Laughter the best medicine

Audrey Hepburn once famously said, " I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most- to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. Its probably the most important thing in a person," and I couldn't agree more.

( Pic sourced from the net)

I genuinely believe that a day in which I haven’t laughed out aloud is a day really wasted- Gone, never to come back again. Like me, many of you probably tend to feel the same way, which is why I wonder why laughter seems to have declined in ‘real’ life?

Mind you, here I’m not referring to the sitcoms and TV shows that sometimes tend to use canned laughter in order to induce viewers to somehow manage to summon up a laugh - I’m talking of the real good old-fashioned hearty peals of laughter that we all remember our grandparents, as well as our parents, indulging in.

Dr Michael Titze, a German psychologist, tells us that in the 1950s people used to laugh 18 minutes a day, but today we laugh not more than six minutes a day, despite the huge rise in the standard of living.

Children can laugh up to 300-400 times a day, but when we grow up to be adults this frequency comes down to less than 15 times a day, if at all.

The answers are not really difficult. Topping the list would be the day to day stress of living in a world which seems to have gone all wrong and where financial crisis is a bitter reality for so many people.

In addition, while there are many plus points of having instant access to worldwide news at the touch of a button, the downside is the heightened anxiety and fear at the very prospect of something that might go wrong.

Here, I’m obliged to point out the recent  Eurozone crisis with the euro facing an uncertain future - just for a moment, try and step into the shoes of all those who have invested heavily in that currency, or worse, the governments that have staunchly defended it till date, and you will begin to get an idea of what I mean.

Top that with long working hours, congested transport and overcrowded cities, and it's not surprising that divorce and family break-ups are higher than ever before.

As a major publicist of Positive Psychology, Dr Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania says engagement and meaning are particularly important. Other researchers have pointed to bonding with friends, family and loved ones as a major contributor.

So if we look at laughter as one manifestation of happiness, it turns out it’s not something we tend to do alone. “It is a tool of communication,” said Robert Provine of the University of Maryland.

Laughter is also infectious. Once one person starts, others quickly follow. As a natural consequence, when we laugh with others, we feel more connected to them - it’s part of our bonding and that makes us feel happier.

So how do we go back to the good old days when we all really did let our hair down and genuinely laugh? There is still hope, and as a result of research in both East and West, people are increasingly realising that laughter is something that can be ‘spontaneously created’ and need not be dependent on anything.

In fact, you can laugh for no reason at all.

Remember the walk in the park where you saw a group of people who at that point may have seemed quite mad to you, simply because they were all laughing? And that too, for no perceptible reason at all?

Well, that is actually called ‘laughter therapy’ and is deliberately designed to teach you how to laugh - in fact in many different styles at that.

We once visited my aunt and uncle in Chandigarh and she proudly showed us two prizes she had won at her local laughter club. After we had admired them and returned them to her she proceeded to demonstrate the prize-winning laughs.

Was that a revelation - it truly showed the extent to which a laugh can actually be created. It started off with some element of sheepishness on our part, but believe me, at the end of that period, we found ourselves joining in, and those laughs came from somewhere within us, of their very own volition!

To conclude, some people might have lost the knack of being able to laugh, but it is perfectly possible to help them get it back. People can be taught to laugh for no reason, to discover their innate capacity to experience their own wellspring of laughter and joy.

After all, 'What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul!' (an old proverb).

N B- This piece was originally written for 'My Take,' my column in Muscat Daily