Laughter therapy

We have all heard of laughter therapy, an alternative treatment based on the power of laughter. An action, that of laughing, that not only helps us to appear handsome in the photo of the card, but also has numerous beneficial effects for health: it stimulates the nervous system, and this, in response, releases endorphins, which act on the immune and endocrine system, improving our quality of life and accelerating recovery from pathological processes.

It is not a recent technique ...

Laughter has been used as a therapeutic weapon since time immemorial. Its trace can be followed from the ancient Chinese empire, in which there were some temples where people met to laugh in order to balance health.

In other tribal cultures, there was the figure of the sacred clown, a sorcerer who used the power of laughter to heal sick warriors. Or, already in the twentieth century, we came across the ever visionary Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud, who attributed to laughter the power to free the body of negative energy.

But it took until the seventies for laughter therapy to receive the definitive push. It was the fault of Norman Cousins, a leading New York publisher suffering from a painful and disabling spinal disease.

Faced with this scenario and with no cure in sight, his doctors then advise him to resort to laughter to try to stop the depression that haunted him. The fat man and the skinny man and the Marx brothers then work a miracle.

Cousins ​​found that ten minutes of laughter allowed him to forget about pain for at least two hours. The results of his experience were made known to the medical community, published in 1976 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, and later in a book, and through his own foundation.

Train your jaw

At present, the groups and associations that are dedicated to organizing laughter workshops have multiplied. But do you know what they consist of?

Welcome to a laughter therapy class.

• THEY ARE FORMED by between 10 and 30 people. Of course, they are fully participatory. Get ready to laugh mercilessly.
• FIRST the workshop is presented, and it is explained what laughter therapy consists of (benefits, types of laughter ...)
• THEN, everyone to be uninhibited. An attempt is made to improve communication between attendees by introducing ourselves to the rest of the participants, using clown noses.
• EXERCISES: in this part of the workshop the muscles of different parts of the body (abdominal, thoracic…) are relaxed to help achieve a better laugh, unblocking tensions.
• Techniques are used to help find children's laughter (the healthiest), and to wake up the child in us, using games, dances, music ...
• SHARING of the experience.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

• Alternative treatment based on the beneficial effects of laughter.
• Its use: reduce the perception of pain, lower the level of cortisol, combat stress and insomnia, improve lung function, reduce anxiety ...
• There are groups and associations that organize laughter therapy workshops.

CLOWNS IN THE HOSPITAL

In the early 1980s, dressed as a clown, Doctor Hunter “Patch“ Adams (his life was made into a movie by actor Robin Williams) began curing his patients using laughter and humor as therapeutic instruments. Nowadays, in many hospitals, patients can benefit from the presence of these Smile Doctors, clown therapists who with their shoes, balloons, big noses and a lot of affection make their ailments a little more bearable.

«Informative note: the contents included in this section offer information related to existing therapies explained by specialists with experience in the field with an informative objective. MAPFRE does not intend under any circumstances to position itself on its suitability or expressly promote its use. "