Going Deeper Into Joy

Week 1 - Day 6 & 7

"Resolve to keep happy and your joy shall form an invincible hose against difficulties."
- Helen Keller

Health Benefits of Laughter

Norman Cousins is a "laughter legend" who in 1979 called attention to the medical community of the potential therapeutic effects of humor and laughter. He described his use of laughter during his treatment for ankylosing spondylitis. Because Cousins believed that negative emotions had a negative impact on health, he theorized that the opposite was also true (that positive emotions would have a positive effect on his health). He believed that laughter could open him up to feelings of joy, hope, confidence, and love (and thus to healing and health).

Cousins is probably the best known proponents of using positive emotions to improve health, but he was certainly not the first to assert this relationship. As early as the 1300's, Henri de Mondeville, a professor of surgery, wrote: "Let the surgeon take care to regulate the whole regimen of the patient's life for joy and happiness, allowing his relatives and special friends to cheer him, and by having someone tell him jokes."

The difference now is that we have scientific studies of the relationship between joy and health. Cousins himself spent the last 12 years of his life at the UCLA Medical School in the Department of Behavioral Medicine where he explored the scientific proof and supported clinical research on humor.

Day 7 Let's Review What We've Learned

* Read or review each of the week's five devotionals.
* Read out loud each of the five declarations at the end of the devotionals.

Questions

* Which of the five devotionals spoke to you in the greatest way? Why?
* What one sentence from the five devotionals stood out to you to the most? Why did this speak to you?
* What two or three steps can you take this week to move forward in strengthening your life through joy?