Benefits To You

Laughter has many proven benefits - in the workplace, for your mind, body and spirit and on social occasions.

workplace benefits

A study by the Business Council of Australia found that ‘fun’ was one of the key elements of extraordinary, productive workplaces [1]. Workplaces which achieved outstanding performance are filled with laughter and humour.

“Fun workplaces tend to enhance learning, productivity and creativity, and reduce … employee burnout [and] high absenteeism”.

... and how does laughter improve workplaces?

1. laughter reduces stress and its costs

Stress is one of the biggest work-related health costs for employers:

  • up to 75% of all time lost in workplaces is stress-related
  • up to 80% of industrial accidents are due to stress
  • 1 in 10 workers are affected on the job by anxiety, depression and stress
  • 40% of job turnover is due to stress and it costs 50- 150% of an employee's salary to replace them

As a result, workers compensation payments for stress have sky-rocketed. Stress costs businesses roughly $1,200 per year [2]. (More about the stress-reducing benefits of laughter below.).

2. laughing builds rapport

Laughter is one of the best ways to build a team. Sharing a laugh is a terrific way to build close relationships. Look to your own experience – how hard is it to be in conflict with someone you can laugh with?

Laughter is a great social lubricant – it discharges negative emotions and helps you relax with others. How often have you noticed that after conflict or a rift things become ‘right’ when you laugh together again. And when you can laugh together you can collaborate together.

“There is an epidemic of seriousness that is raging all over the world. People seem to think that being grim faced and serious is the only way of showing their commitment to work."
- Madhuri Kataria, co-founder, World Laughter Movement

3. laughter improves communication

Laughter is the shock absorber for life. Laughter, jokes and humour make it easier to discuss difficult or sensitive issues. See above.

4. laughter aids innovation and creativity.

“Humour loosens up the mental gears. It encourages out-of-the-ordinary ways
of looking at things" [3].

Fun, humour, laughter and playfulness all help us to be more creative and see the world in a different way. Seeing things differently helps us to break old patterns and develop unique products and innovative ways of doing things. Humour lights up your whole brain.

5. laughter energises

Apart from the fact that it feels good and makes you want to come to work – it also increases the blood flow, oxygenates the blood and lifts your mood. Try it in the middle of the afternoon or when you are stuck. Try a laughter session at your next conference or innovation session.

"Employers who actively sustain a positive environment could experience up to 25% improvements in efficiency and customer satisfaction” — Journal of Applied Psychology.

at social, family and festive occasions

Want to get your next event off to a flying start (or a hilarious finish)? Try a facilitated laughter session - weddings, parties, they suit any social occasion really! Laughter will get people talking to each other. It eases social anxiety and acts as a social lubricant to get people talking to each other and laughing together.

My doctor gave me something he says is good for migraine. I wish he'd give me something that is bad for it!

references

  1. Hull, D. and V. Read,Simply the Best Workplaces in Australia. 2003, ACIRRT - University of Sydney + Business Council of Australia: Sydney. p. 41.
  2. Unknown author,Stress Facts.The College of St. Scholastica www.css.edu/users/dswenson/web/Stress/stressfacts.html. Last accessed: June 2005
  3. Doskoch, P.,Happily Ever Laughter.Psychology Today http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php. Last accessed: 26/4/2005
  4. Kataria, D.M.,Laugh for No Reason. 2002, Mumbai: Madhuri International.
  5. Berk, R.,Research Critiques Incite Words of Mass Destruction.Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor http://aath.org/art_berkr01.html. Last accessed: 26/4/05
  6. Junkins, E.,The Role of Laughter in Psychotherapy. http://www.laughtertherapy.com/Articlesbestbetforblues.htm. Last accessed: 26/4/05
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laughter for your body

The many physiological benefits of laughter make it "great medicine":

