Endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers, are also released with laughter. Overall, laughter produces a general sense of well being. Joyful laughter is estruses – stress that is deemed healthful or giving a feeling of fulfillment. It empties the lungs of more air than it takes in, resulting in a cleansing effect – similar to deep breathing.
This is especially helpful to people who suffer from emphysema and other respiratory ailments. Due to the exponential discoveries with laughter and humour therapy, hospitals are incorporating laughter therapy programmes into their therapeutic regiments. In some foreign countries they even have laughing clubs, where participants gather in the early morning for the sole purpose of laughing. Some clubs have been begun in the US.
Laughter is an aerobic exercise, like internal jogging. It provides a workout for the diaphragm and increases the body’s ability to use oxygen. Besides being an exercise routine it also brings about positive emotions, which enhances the healing and emotional state of a person. Laughter is child-like. Studies also show that children laugh an average of 400 time per day, while adults laugh an average of only 15 times daily.
Considering Jesus’ statement below, we adults might consider consider deliberately increasing our daily dose of laughter: ”I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven. ” (Matthew 18:3 NIV) Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring your mind and body back into balance than a good dose of laughter. Humour lightens your burdens, inspire hopes, connects you to others, and keeps you grounded, focused, and alert. With so much power to heal and renew, the ability to laugh easily and frequently is a tremendous resource for surmounting problems, enhancing your relationships, and supporting both physical and emotional health.
Mental Health Benefits of Laughter include the following; adding joy and zest to life, easing anxiety and fear, relieving stress, improving mood and enhancing resilience. Social Benefits include strengthening relationships, attracting others to us, enhancing teamwork, helping to defuse conflicts and promoting group bonding. The link between laughter and mental health Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, envious, or sad when you’re laughing. That is; laughter offers us protection from these forces of DARKNESS when we laugh.
Humour and playful communication strengthen our relationships by triggering positive feelings and fostering emotional connection. When we laugh with one another, a positive bond is created. This bond acts as a strong buffer against stress. Disagreements, and disappointments, in other words, against darkness. It is also known that laughing with others is more powerful than laughing alone. When you’re happy, people will want to be around you and share your happiness, but when you’re sad, people will avoid you. It is therefore important to make time for healthy fun activities ( e.g Miniature Golfing, etc)
Shared Laughter is one of the most important tools for keeping relationships fresh and exciting and keeping DARKNESS at bay. All emotional sharing builds strong and lasting relationship bonds, but sharing laughter and play also adds Joy, vitality, and resilience. And humour is a powerful and effective way to heal resentments, disagreements, and hurt. Laughter unites people during difficult times. All this is possible because DARKNESS is kept away by laughter, it’s antidote. Incorporating more humour and play into our daily interactions can improve the quality our relationships as well as your connections with co-workers, family members, and friends.
Here are some ways to start: Count your blessings: Literally make a list. The simple act considering the good things in your life will distance you from negative thoughts that are a barrier to humour and laughter. When you’re in a state of sadness, you have further to travel to get to humour and laughter. When you hear laughter, move towards it. Sometimes humour and laughter are private, a shared joke among a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them the opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humour you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and ask ‘What’s funny?” Spend time with fun, playful people. These are people who laugh easily, both at themselves and at life’s absurdities – and who routinely find humour IN everyday events. Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious.
To be in good health and to find supreme happiness here on earth is the will of the Creator for us all. Expressing genuine happiness and joy in various ways including hearty, cheerful laughter is a form of gratitude and thanks to the most high. Disease and hell came into existence through the evil volition of men and only men themselves through further or sustained evil volition do sustain them. From the Grail Message, we learn that harbouring impure thoughts such as thoughts of hate, anger, envy, injustice fear, distrust, rage, anger, jealousy, disappointments, evil activities etc. have devastating consequences both on him who harbours those thoughts as well as susceptible individuals some of whom may be in vast distances away. We are therefore admonished to keep the hearth of our thoughts pure several times in the Message. These negative emotions associated with these impure thoughts generate undesirable chemical and hormones in our bodies which are capable of causing various diseases, while at the same time reducing those health promoting chemicals and hormones in the body. The result is disease (DARKNESS). Laughter on the other hand increases the production of health promoting chemical and hormones and shuts off production of the bad chemicals and hormones. It is impossible to harbour these negative emotions while laughing and indeed soon after. For these reasons a cheerful hearty laughter is indeed a potent antidote to darkness. A hearty, cheerful laugh or smile from within…from the innermost part of man… from the spirit. It is indeed a form of expression of the spiritual core of man. For this reason it is not possible for the DARKNESS to rear its heady via negative thoughts and emotions during the laughter episode and indeed soon after.
The picture may be likened to the situation with physical light such as sunlight or torchlight and the absence of light which is darkness. These two cannot co-exist. Seen from this perspective one may appreciate what a potent antidote to DARKNESS a hearty cheerful laughter really is. In the book of PROVERB 17: 12 we read ”a merry heart doeth good like a medicine ”. This is because such a person will harbour only good thoughts, vibrate only in goodness that keeps the DARKNESS at bay. Genuine, cheerful, hearty laughter has thesame effect.
A hearty, cheerful (belly) laugh is from the innermost core of man, from the SPIRIT. It is a visible expression of the inner vibrations of the Spirit. For this reason the DARKNESS naturally retreats from it
