Pre-Purim Post: You Gotta Laugh

Laughing is Good

We all love to laugh. But many of us just don't do enough of it.
Laughter has been credited with all sorts of health benefits. It can reduce physical pain by triggering endorphin release. Laughter, involves deep abdominal breathing, instead of the shallow stress breathing that we tend to do when are stressed. It also dilates blood vessels, boosting circulation. All this increases oxygen within the body and brain, and increases energy. Laughter triggers the release of endorphins and other biochemicals, reducing pain and, it's been reported, helping with everything from diabetes, asthma and respiratory complications, hypertension, cardiovascular problems and arthritis to senile dementia.
Most of all, though, laughing just feels good. No matter how terrible your day is going or how pain you are in, if you can manage to get off a good belly laugh, you get pulled into the moment—instant mindfulness—and for that split second, and often longer, you're all good.
Laughter is most often a spontaneous, social behavior. It occurs more in the presence of others, it brings people together, and it is contagious. One bizarre example of just how contagious laughter can be is the "Tanganyika laughing epidemic of 1962" in what is now Tanzania. That hysterical episode started with 3 schoolgirls laughing, but quickly spread to almost 2/3 of the school, with some girls laughing uncontrollably for up to 16 hours. 3 1/2 months later, the girls were still so distracted from their laughing that the school shut down completely. When all was said and done, over a year later, the outbreak had spread to several villages and affected 14 schools and 1,000 people. No joke.

Getting Yourself to Laugh
Laughter, when you're alone, is a little tougher to just conjure out of the blue, but you can do it. One way is to seek out funny things: reading material, TV shows and web videos, stand-up comedy on internet radio or mp3's (although I sometimes find it hard to find material that is really funny—any suggestions would be welcomed). If you're adventurous, or just for a laugh, you can try something called laughing yoga, which involves, that's right, a lot of laughing. The idea for laughing yoga came to Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician from Mumbai, when he was doing medical research on the benefits of laughter. He started a laughing club in the park for 5 people in 1995, and the practice has spread throughout the world.
The gist of laughing yoga is that you get together a large group of people to take advantage of the contagion effect and then begin to laugh. They start with fake laughter, but it quickly turns to the real thing. But reading it doesn't do this stuff justice. Check out this clip of John Cleese, a pretty funny guy himself, visiting a laughing club for BBC.

If you don't happen to have access to a wacky bunch of laughers, check out Dr. Kataria's detailed instructions for "laughing yoga alone" here. (I had some trouble with the link when I posted this, but it looks like it will be temporary, so check back if id doesn't go through. If all you want is someone to laugh with right now (this is the experiential portion of the post), see below.