Flood your Heart
with Laughter
and happy memories will follow  

by Patricia Ritsema van Eck

Have you ever experienced how easy you can bend and twist after a good laugh? No? And you’re not a yogi? Nor a ballet-dancer? Then you should try the next exercise.

Stand up straight, but relaxed, your knees slightly bent and your feet about 30 centimeters apart. Now slowly bend over. Start with lowering your chin to your chest, then lower your head further and bow your back. Don’t force anything! How far can your fingers reach down?

Now slowly raise yourself again and start to laugh. This is the hardest part: laughing for no apparent reason. What will you laugh about? Doesn’t matter. Try laughing about nothing. Hard? It just might be!

So what to do if you cannot produce a grin on your face? Just use your fingers to push those straight lips into a charming smile. This has the same physical effect on you as when you smile genuinely. Go ahead. Give it a try. Stand in front of a mirror and watch your grimace. Can you feel an urge for some authentic laughter coming up now? This doesn’t have to happen, but it often does when people see their twisted smiles.

After smiling and laughing for about 5 minutes, you repeat the first exercise. How far do your fingers reach this time? Pretty impressive, is it not?!

If you weren’t in a good mood already when you started this exercise, chances are you will be now. Whenever I do this exercise, the weight in my head resides and my feet begin to feel warm and heavy. Whatever it was my mind was occupied with before I started laughing; I now can no longer be bothered about it.

A little scientific note on the side in case you’re one of those hard-to-convince left-brain professor kind of people who need proof something really works before they take action:

Expressing a smile on your face will force certain muscles to contract. This decreases the flow of blood in nearby vessels, which cools the blood and thus lowers the temperature of the brain stem. Now the brain stem will start producing more of a neurotransmitter called serotonin. And this causes you to feel more happy and relaxed. Got it? Then smile now!

The next thing that happens is that you’ll find it really easy to retrieve happy memories and ideas.  Happy memories are conserved at certain temperatures. So when your body temperature is similar to the happy memory temperature, you readily have access to them. It’s also the exactly right temperature for some proper heart focus.

Be cool, be happy!

(From the chapter 'Can you hear your heart?')

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My Happy Heart © 2004 Patricia Ritsema van Eck