Laughter: the Best Medicine

As written previously in Humor and Health, laughter kicks in our parasympathetic nervous systems (the relaxation response) as well as our endorphins (the“feel good” hormones).  Laughing releases tension and gives us a different perspective, lightening our load.  Laughing just really feels great; you’d think we’d be cultivating this healing modality intently through our adult life.  Unlike the masters of this cultivation, the Tappet brothers on NPR’s radio show, “Car Talk”, most of us don’t.

Statistics say adults laugh an average of 5 times a day; children laugh 30 times more  than that amount, approximately 150 times a day.  Children obviously do not have a discretionary funny bone.  Evidently they think everything is funny.  Either that, or they are not practiced at attaching to beliefs (if they have any).  Most adults are masters at attaching to their beliefs, a talent which can also make them morbidly serious (aka: righteous).

In my life coach and stress management instructor capacity, many people ask, "Well, what do you mean by 'laughing;'?". (Of course, an adult would ask this question.) “Do you mean ‘ha ha’ chuckling or falling on the floor laughing or somewhere in between?”  And then the follow-up question would be:  “How long do you have to laugh for it to be therapeutic?”.  (Aren’t we sad, we adults?)

All types of laughing are great for any length of time.  However, if you want to see a change in your tension levels and general well being (including sleep patterns) you want to be guffawing (or at the very least in extreme merriment) for 10-20 minutes if not everyday, every other day. Pioneer researcher Dr. William Fry - Just Laughter, laugh sounds, laughter CD compared exercise to laughter, concluding that just one minute of “hearty laughter” elevated his heart rate to the same level it reached after 10 minutes on a rowing machine.  And Norman Cousins attributes surviving a major illness with a regimen of hard laughing for 20 minutes a day, in his ground breaking book written several decades ago, Anatomy Of An Illness by Norman Cousins - Reviews, Discussion ...    With Laughter, something inside frees up, an alignment happens; one can almost feel the parallels matching up.

Alignment? Parallels?  Of what?  Experientially, it feels like a unification of sorts;  fragmented parts of myself coming together, in one action (tension collecting and eliminating?).  In a post-laughter bout, a lightness transpires in body, mind and spirit.  One feels clean. Our awareness broadens, small things are noted with a felicity of feeling.  A panting smile of a dog on a sidewalk, a bee feeding from a floating Coreopsis head, the change in the air quality after thunder has rumbled through.  Ah, the lightness.

Yes, a lighter outlook is a wonderful thing to have.  But if you are one of those people really invested in being serious, especially about your life difficulties and are determined not to “lighten-up”, there is good news.  The benefits of laughter and having a sense of humor can be gotten by simulating laughter.  This is true.  By manually shaking your belly and pretending to laugh this helps the body get into it's physiological relaxation responses. However, if you are annoyed to have to do this (and who could blame you), it probably won’t work.  You have to want that feel good feeling (or go through the trouble of going to Laughing Yoga or a Qigong class that does this simulation practice).  Fake it ‘til you make it. (You can fool Mother Nature, at least in this case.) You know how it is, if you answer the phone with a “pretend” smile on your face, you almost always end up genuinely smiling, and enjoying the cascade of good feeling the body is wont to give you if you give it half a chance (by triggering the nerves/neurons in your ‘smile’ muscles in the face to do the real thing and send those endorphins on down to receptor sites that need the coverage).

This seems like a lot of (unnecessary) work.  Better to just find yourself and your sense of  humor and get to some hearty laughing.