What is humor? According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, humor is the faculty of discovering, expression, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous; the ability to be funny or amused by things that are funny.
I have often read about how important it is for us to have laughter in our life. While I was a Behavior Consultant in my former school division, a few social workers and myself dealt with some rather difficult children who either had mental illness challenges or came from families of neglect or abuse or lack of bonding with their parents. We used Theraplay to work with the children and their parents, usually the moms.
One of the strategies we used was laughter therapy. We got the family and us into a sitting circle and told someone to laugh. It was amazing how contagious laughter is. 100% of the time, when someone laughed, we all burst out laughing. You can imagine how healing that laughter was. It also was beautiful to watch the bonding that occurred from such laughter.
Have you ever noticed that at staff meetings when a serious topic is discussed, everyone becomes stressed, worried, and numb? Invariably, someone cracks a joke and the whole staff burst out laughing and they regenerate oxygen to their brains. Then the discussion can continue to be productive and creative. Try it!
