Have you noticed how something that is difficult to learn can be made much easier with humor? Training with Richard Bandler and John LaValle often resulted in our jaws hurting from laughing so hard. Joel and Debra infused SCS/NLP trainings with humor, too, including those who were laughing at our foibles behind our backs and to our faces!
The demonstration of mastery for NLP was a TEST delivered as a skit—developed and performed as a group. Over the years we have had a visual squash, an actual anchor, and many things too colorful to mention here, if you know what I mean….
Humor has been shown to activate the brain’s dopamine reward system. Regardless of the age of the students, the subject being taught, or who is doing the teaching, humor stimulates goal-oriented motivation and long-term memory, resulting in improved retention.
Humor comes to us naturally. Babies laugh long before they can speak.
Often incongruity and surprise result in humor because we did not anticipate what happened. I read once that a fart was likely the first joke.
All of this came to mind recently when a friend shared a video parody on Julia Child teaching the Five Skandhas of Buddhism.
Norman Cousins was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate. This about Cousins from Wikipedia:
Cousins did research on the biochemistry of human emotions, which he long believed were the key to human beings’ success in fighting illness. With a confirmed diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis, and a prognosis of one chance in 500 of recovery, Cousins developed his own recovery program. He took massive intravenous doses of Vitamin C and had self-induced bouts of laughter brought on by films of the television show Candid Camera, and by various comic films. His positive attitude was not new to him, however. He had always been an optimist, known for his kindness to others, and his robust love of life itself. “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. “When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.” His struggle with that illness is detailed in his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient.
Now, I don’t have to know what ails you for you to know there is wisdom in your humor. If you do an internet search using the words “healing and humor” you will see 63,500,000 hits, with entries from prestigious medical centers including Cleveland Clinic and University of Michigan (UofM).
If you want to boost your immune system or enjoy at least two hours of pain-free sleep, take a few minutes to enjoy Chris McCall and The Not Yet Ready for Enlightenment Players – The Five Skandhas.