The Joy of Laughing

This month’s wellness challenge is to laugh. I encourage you to create memories and attend events that intentionally inspire joy and laughter.

Laughter enhances positive emotions, promotes optimism, and creates hope. It is an expression of ourselves and our mood. It is in our nature to laugh.

When you laugh, the throat chakra opens and the expression of joy, happiness, bliss, merriment, amusement, and hope follows. Laughter benefits our body, mind, spirit, and soul and is an important aspect of our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Creativity happens with laughter.

Ask Yourself: What is your pattern of laughing? Do you laugh enough? Is life too stressful or heavy and you find yourself not laughing?

THE BENEFITS OF LAUGHING

There are many benefits to laughing. Here are a few:

• Laughing promotes creative thinking.
• Laughing increases mental resilience.
• Laughing creates strong bonds with others and communities.
• Laughing stimulates heart, lung, and muscle functions.
• Laughing increases endorphins in the brain.
• Laughing decreases depression and anxiety.
• Laughing relieves stress.
• Laughing reduces blood pressure.
• Laughing boosts immune systems.
• Laughing decreases mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical pain.

There may be many reasons why you choose not to laugh or not to engage in activities that bring about humor and joy. Patterns develop in the body due to thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Over time, patterns develop as reactions to situations occur again and again. You then reinforce “your way of doing things” – whether it is in a manner that is healthy or unhealthy.

You may have developed patterns that keep your throat chakra, the energy center, blocked and not in harmony. A functional energy center spins and is balanced so that the life force energy of the Universe can flow through you. Dysfunctional behavior and health problems are the result of a congested and unbalanced energy center. Experiences from childhood and cultural values cause blocks in this energy center. There is a programming that is established from our past experiences that stays in the body and cellular memories.

When the throat chakra is blocked, it is difficult to communicate clearly. You may struggle to fully experience love; the giving of love and the receiving of love. The expression of creativity gets stifled as well as a passion for life and willpower. Fear of being seen and accepted for the genuine self leads to isolation and the “dimming of our Light.”

A balanced throat chakra allows you to take responsibility for your life and speak your needs with a clear and honest voice. You choose to show up in the world in a manner where you are totally seen and heard as the unique individual that you are. 

The goal this month is to laugh and open the throat chakra. Express yourself in a creative manner by laughing. Invite others to laugh with you. Enjoy life, have fun, be silly. Laugh Today.