Laughing at Cancer. Ros Ben-Moshe

      Can you recall a dream you had relating to a significant moment or event that was prophetic in some way?

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      During times of angst have you ever made a conscious wish before you sleep for a dream to help guide you? If not, why not experiment? As our analytical minds are put to sleep, dreams open the door to one’s unconscious mind and perhaps even to a spiritual realm.

      6 June 2011

      Forced Laughter

      Today I held a laughter session for the annual party of a lingerie company, of all places. At the time of booking I was thrilled to receive an invitation to present to a new client, certain it would be a fun crowd. For the past few days all I have wanted to do was cancel. How could I muster the strength and state of mind to run a laughter session when all I wanted was to hide from the public and cry? This was undoubtedly the LAST place I felt I could be.

      My mind casts back to the first time I was introduced to Laughter Yoga at a World Health Promotion conference some five years ago. So entranced by this delightfully wacky practice, not long thereafter I trained as a laughter yoga leader. Still fresh in my mind was my first official laughter gig for local residents at a community health centre. I had been told to expect a crowd of around ten. Grey hair and wrinkles was all I saw as six septua-genarians trickled through the door. Burying my disappointment I began the session. Barely moments passed before bright eyes, youthfulness and a spark for life reclaimed the room. Boy had I underestimated this crowd and the power of laughter. As they say the rest is history. Until this moment in time I have delighted in facilitating laughter yoga sessions on the side of my academic life. Yet come this morning, I am feeling distinctly less than delighted. Too late to cancel, I made myself presentable, psyched myself up and garnered as much energy as my night of sleep deprivation allowed. I put on a face and not just the makeup kind! If there was a measure for stress, mine was stratospheric.

      Thirty or so chatty and excitable ladies filled the room. Their energy was palpable whilst mine still had not entered the room. The hostess introduced me, saying, ‘We’re so happy to have Ros here today, especially as she is going through a bit of a tough time at the moment.’ I had previously forewarned the hostess I was in the midst of a mini health crisis, but had not imagined she would divulge this to the audience. Her words were the last thing I wanted to hear. Please tears stop welling up!

      I took a deep breath in and focused on the task ahead. I explained how laughter yoga evolved decades ago in India, and more recently had taken the world by storm through laughter clubs, with Indian Doctor Madan Kataria2 and his wife Madhuri at the helm. As it doesn’t rely on humour to be effective it is a winning formula that can be used for people, such as yours truly, who really are not in the mood to laugh. Combining laughter exercises, deep breathing and clapping whilst chanting ‘ho, ho, ha ha ha,’ I went on to explain that laughter being used as medicine or therapy was not new – far from it. As far as back the 1500s one particular Court jester is believed to have kept Queen Elizabeth 1 in better health than her physicians. In more modern times clown doctors in over-sized shoes and bulbous red noses traipse down hospital corridors around the world bringing play, humour and laughter to patients, family and staff. There’s an array of humour based laughter therapy and non-humour based laughter therapy: the common denominator being laughter for health’s sake.

      It’s not just the feel good nature of laughter; there is the hard-core science behind it. I then recounted some of the many health benefits including its ability to trigger endorphins (those happy hormones), to stimulating the immune and lymphatic systems, improving circulation, reducing pain and muscle tension and even lowering blood pressure.

      I asked the group how many times a day on average they laughed; a question I’m sure they would never have thought about before, let alone been asked. I then had them guess how many times a day children laugh on average. Everyone was amazed to hear how often that was in comparison to adults. I invited their contributions and a lively discussion ensued. Unsurprisingly stress topped the list, with one lady bellowing, ‘children don’t have mortgages!’ I relayed my own theory: children laugh from the heart; they don’t think about it, they just do it.

      I was saved from having to draw on precious grey matter having given this spiel countless times before and reverted to autopilot. I relayed how, in most societies, as we grow older, our laughter-self becomes conditioned, beginning as early as our junior school years when teachers scald us for laughing out of turn. No one likes to be told off. Just as no one likes to be laughed at. All too soon we learn the harsh distinction between laughing with someone and laughing at someone. Over time this intensifies, as we become increasingly conscious of how others perceive us when we laugh. How will we be viewed if we laugh seemingly inappropriately or excessively? The professional workplace is the biggest culprit. Our inner voice decrees, ‘I’m in a serious job now it can’t look like I’m having too much fun or people will assume I’m not doing my job well.’ Rather than just laughing for laughter’s sake as we did as children, we bring an intellectual or critical quality to our laughter, so for many, over time, the laughter-fountain dries up. We laugh on the inside, saying things like ‘that’s really funny’, and far too often abstain from laughing out loud.

      I refrained from getting too bogged down in technicalities, battling far worse than brain-fog, but as a pedlar of hope, I wanted to recount some basics of neuroplasticity: the brain’s amazing ability to change and heal itself in response to mental experience.

      Captive audience in hand, I delivered the exciting news that the brain is not as fixed and unchangeable as was once thought. As I write, I clearly recall the relief I first felt when exposed to these notions in Dr Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain That Changes Itself 3. His research discounted the misconception I had lived with my whole life: that all those collective bumps and knocks to my head had NOT resulted in permanent brain cell loss. We can grow new ones. We