It is said that more than 4000 years ago there were some temples in the ancient Chinese Empire, where people got together to laugh with the aim of balancing their health. People visiting India can also find sacred places where laughter is performed.

 

Laughter is a serious business. Laughter therapy is presented as a door open to relaxation, using techniques to release body tension such as self-expression through movement, breathing exercises, massage, play and dance; massage and techniques to laugh naturally, healthily and openly. The objective is to improve a person�s emotional state and lead them to face life with a positive outlook, through optimism and good humour.

 

Origin and evolution
Laughter brings numerous benefits for, in addition to eliminating stress and anxiety, it helps in cases of heart and breathing problems, depression, insomnia and other conditions. Laughter therapy has been successfully applied for more than twenty-five years in countries such as the United States, France, Canada and Switzerland, and it is used in an attempt to alleviate the emotional impact caused by disease. It is about removing patients from their situation, freeing their minds of the tension produced by disease and focussing their attention on ideas and situations that make them smile.

 

The first studies into the effects of humour on the human body were carried out in the United States in the 1930s. But it was not until the 1970s that laughter therapy came to be properly known thanks to the famous case of Norman Cousins, a well-known critic and editor at the Saturday Review who was diagnosed with a very painful type of spinal arthritis, which left him crippled. Doctors advised him to try and laugh to make himself feel better. So Cousins started to watch films by the Marx brothers, and �Laurel and Hardy� and by laughing out loud he started to feel better. The more he laughed, the better he felt physically. Combining his laughter therapy with doses of vitamin C and following doctors� orders, he managed to rid himself of the disease in a matter of months. Although no cause and effect relationship can be scientifically proven, it is true that there have been a large number of cases where good spirits have considerably improved a patient�s condition. 

 

However, at the end of the eighties it was confirmed as something more than a theory. A few more studies found that laughter stimulated the immune system and reduced levels of cortisol, a stress hormone found in the blood. Other studies proved that laughter increased the heartbeat, relaxed arm and leg muscles, made breathing easier and helped to release negative feelings such as frustration and anger.

 

Positive effects
Anyone who wants to, not just the sick, can take part in laughter therapy. Generally, classes are made up of different sections. The first, more theoretical, is where different types of laughter are analysed and a review of this phenomenon in different cultures is carried out. Then exercises are performed to relax the body, particularly the lungs, back and stomach, so as to facilitate the subsequent laughter. Communication exercises are also performed, so that the people taking part start to lose their inhibitions and lastly the various techniques are put into practice with the aim of producing genuine hilarity.

 

As a consequence of laughing out loud, a series of effects are experienced by the body, all of them very positive. When we burst out laughing, some four-hundred muscles are used, the diaphragm performs an internal massage which makes digestion easier and helps to reduce fatty acids, stimulates the spleen and eliminates toxins and the spine and neck muscles, where tension usually accumulates, are stretched.

 

Laughter causes the head to vibrate, the eyes are cleaned as a result of the tears and the ears and nose are unblocked. Furthermore, the skin is oxygenated, as twice as much air enters the lungs. Lastly, it encourages the production of endorphins and encephalines in the brain, natural analgesics that protect us from disease. They are neurotransmitters whose function is to relieve pain, reducing the body�s receptiveness in the face of pain. This is why, by laughing and relaxing the nervous system improvements in medical conditions are often achieved.