Are Your Birthday's Happy-Part 6

"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult."– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Linda, my wife, and I recently began ballroom dancing lessons to incorporate an additional healthy and fun habit. Remember, one doesn’t have to engage in intense aerobic activity to be considered healthy. There are many things one can do that are healthy and lead to happiness.  In fact, I just read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal (2/22/12) about a running activity. I didn’t know that there are races all over the world that consists of running upstairs in buildings. And, according to this one running attorney, the skyscraper stairwells in Asia are great and arguably are the best for these competitive races. Running stairwells and flights of stairs sounds interesting and something different. What’s important here is that you find your passion and incorporate a healthy activity for a healthy life. Find that right activity for you. Who knows, it just may become your passion.

Did you know that humor is both therapeutic as well as important to the number of happy birthdays for us? The ability to laugh is uniquely human and represents the body’s normal response to stress; and not only that it is tied to our ability to play and also to communicate with others.  Further, it reduces tension, frustration and anxiety. Like play, humor provides enjoyment, imagination, freedom and is fun.

Sigmund Freud believed that humor was a sociably acceptable method of expressing impulses that resulted in a process that could minimize psychological energy what was important to his theory. He further postulated that humor was liberating, ennobling, and possessing both grandeur and elevation. The net result was that the world then seemed safer and less threatening.

Research studies have found that laughter involves extensive physical activity, is comparable to physical exercise, increases respiration and oxygen exchange, muscular activity, heart rate and stimulates the cardiovascular system. Furthermore, blood pressure has also been reduced in a state similar to that resulting from exercise. Not only that, but brain functioning is at its fullest capacity when both right and left hemispheres function simultaneously as they do in laughter. Think of something funny to get your brain working to its fullest.

Norman Cousins was hospitalized because of illness. He thought that humor could be used to speed up his recovery. He talked to his doctors; convinced them and was allowed to incorporate his own   program of humor with their treatment plan. He focused on things (films, books) that he enjoyed.  He hypothesized that the use of humor facilitated his recovery.  

To illustrate the power of humor, another example is taken from Dr. Frankl’s account of the conversation he overheard taking place between two concentration camp prisoners. A little background is in order. Capos were considered one of the prominent prisoners because of their privileges, authority and position held within the concentration camp structure. This one prisoner said to another “imagine! I knew that man (referring to the Capo) when he was only the president of a large bank. Isn’t it fortunate that he has risen so far in the world?”This prisoner demonstrated that he could still be “funny” in spite of his present physical and psychological condition and circumstance. Be sure to find humor in your situation because it’s good for you.

To be continued