By Jean Sumner
Learning to exercise your ability to laugh will bring you great joy. Along with bringing you great joy, did you know that laughter will boost your immunity, lower your stress hormones, and decrease any pain you are experiencing? It will also help to relax your muscles and prevent heart disease?
Mental benefits of laughter include easing anxiety and fear, relieving stress and improving your mood. And of course it brings joy and adds zest to your life.
Laughter will also strengthen relationships, attract others to you, enhances teamwork, diffuses conflict, and promotes group bonding. With all of these benefits it is important to find ways to increase the amount of laughter in your life.
Here are some ideas for you:
- Practice laughing meditation. You can find many laughing meditations by Googling “laughing meditations”. You will meet your goal to meditate along with your goal to laugh more in one step!
- Find a laughing yoga class near you. You can find these by googling “laughing yoga near me”.
- Decide you want to laugh. Then when the opportunity comes up, you’ll be more likely to let go and really enjoy the moment.
- Call a funny friend or someone you want to share a funny story with, especially if the story is about you. Laughing at you also brings healing beyond just the laughing as you are turning a potential wound into something more lighthearted and can let it go.
- Play with children and watch them laugh without restraint. They are a great template as they do not have the forced reserve that many adults carry with them.
- Read a funny book. We all have our favorites.
- Watch a TV comedy or cartoon. Believe it or not, there’s some very funny stuff on television.
- Tell a really, really bad joke and ask for one in return. Or begin a practice of finding a joke each morning to share with others.
- Keep pictures around that remind you of fun times where you were laughing a lot. And as you think of that time, give it at least a little chuckle.
- Watch a comedy movie. In fact, do not watch anything that isn’t funny. If you are going to spend time watching shows they may as well benefit you!
- Go somewhere out in public and find a good place to people watch. When you step into that place of knowing that there’s a certain absurdity to life, you get to laugh at the little things that you might not have noticed before.
- Head towards the laughter. If you in a room with a bunch of people and you hear a group laughing, move that way. Since laughter is contagious, you may find yourself laughing!
So start laughing today!
Laughteryoga.org
Mercola.com