“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”  ~Victor Borge

I forgot that I’m supposed to be having fun; I even forgot that I wanted to have fun. My anxiety levels matched to the first few pages of the daily news. Life was all seriousness and problem solving and I had forgotten how much fun there was to be had. It is easy to get blindsided by the day’s business, the details of caring for those we love and the onslaught of ever mounting cultural despair. Before long, without even seeing it happen, all my efforts were geared to getting somewhere; not that I could tell you where, only that it wasn’t right here and now.

And just like that I was out of my body and essentially out of the life over which I have any real influence- this very moment. I put myself on a strict laughing regimen as soon as I realized it- a minimum of 30-minutes per day of Comedy Central, which pretty much guarantees a few laughs – it was like a system reset. I remembered myself, I remembered that it is all just this game we call life, I remembered that laughter is like a cleansing shower for the heart. Laughing until you cry has the same physiological benefits as crying until you laugh.

One of the places that can benefit most from remembering the fun is the bedroom.  Your intimate life gains power when you bring levity and light-heartedness to it. Our intimate life is one place where we can easily get lost in the idea that there is some place to get to, and where we can get lost in our ideas of how it should be, all taking us away from the here and now, which, when it comes to making love is the only time there is.

Performance anxiety is not always conducive to lightheartedness, and the drive towards the first often makes the latter out of reach. Ironically it is lightheartedness and humor that has the power to ignite sexual performance and satisfaction in ways that trying harder often cannot match. Laughter in the face of sexual anxiety not only shifts the energy into something workable, but opens the door for another kind of intimacy entirely. Laughing together is kind of like sharing an orgasm of the heart.

I remember a story that a customer once shared with me about how a deeply embarrassing moment in sexuality (I think it was a vaginal fart) became a hysterical moment of connection, and how all the intimacy following that moment was transformed by the humor. Life and sex will offer many opportunities to move towards humor or seriousness. Choose levity. While there are a plethora of games you can buy to add some play to your love making, you don’t need anything but a sense of humor to spice up your love life.

Start with an orgasm of the heart – laugh long and hard and then see where it goes. You will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to remember how to have fun.