation technique in this book, it doesn't, in my opinion, justify a completely new book to explain the practice. It feels like he's trying to milk these topics for everything he can get, when he might better serve his readers by combining some of the related topics into a larger book. The consistency of how much he repeats his other works diminishes the value of this book and his other writing.

I'd recommend this book for someone who's just learning about Taoist breathing and energetic techniques and wants a light introduction to it. However, I can't really recommend it to anyone else, because the majority of the information is available in all of his other books.

On the positive side, this book is a great introduction to the world of qigong and I highly recommend it for beginners and those wanting a little more information about the subject. I made the mistake of purchasing this book along with a few other Mantak Chia's qigong manuals only to find out it had a lot of repeated material from the other books. Don't bother buying this book if you already own Chia's "Healing Light of the Tao" or "Awaken Healing Energy Through Tao".

Although the other reviewers are correct in stating most of this material is repetition from other books, it still deserves 5 stars, easily.

This is likely now the best intro to Mantak Chia's work.

Why is this material incredibly valuable?

-The inner smile is an incredible exercise for improving health

-The benefits can be felt almost immediately!

-It is one of the quickest ways I know to turn your attitude around

-Although Mantak Chia describes tons of Taoist energy exercises in his books, I feel that the Inner Smile is by far the most important one

-The Inner Smile is incredibly easy... virtually everyone gets great results right away.

I enjoy playing with a lot of different meditations... but when I have trouble, it usually only takes a few minutes of the Inner Smile to get me focused, relaxed, and happy again.

In addition, repetition is required for learning. If you read about a meditation, and practice it for a while, it is very valuable to go back and read it again. You will likely learn something new everytime, as your perspective will continue to change from your consistent practice. Having it in another book just gives you another reason to study the material again.

I still have tough days from time to time... this implies to me that I have more to learn/understand/integrate about the Inner Smile, even though I feel it has been of tremendous benefit already.

If you aren't familiar with this exercise... Get This Book! If you are familiar with it, and you practice regularly... then you probably don't need it... but I'm more than happy to spend $10 to support the guy who introduced me to this.

keep smiling,

Benjamin

We enjoyed the education on a theory of inner healing. Well written and easy to follow. And makes you 'smile'.