THERE is a powerful saying by The Buddha which goes like this – ‘Don’t believe me try it for yourself’ – in other words it is in the ‘doing’ of something that the real benefits reveal themselves.
This is certainly a truism in the case of laughter and is well recognised by the sages of bygone eras, so much so that they left us with well-known sayings like
‘Laughter is the best medicine’
‘Smile and the world smiles with you, weep and you weep alone’
Even if you met someone and they made you laugh you would say things like ‘He was an absolute tonic’ or ‘the laughter was infectious’.
A great piece of advice to any young person doing an interview is remind them to ‘smile’, if for nothing else it portrays a demeanour of confidence and also helps create a more relaxed atmosphere.
The benefits are without doubt, but one must ask ‘Why ?’
At a risk of being a total bore, we must again go back to our ancestors and the way they lived their lives.
The secret lies in our genetic make-up. If ancient man was being attacked by a tiger, his first and foremost reaction was ‘survival’ – the obvious thing was to get away from the predator – which involved an increase in heart rate to pump oxygen around the body, an increase in adrenaline and all the other necessary requirements to engage the ‘fight or flight’ mode.
Ah! But what is missing at this vital stage? Laughter!
If you were running from a wild tiger the very last thing that you would be doing at that stage is laughing as the body is taken up with too many more important (vital for survival) things and certainly would not waste any energy on unnecessary laughter, when there is an onslaught of real danger.
So real danger equates to ‘absence of laughter’ and here lies the secret!
In the world we live in, all those ‘real dangers’ are now for the most part non-existent, but our bodies are still programmed to perceive ‘absence of laughter’ as meaning the ‘presence of danger’ in other words fear!
The corollary is also true. The presence of laughter represents absence of fear to the body. There is a great saying and it goes ‘fake it to make it’ and this is so true in this particular instance.
The body doesn’t know whether the reason for laughing is ‘Real’ of ‘Not’ but it still interprets the presence of laughter as being absence of fear and thus smiling and laughter contribute to a calm atmosphere – man will smile and laugh when there is no danger i.e calm.
A great health tip for you and for the world is to ‘Keep on Smiling’.
I am going to leave you with a lovely poem which speaks for itself;
Smiling is infectious
You catch it like the flu
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too.
I walked around the corner
And someone saw me grin
When he smiled I realised
I had passed it on to him
I thought about the smile
And then realised its worth
A single smile like mine
Could travel round the earth
So if you feel a smile begin
Don’t leave it undetected
Start an epidemic
And get the world infected.
Next week, I am going to write about the benefits of a Buddhist philosophy towards life.
• Roger Harty is a life coach and can be contacted on 087-6128336, on twitter at @Innerjoyz1 or by email rogharty@gmail.com
