Body
The Bible has surprisingly little to say about laughter but, what it does say is important. Proverb 17:22 tells us “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.” This ancient wisdom is getting confirmed by modern science, with some studies suggesting that laughing may actually boost the immune system and thereby help us to fight disease. In the late 1800’s William James suggested a novel idea about emotions, i.e., that the mental state follows the physical body. As he put it, “We don’t sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.” According to James, if we aren’t feeling particularly happy the thing to do is to make the body do something that looks like happiness, such as laugh or sing. Even fake laughing will sometimes seem funny enough to get us really laughing. In the 1970s Norman Cousins popularized the idea that laughing could actually be curative after he treated his ankylosing spondylitis (a form of arthritis) with repeated doses of vitamin C and Marx brothers’ films. In recent years, researchers have continued to explore the connection between laughing and physical health, and while the conclusions are still tentative, there is little doubt that laughing has an anesthetic effect, relieving us of pain via a surge of endorphins, and it also decreases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So, we should laugh, it’s probably good for us, and it certainly can’t hurt.
