Remember Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile? What was she thinking about?
There is something puzzling about a smile. In fact, much more than you would have thought.
Apart from the obvious feel-good effect that we experience, research has shown that smiling (& laughing) have a number of positive impacts on health and wellness.
Smiling (and laughing) can reduce stress, improve the immune system, increase well being and help people make better decisions. It even could help recovering from certain diseases. The most famous case is Norman Cousins’ recovery from (what is now thought to be) reactive arthritis which he claims in his book “Anatomy of an Illness” he cured with mega-doses of Vitamin C and heavy doses of daily laughter. He mentions : “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. “When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”
Many Eastern traditions have also incorporated laughter as part of a daily set of practices such as Laughing Yoga and Laughing Qi Gong. The power of the Taoist ‘Inner Smile’ meditations has been well documented (click HERE to listen to a MP3 of a Inner Smile visualisation as taught by Master Mantak Chia of the Tao Garden)
Watch the Ted video below where Ron Gutman reviews a number of studies about smiling, and reveals some unexpected results.