Word of the Week: Laughter!

                         

                                  
How's this for a reading group? LOL!!!



Can we ever have enough laughter in our lives? Probably not.

Laughter not only makes us happy and makes us smile, it is also very good for us, health wise.

Many years ago when I was recovering from "burn-out syndrome/ chronic fatigue" caused by too much worry, work, stress...that eventually added up and robbed me of my good health for almost 2 years, I read many stories about the healing powers of laughter.

I spent a lot of time on the sofa during that time of recovery. I wasn't able to do much as my nervous system was virtually in tatters. Resting and re-thinking how I had been living to have ended up so weak and so ill. I tried to read mainly inspiring and healing stories/ books about real people who had been through illnesses caused by stress who had recovered and lived to tell the tale.

The story of Norman Cousins and his remarkable recovery from a life-threatening tissue disease described in his book: Anatomy of An Illness is a story that has always stayed with me. Cousins and his doctors believed that recovery was due in large part to daily doses of lots of laughs, watching Marx Brother's movies where as drugs and other treatments had had little or no effect for weeks. Cousins had actually been getting worse as time had been going by in the hospital, until he added the funny movies to his daily routine.  If you've never read his story, it is definitely worth the time.

I also recently found this interesting site that lists many of the health benefits of laughter.

When I'm having a bad, sad or mad day... a good laugh (or even better, lots of them) can go a long way towards turning things around and helping me to relax and reassess things.

 I love watching funny movies like: Take the Money and Run with Woody Allen and Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, two of my all-time favorite, classic LOL movies.

If you have a funny movie, book, video etc...to share, please do.

Here's to a week filled with lots of laughter.


It truly is the best medicine, for so many reasons! 

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PS: I was fortunate to photograph a PERFECT pink rose recently. I wrote a haiku poem to go with it. You can see the post at: Haiku Reflections: A Perfect Pink Rose. I never tire of roses!

This adorable (and definitely not Mr. Cheddar approved) photo courtesy of Flickr