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.

Oneness: Ho'oponopono

Anxiety, fear, addiction, depression, alienation, isolation from our neighbors, even loved ones are daily obstacles many people struggle with through their entire life continuum.  Caught in repetitive thinking and feeling patterns, disconnected from our “home”, our internal truths, we tend to wane through the decades we are given instead of living them with robust energy and joy.  We begin to believe this is what life is.  It is sort of like a dog that has always been kicked and starved, it doesn’t know any better, thus endures and expects more of the same.  Or the person who has never eaten an organic carrot, only the petroleum tasting conventional carrot; they can’t be expected to know the difference. Because these abysmal expectations are what are known, this is probably what will be continued to be had. 

These are somewhat extreme parallels I put forth, but the truth is, most of us live some version of them in some way.  Whether it be our acute and unabated loneliness which has conditioned us to feel we will never know satisfying relationship or peace; or wellness/illness obsessing has us completely disillusioned we will doubtfully know a semblance of an ideal life style pattern.

This nagging lack, “hole creating”, often leads people to therapy, self-help books or classes to improve themselves. It rarely leads them to an introspection that connects them to the idea of Oneness, that their difficulties are not solitary, but related to others and the entire cosmos.  Exploring this understanding can be liberating.

A decade ago, a friend introduced me to a Hawaiian healing process called Ho'oponopono, and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len’s work on the concept. The Huna Process of Ho'oponopono .  It basically considers that we are all interconnected, there is no separation between your pain and my own, we are One.  This is considering all sentient beings, ecology, technology, the universe; a very big concept.  The healing comes from saying 4 simple sentences to oneself over and over in relation to the pain or suffering one is having with another (or oneself). The sentences being, I Love You, I'm Sorry, Forgive Me, Thank You.

Dr. Joe Vitale, a psychologist, has explained the basis of this healing works because we enter a sense of responsibility in relation to one’s own suffering and the suffering of another I Love You, I'm Sorry, Please Forgive Me .  I personally find the “responsibility” word a bit loaded in my associative understanding, as have others whom I’ve introduced these concepts to, so I use relationship or relatedness (other “r”words) and that sits with me better.

When I first heard of this type of healing, frankly I thought it was kind of hokey (and it does not help the literature around it is slick and commercial sounding/looking). But I also had a sense there was something simply profound there.  Paradoxes are intriguing, so I sat with it a little longer and decided to test it in my work.  And the experience of it has been illuminating.

I have used it when I am at my wits end, overwhelmed with a patient, or at the end of my available inner resources.  I was working with a revolving-door pair of married addicts, who took weekly turns getting hospitalized ostensibly for pain management to get their narcotics.  The way I was entering this patient relationship on this particular day was alarming to me as a professional; I was frustrated, disgusted, repulsed and angry at this duo.  I had nothing to lose but try the four sentences.  I entered the hospital room to narcotic dose the wife (the patient of the day) and found the wife comfortably watching TV, husband pacing near the window and teenage son glued to his computer. Upon entering, the husband started to bluster about the meds having arrived, and maybe there was some extra for him.  A wave of revulsion ran through me as well as a professional shame that I was feeling this way.  I stood still facing the husband and started repeating to myself the four sentences.  The husband went on and on and I stood there continuing to try the Ho'oponopono practice.  To my surprise, something softened in me and I became engaged with my firmly planted feet.  Within a few minutes, the son stopped looking at the computer screen and looked up at me.  The husband stopped pacing, talking non-stop and gesticulating.  Taking a long pause he said, “You’re listening to me” and then, “No one ever listens to me.”

This was a surprising turn of events.  Where there seemed to be some impact on this family, what was most intriguing was the impact Ho'oponopono had on me.  Being fully caught in an intense internal polarization, this exercise mercifully shifted the rigidity I had entered in myself and made something else possible.  Some facsimile of this experience has happened every time I have tried this and other healers I have passed this on, report similar findings.  There is a penetrating depth to this work.  I am continually finding an expansiveness to its concepts, continued layers to the practice (as I have explored it experientially not per the literature).  It has effected my own practice and thinking on health considerably.

How can this “profound hokiness” be? It’s based on acknowledging (not initially with authenticity) my relationship and connection to another’s pain, asking for forgiveness, and finally gratitude. I don’t understand this in parts of myself, but also it rings true.  It brings home the power of the mind and words thought or spoken to myself and others.