Why Laughter Is Good For You

How Laughter Can Reduce Stress and Improve Your health

A merry heart doeth good like a Medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones. -Proverbs 17:22

Feeling stressed out, angry or sad? Dread going to work?

Try this: Open your mouth as wide as you can, bug out your eyes, stick out your tongue, bring your hands up like the claws of a lion, then erupt in a mighty roar of hearty laughter.

Or this: Sitting down, pretend you're on a roller coaster approaching the top of the hill. Slowly raise your arms higher and higher, bend back, lift your feet off the ground, and in a rising tone of voice, exclaim: "Oooooohh." Then, as the imaginary coaster races downhill, bring your arms crashing down with a big belly laugh that crescendos as you bend over at the waist.

Even if your laughter seems forced, don't be surprised if you feel much better. Just as lifting weights and doing aerobic exercises can strengthen the body and invigorate the spirit, scientists today believe that the act of laughter can be a physically and emotionally therapeutic force.

The lion and roller coaster laughs, together with about a dozen others, are now featured exercises in 1000 "laughter clubs" worldwide. A growing trend first reported on by ABC's Peter Jennings in a l9981 World News Tonight report, laughter clubs (about 100 in the U.S.) are the absolute latest in stress-reduction therapy, easing tensions of modern life and enhancing one's health. And laughter workouts are being effectively used in corporate settings, hospitals, nursing Homes, and even grade schools.

Frame Your Mind To Mirth

Ever since the mid-l960's, when the well-known Saturday Review writer Norman Cousins was diagnosed with a terminal disease and said he laughed himself to health by watching "Candid Camera" and funny Marx Brothers movies (and by ingesting megadoses of vitamin C), scientists have been tantalized by the possibilities of this mind-body connection.

Four centuries before this, Shakespeare was writing about the healing power of levity in The Taming of the Shrew: "And frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life."

Today, Dr. William Fry, a psychiatrist, laughter researcher, and professor emeritus at Stanford University Medical School, agrees with Shakespeare: "When you're laughing you discharge tension associated with the three primary negative emotions--anxiety, fear, and anger," says the physician, who has devoted 30 years to laughter research. "Any of these emotions in excess can lead to diseases that shorten life. If you can laugh at what you fear, the fear just vanishes.

"Mirthful laughter," he continues, "is a total body activity that conditions the heart muscle, exercises the diaphragm, abdominal and thoracic muscles, and augments our respiratory exchange, with more oxygen coming in and more carbon dioxide going out, improving lung capacity."

Moreover, the stimulation of laughter, he explains, improves circulation because it elevates the heart rate and blood pressure. "A day's worth of hearty laughter," Dr. Fry figures, "is about equal to ten minutes on the rowing machine."

"Without question, laughter has a healing and preventive effect on our health, much like moderate exercise, meditation, prayer, or yoga," adds Dr. Lee Berk, associate professor of pathology and human anatomy at the School of Medicine of Loma Linda University, in southern California.

"In fact, the parallels between laughter and exercise are uncanny," says Berk, a laughter pioneer who reels off a list of