Stress is a common issue for many people that involves both physical and mental health. Other words for stressed out, like breakdown, indicate just how serious it can be. Some level of stress is normal and healthy, but when you feel overwhelmed by it, stress can be damaging. The good news is that you can combat stress with something simple and fun: laughter.

Why Laugh When You Have Undue Stress?

A little bit of stress in your life is normal and beneficial. It pushes you to achieve, to do the right thing, and in some cases, to survive. Our modern lifestyles tend to cause too much stress. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and suffer the consequences: headaches, stomachaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and more.

If you have ever used humor to lighten the mood, you know how powerful humor can be. There are many benefits to laughing. In the short term, it helps oxygen circulate in your body, relaxes muscles to relieve tension, and relaxes the stress response.

Over the long-term, more laughter improves your mood, relieves physical pain, boosts immunity, and makes it easier to connect with people and get through difficult situations. It makes you more resilient in the face of stress. Studies have found that even just anticipating a good laugh can boost your mood significantly.

How to Laugh More

Faking a laugh won’t work. To get the benefits of laughter, you need to actively find humor. One of the best ways to do this is to spend more time socializing with friends. Share stories and jokes that you can laugh about. Laughter among friends is contagious.

To get the benefits of both anticipating and experiencing laughter, plan for watching funny movies or reading humorous books. Looking forward to streaming a new comedy after work can boost your mood and get you through the day.

Also, try to look for humor in everything you experience throughout the day. Not everything is a laughing matter, but when you start to see what’s funny in daily details, you will laugh more. This might require an attitude shift, away from complaining about frustrating situations to finding what’s funny in them. Practice makes perfect.

Deploy Laughter with Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a technique that helps people manage and treat a variety of conditions, from headaches and asthma to anxiety and stress. It can be a powerful strategy for battling stress. Biofeedback provides information about your body’s response to stress using electrical sensors.

When you get that information, you can train yourself to implement stress-relief strategies, like finding something to laugh about, to better manage it. So, who developed biofeedback and a technique to treat and combat stress? Gary Schwartz at Harvard developed biofeedback for stress management in the 1970s. He designed the process to give people some control over stress processes in the body that are generally out of our control.

Use biofeedback and other tools to use more laughter and humor in your life. Laughing more will lower your stress levels and make you more capable of coping with the stress you can’t avoid. Add to this tools like meditation and deep breathing, and you have a recipe for wellness in the face of a stressful world.