Laughter is in many ways our universal language. Humans love to laugh, and it’s good that we do so, because laughing can reduce stress, improve our immune system and relieve pain.
Jeannette Sanger, a laughter yoga instructor from New York, experienced the latter benefit last summer. She was cooking when a pot of boiling water overflowed and hurt her leg. “It was painful,” she said, but she forced herself to use her own skills as medicine and tried laughing to reduce the pain. “As my husband drove me to the nearest hospital, I was sitting in the back seat laughing,” Sanger told The Huffington Post. “It successfully stopped me from giving my attention to the pain.”
Even forced laughter like Sanger’s can have a great effect on the body, according to Dr. Madan Kataria, a medical doctor from India who developed laughter yoga, a practice that draws on the breathing exercises of yoga to produce therapeutic(有疗效的) results. The doctor wa researching for an article entitled “Laughter-The Best Medicine” when he made the surprising discovery that both forced and sincere laughter can affect our health.
In 2014, researchers at California’s Loma Linda University found that older adults who watch funny videos show improvement in their powers of recall and show lower stress levels. Another study at the University of Maryland Medical Center found that people who laugh more and have a sense of humour are less likely to get heart disease.
“Laughing is a way of learning how to play again,” Sanger said. Sanger’s classes start out with simple breathing and movement activities. “Motion creates emotion,” she said.
【小题1】What is Jeannette Sanger?| A．A doctor. | B．A cook. | C．A researcher. | D．A trainer. |
| A．To reduce stress. | B．To enjoy its benefit. |
| C．To relieve pain. | D．To amuse herself |
| A．It can result in more laughter. | B．It can make you more sensitive. |
| C．It’s likely to cause heart disease. | D．It may lead to memory recovery. |
| A．By moving around you’re changing your mood. |
| B．Motion brings about great change to your emotion. |
| C．Your emotion can be improved by moving a lot. |
| D．Humor has both physical and psychological effects. |
