Lesson #16: Laughter is medicine

The older I get, the more I laugh. Tonight, on our family holiday, we’ve been playing the Family edition of Cards Against Humanity, and there has been a lot of laughter at the ridiculous answers to ridiculous questions.

Up until a few years ago, I rarely laughed. I was overly serious and life wasn’t much fun. One thing that helped me a lot was a breathwork course with Scott Schwenk on the Commune platform called Ecstatic Breathwork. Interspersed with the breathwork is ‘fake laughter’ which acts to open up the diaphragm, tone the vagus nerve and encourage us to ‘lighten up’. Scott advises, in the course, that if you want to change how you feel, set a timer for a minute and laugh. I’ve never done this in such a formal way, but I do, on occasion, burst into spontaneous laughter, often while standing under a cold shower.

Lately, the playful actions of my puppy, Esse, brings lots of laughter and joy. The fact that I now laugh regularly is evidence of how much my life has transformed over the past few years, very much for the better. Seeing the lighter side of life is a blessing I will continue to cultivate and appreciate.

I’d like to finish this off with some sort of joke or light-hearted observation ..

Ah well.

Another time.