Laughter can lower stress hormones, activate your body’s relaxation response, boost your immune system, release endorphins to help lessen pain, increase blood flow and oxygen, and relieve tension and relax muscles. Here is how to start a  laughter program.

• Watch funny movies, spend time with pets or people who make you laugh.
• Consider “Laughter Yoga” – combines breathing & intentional laughter.
• Look for humor in everyday situations; don’t take yourself too seriously.
• Never miss the funnies in the newspaper – better than the news.
• Smile and look for opportunities to laugh.
• Put funny greeting cards & cartoons on your office wall.
• Make a practice of streaming comedy movies.
• Share a laugh or a joke. Look for joke books.
• Don’t laugh at the expense of others; laughter should not be hurtful.

 No idea where these funny remarks come from.

• Buy a horse ranch and call it “Pasture Prime.”
• The incontinence hotline asked if I could hold.
• The older we get, the earlier it gets late.
• I’m so old, I remember when the Dead Sea was not even sick.
• With age comes wisdom & hair in really weird places.
• Friends are essential, especially ones with chocolate.
• How is it possible to have a “civil war?”
• An expiration date on “sour cream?”

I now live with a nonagenarian – that’s right a 90 year old who is a laughter expert & has a” Dad’s Jokes” book to share with a daughter. To any other nonagenarians out there, here are some laughter/smile thoughts. . .In 1935 a home likely cost less than $10,000 & a new car about $600 – if you could afford one. Stamps were 3 cents, a dozen eggs 18 cents, and a gallon of gas only 19 cents. A family doctor might make house calls. Who won the World Series when you were  a kid?

I honor you all! The older we get, the more stories we have to share again & again. So practice belly laughing, laughing until the tears come. Choose a laugh out loud movie. Or add laughter yoga to our exercises. Post a joke on your door. Let us laugh and smile all the way into 2026.