Weekly Soul: Week 16 - Laughter
Today's meditation from Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living by Dr. Frederic Craigie.
-16-
An Apache myth
tells of how the creator endowed human beings, the two-leggeds, with the
ability to do everything—talk, run, see, and hear. But he was not satisfied
until the two-leggeds could do just one thing more—laugh. And so men and women
laughed and laughed and laughed. Then the creator said, “Now you are fit to
live.”
Larry Dossey
Laughter vitalizes the soul.
In the Navajo (or Diné) tradition, there
is a sacred and joyful celebration of the First Laugh. When babies are born,
they are understood to be part of two worlds: the Spirit world and the physical
world. A baby’s first laughter, often at around three months, is a sign of
their transition to being fully present in the physical world as a member of
their family and community.
The person who observes or elicits the
first laugh… whose character is considered to be passed along to the child… is
responsible for hosting an A’wee Chi’deedloh, the First Laugh ceremony. Guests
offer food to the child, who responds (with the help of his or her benefactor)
by sprinkling the food with salt crystals as a blessing for the guests and as a
first expression of a life of generosity.
We are, certainly, hard-wired to laugh. I
suspect that what we experience as humorous varies culturally, among families,
and, of course, individually. Maybe you have never been able to relate to Uncle
Bob’s sense of humor, and maybe your family gatherings don’t look like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but you smile,
and your eyes sparkle. As is the case with people across town and across the
world.
Laughter, by the way, need not be in
response to “things that are funny.” There is growing international interest in
Laughter Yoga, which is a practice that was developed by a physician from India
in the mid-1990s. Laughter Yoga combines warmup activities and breathing
exercises to invite group participants into the shared experience of laughter
for its own benefit. No Marx brothers, no Jerry Seinfeld, just the shared and
demonstrably joyful experience of a community of people laughing together.
The scientific
literature (which is typically no laughing matter) about the empirical benefits
of Laughter Yoga shows the common theme for non-mainstream approaches to
wellness: “preliminary results are promising, but more research is needed.” I
suspect, though—as perhaps you do, too—that our grandmothers’ wisdom of “a
laugh a day” will turn out to be right on. If you’re interested in exploring
Laughter Yoga, you’ll find clubs in most larger communities, and there are the
customary postings of resources and video examples on the Internet.
From
an infant’s chortle to your own sense of humor to the pure experience of hearty
laughter, laughter means you are fully human; it means you are fit to live.
●
How
is laughter a part of your life? When was the last time you laughed heartily?
●
Has
laughter sometimes defused or redeemed difficult situations for you?
●
How
do you cultivate and express your sense of humor?
●
In
the week to come, notice your experience of laughter both privately and with
other people. Are you happy with what you see, or might this part of your life
warrant a little more attention?
Larry Dossey, M.D.,
(b. 1940)
is a physician, writer, and philosopher of science and the human experience. He
received a traditional medical education, served with distinction as a
battalion surgeon in Vietnam, and established and practiced in a large internal
medicine group, serving as Chief of Staff in his affiliated hospital. As he
recounts, he began to collect stories of “miracle cures” that opened up the
possibility of far richer and more complicated human experience, neither
understood nor studied, than his medical training had presumed. He began to
study the roles of meaning, faith, prayer, and spirituality in health and
healing. In the late 1980s, he introduced the idea of nonlocality, “nonlocal
mind,” which sees humans—and, indeed, all living systems—as connected in ways
that are unbounded by time or space. The tantalizing early research on the
benefits of distant intercessory prayer, for instance, reveals qualities of
nonlocality as does the extraordinarily common experience of calling a loved
one on the phone at the precise time they are calling you. Dossey’s 2016 book, One Mind, chronicles his continuing
exploration of nonlocality, consciousness and the human spirit.
Book Description:
Keywords:
meditation; reflection; inspiration; miracles; aliveness; purpose; laughter; joy; presence; mindfulness; activism; acceptance; gratitude; forgiveness; creativity; civility; hope; affirmation; wholeness; well-being; mental health; personal growth; transformation; inner peace; personal reflection; joy; joyful living; inspirational quotes; inspirational commentary
For more posts by and about Fred and his book, click HERE.
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