more on the importance of laughter
May. 30th, 2005 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonThe other night I was watching "Boondock Saints" with my Lovely Housemates (a deliciously wicked, if somewhat flawed movie which is worth watching just to see Willem DaFoe in drag -- quite gorgeous, BTW), and we found the Irish Mother scene from the Deleted Scenes section on the DVD. Why they deleted that scene I can't imagine, it is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time (it helps if you've known or been a part of some Irish families). One of my housemates commented to me later that she loves watching me really laugh, because "my whole body gets into it."
I was thinking about that. I haven't laughed enough lately -- good, long uncontrollable belly laughs, the kind where your entire body does get into it, where you're totally, fully open to the delicious juicy energy of hilarity, of losing control and letting yourself be swept up in the moment. Laughter is healing, laughter is a celebration of life, laughter joins you to those with whom you laugh, laughter is primal. Laughter is a tool, but laughter is also good just in and for its own sake. The playful banter around the Casa here is almost constant, and a lack of it from any one of us is a pretty sure sign that person is feeling hugely bad or out of sorts. It occurs to me that wickedly playful interaction is a sign of affection, and respect, and the health of relationships, and it's one of the deeper ways we bond as human animals.
One of the primary motivations I had for starting the regular Bardic Circles that we've been doing since the mid-80's was that we were, at the time, involved in a group which was fractured and splintered by in-fighting, factionalization, backbiting and rumor. My somewhat unfocused concept was that it might be a bit harder to objectify and demonize someone when you'd just the previous night sat next to them and shared a bottle and heard them share a song from the soul, or a deeply personal poem, or a favorite wicked limerick, that you'd listened, and laughed together. And as it turns out, that was pretty much what happened. Not all rifts were healed, not all gulfs were crossed, but I'd like to think that over the years, a lot of people have come closer together than would otherwise have happened, because they had a safe, warm place within which they could laugh togther, as well as cry, rage, be respectful, and so on. A warm hearth is a good place to share some of the essence of what it is to be human, and to recognize the fellow humanity (and divinity) in each other.
And just as I was thinking about that, this ScienceWeek article came across my desk. It seems that laughter is in fact an essential part of being human, of being an animal, a basic, deeply primitive part of being alive. It's not something we can do without, not without losing an essential part of our humanity. When's the last time you had a good, long, uncontrollable belly-laugh? When's the last time you let yourself fall into uncontrolled hilarity with someone? May we all have more laughter in our lives, more belly laughs, more joy shared with treasured friends and loves. And, as Andy Stewart sings, "...may there be love and laughter in the heart of your home."
-------
From: http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050603-5.htm
ScienceWeek
PSYCHOLOGY: ON LAUGHTER
The following points are made by Jaak Panksepp (Science 2005 308:5718):
1) Research suggests that the capacity for human laughter preceded the capacity for speech during evolution of the brain. Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain [1] and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along. Recent studies in rats, dogs, and chimps [2,3] are providing evidence that laughter and joy may not be uniquely human traits.
2) The capacity to laugh emerges early in child development, and perhaps in mammalian brain-mind evolution as well. Indeed, young children, whose semantic sense of humor is marginal, laugh and shriek abundantly in the midst of their other rough-and-tumble activities. If one looks carefully, laughter is especially evident during chasing, with the chasee typically laughing more than the chaser. As every aspiring comedian knows, success is only achieved if receivers exhibit more laughter than transmitters. The same behavior patterns are evident in the "play panting" of young chimps as they mischievously chase, mouth, and tickle each other [2].
3) Laughter seems to hark back to the ancestral emotional recesses of our animalian past [3,4]. We know that many other mammals exhibit play sounds, including tickle-induced panting, which resembles human laughter [2,4,5], even though these utterances are not as loud and persistent as our sonographically complex human chuckles. However, it is the discovery of "laughing rats" that could offer a workable model with which to systemically analyze the neurobiological antecedents of human joy [3]. When rats play, their rambunctious shenanigans are accompanied by a cacophony of 50-kHz chirps that reflect positive emotional feelings. Sonographic analysis suggests that some chirps, like human laughs, are more joyous than others.
4) Could sounds emitted by animals during play be an ancestral form of human laughter? If rats are tickled in a playful way, they readily emit these 50-kHz chirps [3]. The tickled rats became socially bonded to the experimenters and were rapidly conditioned to seek tickles. They preferred spending time with other animals that chirped a lot rather than with those that did not [3]. Indeed, chirping in rats could be provoked by neurochemically "tickling" dopamine reward circuits in the brain, which also light up during human mirth. Perhaps laughter will provide a new measure for analyzing natural reward/desire circuits in the brain, which are also activated during drug craving.
