INTRODUCTION-WIL

The Anatomy of Laughter

‘At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”

- Jean Houston

Laughter is a universal language that cuts across cultural differences, global boundaries ad socioeconomic status. Anyone can recognize a smile, and practically everyone partakes in laughter.

Because of its profound impact on humanity, laughter has been studied by scientists and psychologists, academics and mystics. A good laugh can make you feel better. Laughing until you cry means you’ve had a really great guffaw.

The people who were interviewed for this book certainly had only good things to say about laughter. All these wonderful responses led me to probe deeper into the question: “What is laughter?”

When exactly did human beings start to laugh? Is laughter something we’re born with, or does it have to be learned? We’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine, but is it really? Is laughter peculiar to human beings, or do animals laugh? Is laughter contagious, like yawning? Has science made any serious studies of laughter? As it turns out, research reveals that it’s good for you, and may even prolong your life.

Although, there are some rare and unusual conditions in which laughter can cause

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problems, most of us can seize the opportunity to laugh often, love more and have a full life of joy.

The Science of Laughter

Laughter actually has its own science – gelotology. It derives from the Greek words gelos or geloto meaning laugh, laughter or laughing. The discipline of gelotology studies laughter and its effects on the body from both a physiological and psychological point of view.

Sometimes these causes and effects aren’t beneficial. There’s a rare condition known as aphonegelia, where a person isn’t able to laugh out loud. There are also a number of variations on what is called “pathological laughter.” It’s caused by various forms of damage to different regions of the brain.

Sometimes people afflicted with pathological laughter burst out laughing for no apparent reason. There are at least a dozen varieties of pathological laughter. Some of those who have fore-brain damage will laugh at practically anything. This “inappropriate laughter” can cause serious social problems.

Your Brain and Laughter

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Gelotology may also be considered a branch of the science of psychoneuroimmunology. This examines the effects of the mind on the body, and vice versa. As its name implies, it incorporates the disciplines of psychology, neurology, and immunology. This science recognizes the beneficial effects of laughter. Many of its researchers advocate some form of laughter therapy to treat various physical or psychological issues.

Although we have been studying laughter for some time, there remains a great deal we don’t know about. For example, there’s no known “laugh center” in the brain, and we don’t know everything about the neural mechanisms involved in laughter. We do know that the frontal cortex of the brain activates during laughter. This produces endorphins, peptides that are released in the brain, and, like morphine, relive pain. Scientists have demonstrated that laughter involves parts of the limbic system, which is involved in emotion.

While we inherently know that laughter is often related to humor or joy, there isn’t one simple explanation or one accepted theory on why we laugh.

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Sigmund Freud said laughter relieved tension and that it released nervous energy. He called it the “relief theory.” This was one of the earliest theories that led us to believe that laughter is good for one’s health, and that it acts as a coping mechanism when a person is upset or sad.

Humans begin to laugh between three and four months old. Laughter isn’t a learned skill or trait because babies with congenital blindness and deafness laugh. They couldn’t have learned it from someone else.

Scientists have found that laughter is contagious, so contagious that it can lead to bizarre extremes. There’s a case in Tanganyika in 1962. A group of schoolgirls ranging from 12 to 18 years old had a fit of laughter and crying that spread like wildfire. It went from one person to another and eventually spread to adjacent communities. The epidemic became so severe that officials eventually had to close down the schools. Amazingly, the hysteria lasted six months.

Television sitcoms capitalize on contagious laughter with the use of laugh tracks.

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The laugh track was first used in 1950 on the Hank McCune Show. While the show didn’t last long, television producers quickly realized how effective laugh tracks were, and started to use them.

Laugh tracks also found their way into the recording industry. The first “laugh record” was the OKeh Laughing Record in 1923. It was simply a trumpet that was intermittently interrupted by laughter. It became one of the most successful novelty records of all time, and it continues to generate sales to this day. It prompted artists as diverse as Spike Jones and Louis Armstrong to produce their own laugh records.

