How To Laugh, For Those Who Never Do
Or perhaps, you laugh more than you think you do
Laughing seems like something that everyone else does. I just can’t seem to laugh.
It’s something I wish I did more of, or so I thought. For the longest time, I’ve had this limiting belief that I don’t laugh. In Grade 7, I did a presentation about myself, and I remember saying “I don’t laugh”.
There are few memories of when I belly laughed. While you’d think they’d be fond memories, they weren’t. The people around me asked me to stop because they found my laugh annoying. It’s probably why I rarely laugh anymore.
When I tried to think of things that made me laugh, I could only think of a few, a good pun and a cheesy early 2000s chick flick. I want to laugh every day, but I don’t. While I do find myself being silly and goofy every now because I have kids. I still feel blocked.
It’s embarrassing that I felt the need to write this article. But I want to learn how to laugh again.
Benefits
It should come as no surprise that laughter has a number of benefits:
- Improves mood — when you laugh, you take in more oxygen which stimulates your heart and lungs, releasing endorphins, the “feel-good” chemical in your brain.
- Relieves tension and stress — laughter stimulates circulation and helps relax tense muscles from stress. It also decreases stress-related hormones.
- Improves your immune system — releases neuropeptides which can help to fight stress and more serious illnesses.
- Relieves pain — may help the body release its own natural painkillers, which is why they offer laughing gas to women giving birth.
- Increases connection with others— when we laugh, we strengthen our bond with others. It adds joy and helps relieve tension from disagreements.
Laughter Is Important to Ending the Stress Cycle
In Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski highlight that “dealing with your stress is a separate process from dealing with the things that cause your stress.” Just because you’ve dealt with a stressor, like a problem at work, doesn’t mean the stress itself has been taken care of.
To end the stress cycle, you have to end the stress in your body. Your body speaks “body language”, it doesn’t know what “completing a work task” is. Laughter is body language. When you laugh, you’re telling your body it's safe and that you can celebrate because the stressor is gone.
Laughter is powerful. It’s even more effective if it’s combined with full-body movement such as dancing, swinging arms, jumping, etc.
Laughter Therapy
Laughter therapy is accessible to most of us. You can do it alone at home, with a friend or in a group setting.
According to Dr. Ramon Mora-Ripoli, there are three stages in laughter therapy:
- Warming up and opening — this helps open you up to laughing both mentally and physically. It makes the subsequent stages easier. (E.g., speaking gibberish and laughing, or spreading your arms up, laughing straight from your heart, while swinging your arms down and up.)
- Experiencing humour and positive emotions — aim to have spontaneous, simulated, or stimulated laughter. (E.g., flapping your “wings” around like a bird while laughing, or hugging yourself or others while laughing.)
- Closure, recovery, and evaluation — laughter slows down until you return to your normal level. (E.g., lie or sit completely still with your eyes closed, and let any laughter come out.)
How To Develop A Sense of Humor
I lack humour. I take myself too seriously. We tend to think that humour is a personality trait. You either have it, or you don’t. It’s character trait though, and unlike personality traits, character traits are malleable.
A key ingredient to developing humour is to be able to laugh at ourselves when we make mistakes. While some situations may not be appropriate for laughter, often our day-to-day mess-ups can be opportunities to laugh. Here are five things you can do to add humour to your daily life:
- Laugh with yourself — Acknowledge a mistake by saying “I messed up!" and then laugh.
- Surround yourself with reminders to laugh — I have “ha, ha ha, ha ha ha!” on my chalkboard. You could use a funny meme as your phone background, or something else.
- Cultivate your inner child — Be silly, many funny noises, jump and dance, like you did as a child.
- Reduce stress — this is one of the main blocks to laughing. Do what you need to relax. This can make it easier to laugh and end the stress cycle.
- Practice laughing daily — like most things, we need to open ourselves up to laughing. The more silly and fun moments we have, the easier it is to have more of them. Laughing becomes a part of us and it changes our self-perceptions.
How To Laugh
There are so many different ways to laugh and it’s all very individual. I know what makes me laugh is different from what makes you laugh. These are some of the ways I’ve started to practice laughing:
- Set an intention to laugh — add it to your morning routine, your walk to work, at the dinner table. Decide you’re going to laugh and fit it in wherever makes sense for you.
- Say “ha!”, then “ha ha!”, then “ha ha ha!” and keep going — I shared this in my learnings last month. It’s cheesy, but it works.
- Laughter Yoga — Begin with deep breathing, then start clapping while chanting “ho ho ha ha”. Continue for as long as you need. Honestly, this is very cheesy. But the idea is that you remove your ego, and allow yourself to be playful and silly.
- Lion laughter — I teach something similar to my son to release anger. You open your mouth and stick your tongue out while laughing and releasing a loud “roar”. You also put your hands up beside your face like paws.
- Do something silly — my favourite is talking in a funny accent while reading books to my son. It gets me every time. Find what that silly thing is for you.
After I began writing this article, I started to pay attention to when I laughed. Oddly enough, I noticed that I actually laugh quite a bit. Especially with two kids under three, there are so many moments of laughter. This observation has the largest impact in removing my limiting belief that “I don’t laugh.”
I wasn’t “only” a serious person. How many of my other self-perceptions are lies? For now, I continue to practice laughter. It makes for playful days and helps to relieve stress. I’m starting to feel more light-hearted, which is what I’ve been longing for.
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
— E. E. Cummings