33. Laugh: 6 ways to increase your LQ (Laughter Quotient)
Photo by abadonian
The last couple years have been serious. I don’t know about you, but I could use a little more fun, levity, and laughter. If you feel the same, these are a few reasons—and ideas—to up your laughter game and increase your LQ (Laughter Quotient).
Data point of the week
According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter:
Stimulates your organs
Relaxes muscle tension
Relieves pain
Boosts your immune system
Decreases stress, anxiety, and depression, and
Makes you happier
That's a long list of benefits! And there are more…
A study by Rehabilitation Nursing found that a group of older adults who participated in laughter therapy twice a week for six weeks were less lonely than the control group.
Laughter releases endorphins, informally known as “feel-good” chemicals, which have been shown to strengthen social bonds.
The scientific community has theorized that laughter helps humans form and maintain much larger social networks than other primates. Most primates bond by engaging in grooming (which also triggers endorphins). But because physical touch is a one-to-one activity, there’s a limit to how many people we have time to bond with in this way, whereas laughter can help us bond with lots of people at once.
Photo by Pixabay
Reflection
We can laugh solo. There are millions of laugh-out-loud YouTube videos at our fingertips, like this cute baby who falls over laughing. But laughter is primarily a social activity. In fact, while researching this post, I learned that we are 30 times more likely to laugh when we’re with other people than when we’re alone! Wow.
No wonder I’ve been laughter deprived. I’ve spent more time alone in the last two years than at any other point in my life (some of you have the opposite problem—no alone time). Now that I work from home, I need to make a conscious effort to schedule in social time, which in turn will boost my LQ.
Action Step: Increase your Laughter Quotient
Here are a few ideas to help you laugh more:
Consume funny content. Watch funny movies, videos, etc.
Consider establishing a laugh swap. If you have friends, co-workers, or family members with a similar sense of humor, swap memes, gifs, videos, etc.
Schedule more social time. You’re more likely to laugh in a social context than alone.
Spend time with young children, who laugh an average of 400 times a day (compared to 15X/day for adults)! Children’s laughter can be infectious.
Try out laughter yoga. Here’s a video of instructor Bianca Spears laughing for 5-minutes straight with no prompts. If you’d rather have a laughter trigger, you can try these 40 exercises from the founder of laughter yoga, Dr. Madan Kataria. Forced laughter may feel awkward at first but has the same health benefits as spontaneous laughter.
Expand your laugh. When you do laugh spontaneously, see if you can laugh a little harder and longer.
Questions to reflect on or to spark conversation. Please share your responses in the comments—we love hearing from you!
When’s the last time you had a really good laugh?
What makes you laugh? Please share your favorite laugh-inducing memes, videos, etc. in the comments.
