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Laughter and Good Health
Good
health is a laughing matter."
- Patch Adams, M.D.
Have
you ever thought seriously about what makes you laugh?
How do you feel when you are laughing?
Have you ever noticed how relaxed you feel following a good laugh?
Did you know that anxiety and muscle relaxation cannot occur at the same
time? I find that bit of
information quite amazing and exciting!
Patch
Adams, M.D., has built his entire medical practice on the value of humor, joy
and laughter. He believes
medicine has become too impersonal and too technology-oriented. So he lives his work the same way he lives life, irreverently
silly and seriously funny! This
creative and dedicated approach takes courage!
One
proven benefit of choosing laughter is the improvement of health that results.
Research has shown that our bodies respond positively to laughter, and
that measurements of various physical and mental functions before and after
laughing show positive change. Among
other changes, relaxation increases and blood pressure readings improve.
With
himself as a guinea pig, Norman Cousins deliberately used laughter to heal
himself from a chronic disease. He
found and watched hilarious movies and later documented this experiment in his
book, Anatomy of an Illness. This is
his account of laughing himself back to health!
What
about soul satisfaction, that indescribable experience of deep validation that
accompanies a good laugh? Do you
remember the last time you felt it?
I
think a rewarding personal project is to investigate what it is we ourselves
find funny and then seek to create more of it.
Humor is a funny topic, with many varieties ranging from slapstick to
satire and everything in between. It's worth the research!
Some
folks I am privileged to call friends are just funny without even trying, and I
love to be in their presence. If
you are someone with a natural gift for being silly, I hope you enjoy it and
embrace it. What is available in
the space of sharing laughter is an incomparable feeling of peaceful inclusion.
If
you are a book lover, look for Gesundheit!,
by Patch Adams, M.D. Maybe you will be inspired, as I have, to lighten up in
life, to laugh more, to relax, to bask in our relationships.