Laughter is both a tranquilizer and an equalizer.
—MAHATMA GANDHI
D uring the Second World War, Winston Churchill was holding an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss a particularly knotty problem. No one could find a solution and Churchill appeared very morose and upset. Suddenly Lady Astor spoke up rather loudly.
"The way you behave, if you were my husband I would put poison in your coffee."
"Madam," Churchill replied, “if I were your husband, I would drink it."
Everyone laughed and the tension was broken. Within the next few minutes, they found an answer to their problem.
Humor can be a powerful ally in difficult situations when problems seem overwhelming and solutions are not in sight. Start every meeting with laughter and you will have a successful meeting. A laugh breaks the ice, warms the atmosphere, and makes people more receptive to you and what you have to say. As the humorist Victor Borge commented, "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."
You must know how to laugh, how to create laughter, and
how to find humor in all situations, even the most absurd or serious. Don't be one of those solemn, ponderous folks who plow through life with a stony grimness.
Laughter Is Your Best Medicine
People generally believe that if you are healthy you will be happy, but there is an old saying in India that may be more to the point: If you are happy, you are healthy. We have all heard that “Laughter is the best medicine," and it is very true. Humor and laughter are increasingly recognized as sound countermeasures to the effects of stress. If you have ever laughed until your sides hurt and your eyes were watering, you have had the experience of tension being washed out of your system.
Laughter can even help you regain lost health. The value of humor in physical healing came into prominence when Norman Cousins, former editor of the American literary magazine, Saturday Review , published Anatomy of an Illness. In this book he relates how he cured himself of what his doctors had pronounced an incurable illness, by prescribing himself daily doses of laughter. He watched hours of films and videotapes of old comedy movies, and described how after a good laugh he felt less pain in his body. Cousins challenged mainstream medicine to understand the mechanism of what he had accomplished. Scientists took up the challenge and now have at least the early stages of an answer.
Research has shown that our feelings, whether positive or negative, are converted into neuropeptides or messenger molecules, which eventually influence every cell in our bodies toward health or illness. When we laugh, for example, our positive emotions and feelings are converted into chemicals that can prevent and heal disease. Blood tests reveal that endorphins are produced which act as a painkiller, and our immunity increases.
"Laughter," said Norman Cousins, "is inner jogging." Indeed, laughter is almost like an exercise. It increases the rate and depth of breathing, and exercises the abdominal muscles. Laughter
260 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
creates a coordinated rhythmic movement of the muscles of the chest, abdomen, and face, which massage the respiratory and abdominal organs, including the intestines. This improves circulation and increases the secretion of various enzymes that are good for digestion. After laughing there is a decrease in physical tension and stress, and a feeling of peace and relaxation sets in.
How to Use Laughter to Create Health
As I mentioned briefly in Chapter 2, research has confirmed the effectiveness of using physical techniques to improve your mood. This shouldn't be too surprising, as we have spoken quite a bit about effects in the opposite direction. Mind and body are an interconnected whole. Just as happy moods translate into happy molecules that build a healthy body, we can reverse the process and work from the side of the body to create a happier mood. Let me give you an example.
A rarely seen but very effective yoga practice is intentional group laughter. This artificially induced laughter, according to psychotherapist Annette Goodheart, is interpreted by the body as real, and as a result the brain releases healing neuropeptides. Once you get yourself to start laughing in this way, you can continue laughing naturally and without restraint. This relieves the mind and body of exhaustion and tension and brings a feeling of well-being. The brain induces a flow of "happy” molecules, which flood all our fifty trillion cells, combating stress and strengthening our hormonal system and our immunity.
This yoga practice explains research that shows that even when you don't feel happy, smiling can elevate your mood. Smiling artificially—or even manipulating people's facial expressions by pushing their eyebrows and lips to create the equivalent of a smile—can lead to a release of positive neuropeptides. If this process is repeated a number of times, it can raise immunity and help to heal disease.
