be happier

How could you not click on a link called "Be Happier"? Isnt that what everyone wants? Even if you don't want to increase your happiness you probably want to maintain what happiness you already have. I've pursued happiness for a lifetime with various degree of success but I can say that attending laughter clubs has been one of the better things I've tried (and I've tried a lot). It costs next to nothing and has definite, noticeable benefits.

humour v laughter

Humour and laughter are not the same thing - humour is the capacity for an individual to perceive, relate and experience a given situation in a more funny and humourous way. Laughter is one expression of your sense of humour (another expression might be smiling).

In fact there is some research that humour is even better for you than laughter. Humour involves seeing and interpreting a situation and then expressing it. The act of interpreting a situation as funny involves more of your brain (your entire cerebral cortex) than just laughter and this might have greater benefits.

The good thing is that they are interrelated and developing one helps develop the other. (In fact this is true of most skills. That's why so many geniuses excelled at many different activities).

Sense of humour: Faculty of perceiving facetiousness or comicality and enjoying what is ludicrous or amusing.

Laughter: Making the sounds and movements of face and body by which lively amusement, sense of the ludicrous and exultation are instinctively expressed.

developing a sense of humour by laughing

This section is provided with thanks to Madan Kataria's article "Understanding the new concept of Laughter Yoga".

Everyone has a tremendous potential to laugh but this seems to reduce as we get older. Children laugh 300-400 times a day - not because they have a good sense of humour but because it is the nature of a child to be joyful. By the time we become adults we laugh just 15 times a day (not even that on a bad day).

Becoming wealthier is not the answer either. In the 1950s people used to laugh an average of 18 minutes a day but now it is just 6 minutes a day - despite the enormous rise in living standards. There's an epidemic of seriousness! Not every society is the same. Anyone who has been to Thailand can attest to the capacity for Thai adults to continue to laugh and smile into old age, even living in relative poverty.

As we get older (and it appears, richer) our laughter gets lost among increasing piles of FUNGI (Fear, Unhappiness, Neuroticisms, Greed and worst of all Inibition) as well as self-control, responsibility and insecurity. Now FUNGI usually live under DUNG (Disgust, Unhappiness, Neutoricisim, Greed). We need to remove all the DUNG, extract ourselves from the FUNGI and get to the fun in order to laugh more.

That's why the laughter clubs work so well - they help you overcome your inhibitions, relax, have some fun and become playful again. And like a muscle - the more you flex it the more you laugh. This in turn activates your sense of humour. As far as your body goes it can't tell the difference between whether you're laughing for real or pretending. The funny thing is (oops a pun) after a while it all comes more naturally and you start finding you are laughing spontaneously more and more often.

why happiness?

Why strive for happiness? It's not as silly a question as it might seem - after all did Ghandi strive for his own happiness or the liberation of his people? What about Mandela?

Whatever your personal choice one good reason to strive for happiness is the health benefits. There have been plenty of studies that show that people with unhappy emotional states have poorer health than those with average emotional states. Now studies are showing positive moods = positive health. i.e:

• lower cortisol levels
• for men (but not women) lower heart rates
• lower levels of blood protein fibrinogen

(Fibrinogen is a molecule which makes your blood sticky and is vital to clotting but too much can contribute to heart disease).

It appears that positive moods help you to respond appropriately to the environment. According to Professor Jane Wardle, University College, London, UK, happiness makes "...the little hassles and irritations of everyday life loom less large, so you don't get such strong reactions to them."