We are all familiar with the saying that "Laughter is the best medicine." But how many of us have ever taken that idea seriously?
One man who did is Norman Cousins, who cured himself of life-threatening ankylosing spondylitis by watching an endless stream of comedy films. To even think of attenpting this was no joke. Doctors had told Cousins he had but a few months left to live. The disease is a very painful deterioration of the spine, with rapid progression of paralysis.
His complete self-healing through laughter began when he discovered that laughter was the only thing that actually eased his pain. Cousins documented his journey in his book Anatomy Of An Illness
. In his words...“Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.”Quite simply, laughter causes physical changes in the body that promote healing. And lack of it can allow disease to set in. This idea has been around for thousands of years. Traditional Chinese Medicine, for example, tells us that anger causes stagnation, which can cause cancer.
The idea has also been confirmed through repeated controlled experiments by modern medical science. For example, research by Dr Lee Berk and Dr Stanley Tan of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine showed that laughter can strengthen the immune system in many ways, as well as reducing the stress hormones that weaken it. A colleague of theirs, Dr William Fry of Stanford University, said, “We looked at the data and we fell on the floor. It was mind-blowing.”
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So how does this idea fit into an "A to Z of Success"? Well, I'm sure that for many their "wish list", written at the beginning at step A, will have included at least one aim related to health. If yours did not, then why not add something now? Your health is fundamental to success in achieving all your aims.
Consider again what Norman Cousins said, that laughter "is an ignitor of great expectations". What laughter has been proven to be capable of with our health can be effectively applied to the achievement of absolutely any aim at all.
In the pursuit of any worthwhile achievement, the going can seem to get tough. Yet, a simple touch of humour may be all it takes to keep on track. Victor Frankl expresses it well in his book Man's Search For Meaning
, "...humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds."What makes Frankl's words more poignant is that he is writing as a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. In other words, no matter how bad things get for us, we have no excuse. There is always a touch of humour in any situation that we feel imprisoned by, and it can be the key to set us free.
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The funniest thing I found in my research for this piece is that (seriously) there was a "professor of laughter" who studied the benefits of it for 22 years while teaching at univerity level. Dr Paul McGhee PhD has now retired from academic life, but you can explore his findings (and his humour) at his website, The Laughter Remedy. He has had published over 50 scientific articles and more than a dozen books on the benefits of laughter.
Next time you feel things are getting tough, before consulting a therapist consider seeing a comic ... or perhaps do both at once with My Favourite Therapist.
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Next comes "M", and we take a look at some of the myths and mysteries surrounding MIND.
This post is part of "An A to Z for Success". See the side panel on the right for an index.