ROCK YOUR WORLD: LAUGHING OFTEN, LAUGHING MORE!

News from Denise and Summerhill Ranch

Denise shares her experience about her dog Sadie who “cried wolf” (pardon the pun!).  She also shares about her interaction with a virtual assistant at a company she dealt with – she discovered that she was live chatting to a computer software program!!

Laughter and vibration:

Laughing more, laughing often, laughing louder can really help you to overcome blockages.  This raises your vibration, and difficulties are easier to overcome when your vibration is up.

Laughter therapy through history:

· 400 Years ago, Robert Burton said:  “Humour purges the blood, making the body young and lively and fit for any manner of employment.” 

· Plato and Socrates also talked about the benefits of laughter.

· In the 13^th Century, it was used as an anaesthetic for surgical procedures (since anaesthesia didn’t exist then) because it decreased the pain. 

· In the 16^th Century, laughter was prescribed to prevent colds and flus, and when someone had a disease or depression, laughter was prescribed so that the disease/depression could be overcome more quickly. 

· In medieval times, a jester would appear after meals because it was believed that laughter aided indigestion (which it does). 

· Freud and Darwin said that laughter relieves tension and stress.

Benefits of laughter:

1. Immune system – when you laugh, there is immediately a release of disease killing cells (gamma interferon and T-cells mass multiply), and stress hormones such as cortisol start to decrease.  Even “fake” laughs work!
2. It can lower blood pressure.  It was found that people with heart disease are 40% less likely to laugh – there’s an inverse correlation between laughter and heart disease.
3. Laughter oxygenates the blood and you get an “internal workout” – your diaphragm, abdomen and respiratory muscles get a “massage” because of the laughter.
4. It increases your brain capacity – a study at Johns Hopkins revealed that when a teacher uses humour during lessons, there is a dramatic increase in test scores. Laughter improves alertness, creativity and memory.   A study at Stanford showed that laughter is one of the few activities that engages the whole brain, and so all your systems are more balanced.
5. It’s contagious – it brings people together and creates community.
6. It triggers endorphins (natural painkillers).
7. Humour works in less than half a second – electrical impulses surge through your whole body.
8. It builds relationships – smiling begins the relationships.  Even if your smile/laugh was fake at first (because you wanted to “act as if”), it’s a beginning and can start a genuine relationship. 
9. 
   It can change a threat into a challenge – laughter makes things less threatening and more positive.  Learning to laugh can allow you to develop strategies to overcome that challenge or blockage.

How to laugh if you don’t feel like laughing:

1. You Tube videos – look up funny commercials/videos on You Tube.  Find humour that works for you.
2. Faking it – so what if it’s not sincere.  You’re still increasing your immunity, overcoming blockages, etc.  There comes a point when it becomes genuine because laughter is a behaviour conditioned response.  How do you fake it:  go into a room by yourself and start chortling!  Keep doing it.  Try different kinds of laughs (the evil laugh, the stupid laugh, etc.)  You have nothing to lose!!  It might shift your life.
3. Download movies or rent DVD’s that are funny.  There have been stories of people with life-threatening diseases who were able to shift their health by continuously watching humour.
4. Do fun things that will make you laugh – push your parameters eg.  roller-skate, go to Disney World, etc.
5. Make a timeline of your life – it chronicles your life.  Imagine that you’re the director of the movie that is your life – how could you make a comedy out of your life?  How could you look at the events in your life so that they are funny?
6. Take a time of adversity in your life (eg. when you were victimized) and dramatize that event in your life, then role-play this with your friends.  But then do it again as a comedy!  By shifting the way that you view this event, it becomes less ingrained in you and all the beliefs and decisions that you adopted at the time (that have remained with you) begin to dissolve.
7. Laughing yoga – this is a class where you just laugh.  This might feel fake, but there is a shift (a behaviour conditioned response) and you begin to create new neural pathways of joy and happiness in you.

Denise’s Wisdom of the Week:

“The hero is defined by the size of the dragon (opponent/adversity).”

“Find the good now instead of waiting for the good stuff to happen”.

“When you shift your energy field, miracles begin to flow into your life.”

Further Tips from Denise:

When you think the odds are against you and you don’t feel like laughing or don’t know how you can get through it, just think:  “Bring it on!”

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