I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. - Woody Allen
A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically. It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. - Author unknown, from an editorial in New York Tribune, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren

Whether it’s the giggling of a child or the enthusiastic hollers of a talk show’s studio audience, we hear laughter every day. And we love hearing it, because we all love to laugh!

As a motor reflex, laughter is usually present by the time a child is 4 months old, and the instinctual development of smiling and laughing very early in life suggest a high level of importance.

Laughter ringing, laughter pealing, laughter roaring, laughter bubbling. Chuckling. Giggling. Snickering. Snorting. These are the sounds of soul saving laughter which springs from our emotional core and helps us feel better, see things more clearly and creatively weigh and use our options. Laughter is an incredible gift in many aspects, both psychological and spiritual.

I believe we’ve all heard this saying: “Laughter is the best medicine.”

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. - Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts,” Saturday Night Live

Seriously now, there is strong scientific evidence showing that laughter can actually improve health and help fight disease – more on this later in the article.

Resistance is futile !!

Laughter is contagious, it is uncontrollable. Laughter transcends all racial and cultural differences. The sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. Laughter can cause an impressively powerful domino effect of joy and amusement.

Smiling also creates joy and is contagious, I agree, but smiling typically occurs at the lower levels of positive affect while laugher is of the higher levels, thus being *much* more intense.

Let me tell you a story - a true one - that illustrates the huge infectious power of laughter.

In 1962, at a school in Tanganyika, a teacher’s banal remark got a couple of children giggling. Pretty soon the entire classroom was chuckling. Those in adjacent classrooms heard laughter through the walls, and began to laugh, and soon everyone in the school - pupils and teachers - were laughing uncontrollably. Then the children went home laughing and when their parents saw them, they, too, were infected. “Next day, they were all laughing so hard that nobody was able to go to school or work,” Holden said. “The entire village was infected.”

What began as an isolated fit of laughter (and sometimes crying) in a group of 12- to 18-year-old schoolgirls rapidly rose to epidemic proportions. Contagious laughter propagated from one individual to the next, eventually it spread to neighboring villages infecting adjacent communities.

Virtually none of them had a clue why they were laughing.

The epidemic was so severe that it required the closing of schools. It lasted for six months.

Challenge yourself to laugh more

The average children laugh 400 times per day, while adults only laugh 15 times per day. Knowing this, there’s no wonder why childhood years are remembered by most of us as the happiest time of life.So, in order to make the most out of the adult life, challenge yourself to laugh more! In a relatively short time span (a month or so) you will start feeling more creative, more capable and self-confident and you will enjoy better relationships.

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. - Victor Borge

Quantifying this goal may be a bit hard because we typically don’t count how many times we laugh during the day, but laughing more is a worthy goal nonetheless. Here are some of the techniques that I use to increase the quantity and quality of laughter throughout my days.

Be more social. Other than my personal experience, experiments have shown that we are 30 times more likely to laugh when in a social situation as opposed to a situation when we are alone. When alone and exposed to stimulating media, we talk to ourselves and smile, but we rarely laugh out loud. Ever been to a cinema and found yourself laughing at something you wouldn’t usually laugh, just because other people were laughing? Yes, it’s the infectious power at work, but also the social nature of laughter.

Talk more. In the social context, most of the laughter follows rather banal remarks, such as “Look, it’s Andre,” “Are you sure?” and “It was nice meeting you too.” Mutual playfulness, in-roup feeling and positive emotional tone - not comedy - mark the social settings of most naturally occurring laughter.

Read more (good) joke books and watch more (good) comedy films, with friends of course!

Fake it ‘till you make it. Just as studies show the positive effects of smiling occur whether the smile is real or fake, faked laughter also provides the benefits of the natural one. So you can feel free to start faking laughter! You’ll achieve positive effects and the fake merriment may lead to genuine laughter. I know it does for me! The stronger the fake, the better the real one will be.

Find the humor in your life. Life is frustrating sometimes, we all know that. But most of us are constantly hitting ourselves over the head with it. Instead of complaining about life’s frustrations, try to laugh about them! If something is so frustrating or depressing, realize that you could look back on it and laugh. Think of how it will sound as a story you could tell to your friends and then see if you can laugh about it now. With this attitude, you may also find yourself being more lighthearted and silly, giving yourself and those around you more to laugh about. When making fun of yourself, you also disempower anyone who would make fun of you and thus disarm possible confrontations.

Other than the above, consider these activities:

• Go to comedy clubs.
• Listen to comedy while driving.
• Seek out funny people.
• Spend less time with overly serious people.
• Bring humor into conversations. Ask people, “What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today? This week? In your life?” This one really helps me a lot.

