HOME

ARTICLES

HEALTH NEWS

LINKS

RESOURCES

ABOUT

GUEST AUTHORS

HEALTHZINE

CONTACT US

Do you remember when you when your days echoed with laughter, often over the silliest games and jokes? If you wish that you could regain some of that child’s sense of fun, you just may be able to do it.

Most people have a laughter cycle, more simply put:

• Small children seem to laugh the most.
• Teenagers, while still laughing at some absurd things tend to laugh less than they did only years before, when they were in elementary school.
• College and University students still like to laugh and have fun, but many of the students are very focused on achieving the tasks at hand and don’t always remember to take time to laugh.
• Individuals that have spent some time in the workplace tend to laugh even less than their College and University counterparts.
• Those who have hit their middle age stretch often laugh when tell others of their childhood memories.
• Senior citizens often laugh when they watch small children who are giggling at a butterfly or when they see a small child learning to walk or run.

For whatever reason, most individuals see a decline in the amount of laughter once they reach adulthood. Each person will have their own reasons and influences for the amount of laughter and where they deem it is acceptable to occur. Some may feel that it is only safe to laugh when they are alone, in front of their television. Others believe laughter shared with friends is important. No matter what your current situation is, you have unwritten rules about when you feel safe enough to laugh out loud.

The wonderful thing about children is that they do not fear reproach from laughing out loud. If someone sounds funny, while laughing, it just causes a resurgence of laughter. It is not until much later in life, usually in a person’s teen years, that we can become shyer about exposing ourselves by laughing. Laughing is a very personal thing and some feel that it opens them up to attacks from others if they do not fit the acceptable mould. The self-consciousness often remains in tack well into adulthood and often is not shed during the span of a person’s life.

The best possible course of action is to try to unlearn or deprogram our concepts on laughter. Laughter truly is the tonic of youth and can be supported by both physiological and psychological evidence. Consider if you will, the multitude of benefits you can derive from laughter:

1. When you begin to laugh the body’s muscles begin to relax. Posture, while not poor, allows flexibility and an overall feeling of euphoria may start to set in.

2. Laughter causes us to increase our intake of oxygen. This is accomplished one of two ways; first, laughter can encourage deep breathing and second, laughter can also encourage rapid inhalations resulting in increased oxygen to the body.

3. The increased oxygen level in the bloodstream serves to give us a bit of a pick up, if we were feeling tired or dragged out before laughing, we often feel refreshed after a laughing spell.

4. Our shoulders drop and allow the space between our shoulders and ears to widen, relieving the tension often stored in our neck and shoulders.

5. Our normally taxed abdominal muscles are provided some latitude to expand with the deep breaths we are taking while laughing. The momentary rest these muscle get helps to make them feel less strained from the day’s activities of keeping your lower back in proper alignment. Any pain we are experiencing may start to subside, making us feel unburdened

6. As a result of laughter we smile, which provides untold pleasure to the facial muscles that usually are overloaded by our requests to be kept in a sombre position to match our moods. This can help to relieve tension in the jaw and also help to alleviate or prevent headaches.

7. Laughter gives us an outlet for expressing feelings that we normally keep tucked deep inside. These feelings can include anger, disappointment, sadness and any other powerful emotion you may experience. Laughter provides the physical outlet to getting these energies expended from your system.

8. Laughter allows us to forget our current problems, if only for a moment. We get a reminder that there is joy in the world and we are still capable of experiencing the joy without jeopardizing our current position in society

9. Joy, contentedness and a brighter outlook on your situation can result from a simple laugh. It can help us to stop dwelling on the negative and to start thinking about the positive things happening in our lives.

10. Thinking of laughter as an extension of the physical act of crying may help you to further understand the benefits of laughter. Hearty laughter can lead to shedding tears. While the trigger is not a sad event, the same benefits are derived from the tears. The eyes are provided with a method of removing all dirt and debris from their surfaces. Our noses may provide the sinuses with an opportunity to remove dirt and irritants from their surfaces. There can even be a strange feeling of being refreshed after crying. When laughter moves you to tears you have been given an extra special gift.

11. Laughter can help us to regain our health when we have been ill. Dr. Norman Cousins cured himself by watching all the comedies he could get his hands on. The chemical release associated with laughter helps combat illness.

12. Laughter is one of the easiest ways to burn calories; yes it is truly an exercise.

Are you ready to regain some of your youth and vitality? If we retrain ourselves, maybe we can once again learn to laugh as freely and frequently as children.

Launching into your program of laughter:

1. Like any exercise program you can expect there will be days when you do not feel that you want to do the exercises, try to push through and do the exercises anyway. Perseverance is half the battle.

2. Schedule five (5) minutes each day for laughter. Yes, that does sound like a long time, but if you break it into 30-second chucks you will find that the time passes very quickly.

3. You may feel silly at first, so maybe schedule laugh breaks when you can be away from others.

4. Once you feel comfortable on your current schedule, increase laughing time by a minute a day. By doing steps you will reach your goal in no time flat.

5. By this stage of the game you might actually be comfortable to laugh while others are in the vicinity, if this is the case try to react to jokes as part of your training cycle.

6. Soon you will find yourself laughing outside of your scheduled laugh breaks. Don’t worry; this is actually a good thing!

7. Eventually you will reach the stage where you no longer care what people think about you when you laugh out loud.

8. When laughter becomes a necessary part of your day, in other words you feel incomplete without it, you have reached your optimal level. As with any training program you will need to continue to polish your skills.

   Laughter provides us with a new perspective on life. Here is a simple equation for your evaluation: “If laughing equals youth” and “youth equals vitality” what is the sum
   

Contact Us to Request Reproduction in whole or in Part.