Laughing for Health
When was the last time you had a good laugh?
How great did you feel afterward?
Laughing feels great and is beneficial for health. While I am not aware of any formal studies on the matter, wisdom has it that laughter heals the mind, body, and soul. Laughter has the uncanny ability to take us to healing places within the recesses of our minds and spirits, places which we may not be able to access any other way.
When I was receiving training in clinical hypnosis, one of the students, a research psychologist by profession, aside from having a great sense of humor and an appetite for laughter, had a long history of incurable migraines. On one occasion the instructor called her to the front of the room to demonstrate deep trance states. She assured us of her inability to enter into even a light trance, let alone anything resembling a deep trance. He assured her that he was confident in her ability to experience a deep trance. Upon the initiation of the trance induction she burst out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The instructor calmly said, “That’s right. And you know that you can laugh. And you know that laughter feels good. And you know that laughter heals. And you know that you can laugh your way into a very deep trance.” Within moments she had laughed her way into one of the deepest trances I have ever seen, and had begun doing remarkable work towards healing her migraines.
Where conventional medicine falls short, laughter heals.
View Comments
[...] When we laugh we smile. Smiling also feels great on its own. A psychiatrist once used his index and middle fingers to contort the corners of his lips into a smile. When asked about his strange behavior he explained that when the lips form a smile, regardless of the reason, pleasure and happiness inducing chemicals are released in the brain. He then went onto explain that he was feeling down and not in the mood to smile and that’s why he forced a smile with his fingers. If this is true of smiling, how much more so when it comes to a good laugh (of course NEVER at the expense of another). [...]
Leave a Comment