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