Our bodily movements and postures influence our feelings
and emotions, just as our emotions and moods affect our body's movements and functions. So if you want to feel good and create a positive influence on your health and circumstances, you can choose to do so. By smiling at someone, you can begin to turn a difficult situation in your favor. Making other people laugh helps them become healthier while at the same time it helps you
live longer. A smile on your face opens your heart to happiness and health.
When you feel happy, you smile; smile and you will feel happy. So even if you don't feel like it, smile—soon you will feel better. Smiling is easier than frowning, anyway. It takes forty-four muscles to frown, and only thirteen to smile.
h ou can initiate a smile by holding a pencil between your teeth. It may quickly blossom into laughter. On the other hand, if you hold a pencil between your lips, you start a frown, with a subsequent flow of negative neuropeptides flowing through your body, lowering your immunity against disease.
Laugh with Others, Not at Them
Humor and laughter are essential human activities. But in classical Indian tradition, humor is divided into two types. One is when one laughs at others. The other kind, which is considered superior, is when one laughs at oneself.
Laughing at others is considered vulgar and unseemly. Taking delight in the drawbacks or physical handicaps or frailties of fellow human beings is mean and harmful, both for the person who is mocked as well as for the one who laughs. Persons of a superior type make people laugh at themselves or at circumstances.
Genuine humor is never at anyone else's expense. Never be hostile in your humor, or use ridicule to create a laugh. Never laugh at people, laugh with them. This will give you inner peace and create a feeling of fellowship and brotherhood.
Being happy is healthy. But laughter, and the little pleasures of life, cannot be equated with true happiness. Material gain and
262 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
sense pleasures, though surely an important part of life, are transient and cannot be counted on for happiness.
If you think about an experience of great joy, Deepak Chopra suggests in his book, Perfect Health —the birth of a child, the sight of a glorious sunset or an alpine lake at dawn and then carry your feeling to its farthest shore, you arrive at a new state called "pure joy." This pure joy is the fundamental quality of life. In Sanskrit it is called ananda, which is usually translated
as bliss.
With the growing popularity of Eastern teachings, people have come to use the word bliss to express many kinds of positive emotions. But ananda, the bliss that is described in the Vedic literature, resides at the quantum level in its pure form, and bubbles to the surface only under the right conditions. You cannot see or touch the thousands of processes in the brain and body that need to be coordinated in order to create bliss, but nevertheless it is a real experience.
According to ancient Indian sages, all joy stems from this pure joy, ananda, bliss. It is the bright light we do not see directly, but only by reflection in smaller joys. These lesser lights could not exist without the greater one. Even in Western society, where money, physical beauty, and success are generally equated with happiness, everyone has unexpected moments when life seems absolutely perfect and full of joy. If you could live in this state
of pure joy all the time, you would have the practical essence of perfect health.
Laughter is Contagious
Laughter is natural to man. Eluman beings start giggling and laughing at a very young age. Mother kissing her baby's tummy unleashes a torrent of excited giggles.
Scientists say that as children we laugh 400 times a day, but as adults only 10 to 15 times.
Laughter is contagious. Once laughter begins in a group of
people it can spread as a chain reaction, breaking tension and mcreas ln g fellowship. There is a stcy about a monk who would stand in a marketplace and just begin laughing. People would at rs won er, What is wrong with this monk?" But gradually everybody would join in. When asked if he had anything more to say, the monk would reply, "Nothing more is required after one
The Value of Laughter
Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world like grace and shines on everybody.
—Garrison Keillor
What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.
— Yiddish Proverb
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
—Japanese Proverb
If you cannot laugh at yourself, do not laugh at others.
—Julie Sneyd
Laughter is a universal bond that draws all men together.
—Nathan Ausubel
Laughter lifts us over high ridges and lights up dark valleys in a way that makes life so much easier. It is a priceless gem, a gift of release and healing direct from Heaven.
—Alan Cohen