Laughing and Crying: Growth and Healing from the source

I have been working with laughter and crying as a therapeutic process for over fourteen years. First as a curious participant, and then as a facilitator, assisting others to fully experience the transformative quality of these uniquely human capacities.

I came to it first through trust – trust of those who were pioneering the work, and also of those who first guided me through the process.

I have experienced first-hand how working with laughter and crying can liberate us from a lifetime of dysfunction and difficulty, and during my training, I of course gained a reasonable cognitive understanding of what was going on inside me and others, as we took on the challenge of connecting to our joy and our pain.

Over time, I have begun to research further into the mechanisms behind the process and have more deeply come to understand and appreciate the true impact that this work can have.

I wanted to know why, scientifically, this work is so powerful and yet so very subtle, because I found that it takes weeks if not months for the effects to become apparent.

It is not one of those processes that creates a feel-good moment. It’s rigorous and challenging, and yes, participants describe emerging from it feeling lighter, empowered, and revitalised, but the deeper, permanent transformation takes time and retrospection.

We can see changes over time. Insights build on insights, decisions previously avoided are made, boundaries established, and a greater trust in life arises, allowing us to risk more, and embrace challenge, bringing the deep rewards of a changed and liberated life.

So here is my best attempt at a deeper explanation for what is actually going on when we immerse ourselves into this extraordinary work.

When a baby is born it is not self-aware. It knows nothing, yet it is clearly conscious. It can cry immediately from birth and within weeks can also smile and laugh. It is experiencing reality but knowing nothing. A newborn is conscious but not yet self-conscious. It experiences, but does not interpret. It responds, but does not conceptualise. So, what then, is crying or laughter in this raw state?

Pre-cognitive, pre-reflective consciousness

A newborn’s awareness is what we can call pre-conceptual. There is just the raw experience of sensations – sounds, warmth, discomfort, but no labelling of them as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘mine’, or ‘yours’. This kind of consciousness is sometimes called phenomenal awareness, a field of sensations and affects before any conscious mental activity. The baby feels, but doesn’t know that it feels.

In this early window, crying and laughter are embodied reflexes, or spontaneous expressions of physiological and energetic experience, not reasoned or emotional in the adult sense. Crying emerges from any type of discomfort like hunger, cold, pain, overstimulation, or separation. It is an innate biological signalling mechanism, evolved to draw the caregiver’s attention and restore balance.

Laughter (in infants) arises from surprise, relief, or sensory pleasure (tickling, rhythmic sounds, or a familiar face). It, too, is a reflex. It’s a soothing release of tension and a way to engage social connection.

Neither involves thinking about the experience. Instead, they are simply direct manifestations of the body-mind system seeking regulation and connection.

Pre-emotional affect

Before cognition, there is affect, or what we can call the primordial sense of intensity, arousal, or valence (the ability to discern between pleasant or unpleasant). Psychologists Silvan Tomkins and Daniel Stern described this as the affective core from which full emotions will later develop. For the newborn, crying is the expression of negative affect (something is wrong). Laughter is the expression of positive affect (something feels right), but there is no mental narrative attached. The baby isn’t sad “because” or happy “because.” It’s pure felt movement. The body is in dynamic relation to its world.

We can also describe the functions of crying and laughing as proto-communications, forming the earliest bridge between self and other. The baby’s cries evoke care and attention, and its laughter evokes joy in the caregiver. These exchanges begin to shape the infant’s emerging sense of safety, trust, and relationship – the foundation for emotional and cognitive development.

In that sense, crying and laughter are participatory acts of consciousness, even if not yet reflective ones. They weave the first threads of intersubjectivity – consciousness meeting another consciousness, without words and before there is even a concept of the ‘self’.

Once there is a self to feel about something, then emotion arises, but affect and awareness are there from the start, just raw, life-force expressing itself. Crying and laughter, in this early phase are the body’s way of speaking before language, the world’s response through the infant’s organism, or, poetically, the earliest music of consciousness.

This thread, running from the pre-verbal cries and laughter of infancy to the emotional intelligence and relational depth of adulthood, reveals something very profound about how human consciousness grows and develops from early years.

From raw affect to emotional patterning

When a baby cries or laughs, it’s not yet expressing a thought or feeling in the adult sense, it’s expressing a state. That state is a whole-body phenomenon – breath, heartbeat, muscle tone, hormones, and neural arousal, all shift together as one whole physical experience.

