Laughter is medicine

 
One of the fastest ways to chase the blues away when you’re feeling a bit downtrodden is to immediately focus on what makes you feel grateful.
The feeling of gratitude not only positively charges your entire system but it leaves almost no space to experience any sort of “lack”.
This is one of the amazing side effects of gratitude when this uplifting emotion sweeps over you. You experience a deep sense of wellbeing that you have enough and “you are enough”.
Gratitude isn’t the only thing that floods your system with positive energy. So does laughter, which has often been referred to as medicine for the soul.


Imagine that you are meditating at home with a few friends and in a visualization exercise you are facilitating, you ask everyone to keep their eyes closed to get their minds into a quiet space by focusing on their breathing.
Suddenly, after a few moments of complete utter silence, your dog, oblivious to the concentration meditation takes, starts snoring and one of your friends who is sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, tries her best to hold her laughter in.
She covers her mouth so that no one will hear her and her shoulders start shaking from trying not to laugh.
Your own voice begins to crack as you give instructions and a wave of giggles starts bubbling up inside of you and before you know it, you are all practically rolling around on the ground because you can’t stop laughing.
You laugh so hard that you are almost in tears and every time you look at your dog, it makes you laugh even more because he is sleeping nonchalantly right through this.
So as you can imagine, you never get to complete the exercise you are trying to share but this relentless fit of giggles is all the therapy your friends and you need.


Something special happens whenever you burst out laughing. Your barriers come down and you become lost in the moment. There’s something liberating about letting your hair down and laughing out loud.
Audrey Hepburn famously said, “I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills.”


If you’ve ever laughed till it hurts, you know how your stomach feels. It’s definitely a workout. However, laughter does more than just burn calories.
According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter stimulates many organs by enhancing your intake of oxygen-rich air thereby providing more circulation and blood flow to your heart, lungs and muscles.
It’s not your imagination if you feel genuinely lighter or in better spirits after a really good laugh because laughter triggers the release of endorphins in your brain, usually referred to as the body’s natural painkillers.
So the good news is that it puts you in a better state in order to release tension, anger and negative emotions you might be carrying around.
If you ever feel the need to laugh, and you’re in an environment where you can, especially amongst friends or at home, don’t suppress the urge because you will be preventing the flow of benefits laughter brings.
Apart from boosting your immunity, laughing causes your heart rate to rise by 10 to 20%, which leads to an increase in your metabolism, which means you’ll still continue to burn calories once you stop laughing.
It is ironic how you might be searching far and wide for solutions to be happier or calmer in your life when the simplest, most natural remedy is right under your nose. Uninhibited laughter!
But what happens when there’s no trigger or you’re simply not in the mood to laugh or smile? Well, Charles Darwin believes that facial expressions can actually influence your moods.
So, if you’re reading this right now, try reading it with a smile on your face, or perhaps try giggling out loud to see if this has any effect on your current mood.
Laughing for no reason can actually trigger off genuine laughter and if you’re at work and someone sees you laughing by yourself, they might start laughing too.
Laughter has this magical ability to trigger not only the release of “happy hormones” from your brain but also a chain reaction amongst people.
As Charles Dickens wrote in his book “A Christmas Carol”, “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”
Source: freemalaysiatoday