The Amazing Benefits of Laughter

While working with a client on an issue regarding her successful yet sometimes stressful business, we were tapping on the issue at hand, and for whatever reason, we both ended up laughing hysterically.

We tested her SUDS level (Subjective Units of Distress), and her level had decreased from a 10 to a 0. It was great to see how the tapping released her tension enough for her to see the issue from a different perspective and genuinely laugh about it. The laughter shifted her energy and brought her SUDS level down as well. At the beginning of the session, she didn’t feel like laughing at all.

EFT cleared her negative feelings to a low enough level that she could see humor in the previously stressful situation. 

One significant benefit of laughter is that it reduces stress almost immediately. Laughing increases blood flow to the heart, which lowers blood pressure. It is also good for the brain. A Johns Hopkins University Medical School study showed that adding humor during classroom instruction led to higher test scores.

Research

In his best-selling book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration, Norman Cousins, author and editor-in-chief of the iconic Saturday Review magazine, was convinced that emotions played a powerful and overlooked role in human health and disease, a belief rooted in his own experience. Cousins was diagnosed with a painful and debilitating disorder. Conventional medicine had little to offer, so he prescribed his own therapy: liberal doses of vitamin C and laughter. He watched the Marx Brothers movies, among other film and TV comedies. His doctors were skeptical, but he laughed his way to a successful recovery. His book’s publication coincided with some of the first studies suggesting a link between the mind and the body, specifically, the interaction of human psychology with the immune system. People were focused on how stress and other adverse experiences could have negative health consequences, but Cousins said, "We can improve or alter emotional responses to reverse disease."

Steve Backlund, in his book Possessing Joy  shares, “Researchers at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California, and Oakcrest Health Research Institute in Yucaipa, California, discovered that a good belly laugh (or even the anticipation of laughter) has a beneficial effect on our body’s hormones. They studied 32 healthy men, half instructed to view an hour-long funny video. The other half were told to sit in a room with various magazines. Blood was drawn from each man before, during, and after the experiment. The scientists discovered (even before the video clips started to play) that those chosen who watched the humorous videos had 27 percent more beta-endorphins and 87 percent more human growth hormone in their blood on average than the other group. The levels of these beneficial hormones remained high during and after the experiment.

The research, presented in San Francisco at an American Physiological Society session, adds to previous studies that reveal humor has healthy “side effects,” such as lowering levels of two stress hormones – cortisol and epinephrine."

EFT

That’s also the benefit of EFT-tapping on our meridian points while talking about a problem; after a few minutes, it no longer feels like a problem. Of course, there are always those more profound issues and concerns brought on by trauma and such that take longer than a few minutes. Never feel your problems are too deep or too much to heal. I know well that trauma and grief are never a laughing matter; however, when you address them with this beautiful modality and work with an effective and compassionate practitioner, well, you may be free enough to be laughing again.

Here’s to a good laugh today!

Here are more links about the Benefits of Laughter.

www.verywellmind.com

www.mayoclinic.org

ucla.edu/magazine/norman-cousins-humor-health-mind-body

Love,