The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing?A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine

The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing?A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine

by Brian King
The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing?A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine

The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing?A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine

by Brian King

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Overview

Dr. Brian King is a psychologist and stand-up comedian whose humor therapy seminars are attended by more than ten thousand people each year. In The Laughing Cure, King combines wit with medical research to reveal the benefits of laughter and humor on physical and emotional health.

King’s language is humorous and uplifting, and his advice is backed by science. Studies featured in The Laughing Cure show how laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases muscle flexion, boosts immune systems, and triggers endorphins. They show how laughter relieves depression, and even makes us more productive, loving, and kind.

The tips and techniques featured inside can be used for current conditions and as preventative medicine. Through humor and science King explains why much–talked-about but little-understood methods of therapy such as laughter yoga actually work and how we can better incorporate humor into our lives.

Very few doctors have the ability to heal the way that King does; his method is cheap, easy, and chemical-free. Even fun! This wonderful, transformative, and provocative read shows how—and why—laughter saves lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781510702493
Publisher: Skyhorse
Publication date: 05/03/2016
Pages: 268
Sales rank: 929,871
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dr. Brian King is an acclaimed comic and public speaker who travels the world as a performer and an instructor, giving seminars to more than ten thousand people each year on the health benefits of humor. King was the founder and producer of the highly reviewed Wharf Room Comedy show in San Francisco; has worked with such talents as Will Durst, Rick Shapiro, Mo Mandel, Laurie Kilmartin, and Steven Pearl; and produces the annual Bay Area comedy competition Walk the Plank. Today King spends much of his time on tour, but is based in Los Angeles, California.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT, ANYWAY?

BEFORE I GET INTO THE BENEFITS OF HUMOR AND LAUGHTER, I'D like to discuss what these things are. Unless you are a psychologist or a sentient robot trying to understand humanity (and sometimes those are not mutually exclusive categories), you may not have given much thought to the phenomenon of humor. Most people laugh and enjoy humor on a regular basis without ever questioning why or what humor is. Even those of us who produce humor on a regular basis, who seemingly have an inherent understanding of how to make others laugh, don't question it often. I've been making people laugh my entire life and it hadn't really crossed my mind until not that long ago to consider what humor actually is. Funny people rarely analyze their humor; it's just a part of their personality. We tend not to question what comes so natural to us and leave it to others to figure it out.

Robert Benchley, an American humorist, once said, "There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them." In my experience, I have found this to be the case. People with limited responses to humor are always the ones who ask to have it explained to them, and with good reason: we want to understand the unknown. As I write this paragraph, I am sitting in a café in Hollywood, California. Within a ten-mile radius from where I am, I know of at least five studios that teach stand-up comedy to aspiring comedians, and without my having had experience with all of them, I can reasonably guess that if I were to take a survey, I'd find at least five definitions of humor. I would also find a lot of unfunny people hoping to learn how to be funny. The Los Angeles comedy scene is filled with unfunny actors whose agents have told them to give stand-up a shot (to be fair, casting calls are also filled with comedians who can't act hoping to score some acting work).

Humor is an art, and like most arts we know it when we see it but we might not be able to define it. In my seminars, I define humor as the tendency of certain experiences to elicit laughter or amusement. This is about the best definition I've encountered, although it doesn't quite satisfy my taste for something specific. It's a broad, ambiguous definition, and it has to be because there are so many things that have to be accounted for. Basically, humor is anything that we find amusing. The definition isn't limited to stimuli that provoke laughter, because there are plenty of occasions when we are amused but not laughing out loud, but it does need to include a wide variety of experiences. Humor can be experienced by hearing a joke, reading a funny comic, faking out our dog in a game of fetch, wearing a stupid outfit, seeing someone slip and fall, or even being tickled. Virtually any type of experience can result in a perception of humor under the right conditions, as can any sensory modality.

That's right; all of our five senses can be a potential source of humor. Psychologists sometimes recognize more than five senses, but I'll keep it simple and just describe those we are most familiar with: sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch. A lot of the humor we experience relies on our sense of hearing; for instance, we hear and tell jokes. This is verbal humor — someone says something that is perceived as funny. I include reading written humor in this category, although technically we aren't hearing an external stimulus, just our own internal voice. Maybe, hopefully, you've been amused at something you've read in this book so far, if not ... well there is a reason comedy clubs insist on a two-drink minimum. The more you drink, the funnier we get.

