Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, July 18, 2025

“Laughter is inner jogging.” – Norman Cousins

You’re just not going to find too many people who will argue that laughter is not good for you. Maybe not a single person, or even a single grumpy person.

I was thinking of my father — retired military man and oftentimes a bit of a hard-ass — who could be heard after everyone else had gone to bed wheezing with laughter from the TV room, Johnny Carson monologuing in the background. Dad’s laughter was good for him, but it was probably equally good for us.

Most families or groups of friends rely on memories of epic laughs as part and parcel of refilling the feel-good tank. Most of us have memories of laughing so hard we cried, or peed, or, as in the case of my mom many years ago watching a Peter Sellers Pink Panther movie in a theater, got her jaw stuck open while horse laughing. (It wasn’t funny at the time, but got plenty of mileage later on.)

Just this week, I stumbled upon a decade old Saturday Night Live skit I had never seen before, featuring comedian and actress Maya Rudolph — and I just could not stop laughing. I watched it three times and was doubled up and hiccoughing through it each time.

By the end of it, I felt so good, it was as if I’d just had a workout, a nervous system reset and my stems put in water, all at once. My diaphragm got worked, my lungs, my face, my vocal cords and my tear ducts. My mind felt tickled into a pleasing sort of surrender state. It occurred to me how lucky I was to be a human being capable of getting a joke and laughing until physically worked over in the best possible way.

Norman Cousins, the award-winning journalist quoted above who died in 1979, wrote a celebrated book called The Anatomy of an Illness, in which he documented using laughter to treat his own debilitating disease and grim prognosis. This important work on the connection between state of mind and state of body was instrumental in bringing psychoneuroimmunology — the effect of mental state on the immune system — to the forefront, where it firmly remains.

According to a 2016 article called The Laughter Prescription in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (a peer-reviewed academic publication), both spontaneous and self-induced laughter affect health in positive ways, though somewhat differently. Spontaneous or genuine laughter has been linked with increased positivity, reduced stress hormones, reduced anxiety and enhanced immune function. Self-induced laughter, a newer study and actively practiced in laughter yoga and laughter therapy, is being used to reduce pain and improve coping mechanisms.

It might feel strange to induce laughter with a ha or hahaha, or hoho, or a tee-hee or to be given a prescription for laughing in order to help yourself heal. But anyone can try it, connect with the sensations and not suffer any side effects whatsoever. And, the attempts will probably end up making you laugh in earnest.

I have a couple friends I can think of — we all probably do — who really love to laugh and seem to know just how important it is for their overall health. Today more than ever, I see them as role models, in the sense of not only finding the humor in things, but actively looking for it. Seeking opportunities to laugh not just in this world of viral reels but also in their everyday lives.

Though there are purportedly dozens and dozens of theories on laughter; the three most prevalent are release theory (physical release of repressed desires), superiority theory (a means of increasing self-esteem at others’ expense) and incongruity theory (creating a sense of incongruity within a joke). We don’t often think about this, but I would wager that most of us can think of examples of each of these kinds of laughter.

The conclusion that seems self-evident is that laughter, like other workouts, is important for staying happy and fit! Whether you like physical comedy, stand-up, reels about dogs or babies (try searching for the thrown slice of cheese that stops babies from crying), parody…Whether it’s a cackle, a titter, a guffaw, a belly laugh, a chuckle, a giggle, or a snort — just do it. Do more than text the letters LOL, which generally does not include any real out loud laughter, at all.