LAUGHTER AND OUR MIND
Laughter boosts the mental capacities required for success in work, study and life:
- empathy and communication skills are improved
- reasoning and decision-making skills are improved
- learning abilities are substantially increased
- innovation and creativity are heightened
This can lead to a significant improvement in school performance, workplace performance and career development.
SOCIAL INTERACTION
Laughter is nature's teambuilder. When we laugh with a group then social/class/racial/cultural barriers to communication are quickly overcome and a mutual feeling of trust develops. People who laugh often are more popular and are likely to have a greater impact on group decisions. Actor John Cleese, who practices laughter-as-exercise daily to cope with bipolar tendencies, has stated that "laughter is a force for democracy" when commenting on its uncanny ability to remove barriers to communication.
LAUGHTER AND OUR EMOTIONS
While stress causes negative emotions, laughter helps us develop positive emotions and maintain a positive state of mind. This in turn can helps us to counter depression. Depression is a serious debilitating condition that causes many health problems. Research shows that SA depression levels are twice the world average. This has serious implications as international research shows that healthcare costs for depressed people are 4.2 times higher than for non-depressed people. People trained in laughter-as-exercise techniuques are able to shift from a negative to a positive state of mind at will.
Natural Laughter: A gift we are born with
Children at play laugh 300 to 500 times a day. This is natural laughter and is not dependant on jokes or comedy. Children laugh to express their joy and as a means of emotional communication. Natural laughter bubbles out of us without any conscious thought. During adolescence teachers, family friends and culture begin to impose conditions on our natural laughter:
"Don't laugh in class/at the table/in church", "Don't laugh at the poor/others/adults", "Stop behaving like a child" and similar instructions inhibit our natural laughter and force us to think before we laugh. This is conditional laughter.
By adulthood we have become so inhibited that we laugh just 5 to 15 times a day. This is unfortunate as science has discovered that laughter holds many benefits. Laughter reduces stress, teaches emotional resilience that allows us to better cope with stress, boosts our immune system, helping to protect us from illness, and naturally regulates many of our body systems, keeping us healthy.