By Karylee Bonta
Children laugh on average, 200 times a day, while adults average 20. Before I tapped on laughing, I wasn’t laughing even 20 times on a good day and laughter is so good for you.
Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness, overcame a serious connective tissue disease by laughing at funny movies and books all day and taking large doses of Vitamin C. Initially 10 minutes of belly laughs led to 2 hours of comfortable sleep, on a regular basis.
Prevention Magazine shared research where the blood vessels of volunteers laughing at a funny film clip dilated the blood vessels 22% while a war scene caused the blood vessels of other volunteers to constrict 35%.
I’ve watched my toddler fight fatigue by bellowing with laughter at nothing. Ardath Rodale, in another Prevention article, writes, “Studies show that humor and laughter reduce stress, lower blood pressure, boost our immune systems, give our hearts a good workout, create instant relaxation, and make us feel good.”
If you use EFT tapping every day then you know how it can eliminate stress, physically and emotionally relax you, and aid you in letting go of any negativity happening in your life.
I decided to tap on my own apparent lack of humor, as a means of gaining the health benefits associated with laughter.
I started with:
Even though I take life too seriously, I choose to see the humor and fun in life…
Even though a lot of humorous incidents and moments go right over my head, I want to become aware of them…
After about 30 minutes of tapping on these I began to feel like scrunching down to avoid being hit on the head. I couldn’t come up with a specific incident that would make me feel this way, so I then started tapping on:
Even though I was punished a few times for laughing when someone thought I shouldn’t, I’m a grown-up now and it’s okay to laugh.
About 10 minutes later I had the sense of having fun running and suddenly hitting a wall hard.
I changed to:
Even though I was stopped dead in my tracks for being relaxed and having fun at age 12, it’s okay to relax and have fun now.
This process continued and I changed statements for several additional aspects. After an hour my level of intensity came down several points on all of the issues above.
At this point my mind got fixed on:
Even though people who EXPECT my cooperation don’t reciprocate and it isn’t fair…
My level of intensity here was a 9 on a scale of 0 to 10. I’m not sure how this is related to being able to laugh, but I worked on this for an additional 20 minutes. As a result my level of intensity came down further on all of the above statements.
My next statement was:
Even though something else still stands in the way of my enjoying fun and laughter, I completely accept myself.
I had muscle tested that my level of intensity was 7 out of 10 on this phrase. After 45 minutes of tapping on this brought the level of intensity of all the above phrases to zero out of 10.
A few weeks passed while I tapped on a variety of other subjects, including a pulled muscle in my left side from coughing excessively from a cold. While tapping for relief of this pain, additional aspects of laughter having negative consequences came up.
I tapped on:
Even though I sense laughing is a danger and it ties into this painful muscle…
My level of intensity went from 7 to 4 out of 10. For all of these statements I tapped or rubbed primarily on the sore spot, under arms, on all five fingers, and karate chop point because these seem now to be where I need the most relief.
I find that I am laughing more. My daughter often now asks me, “What’s so funny?”
It’s good to be laughing.
