“Angel fly because they take themselves lightly.”
Laughter heals, and healers laugh.
Being successful in front of a group requires a lightness of being, the non-fixated attention that lifts us above the norm, as if floating. It is this magic of lightness that holds an audience’s attention.
The psychology of laughter runs a gauntlet from the physiology of the perceived chuckle to the surprise ending of the incongruity of slapstick humor. The slip, slap, and painful fall when the clown or anyone accidentally gets hurt. I twitch into the ‘nervous reaction’ of an inappropriate laugh.
“I just can’t help from laughing,” we plead, wiping the tears.
“Ouch, that’s gotta hurt,” Seinfeld mutters, as Kramer smashes into the door.
Does the humor come from a mind that needs to react?
Do we laugh to release the incongruity that someone has hurt themselves. That doesn’t make sense. Aha, nonsense (No sense), an often-laughable subject.
Because I laugh am I an inconsiderate sadistic jerk?
Does it give me pleasure to see others pain?
It does give me fits of laughter when Chevy Chase takes a fall, or the Stooges whack each other. When Wiley Coyote goes off the cliff or when Bart Simpson’s favorite characters Itchy and Scratchy perform diabolical deeds of destruction on each other I am known to laugh.
Cartoons may set the laughter gauge from a young age, but to laugh at the pain of another, continues into old age.
Perhaps laughing at another’s pain is a lesson in learning how to handle our own pain. Taking it, all lightly may be a key to entering heaven, and a cure for Seriousitis™.
The reasons for the slapstick laugh are not what a speaker is after, but the fact that it triggers one of the speakers favorite responses, laughter, is a curiosity worthy of a speaker’s attention.
Understanding the physiology of how breathing changes. How laughter creates shortening and gasping of breath as blood rushes to extremities. Even the belly bouncing becomes stimulus for laughter. Seems to work both ways; you can experience humor and laugh or equally successfully laugh and create humor.
It is time to ask the masters in Laughing Yoga classes how to spontaneously laugh. A great skill to learn. Practice tee hee’s, ha ha’s, hee-haws, belly rocking, snorting, head nodding, belly shaking laughing. It’s healthy, stress-releasing, and adds another tool to our tool box.
To be able to laugh on cue, to lead an audience to laugh where you want them, is part of the magic of Paying Attention.
‘Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
Speakers laugh because they know how.