Verbal communication isn't the only source of humor our ears provide us with; certain sounds strike us as humorous given the right context. This is auditory humor. Some sounds can be very funny. My favorite example of this is for you to imagine that you are in school, in some testing environment — let's say it's for some standardized test like the SAT or GRE, or GED even (ain't nothing wrong with those, and I've taken all three). I'll imagine it with you. These environments tend to be extremely serious; everyone is silent and focused on taking the exam. Obviously the results of these exams have some bearing on our futures, so we need to take them seriously; there are rules and time limits, so we stay as focused as we can. Everyone is silent and the only sounds are the scratching of pencils against Scantron sheets. Then suddenly, from the back of the room, we hear the familiar sound of somebody passing gas. That's right, somebody ripped a big old fart and it echoes throughout our testing center. Now, a lot of us are going to laugh at that. I personally think farts are hysterical and would likely lose my focus and laugh out loud in that situation. Imagine it's a particularly long fart, so acoustically perfect that you can almost picture the butt cheeks flapping against each other for a solid minute. At some point you can even hear a hint of moisture. ... Okay, I may be getting a little graphic, but the point I'm making is that it is a funny sound. Farts are funny.

Humor can also be visual. We see things all the time that we find funny. Sometimes it's intended to be funny, like a cartoon or a performance, but a lot of the time it's just something that catches our eye and makes us laugh. The Internet is full of visual humor; Facebook and other social media sites are flooded with "memes" (basically pictures with captions added) and funny photos that are repeatedly passed around. I'm not a huge fan of the site, but if you've never visited www.peopleofwalmart.com give it a peek some time for some examples of unintentional visual humor. By the way, if you see yourself on that site, I'm sorry ... but maybe this could be a first step to not taking things so seriously?

Obviously it's not just images that we find visually amusing, but also scenes and behavior. Now, what I'm going to describe to you isn't going to sound very funny in this format, but visually speaking it is. Just trust me. Imagine you are sitting on one side of a street, just hanging out people-watching. Across the street you see a nicely dressed man, three-piece suit and bow tie, walking down the sidewalk carrying a very large shopping bag overflowing with oranges. He's holding them in front of his body and trying to see around them as he navigates the sidewalk. Now imagine there's a banana peel on the sidewalk and he doesn't see it. You can already guess what happens next, but imagine he slips on that banana peel and his legs fly out from underneath him. He falls on his butt, throwing his bag of oranges into the air as a result. He is now on the ground as his oranges rain down upon him and he's desperately trying to catch them and recover the ones that are currently rolling all over the sidewalk. Now, I told you in advance it wouldn't sound very funny described to you, but if we were to see this scene play out in front of our eyes a lot of us would laugh at it. Not because we are horrible human beings with no sense of empathy, but because that shit is clearly funny.

What I just described might be called slapstick comedy, or physical comedy. It's a genre of comedy that appeals to something really basic in all of us. It's been around since Shakespeare and was very popular during the silent movie era. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were masters of this and their films still make me laugh. The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the Tom and Jerry cartoons (and pretty much any other cartoon from that era, before society became more sensitive to cartoon violence) are all great examples of slapstick comedy from my childhood. Early in his career, Chevy Chase was a master of the pratfall, a fall onto one's butt, which he demonstrated as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Modern comedy movies still include quite a bit of physical comedy.

Physical comedy is not to be confused with physical humor. Physical humor involves our sense of touch. Sometimes, under the right conditions, certain forms of touch can elicit a humor response. We call this tickling.

Hearing, seeing, and touching (or feeling) probably account for the vast majority of our humorous experiences; but as I stated previously, any sensory modality could be a source of humor. Our sense of smell can make us laugh; our sense of taste can provoke amusement. Regarding smell, imagine we are back in that testing center all serious and focused. Imagine that instead of ripping a loud one, the farter produces the dreaded "silent but deadly." Now, the smell has to hit our nostrils before we know what happened, but once again some of us might laugh as a result of our sense of smell. Taste is a little harder to find examples of, but thanks to a recent experience I do have one for you.

