Feeling stressed? Most of us are. We know there is a direct link between high levels of stress and high levels of illness reflected in our mental, physical, emotional, and even financial lives. Stress is pervasive. Many of us don’t even try to deal with stress. We believe that stress is our reality and so it doesn’t even occur to us that we can change things. Our focus is on external conditions and so we just keep reacting off those and not making any internal changes. Changing who we are and how we relate to the problems in our lives, can transform those obstacles into opportunities. We can’t just ignore stress and hope it will go away. Make no mistake, it is imperative that we change, or things will get worse. Things don’t stay the same and even if we maintained the status quo, attrition would ultimately cause more loss and dysfunction. Where to start and with what and how?
Laughter can be a starting point. What’s that now? Admittedly laughter isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we are stressed. The opposite tends to happen—when we get anxious, our mind shifts to survival mode only. As a result, laughter slips down our list of priorities. We abandon laughter so we can handle the panic. Once we’re overcome the overwhelm, we move into a state of energy conservation. It takes a while for our resources to rebuild. With each stressful event, laughter seems superfluous, so we lose touch and lose out on its benefits.
Why you need laughter is based on its health benefits. Here are just some highlights:
- Reduces symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress
- Improves mood and energy levels
- Boost immunity
- Increased ability to focus and concentrate
- Helps us release overwhelm
- Breaks down inhibitions
- Healthy emotional catharsis
- Improves relationships by increasing connection
- Pain relief
- Better sleep
- Release negative thoughts and feelings
- Promotes positive mindset
- Less judgmental
- Increases lung capacity
- Reduces blood pressure
- Relaxes the body and mind
- Helps us to feel lighter and more hopeful
To find out how to access laughter as a mental wellness tool, as a way to overcome stress, it’s important to have an open mind. We don’t do anything unless our mind is sufficiently motivated. Our mind looks for logic, pattern, justification, reason. It wants to test against past experiences to verify validity and safety. If you haven’t laughed unconditionally before, your mind won’t have prior experience and so it will doubt and possibly sabotage your exploration into laughter for stress-busting. That’s okay, you’ve already jumped ahead of the mind just by knowing how it behaves. Now, wouldn’t it be awesome to discover how to access the multitude of health benefits through something you did frequently as a child? Laughter came to you easily and without thinking. You laughed as you played. Our work now, is to get playful again. To find out how, contact me.