Since then, studies have consistently confirmed that television laugh tracks increase audience laughter and that they can achieve higher ratings for programs.

Psychologists conducted a study of the 1984 presidential debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, during which Reagan made two humorous remarks followed by loud laughs from the audience. Many believed the jokes helped Reagan win the debate. To test the theory, three sets of college students were shown three different versions of the debate.

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Two versions included the audience reactions and one didn’t. The students who saw the version without the audience’s laughter gave Reagan’s performance a poor grade. Those who watched the debate with the laughter intact gave him a higher grade.

So, scientists have learned that laughter itself, completely divorced from any jokes or humorous remarks, can evoke laughter in others. This led them to theorize that human beings have neural circuits that respond to human laughter. It’s as if you have a laugh detector that’s coupled to a generator. When you hear laughter, you’re likely to laugh.

Animals and Laughter

Laughter isn’t confined to humans. The laughter mechanism is in other species.

In humans, laughter is anatomically caused by the epiglottis constricting the larynx. It’s tied to our breathing, and in essence is a controlled and intermittently interrupted exhale. Animals, however, don’t have a larynx or voice box, at least not in the same way that humans do, so it doesn’t sound like human laughter. But when we analyze the sound spectra of what we call

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laughter: short sounds repeated at regular intervals a couple hundred milliseconds apart.

It isn’t the sound that humans use in laughter that defines what laughter is; it’s the patterns of notes and the space in between notes that defines laughter.

Interestingly, as human beings, we mostly use singular vowel sounds. Although we use different sounds, we never mix them. You may laugh ha-ha-ha, or ho-ho-ho. But you can ‘t do both at the same time. You can’t laugh ha-ho-ha-ho. Try it!

Of course, when animals “laugh,” we don’t know what they are thinking or feeling, so we can’t arbitrarily day their laughter is associated with joy or happiness. Research has noted a great similarity in the forms of laughter found among primates. This tells evolutionary scientists that laughter derives from a common primate species and might have been around for 16 million years.

Famed researcher Marina Davila-Ross of the University of Portsmouth in England, did a great deal of investigation into the subject. She suggests that laughter has evolved separately in each species over the last five million years.

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Humans have developed the form of laughter that we exhibit that is peculiar to us. She also notes that the closer any primate is to us genetically, the closer their laughter resembles ours. To Davila-Ross, this implies that primates have emotional experiences similar to ours.

Laughter and Philosophy

Laugher has been examined philosophically. John Morreall is a Doctor of Philosophy and Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary. He’s also the founder of the International Society for Humor Studies.

Dr. Morreall theorizes that human laughter has biological origins as a kind of shared expression of relief at the passing of danger. In his pithy book, The Origins of Laughter, he proposes what he calls the Ontic-Epistemic Theory of the Comic. In essence, he says people can’t see reality as it is. We re-interpret it according to our own values, beliefs and judgments. He says that “we distort what we see in the world, adding our own cultural baggage to events and things out there.” For Dr. Morreall, laughter is a response that happens when the difference between external facts and our intuitive notions and cultural

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concepts unravel. He claims laughter helps restore the balance.

Laughter and Communication

Neurobiologist Robert Provine’s research led him to believe that laughter is a part of the universal human vocabulary. He said, “There are thousands of languages and hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter pretty much the same way.”

Provine also concludes that babies have the ability to laugh long before they can speak, and that laughter is a form of communication – probably the first form of communication in the human race.

While most scientists focus on the relationship of humor to laughter, Provine believes that laughter is a social function. He found that people laugh about 30 times more when they’re out socially than when they’re alone.

In fact, his research showed that less than 20 percent of all laughter is a response to anything that resembles humor. People may make totally banal remarks like, “Hey look, it’s John,” and then start to laugh. And even when we’re laughing at “humor,” omst of our

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laughter is only reserved for mildly funny things – not the greatest jokes of all time.

