Читать книгу Ram Up Your Laughter - Santhanaram Inc. Jayaram - Страница 4

We've all heard the quote that laughter is the best medicine, but what does it mean? There has been a lot of research done on laughter and its ability to heal and restore the body and the truth of the matter is that laughter actually has many positive benefits.

Laughter releases your body's endorphins or feel good chemicals.

In essence, laughter is nature’s own pain reliever, and it may in fact be much more effective than any drug you could ever purchase. Laughter can be a great stress reliever as well as a pain reliever and it is not just for fun because laughter can even enhance creativity and increase innovation. There has even been research that tells us that a before we actually even laugh, a wave of electricity shoots through our brain and this research tells us that this wave of electricity covers the entire cerebral cortex region, rather than just a single region, so there really is some science behind the idea of laughter.

It is hard to be in a bad mood when you are laughing and it actually takes much more effort and muscle power to frown than it does to smile. Laughter can help relax us, amuse us, calm us and even surprise us. Laughter is a wonderful ice-breaker for a nervous crowd and it can be a great coping mechanism.

Those who have a sense of humor deal with life's problems much better because they have a tendency to roll with the punches better. According to Doskoch (2011) laughter causes your blood pressure and even your heart rate to drop below normal helping you feel extremely relaxed; laughter also stimulates your endorphins, which are of course your brain's natural pain reliever.

According to William Fry, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, "creativity and humor are identical" (Doskoch, 2011). Fry also contends that creativity and humor bring together two things, which do not normally have an obvious connection, creating a beautiful relationship. Laughter has so many benefits it's hard to list them all.

According to researchers at the Loma Linda School of Medicine in Loma Linda, California laughter sharpens the instruments of the immune system and it activates our natural killer cells and T lymphocytes, which help our body destroy various microorganisms; furthermore, laughter increases the production of the immune boosting gamma interferon and it even speeds up the production of new immune cells (Doskoch).

Laughter is a great distraction as well, and it can help us forget about our problems, even if only temporarily. Research also tells us that most children laugh at least 300 times a day with the average adult only managing a mere 17 times, it’s no wonder we are all so crabby! (Doskoch, 2011). Laughter can help us through dark times and through happy times. Laughter can lift us up when we feel sad and it can help us cope when things go bad. Laughter is one of the best tools we have to deal with life's ups and downs and it can be a miraculous healing mechanism.

Laughter is also contagious and infectious. If someone in the room is laughing, chances are others will start laughing as well. Laughter binds us together in many ways and it may even make us happier.

Humor can make life bearable and manageable and it may even protect your heart. Laughter improves the function of your blood vessels and can even increase the blood flow and protect you from future heart attacks and other related problems.

What about some other benefits to laughter? Besides laughter's ability to lower stress and boost your immunity, it also has many social and mental benefits. For example, laughter can:

N Laughter can even help defuse conflict and enhance teamwork, making it a great benefit to companies as well as individuals.

Just like taking a short nap, laughter can help you recharge and rejuvenate.

If you feel overwhelmed, the best thing you can do is to laugh, because it will give you an immediate mood boost. Just as optimists seem to deal with life better, those that laugh may be able to cope better as well. Some of us even find that we laugh in times of grief or despair, usually as a coping mechanism. The old black and white movies used this tool quite effectively creating characters that slipped and fell or tumbled down a hill creating laughter. The truth of the matter is that many of us could use a laughter break during the day.

There are many social benefits to laughter because laughter can help strengthen your emotional bonds. Laughter can release your inhibitions and help you express your true feelings and it may even help you enhance your creativity leading to more innovative thinking. Companies may find that laughter helps diffuse difficult situations at work, because a good belly laugh helps ease stress in any situation. Humor can be a very effective tool to have in your arsenal and it can help you in many ways. Just as having a pet may help you ward of depression, stress and even heart disease, laughter may be able to do the same thing. If you feel stuck or stagnate, the best thing you can do is to go take a walk or have a good laugh. Laughter may be one of the most effective tools we have to deal with stress. Nothing makes you feel better faster than laughter.

By bringing more humor into your life, you can more easily count your blessings and learn to appreciate things more. Laughter can help you feel more gracious and more loving and it can help you heal.

