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Sheila Shares

Laugh and Stay Fit

Founder of The Oaks at Ojai

“By the time a child reaches nursery school, he or she will laugh about 300 times a day. Adults laugh an average of 17 times a day,” as reported in “Science of Laughter” and Discovery Health. And if you’re not getting your share, you could still be unfit at any age.

Laughter is good medicine. It’s reduces stress, can help lower blood pressure and even protect the heart. Comedian Henny Youngman is quoted joking: “Doctor, I have a ringing in my ears!” to which the doctor says, “Don’t answer it!” If we stretch our bodies, why not stretch our funny bones, too?

Are you aware that laughter can be a great workout? Remember something funny that recently happened and laugh out loud. Doing so you’ve just exercised your diaphragm, abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg, and back muscles. More so, laughter has the ability to massage abdominal organs, tone intestinal functioning, and strengthen the muscles that hold the abdominal organs in place. A real “belly laugh” could be the right workout if you’d like to give your midsection some exercise and that laugh can help digestion and absorption functioning as well.

According to www.HelpGuide.org, it is estimated that hearty laughter can burn calories equivalent to several minutes on the rowing machine or the exercise bike. Now that’s worth laughing about.

But what if you’re already stressed, have too much responsibility or are coping with situations that are out of your control? Here are some tips:

*Make a point to find some humor in everyday situations. *Start your morning with a joke. There are lots of joke books and websites that have clean, funny jokes that you can share with kids, family and friends. When telephoning or emailing her adult children, a colleague always tells the kids some jokes. “It’s good clean humor and I have a feeling they look forward to hearing what nutty joke their mom will tell as much as what is new in my life.” Once she began this, they’ve started to work hard to find jokes that mom will enjoy, too.

*Seek out the absurd, silly, incongruous activities that go on around you each day.

*Watch and learn to laugh from infants and young children. They revel in most ordinary things, from a splatter of a cherry tomato shirking out of a child’s mouth to a dog racing around the garden.

*Be proactive and pro-laughter. Find ways to make life funnier by increasing you exposure to comedies, comic sitcoms, joke books, and visiting places where people laugh.

*Seek out and then hang around with folks who enjoy the same style humor you also like. For instance, if you’re nuts for jokes about a certain professions such as teachers or florists, began to create a collection.

*Studies indicate that the happiest marriages are when couples can laugh together. Each month and as soon as it arrives, a couple I know takes turns to read the jokes from Reader’s Digest. Now, they’ve passed this tradition on to their adult kids, who are doing the same with their spouses.

*Break out in laughter for 5-10 minutes instead of snacking on a candy bar or drinking yet another soda. Read a joke book; get a stack of humorous books like those written by Dave Barry and the late Erma Bombeck. Listen to humorous books on tape.

*Heard a joke you liked? Write it down and tell it to a friend. Writing it down will help you remember it.

*Take five minutes whenever you can and write down some things that will make you happy and give you a chance to have fun. They can be real or fanciful. While you might not be able to run on the beach or play in the river, but if you close your eyes and pretend, you can be there in your mind.

*Get outside and watch nature. Just a good dose of sunshine (with sunscreen on your skin) will make you feel more like smiling.

*Smile at someone and watch it come back.

*Select your new friends for their sunny personalities, especially if you tend to be more somber.

*Remember, it’s okay not to watch violence or horror on television or read it in the news. You can avoid conversations that are troubling by simply moving away from them, or letting your family and colleagues know that you’re not comfortable with the topic.

Now here the “why” of laughter, because roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. Scientists who study humor and laughter on the human body have found that it can help reduce stress, lower blood pressure, elevate mood, boost immune system, improve brain functioning, protect the heart, connect you to others, foster instant relaxation, and make you feel good.

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Sheila Cluff, fitness expert, television celebrity and owner of The Oaks at Ojai, is the author of Take 5: How You Can Benefit from Just Five Minutes of Daily Exercise and The Ultimate Recipe for Fitness by Sheila and Eleanor Brown. Visit Sheila's Spa on the Internet and see all that's happening at the resort: The Oaks at Ojai www.oaksspa.com.