It’s a well established fact (although not a well explained one) that smiling makes you feel happier. It’s something to do with signals from the muscles which normally create a smile being fed back to the brain. Maybe these signals get sent when we smile naturally and the brain therefore interprets any such messages as a sign that we are smiling for real -and that this must be for some good reason…(but who knows).
Today’s invention is a way to exploit this. Telling people ‘Smile and you’ll feel better’ is likely to be greeted fairly unenthusiastically by anyone who is actually glum. Instead, I propose a mask which has internal padded stubs (like erasers on a pencil). These stubs are moved inwards into contact with the facial features and then moved laterally so as to stretch the facial tissues gently into the shape of the opposite expression (eg a frown) from the one desired.
When after a few minutes, the mask is removed, the muscles overreact in the opposite direction to produce a longlasting expression of happiness….and one’s mood therefore lifts (Think how hard it is to look exaggeratedly sad, without breaking into at least a smirk).