People that take life too seriously may end up driving people away. Attitude really is everything when it comes down to it, because your attitude shapes the world around you. If you wake up in the morning sunny and happy expecting a great day, you're going to be much better off than someone who is always expecting the opposite.

This book is meant to both educate and inspire people in terms of what laughter can do to enhance one's life. We will talk about using laughter to enhance creativity in chapter two and even how you can use laughter to enhance productivity in chapter three. There are many uses for laughter for those in the business world, and businesses may just find that in the end, laughter can even help their bottom line. We will talk about why humor is important for innovation in chapter four and humor and different personality types in chapter five.

Chapter five will also explore the idea of the Enneagram, which is a system of nine personality types. The goal of this writing is to help people better understand how laughter can both enhance and improve their lives. One doesn't have to be the class clown to appreciate and use laughter because it just may indeed be more useful for those who take like a little more seriously.

Whether you're a peacemaker, a reformer, a helper, an achiever, an individualist, an investigator, a loyalist, an enthusiast or a challenger, you will find the usage of laughter extremely beneficial.

This book will also explore why learning how to lighten up is good for business and it will also look at humor and its effect on the brain and memory. We will examine the psychology of laughter and laughter and stress relief and ways in which laughter can enhance corporate wellness.

Finally, we will examine laughter as it pertains to the mind/body connection and look at ways in which laughter can enhance one's health, including examining the idea of laughter clubs and some important research.

There are so many benefits to laughter and positive thinking that one could fill up an entire book just boasting about it! Many illnesses have an emotional component and laughter with its powerful endorphin releasing qualities could be a huge help to someone who may be ill.

Not only can laughter help us redirect our energy, it can help us help ourselves by giving us something natural to use as a natural pain reliever.

There has been a lot of press about therapeutic laughter as well with things such as Laughter Yoga and even Traditional Therapy utilizing laughter. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America use laughter as part of their integrative therapeutic approach hosting sessions for patients called Laughter Clubs or humor groups.

According to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, there have been many scientific studies exploring the benefits of laughter and laughter can be used to decrease stress, boost the immune system and even be used to decrease pain.

Norman Cousins, who wrote the book Anatomy of an Illness, described how he used laughter to help heal himself from a serious illness. Cousins used laughter by watching funny movies and taking vitamins and he claims that his self-invented regimen actually helped him recover.

There have been many studies, which we will examine in more detail later on in the book, that offer real research into the effects of laughter on the human psyche. Laughter may in fact be similar to the placebo effect in terms that it makes you feel better and in turn may even help you heal.

The placebo effect of course works on the principle that if you believe something will heal you, even if in fact that something is not even real medicine, that it will heal you just by your thoughts alone. There is no limit to the power of the mind, and in many ways this just may be an untapped resource.

Laughter Therapy can have a huge impact for someone suffering from a chronic illness because it helps them redirect their pain turning it into a powerful form of healing. Just like many alternative and complementary therapies, laughter offers us another option to try, and although it may be the simplest option, it may actually be one of the most effective because it activates our own self-healing mechanism.

If laughter can help someone heal, there is no telling how many advantages laughter could have for stressed out employees.

Laughter helps us in many ways and using humor in the workplace may be just what busy employees need to get through their day. Instead of going from one boring meeting to another, managers may be better off sending employees on a once a day laugh fest. Imagine how creative and innovative brainstorming sessions would be with a little laughter warm up!

Whether or not laughter helps in all these areas remains to be seen, but it is certainly a lot of benefits for one simple little tool!

Laughing is actually a reaction to stimuli and it may result from someone hearing a joke, being tickled or even by watching a funny movie. Laughing can also be thought of as in terms of a mood booster because it offers us happiness, relief and joy. We can laugh from embarrassment or humiliation or even confusion. Those who experience nervous laughter know from experience that laughter is also somewhat of a defense mechanism.

Laughter is definitely contagious because one funny person can get a whole room full of people laughing! The study of laughter and humor, and the psychological and physiological effects on the human body is called gelotology. A gelotologist is a person who specializes in gelotology.

