‘Ho-Ho-Holistic View’ : Serious Side of Humor: It’s Healthy, Experts Say

Taking humor seriously can boost your health and wealth, say the businessmen, doctors, psychologists and educators at a conference on “The Power of Laughter and Play.”

Just listen to Ashley Montagu, the 82-year-old anthropologist and social biologist who says he wants to “die young at a ripe old age.”

Montagu opened the recent four-day conference with the warning that “adults are nothing more than deteriorated children.” He advised his hundreds of listeners to rediscover the childlike playfulness they once enjoyed.

Or take Joel Goodman. Please. The punster and director of The Humor Project in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., titled his talk “The Magic of Humor: A Ho-Ho-Holistic View.”

“People should avoid hardening of the attitudes,” said Goodman, who has brought his message of mirth to dozens of major corporations and hospitals over the past 10 years.

“The power of humor, jest for the health of it, can be used personally and on the job,” he said. “We can use it to deal with stress. George Burns says you can’t help growing older, but you can help growing old. I look at ways people can invite smiles into their lives.”

“The Humor of Eating” is the subject of a talk by Jeffrey S. Bland, a leading authority on health and nutrition and senior research scientist at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.

Bland suggests that “what you eat may be hazardous to your sense of humor” in a talk about how food affects mood.

The program advises guests to “bring your jelly donuts and diet cola for an hour of gastronomical adventure” and “you just may discover how having more fun with your eating may improve your joie de vivre, to say nothing of your soupe du jour. “

Humor to Reduce Stress

Steve Allen Jr., a funny family doctor in Syracuse, N.Y., and son of the famous comedian, concentrates on laughing to reduce stress in his talk, subtitled, “S/He Who Laughs Last, Lasts.”

Putting play to work is Matt Weinstein’s subject. He is the founding president of Playfair Inc., a Berkeley consulting firm that conducts “playfulness trainings” for more than 100,000 people a year.

“My thesis is that stress is not an event, it’s a reaction to an event,” said Weinstein, who has been called “America’s Pied Piper of Play.”

“I tell people not to take things too seriously,” he said. “Take your job seriously, but take yourself lightly. We do keynote presentations to management conferences and have worked with big companies like Honeywell and AT&T;, talking about the benefits of lightening up.

“It’s an essential management skill to have a sense of humor about yourself,” he said.

Weinstein said he was taking himself too seriously once, until he discovered the “Santa Claus Effect.”

‘I Was Too Serious’

“I was really upset, driving my car, when I saw a man on a bike dressed like Santa Claus,” he said. “I realized then I was too serious.”

When people laugh hard, he said, the heart rate speeds up, the circulatory system is stimulated, muscles go limp, the eyeballs glaze and “there’s a dopey smile on your face. That’s also what we look like when we’re really relaxed.”