Using the Magical Healing Power of Laughter to Live Madly, Passionately and Deeply
As Humans, We’re Dreamers and Sages. Clowns, Actors and Liars.
Our choices of how we present ourselves rise out of our need to enhance our image or to hide self perceived flaws.
Since the root cause of extreme negative emotions and reactive behavior such as fury and violence, long-term depression, abandonment, violence, fear and lack of self-love are linked to experiences in our past: abuse, rape, loss of a partner, a lover. The death or abandonment of a parent. Those emotions require time and deep healing with the help of professional therapists.
I’m talking about are the things that temporarily annoy us, or slow us down. Attitudes that can be more easily adjusted. Attitudes that are beneficial and motivate us to open up and shift. For instance, yesterday I was zipping along while writing when suddenly, my creative took a dive. Disappeared into a dark hole. Like me, you probably have your personal portfolio of coping or shifting. My personal best, top of my list involves three steps. The primary driver of the process is laughter.
Step One: Breathe. Deep breathing tells your brain it’s ok to relax.
Step Two: Accept where you are. It’s ok to be there. Chastising yourself is counterproductive. It can interrupt or block your creative flow.
Step Three: LAUGH.
The Benefits of Laughter:
It releases endorphins.
Boosts major organ functions.
Improves the immune system.
Relieves stress and pain
On Being Charlie Chaplin: Heart of my Joyful Heart.
I’m a fan of silent movies featuring Charlie Chaplin and his Little Tramp. You probably know him. That intrepid offbeat anti-authoritarian fellow with oversized shoes, a bow tie, tight jacket and baggie pants. He wears a hat and carries a cane. Chaplin became a mythic global folk hero during some of the darkest periods of the 20th century. World Wars and The Great Depression.
A fumbler, a romantic, a man, who despite his low social status, attempts to behave with dignity. Whenever he takes a fall, he picks himself up. Brushes himself off and starts all over again.
Chaplin movies were projected on the ceilings of military hospitals to uplift the morale of wounded soldiers.
In real life, Chaplin had a rough beginning. He was 12 when his father died from alcoholism and his mother was in and out of mental institutions. He foraged food from garbage cans. Some of the most brilliant comedy comes out of tragedy. I also enjoy physically pantomiming the Little Tramp’s moves as a way of evoking laughter that stems from my performing days. Indulging my inner ‘ham’, or in American theatrical slang, ‘chewing up the scenery’ makes me laugh.
Ways to Benefit by Laughing from Social psychologist and Benedictine nun, Joan Chittister:
1) Laugh when you look in the mirror. Make silly faces.
2) Laugh when you make a mistake to remind yourself of how unimportant it is relative to the bigger picture.
3) Laughing with small children is an easy stress relieving tactic. They laugh when they drop something. Mashed food is funny and wearing it is even funnier. One evening, while lying in the dark my 3-year-old daughter told her first joke. ‘Mom, guess what! The frog jumped over the moon.’ She burst into a fit of giggles. And it only took a second before I joined her.
Making a joke when I’m late breaks through any awkwardness. Sometimes, I spin out an improbable silly story. ‘There was a cow running loose down the highway.’
Each moment of self-directed laughter has the potential to be a learning event. It can evoke feelings of tenderness
Fabricated or True, Telling a Funny Story Can Be Your Salvation.
Make up a story about the stain on your sweater or misbuttoned shirt. Spin out a detailed account of your experience with a malfunctioning catsup dispenser. Or begin by suggesting that people with a high I.Q. don’t sweat the small stuff. They’re too focused on the big picture.
4) If you do a belly flop in a meeting, shrug it off. ‘So, I’m perfectly imperfect!’ Which is, in fact, everyone’s reality. They’ll love you for making them laugh.
Personal stories that make people laugh can be your secret superpower, especially in a stressful, fast-paced businesses like the film industry or the stock market. It’s a gender equalizer that helps you connect on a personal level that promotes partnerships and creates allies. As a single mum working long hours, I was always tired and in a rush. One morning, I showed up with my sweater inside out. Fortunately, my assistant, bless her, pointed out the manufacturer’s tag under my chin. Another time I was anxious and running late for a meeting. Punching the automatic lock on my car door, I climbed out and shut the door. Only to realize I’d left the keys in the ignition and the motor running. Laughing at myself was empowering and made great material for funny stories that broke through the male chauvinism so prevalent in industries that attract high energy and overachievers. It’s kind of ‘hey, we’re all human!’
Blessed to have another single mum/exec whose office was down the hall, we met regularly for lunch to share our single mother’s life in the trenches stories. Inevitably, we laughed until we cried. She had years more experience than I did. She became a good friend and mentor. A female partner in crime, we shared stories and at moments when we laughed until we cried.
A True Story about Using Laughter to Defy Death and Live Longer
Norman Cousins was a well known New York Editor and Journalist, who became an adjunct professor at UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. His research focused on the connection between attitude and health. It was during those years he contracted a painful disorder. The docs gave him steep odds of recovery: one in 500 odds. Enough to send some people into deep fear and depression. Cousins, known for his optimism and kindness to others, designing his own healing program. He took massive intravenous doses of Vitamin C and spent long hours watching comedy films and episodes of Candid Camera. Some people go to spas where they get massages to reduce stress and anxiety. Norman’s choice was laughter treatments.
“Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect that gave me two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. When the effect of the laughter wore off, he returned to watching more comedy. This would lead to another pain-free interval. Cousins lived 30 years beyond his heart doctors’ predictions. Not too shabby an outcome!
Laughing Yoga
Fact: Your body doesn’t know the difference between genuine laughter and imitation laughter. Practicing laughter yoga can be done standing or lying prone on the floor.
At my first session, I felt silly and a little suspicious about the effectiveness of imitation laughter. The instructor had us place our hands on our bellies and follow the rhythm of his laughing sounds. Almost immediately, the magic of laughter made its way to the sound of 15 students’ belly laughs. There were three sessions offered, but over coffee, several of us chose to continue practicing laughing yoga. The benefits were too good to ignore.
Die Laughing
Admittedly, I’ve occasionally entertained the idea of creating an end-of-life ceremony around laughing. A way to dispel any lingering fear or sadness about dying. Wouldn’t it be great to have a crowd of friends around your death bed to talk about funny experiences you shared? Rattle off some silly jokes and confess to some of your best personal embarrassing moments. You know the ones! They begin with ‘I can’t believe I said that..!’ For me, that would be the perfect ending for a hero’s story.