Laughing may also serve to protect your heart, although studies are not exactly sure why but the studies do help explain that one’s mental stress actually impairs something called the endothelium, which is the protective barrier lining a person’s blood vessels. Once impaired, it can actually cause a series of very serious inflammatory reactions that cause cholesterol to build up in a one’s coronary arteries, which can ultimately cause a heart attack.

According to Psychology Wiki, and Psychologist Steve Sultanoff, Ph.D., the president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor:

"With deep, heartfelt laughter, it appears that serum cortisol, which is a hormone that is secreted when we’re under stress, is decreased. So when you’re having a stress reaction, if you laugh, apparently the cortisol that has been released during the stress reaction is reduced.

Laughter has also been shown to increase pain tolerance and even boost the body’s production of infection-fighting antibodies. This can help prevent hardening of the arteries and other subsequent conditions such as angina, heart attacks, or strokes.

Sultanoff also added that research shows that negative or distressing emotions can also lead to heart disease.

Moreover, people who live stressed out lifestyles increase their chances of having coronary artery blockages and people that are depressed actually have twice the risk of developing heart disease, according to Sultanoff.

These are certainly very grim statistics, and they lead us to the conclusion that a negative attitude can be debilitating for your health. It is very clear that laughter and humor at the very least influence both our physical and psychological well-being and humor can influence health outcomes.

In light of this, one has to wonder what the physical changes are the body goes through during laughter, and there have been several studies that explain this further. Some studies equate laughter as being equivalent to a form of aerobic exercise because laughter actually stimulates the heart and blood circulation, however, unlike exercise; laughter may actually lead to the relaxation of muscles with this post laughter period lasting up to 45 minutes.

Laughter may also lead to a change in the respiratory function because laughter causes us to have episodes of sporadic deep breathing.

Bennett (2008) found that all emotions, regardless of what they are, lead to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system finding that humor helped to buffer some of the negative aspects of the sympathetic activation on one's blood pressure.

In light of all this information, it may be time to take laughter a bit more seriously. Laughter and humor have many positive effects that help us feel better.

Laughter can have some amazing benefits helping you free up space in your mind to put towards greater productivity and even creativity.

It's hard to have a creative thought when you are stressed or angry. In many ways, laughter helps us remember that life is supposed to be enjoyed, not merely tolerated. So many of us are dragging through our days dreading every moment, that it is no wonder we have so many health problems.

Employers may actually get more out of their employees if they cut them a little slack and allowed them to have a good laugh every now and then. Abraham Lincoln actually said that:

In this instance, laughter may have even saved a country because Abraham Lincoln knew that he needed to give himself a break every now and then in order to be the best that he could be. Scientifically, laughter has been shown to increase muscle flexion and even boost the immune function. Laughter has even been equated to internal jogging, with just as many benefits.

It is quite obvious that a healthy worker is more productive than a sick worker or a depressed worker. What about laughter's effects on things like teamwork? Laughter can promote bonding, which helps teams work better together. Laughter can take the pressure off of tense situations, helping people cope better. Laughter can encourage creative thinking and out of the box thinking, because it allows people to think in a different way. Brainstorming sessions would probably go much better with a little laughter thrown in because laughter helps clear the mind clutter.

Laughter can be the perfect antidote for our problems and help us achieve bigger and better things.

Now if this doesn't give you the incentive to laugh more, I don't know what would. Laughter can help you in more ways than one, and you may just find yourself laughing all the way to the bank! A great joke or funny antidote can boost our creativity, encourage conversation and even build a more trusting environment. When you get stuck in your thoughts or stuck in your mind, laughter can help you shift your energy and your focus.

Laughter gets the kinks out and helps you think more clearly. Creative inspiration doesn't usually occur when one focuses intensely on the problem at hand; it is more likely to occur the moment one takes their eye off the ball. Sometimes, our best ideas occur to us the moment we stop thinking so hard about something. There is a reason your best ideas come from the shower and the reason is that you distracted your mind enough to allow your creative mind to solve the problem.

There have many writers and inventors who claim that they write from a part of their mind that they are not necessarily aware of. They speak of the creative process like it flows from another universe or another state of mind. Einstein received his greatest inspirations through something he called the Super Conscious Mind or the Universal Mind. If Einstein admittedly stated that he accessed a part of his mind and tapped into the creative process by distracting himself, think of all the miracles and innovations that are yet to occur from tapping into something as simple as laughter!