Laughter is more about mutual playfulness and feeling part of a group. To Provine, most research on laughter is flawed by the fact that it most often focuses on people’s response to jokes. As a matter of fact, his studies showed that the speaker laughs about 45 percent more than his or her audience does.

Provine says, “Laughter is primitive and unconscious vocalization.” He argues that it has a genetic component. This has been supported by research involving identical twins separated at birth or shortly thereafter. One of these examples was a study of twins he called “the giggle twins.” Separated at birth, and reunited 43 years later, each of these ladies said that they had never before known anyone who laughed as mush as they did – until they met each other. Provine surmises they inherited their laughter sound and pattern and their readiness to laugh – and perhaps even their taste in humor.

Provine suspects that humans may be “tuned” for laughter the same way songbirds are tuned for songs. Each family of birds has its specific family song. Certain nerve cells in a songbird’s

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brain respond when they hear that sound. Provine suspects that humans also have specialized nerve cells that respond to laughter, and that we are also “tuned” to respond.

Laughter, he says, helps us clarify our intentions and provides an emotional context to our conversations, and is used as a signal of being part of a group. And the emotional tone of the conversation tells us something about the intentions of the speaker. It’s always difficult to interpret the true meaning of a letter or an e-mail because the emotional clues we might get from the sender’s tone are missing.

Laughter and Health: Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

I have to admit that this isn’t always the case. There have been incidents where laughter has actually caused a heart attack or even a stroke. It isn’t a great idea to laugh right after you’ve had abdominal surgery, or if you have broken ribs. But with those few exceptions, laughter is indeed very good medicine.

Many people are familiar with writer Norman Cousins and how he used laughter to help cure

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himself. Cousins suffered from various illnesses and physical problems during his lifetime, but while suffering from arthritis, he developed a recovery program that incorporated high dosages of vitamin C along with a positive attitude, hope and laughter. In his case, he watched Marx Brothers films. In his book Anatomy of an Illness, he wrote, “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep. When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

Cousin’s book came out in 1980, and since that time the sciences of psychoneuroimmunology and gelotology have come into being.

Current research shows that laughter does the following:

- Boosts the immune system- Exercises the heart muscles- Clears mucus and aids ventilation- Lowers catecholamines- Lowers cortisol- Lowers growth hormone

The last three are all associated with stress.

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In 2005, researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center published a paper that reported a link between laughter and the healthy function of blood vessels. The paper shows that laughter dilates the inner lining of blood vessels (called the endothelium) and increases blood flow. Drs. Michael Miller and William Fry theorize that beta-endorphin-like compounds activate receptors on the endothelial surface to release nitric oxide, which causes the dilation of the blood vessels. Nitric oxide reduces inflammation and decreases platelet aggregation.

May hospitals have “humor rooms” and “comedy carts.” If you’ve ever seen the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams, you know that hospitals routinely use clowns to bring good cheer and laughter to sick children.

Laughter and Therapy

In experiments on how stress affects the nervous system and various disease states, laughter has been shown to have many beneficial effects on health. Laughter causes changes in the autonomic nervous system (especially the sympathetic nervous system)

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and alters stress hormone and neurotransmitter levels.

Through gelotology, using the psychoneuroimmunology model, these forms of therapy have been established:

Humor Therapy: Also known as therapeutic humor. The technique uses humorous films, books, shows, stories and often the patients’ own humorous experiences.

Laughter Therapy: Patients identify their laugh triggers, like peple in their lives, things from their childhood, movies, jokes, comedians or situations that have made them laugh. Once the clinician has this information, she creates a personal humor profile. The client is taught basic exercises that they can practice. The exercises remind the patient of the importance of relationships and social support. They’re huge factors in the healing process.

Laughter Meditation: Although this is somewhat similar to traditional meditation, the subject focuses on laughter in order to concentrate on the moment. It’s usually a three-stage process:

- Stretching and relaxing- Laughing or crying

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- A period of meditative silenceIn the first stage, the subject simply relaxes by stretching every muscle. Laughter isn’t involved.