The (many) benefits of laughter

Let’s see what the benefits of a good laughter are. A good hearty laugh can help:

• Reduce stress
• Lower blood pressure
• Elevate mood
• Boost immune system
• Improve brain functioning
• Protect the heart
• Connect you to others
• Foster instant relaxation
• Make you feel good

Laughter dissolves tension, stress, anxiety, irritation, anger, grief and depression. Like crying, laughter lowers inhibitions, allowing the release of pent-up emotions. After a hearty bout of laughter you will experience a sense of well-being. Simply put: he who laughs, lasts. After all, if you can laugh at it, you can live with it!

Medical research has found that laughter boosts the immune system. The study of how behavior and the brain affect the immune system is called psychoneuroimmunology. Though still in its infancy, this science is rapidly gaining much attention as mankind strives to understand the mind-body relationship.

Laughter reduces pain by releasing endorphins that are more potent than equivalent amounts of morphine.

Humor and laughter help integrate both hemispheres of our brain, for the left hemisphere is used to decipher the verbal content of a joke while the right hemisphere interprets whether it is funny or not. By stimulating both sides of the brain, it enhances learning. It eases muscle tension and psychological stress, which keeps the brain alert and allows you to retain more information. If you think you’re having a bad memory, try laughing more often!

Develop your sense of humor and you will find you are more productive, a better communicator and a superior team player.

Everyone loves someone who can make them laugh. The more you use and share your sense of humor, the more friends you will have. If you want to feel extremely good and gain friends in the process, raise your left hand. Oh wait, I can’t see you…: )

Laughter is even equivalent to a small amount of exercise. Laughter can be a great workout for your diaphragm, abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles. It massages abdominal organs, tones intestinal functioning, and strengthens the muscles that hold the abdominal organs in place. Not only does laughter give your midsection a workout, it can benefit digestion and absorption functioning as well. It is estimated that hearty laughter can burn calories equivalent to several minutes on the rowing machine or the exercise bike.

People who laugh heartily on a regular basis have lower standing blood pressure than the average person. When people have a good laugh, initially the blood pressure increases, but then it decreases to levels below normal. Breathing then becomes deeper which sends oxygen enriched blood and nutrients throughout the body.

Laugh helps you replace distressing emotions with pleasurable feelings. You cannot feel angry, depressed, anxious, guilty, or resentful and experience laughter at the same time, can’t you? I knew it.

Laughter, even if it’s a calorie burner, increases energy, and with increased energy you may perform activities that we might otherwise avoid. Imagine what a morning laughter could mean for your productivity.

Train your funny side

If you can’t laugh as easily as other people, don’t worry, your sense of humor isn’t missing (we’re all born with it), it’s just that you haven’t trained yourself to use it. Even if you did not grow up in a household where laughter was a common sound, you can learn to laugh at any stage of life. You may begin by setting aside special times to seek out humor and laughter, but eventually you want to incorporate humor and laughter into the fabric of your life.

Here are some of the ways which helped me start.

• Smile. Smiling is the beginning of laughter. Like laughter, it’s contagious. Pioneers in “laugh therapy,” find it’s possible to laugh without even experiencing a funny event. The same holds for smiling. When you look at someone or see something even mildly pleasing, practice smiling.
• Count your blessings. Literally make a list. The simple act of considering the good things in your life will distance you from negative thoughts that are a barrier to humor and laughter.
• Sometimes humor and laughter are private, a shared joke among a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and ask, “What’s funny?”
• Spend time with people who have successfully incorporated humor into their lives. These are the people who naturally take life lightly, who routinely find ordinary events hysterical. Their points of view and their laughter are contagious.
• If all of the above look useless to you, then you most probably are taking life waaaay to seriously. Remember that “Angels can fly because they take things lightly!”

Take life less seriously. Serious.

Some events in life are clearly sad and not occasions for laughter, but most of them don’t carry an overwhelming sense of sadness or delight. Most life events fall into the gray zone of the ordinary and the choice to laugh about them or not is up to you.

Here are some ways through which you can lighten up and start enjoying the benefits of laughter.

• Even world leaders realize they have limited ability to affect others’ lives. While you might think taking the weight of the world on our shoulders is admirable, in the long run it’s unrealistic, unproductive, unhealthy and even egotistical. So view your life in context to have the correct image.
• While your ambitions may be noble, being overly serious about them weighs you down and lessens your chances for achieving them. Be less serious.
• Dress less seriously.
• Keep a toy on your desk or in your car. And play with it – when no one’s watching! : )
• Pay attention to children and emulate them. Children are the experts on playing, taking life lightly and laughing. The laughter of a baby can make almost every adult laugh!

Laughter related links on the net:

• Laughter is the “Best Medicine” for Your Heart
• How Laughter Works
• What is Humor?

Share your thoughts on the subject of laughter in the comments!

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