If everyone is universally connected, imagine how much healing could occur through something like shared laughter?

Laughter is fun and laughter makes us feel better. Laughter is a psychological phenomenon in many ways and researchers have barely begun to tap into its powers. In many ways laughter is nature’s tranquilizer and natural pain reliever. Think of all the hundreds of dollars that people spend on medication and prescriptions and think of all the money we could save if all just took a little time to laugh more!

What is laughter anyway and why do we find the need to engage in it? Laughter helps us release our emotions in some sense because our emotions can tangled up inside of us causing our energy to feel jumbled. There are also many reasons why we laugh. We obviously laugh from humor but we also laugh when we are excited, nervous or happy. We may laugh just because someone else is laughing as well.

Laughter obviously causes us to release endorphins, which in turn helps us relieve pain naturally. Laughter also increases the amount of T cells, which in turn attack viruses, foreign cells, cancer cells and gamma interferon, which is a protein that helps fight disease. Laughter can also increase our B-cells, which create disease destroying antibodies. Our stress hormones are reduced when we laugh and this can help us in many ways as well. When we are happier, we are often healthier so the more we laugh, the happier we are and the healthier we feel!

Laughing exercises our cardiovascular system and helps us lower our blood pressure and increase our heart rate. It most likely also causes us to improve the coordination of our brain functions, which helps us increase our memory and alertness.

Laughter may actually be one of the most powerful medicines we have because it helps us activate our own unique system of healing. Laughter is a very powerful force and it can help us in many ways. Incorporating daily laughter sessions may be the perfect way to unwind every day. Perhaps instead of coming home and having a drink, one could come home and just have a laugh!

Laughter may just be the medicine of the future and it is probably more powerful than the strongest dose of morphine one could acquire. Laughter has many benefits, but it is not taken seriously or used enough. People who laugh more are just happier people. People who spend their time focused on everything that is going wrong, instead of everything that is going right definitely have a harder time in life.

Laughter helps remind us that life is supposed to a fun and fascinating journey, not a torture chamber. In many ways, laughter helps us be the best that we can be. It helps us be true to ourselves. It helps us remember those things that make us smile. It allows us to release our inner child and remember how much fun it to play and dance and sing. Laughter is like a giant relief valve, helping us deal with the difficulties in life.

Laughter reminds us of what really is important in life and it helps us put things in perspective. Nothing makes us feel as grand as laughter; the only thing that comes close is the feeling of love.

It's important to find the joy and happiness out of each moment. If you learn to laugh more, you will have less room for anger, moodiness, stress and complaints. If you learn how to have more fun, everything will seem easier. Life can be a long and difficult journey if you allow it to. You can choose to take a different path and you can choose to laugh instead of cry. You can choose to laugh instead of getting annoyed.

Sometimes the best-laid plans just don't work out, and if we don't learn to laugh at our foibles, we will end up crying instead. The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of your thoughts! You reap what you sow and you are whatever you think you are. If you are constantly dwelling on the negative aspects, negativity is what you'll get. If you take time to laugh and make a conscious effort to focus on the positive aspects of things, your life will be much smoother.

There are many things we can learn from our childhood and learning how to rediscover laughter and joy is just one of them. Sometimes all we need is a new perspective or fresh eyes. If you have ever spent time working on a problem, you know that sometimes solutions come easier the moment you walk away. Focusing intently on things doesn't always pay off in the end because a watched pot never boils. Learning how to tune into the joy and creativity in your life can help you solve problems in an entirely new way.

The 21 lessons learned from Dr. Seuss

I love the 21 lessons learned from Dr. Seuss, because in many ways this helps us put things in perspective. According to Sources of insight (2010) Dr. Seuss can teach us many things including:

Dr. Seuss definitely knows how to make someone laugh and taking the time to remove yourself from the stress and strain of everyday existence can pay off in a big way. Laughing can help you heal and make your world a bigger and better place.

Those who learn how to laugh and even poke fun at themselves are often laughing all the way to the end of their long and happy life!