That's Fit

So, most of the time, yoga is a fairly serious practice. There's a lot of concentration and meditation involved -- you breath, you focus, you get more in tune with your body -- and it's wonderful.

However, laughter is good for your body, too, and in honor of Mike Meyer's new flick, The Love Guru, I present to you Mr. Meyers' newest character The Guru Pitka. He has a series of yoga poses that are not for the faint of heart and definitely not for those without a wicked sense of humor.

It's kind of what you'd expect if you were to do a private yoga class with the man behind Austin Powers and Shrek -- asanas like Gassy Cobra and Yank My Doodle, It's a Dandy, and the faces to go with them. Are you going to get a great yoga workout from it? No way. But, you're pretty much guaranteed to laugh, and that's worth something, too.

It's a common stereotype: old people don't get jokes. Usually, the assumption is that older folks miss out on humor because of the generation gap, but recent research suggests that it's something more.

Apparently the real reason older adults have difficulty understanding jokes is because they have problems with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory.

Researchers created a test in which two groups were supposed to select the most-appropriate punchline to a joke from 1983 -- that way, participants didn't have to be familiar with contemporary pop culture to find it funny, and everyone would theoretically have the same chance of getting it right. However, the study's authors found that younger adults were 6 percent more likely to answer correctly than their older counterparts.

Of course, humor is a subjective thing -- some people, I'm sure, failed the test simply because they didn't have a sense of humor.

If you're dealing with depression one of your most important tools for managing your symptoms is humor. Humor may be the very last thing on your mind if you're dealing with depression, but it's a tool that can help you change your perspective. Viewing life with a more humorous outlook can help snap you out of a negative frame of mind.

A humorous outlook doesn't mean you have to make a joke of everything happens. Instead, it can help you find balance, perspective, and view things a bit more lightly. Humor allows you to be forgiving with yourself and to understand that you're human and completely fallible. To create a more humorous outlook, give yourself permission to laugh at your own behaviors (but not at yourself... there's a difference). Try being a bit silly now and then -- do something you wouldn't normally do, act like a kid -- life isn't all about bills and seriousness so let yourself have a little fun. This article has more information on the benefits of inserting humor into your life and more tips on how to cultivate humor.

A recent study appearing in this month's issue of Addiction finds that problem drinkers can't always understand jokes -- and, subsequently, are less likely to find them funny.

The study tested 29 German alcoholics to measure mood, intellectual ability, "mentalizing ability" (likelihood that a participant could understand the behavior of others) and capacity to appreciate jokes. Subjects were given the premise of a joke, and then asked to select the most logical punchline from a number of options. 68% of of the alcoholic patients chose correctly, as opposed to 92% of the healthy control group. The alcoholics also scored poorly on the mentalizing ability tests, leading to speculation that the problem drinkers would have difficulty understanding or finding humor in jokes.

But it's not just about being able to appreciate a good zinger. An alcoholic's inability to make sense of his or her own mental state or the mental state of others, combined with a diminished sense of humor, could make it difficult to engage in social settings, thus hampering the rehabilitation and recovery process.