(ambient music) (logo whooshing)
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In the spirit of research,
I haven't done this very often with groups,
so being this is like a scientific group.
And so I'm gonna ask you to do something very simple.
I'm gonna have you draw.
Let's do
five lines on just a sheet of paper.
And the first one we'll just put a little heart by it.
Then one to 10, one to 10, one to 10, one to 10.
All right, I wanna get a baseline here
before we get started.
So, I want you to get an approximate count of your pulse.
Do you know how to take your pulse?
If not, it's like slow, medium, fast.
But if you know how to count your pulse for six seconds.
Heidi, can you give us six seconds?
And then we'll just put a 10 after it.
Okay, on your mark, get set, ready?
Go.
Okay, and then just plot that somewhere
between 60 and 120.
And then on a scale of one to 10,
How would you rate your mood with one being,
oh, so sad, and 10 being really, really happy?
Like ecstatic.
Given that you just had lunch on a scale of one to 10,
how would you rate your level of alertness?
Are you kind of sleepy, you kind of tired?
Are you feeling moderately awake?
Or you're just like, "Woo-hoo."
Let's see.
Next one, let's do respiratory.
Just about how many breaths you're taking in a minute.
Heidi, give us another six seconds.
All right.
Oh, thank you.
That's so much more important. (giggles)
Another six seconds.
I just want you to count how many breaths you have
between when she says start and stop.
Okay, six.
So, put a zero after that.
And then last but not least,
let's put on a scale of one to 10, your comfort level.
With one, you're experiencing quite a bit of pain
and the other you are just totally pain-free.
And I want you to just kind of put that aside
and we'll come back to that.
Yay.
All right, I'm so excited to talk about this.
And this is something that I'm so passionate about
and I'm just so appreciative
that Wayne asked me to be part of this.
And I'm just so excited
that Wayne is so forth thinking
about this whole concept of brain and how it can help people
especially those with invisible disabilities,
with chronic illness, but anybody,
just anybody can improve their wellbeing through the brain.
Now that being said, my background is in humor.
I studied it in graduate school,
convinced my advisors to let me be able to look at this.
And it's very true what E.B. White said.
That humor can be dissected as a frog can,
but the thing dies in the process.
And the innards are totally discouraging
to any but the purely scientific mind.
And that's because humor is, we know it when we see it.
It's like, "Oh yeah, that was funny,
or that made me feel good, or that made me laugh."
But in terms of being able to measure it,
that gets a little trickier.
And there's a couple of different reasons for that.
Actually, numerous reasons for that.
When we're talking about,
whoa, we're just zipping right through.
I got to put this down before I get myself into trouble.
Oh, we'll just go here.
I'm a neurohumorist.
I know what you're thinking,
(scoffs) "Oh God, another neurohumorist."
But when we're talking about humor,
there are several components.
We could be talking about the cognitive component.
The part that engages the prefrontal cortex,
the part that involves the prefrontal lobe.
And this is the intellectual process.
And that's what we refer to as wit.
And then there is the emotional process.
How does humor make us feel?
And that is mirth.
And then there is the physiological expression of humor.
And that is laughter.
Now, how many of you
have ever experienced something intellectually
and it was funny, but you didn't laugh out loud?
'Cause you can certainly have wit without laughter.
You can have wit and you can have the emotional feeling,
but you might not have laughter.
You can also have laughter and not necessarily have anything
that caused it.
Maybe you just were laughing at a response
because you heard somebody else laughing.
It was contagious.
Or maybe you were practicing laughter for no reason.
And so we can have these things individually, but in total,
this is what I'm gonna be referring to today as humor.
Groucho Marx said, "Humor is reason gone mad."
Elaine Pasquale, who was a researcher said,
"Humor is whatever people find funny."
Now there's much more expansive kinds of definitions,
and they go into a lot more detail.
But for our purposes today, this will be enough.
And so let's just, yeah,
let's just leave that as it is there.
So, when I was doing my research in graduate school,
one of my mentors was a PhD,
a nurse researcher, Vera Robinson.
And she came up with five purposes for humor.
And initially these were for healthcare,
but I have found that these could be generalized
I think for any situation.
And I wanna give these to you
so that you can be thinking about these
as we come back later with some more examples.
One was to establish relationships.
Another was to relieve anxiety and decrease stress,
to release anger in a socially acceptable way,
to avoid or deny painful feelings,
and to facilitate learning.
And then she went a little deeper
and we went into the functions and effects of humor.
And that is the psychological, social,
communication, and physiological.
And so I wanna go into each of these
in a little bit of detail
because this will help you gain some understanding
as to how humor can be of help
in particular with those suffering
from any kind of chronic illness, invisible disability,
or whatever the case may be.
Even if you are in a state of wellness.
So psychologically,
humor is recognized as a healthy coping mechanism.
