By Trafalgar’s Editorial Team
This Content is Created By Kinga Burjan, M.A., R.P.
General Coping Skills: The Benefits of Laughter
Thank you for joining me on your wellness journey. Today’s episode of “Did You Know” is going to review the benefits of laughter.
Laughter has many positive physical benefits and mental health benefits. Overall laughter decreases our stress levels.
And laughter actually positively shifts our moods by altering serotonin levels, dopamine levels, and also increases the feel good hormone called endorphins. Laughter, the action itself stimulates our circulation, increases oxygen uptake and results in soothing tension and muscle relaxation.
Laughter can also result in a decreased heart rate, respiratory rate and decreased blood pressure. People who practice laughter report feeling fulfilled or uplifted after the act and also laughter forms social bonds. So from a therapeutic perspective, we know through the therapy, CBT therapy that our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are connected.
So when we engage in laughter and engage in this behavior, we can actually shift our mood and when we shift our mood, our thoughts can also shift as well. So basically, the way we think or feel about ourselves or situation can shift if we’re altering our behaviour.
What that means is you don’t have to be prompted by anything external to laugh. We can actually just laugh for no reason.
And our body doesn’t know if it’s real or fake. It just has the same response whether we’re faking it or not.
So, this means you don’t have to wait for something funny to come your way to laugh. You don’t have to be with someone necessarily that makes you laugh to laugh.
But if this is something you’re interested in, there’s actually laughter clubs all over the world where people come together to laugh for no reason.
Laughing with other people helps form social bonds and overall is good for our mental and physical health.
Laughter is free
This is a resource that you have inside of you that you can access at any time. Maybe not every time is appropriate, but I encourage you to put away some time or set aside some time every day, whether it’s one minute or two minutes, and just try laughing for no reason.
If that’s too much of a stretch, then perhaps take some time. And rather than watching drama, you want to watch a comedy show or something that’s going to make you laugh just to get in that mindset. And remember that if you laugh for no reason to your brain and body still going to respond like it’s laughing for a reason and create those positive benefits in your favour. You are worth it. I encourage you to try this technique and see what happens.
Thanks again for joining me, and we’ll see you again.
