A short talk by Ashok Gupta encouraging deliberate engagement with joy and laughter during recovery from conditions like ME/CFS and fibromyalgia. He emphasizes that joy should not be postponed until healing; instead, practices that relax the nervous system (laughter, massage, hot baths, tai chi/qigong, mindfulness-like slow rhythmic movement) should be used now to support recovery.
Laughter. You know, it's so important to laugh. Sometimes we think that with this condition, we're not allowed to be happy. We're not allowed to take pleasure from things because we've got to work so hard on getting better. But there is no way to joy. Joy is the way. So in the same way, we don't wait to heal before we allow ourselves to allow laugh and re engage with joy, as we keep saying. Instead, we do that deliberately right now, even though we may not feel that particular way, we do what we can manage. So laughter can be in so many different ways. And I always give that example of watch your favorite comedies and laugh out loud, because that has a brilliant effect on our whole nervous system. And it's about finding what else relaxes your nervous system. Is it regular massage? Is it sitting in a hot tub or having a hot relaxing bath? Is it tai chi or qigong, which we know there's some evidence that they can really support fibromyalgia as an example. So there's slow, rhythmic movements with breathing very similar to mindfulness, can also help us relax our nervous system so we can be aware of what kinds of activities support us.