How many of you have ever been stressed out
and found a way to deal with your stress
in an unhealthy manner?
Anybody here love chocolate?
Do you love eating?
And then for some people it might be smoking,
it might be eating, it might be drugs,
it might be retail therapy.
There's a variety of different ways
that we can deal with our stress.
But humor is a positive psychological coping mechanism.
Socially, it is a lubricant.
It bonds people.
It establishes relationships.
It builds relationships, it builds rapport.
And when we are thinking about persons
who are suffering from an illness
or an invisible disability,
many times one of the factors
that they're dealing with is isolation.
And how can we use humor
to help build those relationships and rapport?
To help decrease that isolation?
Third is communication.
It's a great way to enhance communication.
Whether you're trying to impart information,
as one of the purposes was.
Whether you're trying to convey anger,
whether you're trying to convey frustration.
A lot of times people will do this
through the guise of humor because it's safe.
Someone who is not comfortable, who doesn't feel safe.
We're going back to the brain and safety.
If you want a safe way to give someone a message,
you can give it in the guise of humor.
Because if that person responds
the way you hope that they would respond,
now you get a satisfactory response,
you have a great engagement.
But if they don't respond the way you hope
that they would respond,
the person still has a safety net because now they can say,
"Oh, that's okay.
I was only joking. I was just kidding."
And it gives them the ability to save face.
I remember once,
this is more of a healthcare professional example,
but I was taking care of a gentleman
when I was doing hands-on nursing and he had cancer
and the surgery was going to necessitate
the removal of his testicles.
And so going in before the surgery,
I went in and I asked him, as nurses are trained to do,
can you explain the surgery to me as you understand it?
And he looked at me and he slapped his leg and he goes,
"Yup, sounds like the doc's gonna change me
from a rooster to a hen."
And that was really funny and I laughed,
but there was something that was just in the back of my head
that said, "Sounds like there might be an issue here,"
because that was not normally
the way he interacted with people.
And so I busied myself about the room
and just continued to chat with him.
And within less than 30 seconds,
he was asking me questions
about his sexuality after the surgery.
So it was his way of staying safe
and communicating at the same time.
So lots of different ways
that humor comes into communication.
And in terms of business,
when I do business talks and leadership talks,
we also talk about the importance of humor in negotiation
and dealing with difficult people.
And then most importantly,
what I wanna cover in the time that we're here together
is the physiological effects.
Because there are so many wonderful, wonderful,
positive physiological effects.
Humor is designed wonderfully for acute stress.
It's very good for dealing with the adrenaline
and in dealing with that short-term response.
But what I'm hoping to help inspire you to do
is not only use humor for the short term,
but you start building it like a muscle
so that you can increase your bandwidth
so that you can be more resilient.
And this isn't the only tool that you need in your toolbox
to build resilience, but oh my goodness,
I tell audiences, I said,
"What if I could give you a tool
that didn't require you to break a sweat?
Didn't require you to break a bank.
You don't have to be coordinated,
you don't have to spend a lot of money,
you don't have to have any special skills.
Would you be interested?"
And so much of what we want people to do
and be compliant with, we say,
"Well, we want you to eat a very special restricted diet.
We want you to do these kinds of exercises
and I know it's gonna be uncomfortable
and you're gonna sweat a lot
and you're gonna feel miserable,
but it's gonna be so good for you."
And hopefully they will do that.
But here is something that I would think
that the compliance would be so much higher
because it is fun.
Now that being said, that's almost counterproductive to this
because I don't know about you,
but my mom when I was growing up, my mom said,
"If it feels good, it's either illegal,
immoral, or fattening."
And there is this feeling that,
well, if it feels good and it's easy and it's fun,
then it can't really be that good for you.
And I am here to tell you that humor is power.
And the power comes in the intentional,
purposeful, and repeated use.
You develop a habit, you do it over and over again.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
So I'm going to ask you to participate
in a bit of research here.
And if you do not wish to participate, you are excused.
But what we're gonna do is we are going to do
a 60 second laughter meditation.
Normally with audiences I do this for two minutes.
We've got a short amount of time
and we're at a higher altitude.
I think I might keel over if I do this for two minutes.
We're gonna start out with laughter for no reason
and most likely for the majority of you,
it will be become true spontaneous laughter.
Again, if you don't wanna participate
or you start feeling tired or lightheaded, stop.
But otherwise, I would like for you
to try to do it for the 60 seconds
and then we'll come back and discuss our findings
and our research here.
So Heidi, you're gonna time us for 60 seconds.
Tell us when to start.
Go? Or no?
Oh yeah, real funny.
(everyone laughing)
Oh, I feel like "When Harry Met Sally."
I'll have what she's having.
(audience laughing)
Heidi, I want you to give us a six second count.
I want you to check your pulse.
Ready?
