Laughing out Loud
On Sunday May 3, the world celebrated this year’s World Laughter Day, intended to create global consciousness of camaraderie and friendship through laughter. Chineme Okafor examines its popularity by asking residents in Abuja how the day can impact on glo
Across the world, therapeutic researchers are increasingly considering laughter as perhaps a distinct healing balm that could make people feel better and lifted from everyday challenges of life. When it comes to relieving stress, therapeutic researchers recommend that more giggles and hearty laughs are just what is needed to lighten mental loads and induce physical changes in the human body.
And even though these researchers aren’t too sure if laughing actually makes people feel so much better with their challenges, pundits in human sociology posit that good sense of humor, positive attitude and sincere support from family and friends play remarkable roles in keeping people laughing and happy with their lives.
While not shutting out the possibility of advancing scientific proofs on the staying influence of laughter on people, it is however obvious that laughter does help people feel better and certainly does not hurt but changes the physiological state of people who laugh and do it heartily.
Medical practitioners states that when people laugh, they stretch muscles that are in their faces and body, at the same time send more oxygen to tissues in the body through the pulse of the heart.
On May 3, 2015, Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the annual World Laughter Day (WLD), a day set aside but not yet globally ratified and enshrined to promote global peace through laughter.
Observation of the WLD is however gaining momentum amongst nations especially within the context of ongoing dealings in the international environment-the global community is devoid of cheering peace and lately in huge contention with terrorism, and the WLD can be said to have come beneficial to people of all race and creed seeking to relieve the burden of contemporary human existence.
Nigeria, in as much as it is beset with corruption, poverty and violence, has its people known and referred to as happy people and the country can as well tap from this day to expand its frontiers of peace through laughter, after all homegrown stand-up comedians have constantly kept Nigerians laughing wholeheartedly even in times of bleakness often occasioned by extant socio-economic challenges.
In trying to identify what makes the average Nigerian laugh and how well they do this in especially with regards to the WLD, THISDAY discovered from interactions with citizens in Abuja that with or without the WLD, they still find time to really enjoy some good laugh from their hearts.
To buttress such claim, most of the people who spoke to the paper recalled that a comprehensive survey on national mood that was recently conducted by the United Nations (UN) rated Nigerian citizens as the 100th happiest people in the world after wealthy and prosperous countries like Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.
The report which came just few years after a 2010 Gallup global poll rated the country as having the “happiest people on earth” through a poll of 64,000 people from 53 countries around the world and in which Nigerians were the adjudged the most optimistic people in the world.
The first gathering of the WLD took place in Mumbai, India, in 1998 with 12,000 people from local and international laughter clubs joining to make up what was called a mega laughter session.
According to information from WLD, two years after the first two laughter sessions took place in India, Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital hosted the 2000 edition of the fiesta. And with a theme, “happy-demic”, more than 10,000 people gathered at the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen to form a gathering of persons that laughed and bonded together not minding their affiliations.
Founder of the WLD, Dr. Madan Kataria is said to have understood the science of emotions and emotional contagion and how the practice of laughter yoga causes the body to release certain “feel good” hormones into the bloodstream related to feelings of happiness, warmth, unconditional love, bonding, tolerance, forgiveness, generosity and compassion.
Kataria had posited that the presence of these hormones and neuro-peptides prevents the production of other hormones and neuropeptides that correspond with hatred, fear, violence, jealousy, aggression and the emotions associated with war and oppression.
He therefore concludes that the practice of group laughter yoga could raise the levels of these hormones to high concentrations through the multiplier effect of people mingling with others who are in turn affected to varying degrees by same and they in turn infect other people they come into contact with.
By practicing and experiencing the chain