Pursuing good health is a laughing matter

Dr. Steven Sultanoff might not be a comedian, but he's been spreading the word about **therapeutic humor** for the past 20 years. This clinical psychologist, known more for his wit than his jokes, educates doctors and therapists on the benefits of laughter at Pepperdine University and in workshops across the state. Over the years, Sultanoff has come up with his own model for helping people through applied wit and whimsy. He calls it Humor Matters. But it’s far more than fun and games—his approach to levity has a purpose. “It’s not like you sit down and I tell you jokes. You talk about something, then maybe I exaggerate something, and you laugh at it. And the reason I might have exaggerated it was to help you shift your thinking about whatever it was,” he says. Sultanoff had the aha moment that would shape his career during a training session for cognitive therapy. He realized everything he was trying to accomplish—managing our thoughts, behavior, feelings and even biochemistry—could be effected with humor. He developed a three-component model: laughter, mirth and wit. “When you laugh,” Sultanoff says, “it affects you physiologically; when you experience mirth, it affects you emotionally; and when you exercise your wit, it affects you cognitively.” He has been known to don a clown nose to change the mood during a session, and he often instructs his clients who suffer from phobias to visualize a time when they laughed so hard it literally brought tears to their eyes. Sultanoff sees proof daily that the emotional shifts stimulated by this are a beneficial physical aid. “You feel less stressed, and it seems to increase the tolerance to pain.” Recently, there has been much media fanfare over a growing community that believes in pairing a hearty guffaw with breathing exercises—known as laughter yoga. Dr. Madan Kataria, a medical doctor from Mumbai, founded Laughter Yoga Clubs back in 1995. He and Sultanoff have appeared together on panels, and though their approach is different, their goal is shared. “In laughter yoga, anyone can laugh without comedy,” Kataria says. “You start by fake laughing, and then once you lose inhibitions, it becomes real—and contagious.” It should come as no surprise that California is home to the most laughter clubs in the nation. “The last time I was in Los Angeles, I suggested they start calling it Laugh Angeles,” Kataria says, punctuating his sentence with booming ha-ha’s. Celebrities Goldie Hawn and Oprah have endorsed the shift to laughter therapies. Former ballerina and Playboy model Cynthia Toussaint is a believer as well. She founded For Grace, a nonprofit for women in pain, and selected Sultanoff to speak at the group’s third conference, Gender Matters. After decades of enduring complex regional pain syndrome—sometimes known as the suicide disease because of the constant pain—she says developing a more jestful nature has helped her weather years of suffering. “There are many options for pain, and we need all of them,” Toussaint says. “Plus, you get to have fun.” Medical practitioners agree humor is a welcome distraction and valuable therapeutic tool, though even Sultanoff acknowledges additional research is needed to determine if fits of giggles can ever be considered an actual cure. Laughter being the best medicine will have to remain a cliché—for at least a little while longer. As a side note. The Improv Traffic School offers thier online traffic school in a fun and simple way. We all know traffic school can be a bore but they make it fun and funny!

News Flash: The Cultural Difference Of Southern Driving

Driving reveals *a lot* about culture. Germans zoom down highways, the British manage on the **left side**, and Americans show interesting differences between **Southern** and **Northern** driving styles. The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had covertly funded a project with the U.S. auto makers for the past five years, whereby the auto makers were installing black boxes in four-wheel drive pickup trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash. They were surprised to find in 47 of the 50 states the last words of drivers in 61.2 percent of fatal crashes were, "Oh, Shit!" Only the states of South Carolina, West Virginia and Arkansas were different, where over 89.3 percent of the final words were: "Hold my beer and watch this!"