Begin.
Okay, mark your pulse now where it is
compared to where it was before.
Let's do one more six second
and we're gonna count respirations while we got Heidi here.
Ready?
Okay, will you give us another six seconds?
Okay, respirations.
Okay, mark your respirations
compared to where they were before.
And then just do a self-assessment.
Where is your mood now
compared to where it was when we first started?
Where's your level of alertness?
And where's your level of comfort?
This is just a little self-assessment for you.
I'd love to hear what your findings are later.
Afterwards, I'm gonna be at the table in the next room.
But just the beginning of showing people
because so many times I can show people what the research is
and oh gosh, when I have groups
that have doctors in the audience,
they love to see the research.
In an effort to make you happy.
Our friend Lee Berk,
Heidi and I are great friends with probably
the leading psychoneuroimmunologist in the world.
And he said, "If we took what we know now
about laughter and bottled it,
it would require FDA approval."
So the next two slides
are not really intended for you to read.
If you want these on a PDF, just email me.
My email address is Karyn@KarynBuxman.com
But you'll see here that we have study,
after study, after study.
Studies that show increase of longevity of life.
We have studies that show an effect on the immune system.
We have studies that show the effect on cholesterol.
We have studies on the effect of blood glucose.
We have studies on the effect of renin.
We have studies on the effect of angiotensin.
We have more studies in terms of expression of gene,
blood pressure, the cardiovascular system, pain tolerance,
the psychological wellbeing.
There's all of these and more that the science is very new,
but it's gaining momentum.
And so what I'm really wanting you to understand
is that this really, really is good for you.
And I'm not necessarily wanting you to just wait
for it to happen.
I want you to make it happen by choice.
Now, here's one of the issues.
People will say, "But you don't understand.
There's nothing funny happening in my life.
There's nothing funny happening where I work."
And if that is your belief, that's your truth.
However, if you start assuming that humor is there,
you will start to see it.
You will be activating the reticular activating system
and you will start seeing things on a more conscious,
rather than non-conscious basis.
It's more important about seeing funny than being funny.
Some people are concerned, they're like,
"Well, but I'm not funny."
Great. You don't ever have to be funny.
The whole point of this is to appreciate humor
and if you're in a position of leadership
to appreciate humor in others and help build that up,
help them show their level.
I have examples of things that I have seen around
or that Heidi has shared with me that we have seen around.
These are just examples of humor in our environment.
I love the fact that we have cameras on our phone now
because humor is abundant and everywhere.
I'm just gonna share with you a couple of things we've seen.
I found this up in Maine
and I was getting my first lobster roll
when I looked on the counter and I realized
that this blender is actually a fish bowl with a fish.
Now, nurses love body fluids, death and dismemberment,
so I thought this was really hysterical.
But haven't you ever felt like that?
Like you're in a blender and at any given moment,
someone's going to push the button
and you are about to be fish food or chips.
Heidi took this picture in San Francisco
or San Diego I mean, and this is an actual Fitness.
This is somebody who's riding an escalator up
so that they can spend their hard-earned dollars
on a StairMaster.
But again, it's the absurdity of things in our lives
that provide us the humor.
My coffee shop has unattended children
will be given an espresso and a free puppy.
A medical office that I toured,
this was their stress reduction kit.
Bang head here.
I don't even know
what this means, (audience laughing)
but I thought it was pretty darn funny
so I took a picture of it.
This I threw in
because this is a 99-year-old mother of three,
grandmother of I think about seven,
great-grandmother of about 27.
She's holding up a letter that she got from the hospital
letting her know that she's pregnant.
(audience laughing)
So finding the humor around you.
This last one, it's not that George Clooney is so funny,
it was just more or less where he was.
I was in for my annual exam with my GYN
when I happened to look up on the ceiling
and there's George Clooney. (audience laughing)
I have to tell you, I didn't know whether to laugh
or be totally creeped out.
But the truth is that neurons
that fire together, wire together.
The more you use humor, the easier it will become.
Practice it, gain the physiological benefits.
And remember, one of my favorite authors is Viktor Frankl.
And Viktor Frankl said.
How many of you do not know who Viktor Frankl is?
He wrote a book called "Man's Search for Meaning".
If you've not read that,
put that on your recommended reading list.
And he was a prisoner of war,
he was in a German concentration camp.
And he said, "Between stimulus and response,
there's a space.
And in that space is our freedom and our power
to choose our response.
And in our response lies our growth and our happiness."
Stimulus, response.
Stimulus, response, stimulus.
It might seem that it's just so short,
but you do have a choice.
There's many mechanisms that you can put in
between the stimulus and response,
but I'm hoping that next time you have that situation
that you will choose humor by choice
and not let it happen by chance and experience the benefits.
Yay, time's up. Thank you.
(audience applauding)
Woo.
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