| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
|
 |
 |
|
stress
Laugh It Up "An amazing life requires
humor." When I was a little girl, I'd often grab a bowler hat and cane so that I could mimic Charlie Chaplin---someone who always made me burst into gales of laughter with his silly gait and twitchy mustache. My entire family loved my portrayal and would egg me on, and the more they laughed, the funnier I became, until I was totally possessed. Some things never change. Once again, here I am making people laugh to reduce their stress and I love every minute of it. Each time I stand on stage, I feel blessed to be able to get thousands of people to laugh at themselves. But this wasn't always the case. When I attended Saint Joseph's Catholic School, the god sisters would call my mother quite often to report my antics. They'd say, your daughter is bright, but foolish"---ironically enough, I now get paid for it! Humor became my saving grace. As George E. Valiant, M.D., of Harvard has said, humor is "man's most elegant coping mechanism." That's certainly true for me---through pain and pleasure, laughter has served me well throughout my life. When I first became interested in researching the healing effects of humor, there was very little information available. I felt fortunate that a friend told me about Norman Cousins and his pioneering work, Anatomy of an Illness. In this book, Cousins described his diagnosis with ankylosing spondylitis, a crippling, painful disorder that there was no cure for at the time. He was hospitalized with fever and paralysis, and traditional medical treatments gave him no relief. So Cousins turned to the theories of Hans Selye, who was among the first scientists to study the effects of stress on physiology. Cousins then deduced that if negative emotions could produce negative chemical changes in the immune system, then why couldn't positive emotions produce positive effects? He consequently eliminated medications, except for large doses of intravenous vitamin C. He brought in family and friends to watch Candid Camera and Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy films. The inflammation associated with the disease resolved itself, and Cousins regained his health. In the years since the publication of that book, we've discovered that humor offers us many wonderful benefits---in mind, body, and spirit. I'm always amused by the fact at last we're beginning to see research that defines the obvious effects of how laughter affects us. When humor is absent from our lives for long periods of time, we're deemed clinically depressed. We know that laughter provides a buffer between stress and its toxic effects---if we're able to find the humor and laugh at our stress. When we laugh, our heart rate and blood pressure increase, as if we're doing a form of aerobics (Cousins called it "inner jogging". And we're often relaxed afterwards. The benefits are similar to those of medications. The most important thing that I've learned from all this is that laughter has the power to make us kinder to one another. When we're able to laugh together at ourselves, it truly brings us to a higher state of consciousness. The
medical community is starting to catch on, too. Hospitals are using comedy channels and humor rooms to help
their patients heal faster and reduce pain (the endorphins released
from laughter are natural painkillers).
In fact, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York
City was the first to participate in the "Clown Care Unit,"
which was founded by Michael Christensen of the Big Apple Circus.
Now, at least 15 hospitals nationwide offer this program,
for medical professionals have discovered that when children interact
with the clowns, they get better faster.
And yet, with all this evidence to support something so obvious,
many of us still don't get it. Humor can be dissected as a frog, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientist." -E. B. White
|
