The Healing Power of Humor Begins with a Smile

All laughter starts with a little smile. But, that’s often the hardest part of it all. Checkout this article about the importance of turning that frown upside down

By Arthur Black
Original Article found @ VicNews.com

Here’s a fun experiment: draw a human face. Nothing fancy – just take a pencil and draw a circle on a piece of paper. Now add two dots for the eyes. Draw a smaller blob below them for the nose.

Doesn’t tell you much of anything so far, right? Your subject could be loon-like hysterical or wrist-slashing suicidal. Ticked off or blissed out. There are no clues in that half-finished face.

Now take your pencil and draw a line for the mouth. Presto, you’ve got attitude.

If you draw the mouth like a hammock with the corners riding high, you’ve got a happy camper. Invert it and you’ve created Gloomy Gus.

All with one simple line.

At about this point you are saying approximately, “Yeah, so? It’s a dumb cartoon. What’s this got to do with real life?”

Everything. You want to elevate your mood and feel better – right this minute? Forget pills. Forget the double Drambuie. You don’t need a hit from The Comedy Network.

All you have to do is lift the corners of your mouth and smile.

Fake it if you have to. Take that pencil you drew the face with and stick it crossways in your mouth. It works.

In 1983, researchers at the University of Washington instructed half a dozen subjects to jam a pencil between their teeth, then showed them a series of cartoons. They showed the same cartoons to six subjects who weren’t required to ‘smile’.

The pencil-clenchers rated the cartoons “significantly funnier” than the control group did.

It’s powerful medicine, the smile. So powerful that it’s common to cultures around the world, primitive and sophisticated alike. People everywhere smile when they’re happy and frown when they’re not. Charles Darwin, on his voyages aboard the Beagle, remarked on this cross-cultural phenomenon nearly 200 years ago.

Best of all, The Smile is aide de camp to The Laugh, which is even more powerful medicine.

Researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center have been analyzing the therapeutic clout of simple laughter. They came to the conclusion that laughing:

n Increases blood flow through the arteries;

n Lowers blood sugar levels among diabetics,

n Eases pain (because it relaxes muscles);

n Regulates the immune system and

n Even burns calories.

Wait a minute. You can lose weight by laughing?

Absolutely. Researchers at Vanderbilt University calculate that 15 minutes of hearty laughter burns about 40 calories. Do it every day and you’ll drop four pounds over the next year.

And you thought watching the Parliamentary Channel was a waste of time.

Is there a downside to laughter? Not really. “A tranquilizer with no side effects” Arnold Glasow called it.

Laughter is also an unparalleled tool of diplomacy. It is very hard to be angry with someone while you’re laughing at them.

At the same time it’s an incredibly powerful skewering device to wield against your enemies. Adversaries can steel themselves for sneers, curses, growls, snarls, slanders, and all manner of verbal abuse. But someone laughing at them? There’s no defence against that.

And it starts with a smile. A simple flex of the lip muscles. Smile enough and your enemies will melt away before you have to bring out the heavy ordinance. At worst, you’ll confound them for life.

Or even longer.

Lisa Gherardini’s smile has been confounding viewers for more than 500 years. Lisa Gherardini? Wife of a 16th century Florentine silk merchant. We’d never have heard of her if her smile hadn’t caught the eye of an artist named da Vinci about the time another young Italian named Columbus was setting sail from Spain to see what was over the horizon..

So smile. Worked for Mona Lisa. It’ll work for you.