The second stage starts with a gradual smile and then slowly begins to purposely belly laugh or dry. Either might occur.

In the final stage, the patient abruptly stops laughing or crying. Then they close their eyes, breathe silently and focus their concentration on the moment. The process takes about 15 minutes.

Laughter Yoga and Laughter Clubs

Laguhter Yoga is also known as Hasa Yoga. It’s a form of yoga which employs self-triggered laughter. The laughter that’s generated is a purely physical expression and isn’t necessarily tied to any specific kind of humor or comedy. The original concept was developed by Jiten Kohi, an Indian guru. It was turned into a popular exercise routine by an Indian physician Madan Kataria, the author of Laugh for No Reason.

Because of the contagious nature of laughter, and the fact that we can spontaneously make

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ourselves laugh, it’s easily stimulated in a group – especially when it’s combined with eye contact, laughter exercises and playfulness. It begins with fake laughter, which quickly becomes real laughter.

Laughter Yoga brings more oxygen to the body because it’s incorporated with yogic breathing exercises called pranayama. Laughter Yoga is based on the premise that the body can’t tell the difference between fake laughter and real laughter; the benefits are the same, both physiologically and psychologically.

At first, Laughter Yoga was practiced in the early morning by groups in public parks. Dr. Kataria later began laughter clubs. The first club started in Mumbai in 1995. There are now approximately 7,000 laughter clubs in over 60 countries.

The primary reason Dr. Kataria called this technique Laughter Yoga was because he incorporated pranayama into the laughter exercises. The combination has a powerful effect, exerting its influence over the body, mind and emotions. Stress always changes our breathing patterns. We know this inherently, because every time someone is upset, the first thing we tell them is “take a deep breath.”

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Pranayama normalizes the breathing and thus our autonomic nervous system.

The word yoga comes from a Sanskrit work meaning union. In this case, the idea is to integrate body, mind and emotions. There are many paths of yoga, like Hatha Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga.

Laughter Yoga is unique because it enables you to achieve sustained hearty laughter without involving cognitive thought. It bypasses the intellectual systems that normally makes us stop laughing after a very brief time.

Laughter Yoga sessions start with gentle stretching, chanting, clapping and various forms of body movement. This helps break down inhibitions. Practitioners are taught yogic breathing to prepare the lungs for laughter. Then they are given various laughter exercises, and these are interspersed with more breathing exercises.

These sessions often conclude with laughter meditation. In this case, “laughter meditation” means that the participants sit or lie down and allow spontaneous laughter to flow naturally from within – as if they were human laughter fountains.

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These sessions have many psychological and physiological benefits. Imagine if we did five minutes of laughter meditation every day before we went to work. Our day would be brighter and happier.

Reflections on Laughter

What is Laughter? In this book you’ll find over one hundred different definitions of laughter from people around the globe. They represent all walks of life.

They aren’t the first to discuss, define and celebrate laughter. Laughter and its effects have elicited the interest of a fascinating mixture of people over time, ranging from scientists to health experts, communications experts and even yogis.

I’ve been blessed in my life to be surrounded by people who have made me laugh and who have shown me the power of laughter to heal and transform lives. Romero Britto epitomizes laughter and generosity. Just being in his presence uplifts your psyche and spirit. His happy, positive artwork makes you smile, laugh and feel better when you look at it.

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Romero is a fine artist and his loving, compassionate, giving personality is depicted in every piece he produces.

But it started with my parents. They raised my siblings and me with a daily dose of laughter and fun. It was a huge part of family life. Laughter was always served with family meals, and it was on the menu for everyday occasions.

My mother was an amazing joke teller and she constantly made me crack up. My father was naturally funny. It didn’t take much for him to make me laugh. I remember a childhood filled with watching comedies together. We would sit there and howl. My Dad always called me by my nickname, “Toad.” He called me Toad because I hopped around following him wherever he went. My Dad had a great sense of humor, and I always wanted to be in his presence. His loving, happy personality lifted my spirits. When I look at Romero Britto’s wonderful artwork on the cover of this book, I laugh and smile and remember my nickname: Toad! Even when the family would water ski or be I nvolved in sports, we would laugh and laugh – and laugh.

