10 Minutes of Laughter

10 Minutes of Laughter

You’ve heard that laughter is the best medicine, but did you know that one hardy laugh can be just as effective as a pain medication, sustaining pain relief for almost two hours? Of course, this is hard to prove medically, but many people have reported total healing has occurred when watching a series of funny movies and programs and staying positive and out of a depressive state.

This, of course, doesn’t work when you have had your stomach muscles cut, such as with surgeries such as a Caesarean birth and hernia surgeries. In these cases, laughing actually exacerbates healing. When I began recovering from my hernia surgery, I actually had to send my mother home, because she kept trying to make me laugh, which was providing more pain than comfort.

After a few days I invited her back as laughter became a great relief and healing factor. If you go to the Internet for studies about how happiness and positive living provides the necessary environment for a healthy body, you’ll find a myriad of advice and stories of miraculous recovery.

In my own life, I can tell you that the healthier I feel mentally, the better my body feels, almost inevitably. I notice that during days of beautiful sunlight and clear days that my body also feels better and healthier. On the contrary, my sensitivity to the weather makes me have more challenging days when it rains or is considerably overcast. This illness is called SADS (Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome). Plenty of my friends have the same reaction to weather as I do, as do many of my Sensory Defensive Clients.

Sensory Defensiveness—the feeling of being overloaded by light, sound, and touch is a difficult disease to shake, because you are affected by people and environment that you can’t change almost every day. For instance, I am waiting for my friend Sharon to have eye surgery. The waiting area has overhead lighting that is annoying and causing a migraine. I had to go to my car for a pair of sunglasses to keep from getting a headache. Even now, I’m having to rest my eyes periodically to keep that feeling of an angry claw clamping down on my head from happening.

Other ways to help SADS and Sensory Defensiveness is to do actions that change the neural pathways firing in the brain or, at least, slow them down. You can wear a weighted vest or ankle weights. This has proven to be one of the best solutions for me. I know it looks a little odd for the weighted vest, but I can usually find a pair of pants that will cover ankle weights, if I have to be in a place such as a bar, theater or department store, where the environment is often frenetic and challenging for me.

Of course, if your problem is bright light, carry a pair of wrap-around sunglasses with you at all times. I’m thanking God right now for the sunglasses I’m wearing now. The headache is subsiding slowly, especially since I am doing a few yoga stretches to my neck and shoulders intermittently as I finish this blog.

Yoga is also a great way to get to know your body. In theory, the yoga movement practice was developed to experience every part of the human anatomy. This experience is actually for a different reason than you may think. The asana or movement portion of yoga was actually practiced to discover every part of God in you. As the scriptures say “that we are made in the image of God,” the yogis believed that discovering God could be helped by challenging the breath of life by creating different breath exercises. Each exercise helps the mind to control that body and the breath, which, in turn, helps you discover more of God.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com. Please feel free to comment and/or sign up to receive your blog sent to you directly or stream with an RSS Feed.

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