Slow Laughter
A good belly laugh is like getting an internal massage. Your whole body is engaged. No wonder we use the expression to ‘burst out laughing.’ There’s a build up of tension and then a release. The effect is relaxing.
Laughter is a movement. We talk about emotion (a somatic motion). Feelings cause our body to behave in some way. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, our bodies behave in a certain way and feeling comes from that. Yes, that’s how laughter clubs work.
That belly laugh is the big event. It’s being in the moment. When was the last time you laughed so much, tears were streaming down your face and your stomach muscles got a good work out?
There’ve been some studies (aren’t there always?) about how our frequency of laughing declines with age. Young children laugh often and with their whole bodies. But adults do a sort of fake titter. The whole body is no longer engaged.
Most adults tend to get overly rigid. I expect this has to be social conditioning. This isn’t that surprising because we value being in the head more than being in the body, what can you expect? In Victorian times laugher was unseemly. Are we experiencing and epidemic of somberness today? We can be serious without being somber. I know you know that, but I wanted to say it anyway.
I’m not sure what’s changing with me, but something is. I was out walking the other day and got to thinking of this and that, you know how you do.
All of a sudden an amusing thought occurred to me. And there it was— the spontaneous belly laugh. It just welled up. I felt great. I do know that I was walking slowly. Is it fair to say that laughter is the embodiment of joy, or of being alive?
When I was younger, I remember seeing Fawlty Towers for the first time. I laughed so hard and for so long at that.
Are you still able to spontaneously belly laugh? When does it occur?