Grief is physical as much as it is emotional and psychological. It manifests itself in symptoms that affect the normal functioning of our body. Erich Lindemann had looked into the somatic manifestations of grief and he saw how people who were grieving exhibited physical changes in their behavior such as having tight throats, heavy and persistent sighing, and inexplicable pain.
Different people process grief differently, and I would argue that the intensity at which people experience grief can also require different methods of dealing or managing it. Now, there have been several therapists who have used laughter as a means of helping people cope with or process grief, particularly the physical symptoms of it.
The idea first gained much prominence when Annette Goodheart, a painter and therapist, began to develop laughter techniques in the late 1960's and '70s for therapy. What she wanted to target was how people going through painful experiences or heavy negative emotions like grief struggle to find healthy outlets or means of release for the accumulated stress and negativity in their bodies.
Due to the fact that we have been taught to suppress our emotions, whether directly or subtly, through expressions like "Stop crying" or "You've cried enough about that", people have internalized the idea that showing emotion is unhealthy or bad. However, bottling up our emotions or having a lot of pent-up emotions is quite unhealthy because, as it continues to build up, it will try to find a way for release, otherwise, we will simply implode which is what happens when people experience breakdowns due to a prolonged suppression of their emotions.
In order to combat that, Goodheart advised people to find a means of achieving catharsis, whether it be through crying or laughing. And, according to her, we should make time to laugh more in order to remove our barriers to vulnerability. As we open ourselves up, the body is able then to release all of that accumulated stress, pain, and heaviness. Much like how a four-year-old lives its life without a care in the world, and being stress-free, laughing at least five hundred times a day, when we start to unleash the pent-up emotions, we can start to feel lighter.
Of course, laughter is not the panacea for all psychological pain or emotional distress. We still need to take the proper medication, to eat right, have enough sleep, and exercise. But laughter does open a pathway for the emotions to rise from within and find its way out.
As Cody Delistraty discovered for himself, no matter how much physical exercise he did or how long he slept, he just wasn't able to get over the grief brought about by the death of his mother. At a certain point, his body just broke down. And so, he tried out the laughter therapy sessions, and found some relief in being able to go through a cathartic exercise. He also recounts several other "grief cures" in his book The Grief Cure: Looking for the End of Loss.
(Image credit: zoo monkey/Unsplash)
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