Humour As A Stress Reducer

According to William Fry, who is renowned for his research on physiology of humour, says that humour is like ‘internal jogging’. The story of Norman Cousins points to a possible link between humour and wellbeing. Cousins suffered from an incurable disease. Doctors advised that there was nothing that they could do for him. But Cousins had decided otherwise. He began to read humorous books and watched every comedy film he could get his hands on. To everybody’s amazement he sufficiently recovered to return to work. Cousins ascribed his remarkable recovery to ‘laughter therapy’. In his book ‘Perfect Health’ Deepack Chopra says that people who have a healthy ‘laughter index’ not only experience a better quality of life but in the process also live longer.

While evidence, linking laughter to wellbeing, is, in some cases, anecdotal, there is a very real scientific basis for this assertion. Glen Schiraldi, a stress management consultant for the United States government, for example, found that laughter has many positive effects on the body including:

• Relief from pain
• Cardiovascular conditioning
• Improved breathing
• Muscle relaxation
• Improved immune system functioning