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Now that both my parents are gone, I realize more than ever that they live on through memories of laughter and joy. Laughter, I believe, is often what we remember most about people and the time spent with them.

As Miss World USA in 1974, I traveled around the country with Bob Hope, the pageant’s goodwill ambassador. I saw how he used laughter to truly change people’s lives. And he really made me laugh! I would go on stage with him and he would ask me, how old are you? I would answer “I am 19 years old.” He would say, with a straight face, “I have golf balls older than that.” From service men and women he entertained through the USO to everyday people he came in contact with, he understood how to use humor and laughter as a transformational tool.

Bob was philosophical about his chosen profession. He once told me that if he could make people laugh for an hour and help them forget their troubles, then he was making a real difference in the world. He entertained thousands of armed service members, and by doing this, he gave them a reprieve from their stressful duties. He spent most of his life making people laugh.

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Bob was a truly happy, funny guy, and he allowed laughter to be the foundation of his life until his very last breath. If you ever wonder if laughter truly is the best medicine, think about Bob Hope and fellow actor and comedian George Burns, who both lived to be 100.

I’ve come to believe that laughter truly is our birthright – birthright we should claim and embrace. Laughter literally creates positive vibrations and can start a “good mood virus.”

When I talk with people who are funny, my heart feels more open. When I’m with friends who make me laugh, I’m uplifted. When people laugh out loud around me, I want to join in. Laughter has a spiritual element; it can raise your vibration and connect you to a higher consciousness.

Our family loves to spend time with Tibetan Monks; they carry a lightness of being that is attractive and welcoming. Some of the most spiritual people I know have an uncanny sense of humor, including Rami Shapiro, Cynthia Bourgeault and the Dalai Lama.

On the special occasions in my life when I have been in the presence of the Dalai Lama, I have been again reminded what I learned from my

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parents, and then from Bob Hope – that laughter is a powerful form of healing and that laughing a lot is a wonderful way to live. The Dalai Lama uses his smile to reach people – and he is truly lighthearted and playful.

In his book, My Spiritual Journey, he explains why he laights so frequently. “I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher. Laughing is a characteristic of the Tibetans.”

He adds, “My cheerfulness also comes from my family. I come from a small village, not a big city, and our way of life is more jovial. We are always amusing ourselves, teasing each other, joking. It’s our habit.”

My family was the same way, and to this day it’s still what gets us through the tough times and rough spots. My sister and I have a special saying: “We’re going to laugh our way through this life into the next one.”

For me, one of the happiest sounds is children playing and laughing on a playground, or

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laughing in the backseat of my car while I am driving to a sports game. Children are often our greatest teachers. Laughter comes easily to them – much easier than it does to adults.

Laughter as the foundation for living is the philosophy I use to raise my three children. They know it takes just a little bit of laughter to get you to smile more and laugh even harder. Even when they’re feeling under the weather there’s a way to find humor in the situation. One day, all three were sick and feeling awful. Suddenly, one started doing an impersonation and the others danced around in a funny way. They got silly, and within the silliness, they got lighter. That night, I saw that laughter truly made them feel better!

Just as I remember the laughter shared with my parents, I hope that our legacy to our children will include laughter. I am sure they will remember the love and the spirit, but most of all they will remember the laughter.

My husband has a favorite toast: “Here’s to you, may you live to 110 and may the last voice you hear be mine!” I’ve heard it hundreds of times and I still laugh.

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I think we all remember the laughter in life, so let’s make sure we have more of it to lighten the load and warm our days. So keep on laughing – laugh out loud, every day! Remember, time flies whether you’re having fun or not.

In Love, Spirit and Laughter,

Lexie

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