‘Laughter Yoga’ and Provocative Therapy
As the silly season draws to an end it’s time to turn to more serious matters. So let’s talk about laughter, humour, health and Provocative Therapy.
The current edition of The New Yorker (Aug 30, 2010) features a nine-page article on the world’s most famous advocate of ‘Laughter Yoga’, Dr. Madan Kataria, a celebrity doctor endorsed by Goldie Hawn and Andrew Weil, MD. Although laughter does not feature in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the most succinct text on the practice of yoga, Kataria has apparently linked the term ‘yoga’ to his laughter practice because some of his exercises use controlled breathing – which could be construed to be a new form of pranayama.
Laughter clubs have sprung up all over the world and have even been promoted by the city council of Teheran. Perhaps Ahmadinejad and Obama should have been invited and the world could have laughed its way to peace? Or maybe not…
The title of Kataria’s book, Laugh for No Reason, makes it clear where he stands on the issue of laughter and health: Laughter is good for you physically, mentally and spiritually and it does not matter why you laugh – only that you laugh. He is by no means the first to point out the therapeutic benefits of laughter. William Fry, Norman Cousins, Patch Adams and many others have spoken and written of the physiological benefits of laughter – the most important of which I have encapsulated in the mnemonic SMILE.
So what makes Dr. Kataria different? Khatchadourian describes Kataria as an ‘exceptional fake laugher’ and this is probably the key to his international success. But can satire, farce, burlesque and theatre of the absurd be utilised to help us overcome psychological issues in ways that ‘laughing for no reason’ cannot?
Provocative Therapy is the cutting edge in the use of reverse psychology and humorous insights in psychotherapy. Patients undergoing Provocative Therapy need to give the therapist permission to say things that might sound absurd, rude, inane, surreal etc. The idea is to provoke (ie.to call forth from Latin pro-vokare) the patient to locate the solution to his/her problem within himself/herself. Although laughter is not absolutely necessary for Provocative Therapy to have a therapeutic effect, its paradoxical approach to dealing with psychological issues often produces a great deal of laughter in the consulting room.
When a Provocative Therapist induces patients to laugh, this is very different from the ‘laughter for no reason’ of laughter yoga. When patients are warmly and kindly provoked into laughing at the absurdity of aspects of their psychological suffering, they can often liberate themselves from that suffering. Frank Farrelly’s Golden Rule of Provocative Therapy (Only do it with ‘affection in the heart and a twinkle in the eye’) ensures that the patient knows that the Provocative Therapist has a therapeutic objective at all times. As people are therapeutically provoked to laugh (and occasionally cry or just stare into space in semi-trance) a window of opportunity can open for them to locate, prescribe and enact their own solutions to their problems.
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Comments
Dr. Kaplan,
Your recent mail on Laughter caused me to think of Norman Cousins. Below is a summary of how he beat disease – through laughter amongst other things. He even wrote a book on his experience (still available on Amazon US):
Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient
Norman Cousins: The Man Who Laughed In The Face of Death
What Does Laughing for Do Your Body? Norman Cousins Knew.
Norman Cousins was given a few months to live in 1964. He had Ankylosing Spondylitis, a rare disease of the connective tissues. He was told a doctor who was his friend that he had a 1 in 500 chance of survival. He was told to ‘get his affairs in order’.
But Cousins would have none of it. A journalist, he was used to research and set himself to find a solution. He read and discovered that both his disease and the medicines were depleting his body of vitamin ‘C’, among other things.
He did three things that would be usual today and were unheard of then.
1. He fired his doctor and left the hospital to check into a hotel. He ascertained that the cultural of defeat and over medication in the hospital was not going to be good for his health. He found a doctor who would work with him as a team member as opposed to insisting on being in charge.
2. He began to get injections of massive doses of vitamin ‘C’.
3. He obtained a movie projector, no small feat in those days, and a pile of funny movies inclusing the Marx Brothers and ‘Candid Camera’ shows. He spent a great deal of time watching these films and laughing. And he didn’t just laugh. In spite of being in a lot of constant pain, he made a point of laughing until his very stomach hurt from it.
Did it work? Who knows. You should know that Cousins finally died November 30, 1990 in Los Angeles, California, having survived years longer than his doctors predicted: 10 years after his first heart attack, 16 years after his collagen illness, and 26 years after his doctors first diagnosed his heart disease.
Can it be proved that laughing added 26 years to Norman Cousins’ life? Not really, but we see above that it strengthens the immune system that fights disease. There can be no double blind tests for this. They can’t take two groups of dying people and have one laugh and the other cry and see who lived. The ethical restraints would be enormous and there would be too many variables. We will just have to take his word. Perhaps a version of Pascal’s Wager. If laughing doesn’t extend life, wouldn’t it be better to laugh anyway to make your last more pleasant?
I am intrigued by the suggestion false laughter can do you so much good- why does the ‘risus sardonicus’ of terminal tetanus not rescue the sufferer from death? Provocative therapy has the basic tennent of genuine affection and an open heart. Many false laughs can feel positively hurtful as well as irritating and are easilly discernable as a false expression of the ‘rigoleur’s’ underlying feelings. It would be interesting to compare put on laughter with the genuine article: sniggering vs guffaw? It would appear more research is required to determine whether the benefit is in the muscular exercise of the mouth and face or the release of emotion, perhaps accompanied by a tear from the eye? Interesting how we can also FEEL so much better after deep sobbing crying- anatomists inform me similar muscle groups to those used in laughter are employed.
@Dr.Kaplan- Your article “Laughter Yoga and Provocative Therapy” is very interesting.However a practitioner,in my opinion,requires the versatility of innovative outlook and expertise in homoeopathic philosophy and prescribing as you have achieved with dedication and practice. While Provocative Therapy can be mastered and popularised in the West by homoeo physicians Laughter Yoga requires caution in application because the western mindset in general is evidence oriented and amenable to rational experience and logical deduction of any observed phenomenon. Imbued with study and a deep understanding of Indian philosophy your perspective of ‘therapy and yoga’ as read in the concluding sentence may not be readily intelligible and communicative to people in the west. Dr.Madan Kataria’s Laughter Yoga may be innovative to erudite minds but can be confusing and doubtful to common laity.
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V interesting. I personally love provoc therapy. Tell me about Frank Farrely. I love what you say on laughing for no reason. People today should laugh more at themselves and the environment around you. Dr Kaplan I love what you are doing (blogging) about homeopathy. I hope to continue loving your blogs on provoc therapy. Thank you Dr Kaplan for providing me the joy of reading your blog.