To give this example, let me first go off on a tangent and give you a little back story. I'm originally from the Northeast, Long Island, New York, to be more specific. The Northeast is littered with these restaurants we call "diners." Now I realize the rest of the country has places they call diners too, but not like back east. Diners are restaurants that offer a ridiculous variety of menu options. Seriously, some diner menus have more pages than a book. How could one establishment offer an entire Greek menu, and have separate pages for Italian, kosher, Mexican, and everything else you could possibly imagine? Forget training someone on how to prepare all the different foods, how do they even have room for all those ingredients? Anyway, I've always been amazed by diners. A lot of them operate around the clock and offer Long Island teenagers, such as the one I used to be, a place to hang out and meet friends. Sometimes I went there to socialize, sometimes on dates, sometimes to study, but I spent a lot of time in diners. There was a practical joke that I remember some of us would play at the diner. You might be familiar with it already; we'd take the tops off the sugar and salt shakers and pour the salt into the sugar without mixing it up. Are you following me? When you put the tops back on them, the sugar shaker now has an undetectable layer of salt on top of it. We'd set that practical joke in motion, but I don't remember if I ever witnessed someone falling for it.

That was years ago and I'm no longer a teenager nor live in the Northeast, but recently I was on tour in New Jersey and I popped into a diner for a late-night coffee. When I got my coffee, I poured in my milk and added a few shakes of sugar. I stirred it up and took a sip, and it was the most disgusting, saltiest mouthful of coffee I have ever tasted. I spit it out and immediately started laughing as I realized what had happened. My sense of taste, in the context of my memory, provided me with a humorous experience.

Not to complicate things but because my seminars tend to appeal to a somewhat professional, educated crowd, people often ask me what the difference is between "wit" and humor. The difference is simple, humor makes us laugh. That previous statement is witty. To give you a little more, wit is clever. It can be subtle and usually involves a degree of thought, but it's not always funny. Witty remarks can make us laugh, but often we react with a simple "I get it" response. Wit is fantastic mental exercise and some of it can be really funny, but I think I prefer a good gut-busting laugh any day.

Anything can potentially be a source of humor. It isn't limited to verbal communication, and that's one of the greatest things about it. We are capable of laughing at virtually anything, provided it's funny.

CHAPTER 2

SO WHAT MAKES SOME THINGS FUNNY?

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER I INTRODUCED THE IDEA THAT ANYTHING could potentially be funny. But why is the sound of the fart so hysterical in the testing setting, but not the grocery store? Why is it that when we see our loved ones slip and fall it is far less amusing to us than when Chevy Chase does it? Why would most people, I'm assuming, react to a mouthful of salty coffee with disgust and anger instead of laughing their asses off?

We may not have a precise definition of what humor is, but we do have a really good idea of why things are funny. There are several prevailing theories of humor out there, and each of them has their proponents. But my favorite theory of humor is called benign violation theory (BVT) and was developed by Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. Before I explain the theory, I want you to know why it's my favorite. It's not because McGraw and Warren owe me money or anything (they don't), but because in my humble opinion this theory has two things going for it. First, it is consistent with how the brain processes information, and second, it pretty much explains EVERY INSTANCE OF HUMOR IMAGINABLE. Seriously, I cannot think of a single example of humor that is not explained by BVT, and I've tried. It's an extremely robust theory and it's consistent with what we know about the brain's response to humor, so I put a lot of value on BVT. Also, I'm too lazy to come up with something better. Theories are hard.

According to benign violation theory, humor occurs when the following three conditions are satisfied by a situation. First, we have an idea of how things should be or we make a prediction about what is going to occur. Second, what actually occurs is inconsistent with our ideas or predictions; in other words, it violates our original appraisal or expectations and it does so in a nonthreatening way, and so is a benign violation of our expected experiences. Third, we are in a position, cognitively speaking, to recognize the difference. BVT says that for the experience to be humorous, the violation must be something that could potentially be negative in another context. And timing is a factor, as the threat appraisal and benign reappraisal of the situation should occur close in time. Basically, BVT explains that humor occurs when our brain recognizes it made a mistake in judging a potential threat. To anthropomorphize our brain a little, it's as if it is saying to itself, "I thought this one thing was going to happen, but something else happened and it's not scary or threatening. It's okay, I can laugh at it." Our perception of humor is the result of the discrepancy between a negative prediction and a benign outcome.

