The Best Medicine

"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine."
Lord Byron

I've been thinking a lot about the power of laughter these days. A friend of mine turned me onto Laughter Yoga on the Phone. You call a phone number at certain times of the day for a live 20-minute laughter yoga session. Sometimes the moderators leads you in specific laughter exercises and sometimes they just laugh. They also have prerecorded sessions that you can listen to whenever. I like to call in when I'm driving. It is impossible to have road rage when you're in your car cracking up. However, you do need to be careful and pay attention. If you're laughing so hard that you can't see the road clearly, it can lead others to have road rage at you. Haha.

There is something incredibly beneficial about laughing ... even if, especially if, you're laughing about nothing. Even pretending to laugh has much of the same health benefits as laughing. And once you start pretending to laugh, it is hard not to start laughing in earnest.

So what are the benefits of laughter?

• Laughing makes us breathe deeper and pumps more oxygen around the body.
  
• Laughter reduces blood pressure
• Laughter reduces stress hormones
• Laughter boosts immune function
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins -- the body's natural painkillers and "feel good" hormones
• Laughter makes us all more attractive adding that soft healthy glow to skin that makes a person seem more approachable.
• Laughter promotes inner tranquility and relaxation
• Laughter improves lung capacity
• Laughter can alleviate depression and anxiety
• Laughter allows us to be playful and to just feel good.

Laughter does all this and it has no negative side effects and it's free! It's truly the best medicine.

Children are a great teacher of the benefits of laughter. Children laugh on average 300-400 times a day. Adults laugh only about 15 times a day! Imagine all the benefits that a person would get if they would laugh even half as often as a child.

Here's an exercise that you can try this week to bring more laughter into your life. Carry a piece of paper and a pen or pencil with you. Every time you laugh mark a tick on the paper. Try to get to at least 100 today. Tomorrow do the same exercise, but try to laugh to 150. Keep adding 50 more laughs per day until you get to 400 laughs per day. (Hint, one laughter yoga call will get you way above this minimum quota). Try this exercise for a week and see how you feel. I'm betting you'll feel pretty great.




The above image is from Natural Selection by Russ Wallace.
"A ticklish question."