Over time, as the caregiver responds with a soothing touch, feeding, and smiling, the baby begins to associate these bodily states with patterns of experience. The links begin to form. Crying results in comfort and safety. Laughter results in delight, joy, and a feeling of connection.

These repeated cycles teach the nervous system that certain inner states lead to certain outer outcomes. This is the birth of emotional meaning. It’s not cognitive at first, it’s known as implicit learning – the information is stored in the body and the limbic system as patterns of safety or threat, trust or isolation, joy or withdrawal.

The caregiver as an emotional mirror

Developmental psychologists like Daniel Stern and Allan Schore have shown that the infant’s sense of self develops through attunement, or how the caregiver mirrors and regulates the baby’s states. When a parent responds warmly to crying or shares laughter, the child experiences it as, “My inner world is seen and held. Connection feels safe.” If, instead, responses are inconsistent or missing altogether, the infant learns that, “My feelings don’t matter. My needs will not be met.”

These early patterns are critical in shaping our emotional regulation and attachment style, the foundation of empathy, trust, and intimacy later in life. So those primitive cries and laughs are the seeds of what will eventually grow into our entire adult relational landscape.

From affect to emotion to cognition

During the first year of life, as cooing and gurgling develops into early language, children begin to name their emotions – sadness, anger, fear, joy. This naming allows the raw energy of affect to be organised and integrated into self-awareness. “I’m sad because you left.” Or, “I’m happy because you smiled.” Now emotion becomes cognitive – tied to meaning, time, and situations. But the root energy, the living pulse beneath the word, remains that same primal affect that once moved through the newborn as a cry or giggle.

In adulthood, emotional intelligence depends on staying connected to that underlying felt sense, while also being able to now reflect on it with inner language and perspective. It’s not a shedding of one and moving on to the other. Emotional intelligence (EQ) isn’t suppressing primal affect, it’s about integrating it with awareness.

A person with high EQ feels deeply (access to affect), understands their feelings (cognition), regulates them wisely (self-awareness), expresses them authentically (communication), and tunes into other’s feelings (empathy). EQ is the coming to maturity of those first cries and laughs. The raw signals of life transformed into conscious, empathic communication.

The through-line: From pre-verbal to trans-verbal

Now consciousness begins to circle back and forth. Mature presence contains the innocence of infancy but now with self-awareness intact. We rediscover the immediacy of the experience of laughing or crying knowingly, without losing the reflective mind.

In essence, crying and laughter are not primitive noises, they are the first voices of consciousness. They teach the body how to feel, the mind how to experience meaning, and the heart how to relate and connect. When we grow into emotional intelligence, we’re not moving away from that original field of awareness, we’re deepening our ability to listen to it, contain it, and share it with others.

Crying and laughter as core regulatory functions

From infancy, crying and laughter are also biological regulators, used by the body to release physiological tension. Crying releases cortisol through the lacrimal glands (tears), and laughter releases endorphins and oxytocin, rebalancing the nervous system. Laughter also signals vulnerability or joy to others, inviting connection and resonance. That’s why laughter is contagious. When we hear laughter it activates our natural response to recognise the joy in another and in ourselves.

Repression of laughter and crying

When we’re free to cry and laugh, our body ‘breathes’ emotionally, allowing it to complete cycles of trauma, stress, grief, relief, or joy. When there is repression of crying and laughing – our two most primal expressions, it doesn’t just quiet our emotions, it subtly reshapes the nervous system, the sense of self, and our capacity for connection.

Most cultures train children – openly or implicitly – to mute or at least ‘manage’ strong feeling: “Don’t cry, be brave.” Or “Stop laughing, it’s not appropriate.” This teaches the child that natural expression equals social risk. The child learns to prioritise belonging and self-control over authenticity. The nervous system adapts and starts to pre-emptively inhibit expression to stay safe. What’s lost is not just crying or laughter, but the trust in one’s own felt sense of true self.

This is the physiology of early adaptation, and when that natural rhythm gets interrupted again and again from outside influence, it becomes Chronic suppression. The emotions are not able to be processed but never actually disappear. Instead, they go underground into the body.