As I mentioned, I feel this theory can potentially explain anything we find humorous. Remember that fart sound I described early? Sure you do. Man, if only this book was printed in scratch and sniff. Well, anyway, that fart elicits laughter from us because it fits the theory. In that quiet testing center, we are focused and we have an expectation that the room is going to remain silent for the duration of the test. Our expectation is shattered when we hear that sound; someone literally broke the silence by breaking wind. It's a violation of our expectation and it's nonthreatening, it doesn't hurt us. Well, it's nonthreatening for those of us sitting far away from the source, but you get the idea. It violates our implicit expectation of a silent testing center and our brain reacts to this violation by perceiving the humor. When I asked Dr. McGraw to review an earlier version of this chapter, he pointed out that people are simply "not supposed to fart in public" and that "it is a bit disgusting." Which is the original source of the violation, in any context.

Think about the man walking down the sidewalk carrying his bag of oranges. When we see the man walking, our brain makes the assumption that he is going to continue walking down the sidewalk. Suddenly he slips and falls and is showered with oranges. What actually happened violated our idea of what was going to happen, and it was nonthreatening. It didn't happen to us. It didn't happen to anyone we cared about. It happened to an unknown stranger who reacted in the most spectacularly absurd way possible and we were in a position to recognize the discrepancy. Seriously, we had front-row seats. Think about the benign nature of this situation for a moment: it isn't us or anyone we care about. If it was our spouse or maybe one of our children that just fell down before our eyes we'd probably react a little differently. We would react with concern, we might be worried, and we'd probably run over to make sure they were not seriously hurt. THEN we'd laugh. Filmmaker Mel Brooks articulated this very well when he said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

If we are overly empathetic, we might not find the situation funny. We might find ourselves thinking something like, That's not funny, what if that happened to me? Although we aren't the man who slipped, we might imagine what it would be like if we were in his shoes and react as if the violation IS threatening. Sometimes empathy gets in the way of a good laugh and I suspect this is one reason why men tend to enjoy The Three Stooges and the slapstick genre in general more than women. However, before you think of us as heartless animals devoid of empathy, show any guy the zipper scene from the movie There's Something About Mary and watch him squirm in empathetic agony. I can barely type this sentence as I've just conjured up that image in my own head. If you haven't seen the movie, you should cuz it's awesome. The scene involves Ben Stiller getting his testicles caught in his zipper in the most ... oh man I just can't finish that sentence. It hurts just thinking about it.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Laughing Cure"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Brian King.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

What Are We Talking About, Anyway? 15

So What Makes Some Things Funny? 21

Humor: So What's the Point? 28

What Is a Joke? 35

Jokes: Again, What's the Point? 44

The Brain 46

The Brain: What's the Point? 53

Speaking of Laughter… 54

Laughter: What's the Point? 66

The Benefits of Laughter: Why We Should Care 69

Laughter Makes Us Happy 72

Okay, So What's So Important about Happiness Anyway? 83

Laughter Feels Good 88

Do We Really Need to Discuss the Importance of Pleasure? 91

Laughter Decreases Pain 92

Is No Pain Our Gain? 102

Laughter Reduces Stress 107

Other Than the Obvious, Why Is Stress Management So Important? 122

Laughter Is Healthy 124

Comedians with Diabetes on Coping with Diabetes 133

Okay, So What Is So Important about, Um … Health? 140

Laughter Is Exercise 144

Laughter Makes Us Friends (and More) 146

Now That the Question Has Been (Sort of) Answered … 160

What Is So Important about Making Friends? 162

Laughter Is Foreplay 166

Why Is Foreplay Important? 171

Laughter Helps Sustain Relationships: My Chat with Yakov 172

Laughter Helps Calm Our Mind 178

Why Is It So Important to Overcome Negative Thinking? 189

Laughter Generates More Power Than Screams 192

The Benefits of Laughter: A Recap 193

Okay, So What Can We Do with This Information? 195

Learn How to Not Take Life Too Seriously 200

Learn How To tell a Damn Joke 206

Recognize the Therapeutic Value of Humor and Laughter 214

Practice Laughter, and Laugh Often 222

Final Thoughts 227

Appendix I Humor Testimonials 230

Appendix II Expressing Gratitude 246

Endnotes 248

Acknowledgments 259

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