LAUGHTER REALLY IS THE BEST MEDICINE
“Oh, come on, lighten up”.
Don’t you just love hearing that when you feel like you have a justifiable reason for not being happy?
Yet by suggesting that perhaps you need to chill out or adjust your attitude, these people may not realise just how very astute and wise they are being on their request.
Wisdom alone cannot get through when your thoughts are dense or heavy.
Laughter lightens the mind’s load and relieves the tension that keeps your heavy thoughts circling around and around.
Laughter can free your thoughts from their tendency to go down a negative riverbed. Laughter distracts you from what’s bothering you, giving you a sense of detachment that allows your intuition to kick in.
As a result, it enables your mind to make room for unusual solutions to problems as well as for wisdom to come through. It allows you to get in touch with the part of you that is wiser and might be more rational than your emotional self.
Laughter dulls the edge of the knife your inner critic wields.
Since it can do all these things, is it any wonder that we are grateful for comic relief during a serious movie or play or even an intense business meeting?
Just as there are times when helping others crosses the line, we need to be careful with laughter as a way of gaining perspective.
That’s because it can sometimes serve to hide our true feelings.
And it’s common for people to deflect intimate, deep emotions with humour to avoid feeling vulnerable.
I once attended a wedding where the bride cracked jokes and played up to the guests during the ceremony because she was terribly uncomfortable with the profound sanctity of the moment.
Humour can be used a way of expressing an opinion without being genuine.
I’m sure you can think of many times in your life when someone cracked a joke at your expense, only to take it back, upon seeing your reaction, with an indignant “Just kidding”.
In fact, the person being kidded was not you but the joker, who convinced himself that you would not notice or feel the true intention behind his humour.
When humour is used to avoid telling the truth, it loses it’s ability to clear your brain and allow your inner wisdom to emerge.
When humour is truthful, it can be just as powerful in it’s impact as a profound philosophical insight.
Just as a profound insight can illuminate a new possibility, so can humour provide a way to look at something in a whole new way.
Download the activity for this lesson in the next slide and watch the video to assist in training your mind to lighten up & laugh.