References (abridged):
1. K. Poeck, in Handbook of Clinical Neurology, P. J. Vinken, G. W. Bruyn, Eds. (North Holland, Amsterdam, 1969), vol. 3
2. T. Matsusaka, Primates, 45, 221 (2004)
3. J. Panksepp, J. Burgdorf, Physiol. Behav. 79, 533 (2003)
4. G. M. Burghardt, The Genesis of Animal Play (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005)
5. R. R. Provine, Laughter (Viking, New York, 2000)
Science http://www.sciencemag.org
I was thinking about that. I haven't laughed enough lately -- good, long uncontrollable belly laughs, the kind where your entire body does get into it, where you're totally, fully open to the delicious juicy energy of hilarity, of losing control and letting yourself be swept up in the moment. Laughter is healing, laughter is a celebration of life, laughter joins you to those with whom you laugh, laughter is primal. Laughter is a tool, but laughter is also good just in and for its own sake. The playful banter around the Casa here is almost constant, and a lack of it from any one of us is a pretty sure sign that person is feeling hugely bad or out of sorts. It occurs to me that wickedly playful interaction is a sign of affection, and respect, and the health of relationships, and it's one of the deeper ways we bond as human animals.
One of the primary motivations I had for starting the regular Bardic Circles that we've been doing since the mid-80's was that we were, at the time, involved in a group which was fractured and splintered by in-fighting, factionalization, backbiting and rumor. My somewhat unfocused concept was that it might be a bit harder to objectify and demonize someone when you'd just the previous night sat next to them and shared a bottle and heard them share a song from the soul, or a deeply personal poem, or a favorite wicked limerick, that you'd listened, and laughed together. And as it turns out, that was pretty much what happened. Not all rifts were healed, not all gulfs were crossed, but I'd like to think that over the years, a lot of people have come closer together than would otherwise have happened, because they had a safe, warm place within which they could laugh togther, as well as cry, rage, be respectful, and so on. A warm hearth is a good place to share some of the essence of what it is to be human, and to recognize the fellow humanity (and divinity) in each other.
And just as I was thinking about that, this ScienceWeek article came across my desk. It seems that laughter is in fact an essential part of being human, of being an animal, a basic, deeply primitive part of being alive. It's not something we can do without, not without losing an essential part of our humanity. When's the last time you had a good, long, uncontrollable belly-laugh? When's the last time you let yourself fall into uncontrolled hilarity with someone? May we all have more laughter in our lives, more belly laughs, more joy shared with treasured friends and loves. And, as Andy Stewart sings, "...may there be love and laughter in the heart of your home."
-------
From: http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050603-5.htm
ScienceWeek
PSYCHOLOGY: ON LAUGHTER
The following points are made by Jaak Panksepp (Science 2005 308:5718):
1) Research suggests that the capacity for human laughter preceded the capacity for speech during evolution of the brain. Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain [1] and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along. Recent studies in rats, dogs, and chimps [2,3] are providing evidence that laughter and joy may not be uniquely human traits.
2) The capacity to laugh emerges early in child development, and perhaps in mammalian brain-mind evolution as well. Indeed, young children, whose semantic sense of humor is marginal, laugh and shriek abundantly in the midst of their other rough-and-tumble activities. If one looks carefully, laughter is especially evident during chasing, with the chasee typically laughing more than the chaser. As every aspiring comedian knows, success is only achieved if receivers exhibit more laughter than transmitters. The same behavior patterns are evident in the "play panting" of young chimps as they mischievously chase, mouth, and tickle each other [2].
3) Laughter seems to hark back to the ancestral emotional recesses of our animalian past [3,4]. We know that many other mammals exhibit play sounds, including tickle-induced panting, which resembles human laughter [2,4,5], even though these utterances are not as loud and persistent as our sonographically complex human chuckles. However, it is the discovery of "laughing rats" that could offer a workable model with which to systemically analyze the neurobiological antecedents of human joy [3]. When rats play, their rambunctious shenanigans are accompanied by a cacophony of 50-kHz chirps that reflect positive emotional feelings. Sonographic analysis suggests that some chirps, like human laughs, are more joyous than others.
4) Could sounds emitted by animals during play be an ancestral form of human laughter? If rats are tickled in a playful way, they readily emit these 50-kHz chirps [3]. The tickled rats became socially bonded to the experimenters and were rapidly conditioned to seek tickles. They preferred spending time with other animals that chirped a lot rather than with those that did not [3]. Indeed, chirping in rats could be provoked by neurochemically "tickling" dopamine reward circuits in the brain, which also light up during human mirth. Perhaps laughter will provide a new measure for analyzing natural reward/desire circuits in the brain, which are also activated during drug craving.
References (abridged):
1. K. Poeck, in Handbook of Clinical Neurology, P. J. Vinken, G. W. Bruyn, Eds. (North Holland, Amsterdam, 1969), vol. 3
2. T. Matsusaka, Primates, 45, 221 (2004)
3. J. Panksepp, J. Burgdorf, Physiol. Behav. 79, 533 (2003)
4. G. M. Burghardt, The Genesis of Animal Play (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005)
5. R. R. Provine, Laughter (Viking, New York, 2000)
Science http://www.sciencemag.org
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 10:48 pm (UTC)*lol* Okay, I Googled "laughter therapy," and, of course, there's a website (http://www.laughtertherapy.com/) (disclaimer -- I know nothing about these folks)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 10:52 pm (UTC)"Lunacy without love is possible but love without lunacy is impossible."