Laughter Is The Best Medicine For Anxiety, Too

We all have heard this adage so many times that the meaning is lost on us now. However, this is indeed wisdom that you should give due importance. Anxiety is in one way the opposite of happiness or laughter. By this definition, it would make sense that if you laughed often enough anxiety would not be able to establish a hold on you. However, what if the anxiety already got hold on you? Could you reverse the condition with laughter? Yes, you can.

Laughter therapy is today accepted and promoted by traditional doctors because it is indeed able to do miracles. Just by laughing aloud about 10-20 minutes every day, you would reduce your blood pressure, heart problems, and respiratory problems and boost your immune system. How does this work? Laughter promotes the production of endorphins or the feel-good hormones, which in turn relax the body and mind.

Laughter also regulated the function of the endocrine glands, whereby the hormones production in the body is regularized. Hormones, as you all know, are what keep our systems functioning properly; once the hormone production is optimal, all the systems in the body perform optimally. The result is that you look, are and feel healthy.

You should seriously consider taking up the laughter therapy and laugh aloud for about 10-20 minutes every day. Initially, it would be difficult to laugh without any reason. This is why laughter therapy works best when practiced in groups. For best results you need at least five-six people who would get together and laugh loudly; there would be a leader who stands in front of the group and laughs loudly asking the group to follow him or her, just as a lead would do in aerobics or any such exercises. Just because everyone would look so silly, people who would initially laugh forcefully would gradually enjoy themselves enough to have a good laugh.

In case the laughter therapy does not appeal to you or you are unable to practice this, there are other ways to ensure that laughter becomes an integral part of your daily life. Here are ten easy and effective suggestions:

1. Read jokes on or off the Net
2. See a comedy once in a while
3. Learn to laugh at yourself; you will never run out of reasons to laugh
4. Learn to look for the lighter side of any situation; it would take a while initially, but after a while, you would be able to instantly see the funny part even in the worst of situations
5. Nurture relationships with people who laugh easily and are projecting happiness around them
6. Avoid morose, pessimist type of people, unless you feel you could help them cross over to the humorous side
7. Make it a point to do something that you love and gives you happiness, at least once a week. Every three months treat yourself with a small gift and once in a year have an outing with your friends (exclude your spouse, if he or she does not match this circle) and have a blast.
8. Introduce a pet into your home and life. Anything would do - a fish, cat, parakeet, dog, badger, rabbit, lizard, frog, snake and what-you-may-have. As you learn to appreciate this being, you would feel relaxed and happy just by watching the animal(s). The pet therapy has been proved as being one of the best boosters of 'the will to live'. When senior people were introduced to pets, their memory, health and overall disposition improved considerably. People ailing with terminal diseases started responding to medication; depressed patients made a faster transition, and stressed out people felt more relaxed in the company of animals.
9. Look around you and start a 'I want to help' chain. Help someone you know who needs help; instead of accepting their thanks, ask them to help someone they felt needed help and so on. It is amazing what a little kindness can do to your life and that of others.
10.Do a good deed every week just as a regular feature. Helping others gives you a sense of achievement and fulfillment that no professional or personal accomplishment can equal. When you know you can make a difference, however humble this would be, in somebody's life you would feel a sweet, quiet inner happiness that cannot be compared with any other.

Humor has been accepted as a great catalyst in medicine, a fact endorsed by umpteen research studies on a huge repertoire of diseases, especially serious disorders. Train your mind to see the lighter side of life and you will find that when you open the door to laughter, the one leading to worry and anxiety is shut tight.

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