Five Secrets for Laughing for No Reason

You don’t need a sense of humour to laugh

Most people believe that one must have a sense of humour to laugh. Laughter Yoga has proven otherwise. Laughter arising from humour is conditional. It depends on the persons state of mind, intellectual ability, upbringing, cultural references, level of happiness and life satisfaction. However, laughter can be achieved unconditionally. Children have the innate ability to laugh without any mental or cognitive ability to aid them in comprehending humour. Most of their laughter is an outcome of playfulness and inherent joyfulness. To develop the ability to laugh joyfully once more, adults must remove layers of inhibition, environmental programming and mental roadblocks created by self, family, and society. Beneath these barriers lies the infinite and innate ability to ‘laugh for no reason’.

You can laugh even if you’re not in a good mood

How do you laugh when you’re in no mood to laugh or don’t have any reason to laugh? You can rely on the theory that ‘motion creates e-motion’.

There is an inherent link between the body and mind. Whatever happens to the mind happens to the body. Psychologist William James in 1884 found that the state of mind, whether positive or negative, is mirrored in a matching bodily behaviour. In his research, he found that each emotion in the mind has a corresponding behaviour in the body. He discovered that bodily enacting any emotional behaviour triggers corresponding changes in the state of mind. The connection works both ways: from mind to body and body to mind.

This is known as the theory of ‘motion creates e-motion’ and it established a two way link between the mind and body. If one can change the quality of thoughts, one can feel a change in bodily behaviour. Conversely, if one can change their bodily behaviour one can experience a change in their mental state. Laughter Yoga has the ability to synchronise both body and mind, maintaining a mutual harmony.

You can laugh even if you’re not happy

Laughter Yoga makes a clear distinction between happiness and joyfulness. Happiness is a conditional response. It is dependent on the fulfilment of certain desires of the mind and is related to events in the past and the future, and seldom deals with the present stimuli. For example, how long did you remain happy after getting your diploma, new job, new car, new house? Sadly, the fact is that once the conditions have been fulfilled, happiness is often fleeting as it is quickly displaced by new conditions. In contrasts, joyfulness is an unconditional commitment to be happy for the moment and to have fun despite life’s problems. Joyfulness is easily triggered by joyful activities like laughing, dancing, singing and playing. It is purely a physical phenomenon while happiness is a concept of the mind.

When you’re joyful, you experience physiological and biochemical changes. The generation of good feelings and a sense of well-being change your outlook towards life. Laughter Yoga is all about learning to be joyful and you can navigate happiness in a much better way.

Childlike playfulness is the essence of laughter

We don’t just laugh for the sake of merriment. It is actually about cultivating childlike playfulness. Once you embrace your innate childlike playfulness, you don’t have to force yourself to laugh. Laughter will be the natural outcome of your playful inner child and you will lose your inhibitions. If you want to free yourself from your dependence on jokes and external factors, but still want to laugh, simply become more childlike. In the initial growth of Social Laughter Clubs, telling jokes was unable to produce sustained and harmless laughter, and forced laughter became mechanical and monotonous.

Hence the reason why Laughter Yoga exercises and childlike playfulness are the focal point of Laughter Clubs today. This helps keeps the members engaged in the activities.

Robert Holden once wrote: “Every child is born with abundant creative potential for laughter, fun, play, happiness and love. Any restraint on any of these has as adverse effect on the child’s growth and development. Anyone who grows with the inner child will find health, harmony and happiness. Therefore, instead of growing out of the child, we should grow with the child” – from Laughter, the Best Medicine.

Laughter Yoga can help you revisit your childhood, so you can try and carry your innate carefree spirit over to daily life.

You can train your body and mind to laugh

Our body and mind can be trained to laugh at will. It is like learning to ride a bicycle which uses muscle memory; once you learn the skill, you never forget. The theory of NLP indicates that by repeating any bodily behaviour over a period of time, the mind begins to generate a predictable response. The body learns to produce a knee-jerk reaction without involving the rational brain to process ‘thinking’. This is called ‘conditioning’.

With repetitive exercises, the body starts reacting out of reflex before the conscious brain can rationalise and process the stimuli. Throughout our lives we are conditioned in both positive and negative ways.

Over time, members of Laughter Clubs become conditioned to be joyful through the bodily experiences of doing Laughter Yoga; the brain develops new neuronal connections that produce happy chemistry in the body. These reactions can be triggered simply by laughter exercises, and doing certain actions of the body which lead the mind to experience the emotion of joy – no matter what.

SOURCE: The Inner Spirit of Laughter by Dr. Madan Kataria.