  1. Laughter reduces stress and produces endorphins that make you feel good
  2. Laughter relaxes your muscles
  3. Laughter boosts your immune system. This happens for two reasons:
    • Stress hormones and flight-or-fight compounds suppress the immune system. By changing your mood, laughter "unsuppresses" the immune system. It provides a safety valve which shuts of the flight-or-fight response and lets your body function return to normal.
    • Laughter boosts your immune system directly and causes:
      • cancer fighting lymphocytes to increase
      • immunoglobin (sIgA) increase - this defends you from infections via the respiratory tract
      • increased T cell activation and number
      • increase in number of B cells which produce disease-fighting protein
      • Gamma-interferon (a disease fighting protein)
      • These effects last from 30 minutes to over 12 hours! There is a famous case of a man called Norman Cousins who cured himself of cancer by laughing.
  4. Laughter therapy is an excellent aerobic exercise. Laughing 100 times is as much a workout as 10 minutes of rowing or 15 minutes on an exercise bike.
  5. Laughter helps you lose weight. Researchers at Vanderbuilt University found that 15 minutes of laughter burns as much as 50 calories. According to nutritionist Dr Mac Buchowski, a healthy laugh a day "could burn 2 to 4 pounds of fat, even without changing dietary habits". Sure beats dieting.
  6. Improves breathing (respiration) and blood circulation. Under normal conditions a small amount of air stays in your lungs which carries more carbon dioxide and moisture. Laughing forces you to expell all the air in your lungs getting rid of excess carbon dioxide and moisture. It also loosens up and helps you expel mucus and phlegm.
  7. 10 minutes of laughter can result in two hours of pain relief. This occurs because laughter releases two neuropeptides endorphins and enkephalins – the bodies’ natural pain-suppressing opioids[4]. The Tasmanian Arthritis Foundation has incorporated laughter into its support groups.
  8. Laughter lowers blood pressure. Ten minutes of laughter therapy reduces blood pressure by 10-20 mm.
  9. Laughter therapy is a good massage for your organs. Laughter has been likened to internal jogging - it gives your organs a good rub around.
  10. Happiness, laughter and love of friends are as important to protecting us from heart disease as keeping cholesterol under control and taking an aspirin. A researcher at the University of Maryland, Michael Miller, recommends at least 15 minutes of hearty laughter a day to ward of heart attack. 15 minutes of laughter relaxes arteries and raises blood flow for up to 45 minutes - comparable with aerobic excecise.
"The more I laugh as an exercise, the more laughter creeps back into the rest of my life. It's like you've tuned the engine. It's quite powerful, you can laugh more than you think you can. And when you do, you'll feel good."
- Tim Scally, comedian and laughter leader.

for the mind and spirit

The evidence for the psychological benefits of laughter is even stronger.

“...[laughter] enables one to distance oneself from professional and personal problems, that is, to detach or disengage mentally to put those situations into a proper
perspective.” [5]
  1. Laughter improves your mood.
    Laughter is cathartic; it releases negative emotions particularly anger, anxiety, fear and boredom in a pleasant and acceptable way [6]. Building more humour and laughter in your life helps assure that these (Neuropeptides) chemical messages are working for you, not against you.
  2. Laughter improves creativity.
    Laughing in response to something funny is a very sophisticated brain function which sweeps our entire cerebral cortex and is terrific for mental flexibility.
    There's an old story about a reporter interviewing Albert Einstein at his laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. The reporter was surprised to see a large horseshoe hanging over the professor's office doorway. "Professor Einstein," she asked, "you're a great scientist. Surely you don't believe a horseshoe will bring good luck. "Of course I don't," he replied. "Then why is the horseshoe up there?" the reporter insisted. "Because it works whether you believe it or not."
  3. Laughter therapy relieves depression.
    See 1 above
  4. Laughter reduces barriers
    Laughing is wonderful for team-building. It works extremely well at social functions and events where people may not know each other very well.
  5. Laughter therapy helps us deal with our mortality.
    “People's willingness to sign the organ donor consent on their driver's license rises with their tendency to laugh.”

    “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people” - Thomas Borges

    “Creativity and humour are identical. They both involve bringing together two items which do not have an obvious
    connection and creating a relationship. [3]”
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