Laughter is Good for You!

In 1979, Norman Cousins, the writer and editor, published Anatomy of an Illness.  He had been suffering from an auto-immune disease which came upon him in the form of a debilitating arthritis.  Doctors had told him that his condition was terminal.  His book started a revolution in patient care, because it told a story of how powerful the results can be when a person participates in their own healing. That one could alter the course of a terminal diagnosis was a brand new idea in the late 70’s.

Cousins used many different techniques beyond the medicines he was prescribed to deal with his illness.  The book walks the reader through his journey to find health again.  One of the things he discovers along the way, is that if he watches the Marx Brothers or reruns of Candid Camera, and laughs hard, it is good… really good! 

He shared that he was able to enjoy up to two hours of pain free sleep from just 10 minutes of deep belly laughing!  No sedative or pain medicine was able to do that for him.  There was a point in the progression of his disease when laughter really was the best medicine!

He reminded us of something we humans have always known.  Laughter can save our lives! 

Cousins didn’t die from his auto-immune disease, like the doctors said he would.  After he recovered, he wrote more books, and he became, among other things, a Professor of Medical Ethics at UCLA.  It was there that he participated in doing research on the biochemistry of human emotions. 

Back in the late seventies, scientists were just beginning to prove what we take for granted these days,  … one’s emotional state is important for how one’s body deals with disease.  We’ve come to believe that optimistic, hopeful, trusting folk are more resilient; recover faster.  Negative, paranoid, cranky folk don’t do so well…

 

It’s really not that either/or! 

Yet laughing is critical for our mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

We can’t laugh our way out of the human condition!  But we can cope better.  We can by laughing relieve stress, find commonality with each other, and give ourselves some needed distance from the pain and the downright absurdity of life.  It is good to let in some comic relief!  

Being able to laugh, just laughing on a regular basis, often and long and loud… is maybe way more important than we might think it is!  

Have you heard about Laughter Yoga?

Its proponents claim that there really is no need for reruns, comedians, sarcasm, clever humor, poking fun!  …your body just needs to laugh!

Started by an Indian physician named Dr. Madan Kataria from Mumbai, Laughter Yoga Clubs now number over 6000 across the world and are in nearly 60 countries.  Dr. Kataria started the first club with a few friends in a public park in 1995.  They simply came together to laugh for 20 minutes….as hard and as deep as they could.  Then they did it again the next day and the next…  That began the Laughter Yoga Clubs that are now all over the world. 

It doesn’t cost anything to join.  There are no forms to fill out.  The clubs are non-political, non-religious and non-profit.  They are run by trained volunteers.  The training they go through helps the leaders teach the others how to breathe!  Breathing is important when your goal is to laugh for 20 minutes!

The ultimate goal of laughter yoga is nothing to laugh about!  It is no less than world peace!

Actually the theory behind laughter yoga is that it doesn’t rely on humor, or sarcasm, jokes or comedians!  There are studies that have been done that prove that the body cannot tell the difference between faked or real laughter.  One will receive the same physiological and psychological benefits either way. 

Watch this!

The proponents of laughter yoga hope that these clubs will spread to more businesses, schools, prisons, long-term care, or cancer centers, and/or wherever there are physically or mentally challenged folk. 

I think it would be great if instead of opening prayer, congressional sessions or city council meetings, police briefings, or military operations could start with 15 minutes of belly laughing!  Now that would be revolutionary!

Perhaps it would change the world if we laughed more, more often and for longer periods of time!  

…especially before we engage in serious concerns

We really don’t need science to tell us that laughing is good for us.  Perhaps we need science to prove how laughter works, but we’ve known that its good medicine for a long time. 

They say that healthy children laugh up to 400 times a day, but adults only 17 times a day, on average.

From a religious or theological perspective, laughter can honor the essential absurdity or paradox of the human condition.  Comedy is sacred art.  It can keep us from thinking too much, worrying too much about the ultimate questions that essentially have no answers…like why did this happen to me?  …or why do we live, just to die?  …or what happens when we die? 

Laughter can bring people together and dissolve differences and hatreds, and pain. 

Laughter can enlighten our everyday existence so that we see with new eyes, so that the world of joy and possibility becomes real.  It helps us not to take ourselves so seriously…

Or perhaps what I ought to say is that laughter might help us to be and to do the very serious task of changing the course the world is on, or altering the progression of disease. 

Laughing is good for you!