Have you ever laughed so hard about something that you spewed whatever liquid you were drinking? My brother used to make me laugh like that. In fact, one time when we were 7 and 9, he made me laugh on top of a laugh on top of a laugh and I really got scared that I was not ever going to be able to catch my breath again. Of course, you know that i went back for more and more and more!

If you’re lucky you have someone in your life who ignites your laugh button (or at least your giggle button). I believe I have selfishly been collecting laugh-makers my whole life. There is nothing I love to do more than to laugh except maybe to make someone else laugh harder than me. Tonight my husband and I just returned from playing Rumicube with our good friends Tony and Janet. What we love about playing games with them is that we can really let our hair down and be silly with them while playing Rumicube or Dominoes or Uno and I feel just like I did when I was a kid. My ultimate goal is to win the game AND find a way to make everyone laugh at the table. I don’t think I could ever be the kind of comedian who people pay to see because usually I start cracking myself up about something before I can even get it out of my mouth. Sometimes that works in my favor though because everyone will start laughing at me laughing while trying to get out of my mouth what I find so funny. Then once I get it out, we all get to laugh again at the cause. By the way, I’ve been sober for almost 20 years so it’s definitely not the beverages I’m drinking—though there have been many a time when the people around me have threatened to cut me off from my decaf coffee.

If you haven’t laughed in awhile, it is okay to just start laughing at nothing right now for about five minutes. Seriously. Our yoga teacher used to tell us that there were actually laughing clubs in India that people went to just to laugh. One of the exercises he would have the class do towards the end of our session was to lay on our backs and laugh from our bellies as loudly and long as we could. Inevitably, someone somewhere would start laughing for real and the sheer joy of their laughter would cause others of us to follow suit. I loved it when a friend, who knows how I love to laugh, would be in the same class with me, because we would definitely encourage the laughter from each other.

Practice laughing so that you can get to the point that if you had taken a sip of something you’d accidentally spew it all over from the interruption of swallowing by laughter.

Laughter: It’s good for the soul!