Can Laughter Help Us Process Grief? [Video]

Grief is physical as much as it is emotional and psychological. It manifests itself in symptoms that affect the normal functioning of our body. Erich Lindemann had looked into the somatic manifestations of grief and he saw how people who were grieving exhibited physical changes in their behavior such as having tight throats, heavy and persistent sighing, and inexplicable pain.

Different people process grief differently, and I would argue that the intensity at which people experience grief can also require different methods of dealing or managing it. Now, there have been several therapists who have used laughter as a means of helping people cope with or process grief, particularly the physical symptoms of it.

The idea first gained much prominence when Annette Goodheart, a painter and therapist, began to develop laughter techniques in the late 1960’s and ’70s for therapy. What she wanted to target was how people going through painful experiences or heavy negative emotions …