Wilhelm Reich, and later somatic therapists, described emotional repression as muscular armouring, manifesting as chronic muscle tension, like tightness in the jaw, or the diaphragm, shallow breath, hunched shoulders, constricted chest or a ‘lump’ in the throat, when the body literally ‘swallows’ tears or laughter.

The consequences of repressed laughter and tears

Over time, repression affects multiple levels of being and human development. Initially there is nervous system dysregulation, because emotions are energy in motion, and blocking them keeps the nervous system in a low-level fight, flight, or freeze response. Over time, this can lead to anxiety, fatigue, and disconnection from the root energy or affect that is supported by laughter and tears.

Also, when expression is restricted, there is a loss of vitality. Spontaneity and creativity become almost impossible. A person may appear ‘composed’ but inside they feel completely numb or flat. They may struggle to recognise or name their emotions, mistaking their numbness for calm, as they lose the fine-grained sensitivity that emotional intelligence depends on. Adaptation becomes normalised and the true self is forgotten.

Relational capacity

Because crying and laughter are also deeply social, suppressing them weakens the capacity for genuine connection. Relationships become performative and cautious, rather than resonant and authentic. Affective vitality supports curiosity, intuition, and insight.

Conversely, repression narrows thinking and feeling – people become efficient but uninspired. They lose purpose and passion, life loses meaning. We become more contracted and closed, and begin to automatically identify more with control than with vulnerability and openness. “I’m strong.” “I don’t get emotional.” There is no longer an authentic voice. Instead, there is isolation and avoidance. Beneath it, the self feels hollow or disconnected from any meaning, and energy begins to fade.

The collective layer

When an entire society discourages crying and laughing, for instance, in cultures where productivity, stoicism, or propriety are admired, the result is a collective emotional anaesthesia. People become slaves, complying and surrendering individuality for their survival and safety.

We see this in the rising mental health crises in developed nations, despite the material comfort that their people experience. Genuine expressions of joy and happiness are replaced by cynicism and nihilism, leading to explosions of rage or despair when repression finally collapses, and we realise that we are no longer ourselves at all.

The repressed feelings leak out – in sarcasm, judgment, and ridicule. A state of negative feeling begins to dominate, leading to destructive behaviours or addiction, burnout, or sudden nervous breakdowns. A cultures that forbid tears and laughter often end up haunted by unallowed expression, resulting in an uninspired, cynical population.

Recovering and releasing repression

This is why working directly with laughter and crying in the very pure form of the process that I facilitate – without using any cognitive or verbal stimuli to generate laughter and then tears, is so fundamental to recovering our true nature and the healing that can bring.

Re-connecting to the very source of our natural expression, is one of the most direct pathways to return to our true and natural state of being. Laughing and crying, unrepressed and free-flowing, give us back our hearts, both as individuals and as a society. Creativity and passion return, inspiration and real, authentic communication become available to us once again. Reconnecting to our primal energies liberates everything that is to be human – both the joys and the heartaches that life bring us. We can feel, we can express, and we can share what lives inside us with those around us.

Experiencing that primal self, especially in a safe and held group environment, brings us back to who we really are. Everyone is born with laughter and crying already built in, whatever their background, culture, or language, and all we are doing is inviting and allowing our laughter and our tears to again fulfil their function, just as they have always done from the moment of birth – to meet our need for connection, safety, acceptance, and love.

Osho’s Meditative Therapies

When Osho created The Mystic Rose Meditative Therapy back in 1989, he had seen the potency of laughter as an expression of insight, realisation, and ultimately awakening. He also made the connection of using laughter as a force to break through stagnant energy and repression held in the body, allowing tears to flow, both of sorrow, gratitude, and joy. “Whenever there is overflowing, tears come,” were his words, and most of his discourses concluded with a few great jokes because for him, a sense of humour was something sacred, which is why he always wanted his people to start their day laughing.

My first Mystic Rose in 2011 was life-changing. Not an easy journey at first – change seldom is – but having had countless conversations with Leela over the early years about the process, and hearing her insights on it through all those years, then finally experiencing it and eventually training to facilitate it, allowed me to work on trust and intuition more than logic and ‘method’.

But now, taking Osho’s original concept out to a more mainstream audience, it felt important to be able to explain the magic just a bit more to sceptical and cautious minds. To see this process – Laughter, Tears and Silence – grow and blossom around the world is, I believe, more needed now than ever before in our evermore challenging world.