I am sure you have heard these cliches. How true they are. Laughter has now, in fact, entered mainstream medicine. There are laughter clinics and laughter clubs aiming to elevate the mood and alleviate misery. In USA there is an association which deals with therapeutic aspects of humor. In fact I have visited a center doing research work in therapeutic laughter called Hasya Yoga kendra in Mumbai. There are some composers writing laughter music! And there are restaurants serving laughing stock!

Why laugh?
We seem to have underestimated the value of laughter. Taken laughter for granted. But laughter has many proven benefits to the mind and body. So let’s start laughing again and make life richer.

Laughter has intrinsic and extrinsic benefits.

Intrinsic benefits include better mind and better body. There is a mood elevation while laughing with the release of endorphins in the brain. You really feel better after that funny movie or TV serial, you feel relaxed and at peace with every thing. That’s the magic of endorphins.

Benefits of laughter include compulsory deep respiration. When you laugh there is an involuntary stimulus to the respiratory system. Hearty laughter involves effective expiration of gases followed by deep inspiration. A good exercise for your lungs and diaphragm.

Benefits to the immune system have been documented. Regular hearty laughter ensures higher levels of immunoglobulins, which help you increase your immunity and fight illness better.

Laughter is meditation: Several philosophers have recommended laughter as a form of meditation. When you laugh you forget the world for the moment. You are living the moment completely. There is no worry of the past or bother of the future. You are there with the present, enjoying yourself, completely lost to the world. Laughter can be a transcendental experience.

Researchers are gathering more and more evidence that laughter can be used as a form of therapy to alleviate pain in terminal illness. Where highly potent analgesics fail, laughter has shown good results. Laughter has shown arrest and reversal of several chronic diseases of the psychosomatic variety. The future holds good scope for laughter as a form of alternate medicine with holistic dimensions. Besides laughter has not killed anyone nor has shown any side effects and not yet banned by the FDA.

Laughter has several extrinsic benefits. This means that by laughing you can benefit others. This is the concept of passive laughing. If you laugh the persons around you can derive benefits of passive laughing. This is the opposite of passive smoking where you could kill others with your smoking. A good example of passive laughter is seen if you visit an outdoor laughing club. In a laughing club several persons assemble one fine morning and laugh their guts out collectively. The onlookers, trying to decipher the nature of the affliction of these clubbers, are filled with a sense of curious mirth. Initially they start laughing at the laughers and soon end up laughing with them. Well, laughter is infectious and can change the mood of a gathering. It can improve the working environment in an office, ease tension and enhance creativity. If you can make people laugh you are not only a genius but also a doctor! I cannot remember many great public speakers without a sense of humor.

Why have we stopped laughing?
Babies laugh a few hundred times a day and adults only a few times. Children know only crying and laughing as means of communication. These are the fundamental human languages irrespective of race or creed. During one’s growth and development one loses these basic emotions under the veneer of education and conditioning. A school going child is subjected to a tirade of advice like:

• Wipe that silly grin off your face!
• What’s so funny? Don’t laugh like a jackass.
• Learn to be serious.
• Have you gone mad? Stop it.
• Soon we get conditioned to suppress laughter and one day it becomes difficult to laugh heartily.

Introspection: How high is your LQ or laughter quotient?
Many of us boast of a high IQ or an intelligence quotient but have we looked into our laughter quotient? Laughter quotient tells us the ease with which we can laugh. Higher the LQ the smallest things make us laugh. Lucky are the people with high LQ.

We had a very pleasant person called Raghu in our medical college. He would laugh very easily. He was very popular as he had a high LQ. Jokes were graded according to the intensity with which he laughed. If your joke failed to elicit a laugh out of Raghu you were the pits in the humor department. Raghu was called Jokometer Raghu and we would get immediate feedback of our pranks and jokes from his laugh.

Once a professor said to Raghu: "Stop laughing. Doctors should be more serious."
Raghu replied solemnly: "Sir, It would do us all good if patients were more serious."

Where do I find laughter?
If you develop the attitude there is humor everywhere. One has to look at the humor angle in a situation. Stuck in a traffic jam there are persons who fume and fret raising their blood pressure. This is a situation beyond our control. Fuming won’t help. Take a deep breath and look at your neighbor in the next car and watch his facial expression. It will be hilarious. If you catch his eye, smile. He might smile back, raise his eyebrows and shrug at the helplessness of the situation. Lots of adrenaline saved. If you are stuck for longer, look around, you will find other drivers doing all kinds of things, speaking on cellular phones, picking noses, wiping sweat, cursing under their breaths and if you are lucky you might see a good fist fight. If there is nothing interesting just imagine your bosses face waiting for you as you report late. You could draw a large imaginary moustache on his face. Visualise his face contorting and guttural sounds coming form his throat. Try inventing the most bizarre and stupid of excuses to tell your boss. Like "I was driving to work and this large UFO pulled me up for speeding and took me to the space police station. I was released only when I dropped your name, Sir." Or "I was driving near the mental asylum and had a flat. As I was changing the tyre all the wheel nuts fell into a sewer. I was helpless. Suddenly I caught sight of an asylum inmate laughing at me from his window. He told me that he could help me with his suggestion. He told me that I could remove a nut each from the other 3 wheels and fix the spare tyre with 3 nuts, and proceed to the nearest service station. I congratulated him on his brilliant idea and wondered how a person like him was in an asylum. He promptly replied that he was there for being crazy and not stupid."

As children we went crazy with banana peals of laughter and enjoyed seeing people somersault over banana peels. We laughed at people passing gas or persons who stammered. In school we had a ball imitating funny accents of various teachers. Well as we grow up we cannot continue to have banana peals of laughter (however much we would enjoy) and have to look for humor in other day to day situations. In situations where things happen which ideally should not. Good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good ones. Try laughing at the chaos and unpredictability in life. We could develop a cartoonist’s perspective of things happening. R. K. Laxman, India’s most creative cartoonist deserves an honorary medical degree for getting that smile on the faces of millions of readers in spite of the terrible news headlines staring at them. Dr Laxman has a funny interpretation of the worst problems and one cannot help chuckling looking at his caricatures. Laxman’s humor is therapeutic in today’s chaotic world.

• Life is full of puns and satyrs, paradoxes and slapsticks, funny sounds and sights.
• One has to relax and observe without prejudice. Be aware of the humor option. Next time someone asks you at the bus stop, "Are you waiting for a bus?"
• Don’t get irritated. Think of funny replies!
• "No, I am in love with bus drivers who don’t stop at bus stops. I am standing here to blow them flying kisses."

Proactive thinking:
"If you can do something to help the situation, do it. If you cannot, laugh."
Dr K V Patel the pioneer of the laughter movement in India conducts mini laughter workshops at the Hasya Yoga Kendra. He has simple suggestion on how to start your day. He believes that under the garb of our education, degrees, designations and social positions there is a child who is dying to laugh. He tells people to go to the bathroom and start undressing. With each garment throw out the conditioning acquired over the years. Forget that you are a doctor or a businessman or a Rotary president. Look at yourself in the mirror, take a deep breath and say Ha, ha, ha. The rest will follow. The child will come out and laugh heartily. Enjoy your bath.

To make humor a daily habit try getting hold of joke books, join a laughing club, collect videos of Laurel and Hardy, see the Indian parliament session on TV or just try and associate with children they will teach you a lot about laughing. Whatever you do remember to laugh. Everyday.