Many years ago I was introduced to Scott Kim at a party and found him delightful and accessible, even though he possessed a creative brain that was light years beyond my own abilities. He wrote the book Inversions– a book of names (like “dance” shown here) that read the same right side up, in the mirror and upside down – an astonishing 30+ years ago, and it’s still fascinating.

More recently he collaborated with renowned neuroscientist Richard Restak, M.D. on
The Playful Brain: The Surprising Science of How Puzzles Improve Your Mind, the title of which describes the content perfectly. In between those two publications, and since, have been thousands of other puzzles. Scott, who has a PhD from Stanford, describes his puzzles as being “in the spirit of Tetris and M.C. Escher — visually stimulating, thought provoking, broadly appealing, and highly original.” Check out his website http://www.scottkim.com/  to learn more.

I’ve put the following games in the creative right brain column because they involve visual thinking, but I’ll let you decide if they really belong there.

Hue Knew? is a variation of the chart that features the names of colors – pink, purple, red, green, and so on – with each color name written in a color that doesn’t match. The word “orange” might be written in purple, for example. On the chart, your task is to recite the color of the print rather than the printed word. The game “Hue Knew?” takes that same concept and puts it on colorful round cards with two circles of words on each. The goal is to quickly find the two words on each card that are actually written in the colors of their name – “orange” written in orange, for example – and grab the markers with those colors. Four of the cards in the set have all of the colors correct, in which case you must aim to be the first person to grab the black marker (since black absorbs all colors). Played as a competitive game between two or more people, the fastest thinker/grabber wins.

Personally, I don’t think speed matters, but if you practice on your own, you will find that you get faster over time, which at the very least is likely to make your brain feel a little more smart-alecky.

Your speed is also likely to improve with a second round game available through Amazon but produced by BlueOrange (www.blueorange.com), this one called Spot It!

Each round card has eight symbols on it in various sizes, such as an anchor, baby bottle, ice cube, zebra, heart, moon, cactus, and ladybug – with a total of about five dozen objects in all. Take any two cards, and only one item will match between them. They will almost always be of different sizes and two or more items on each card will have similar coloring, such as the snowflake, snowman and pencil, so “spotting” the match can be tricky. I am absolutely fascinated with the algorithm that was used to create this deck in which it’s possible to place any two cards next to each other and find a matching item, but only one match. Genius!

The game is usually played with a partner, and the first one to spot the match in the two cards turned over gets to keep them, but as with Hue Knew? one can also play this game alone.

In addition, as you may have guessed from the examples given, there are variations in how it might be played, such as pointing out all the like-colored items or things that go together like the raindrop and snowflake or the snowflake and snowman or the snowman and igloo or the igloo and ice cube. In fact, finding all the possible likely combinations, which requires using your imagination, is probably the more challenging brain game.

You can also find these games in the MindWare catalog (www.MindWare.com), which despite its focus on children as models, has many games that are fun and challenging for adults.

One of my favorite people to connect with at the annual AATH conference is Allen Klein. I have long used his book, The Courage to Laugh, in working with caregivers, along with his uplifting books of quotes. His basic premise in the Courage book is that not only can humor lead to physical and emotional healing, but it can lead to deeper connection between people.

At the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor conference Allen used a number of clips from popular movies. One of them was the 1989 hit “Steel Magnolias,” which I remembered purely as a heartbreaking story. But the scene he showed featured Sally Field walking away from her daughter’s gravesite with her dearest friends. She is filled with anger at everything that shouldn’t have happened and cries out that she just wants to hit something. “I want to hit something – HARD!” Olympia Dukakis grabs the least helpful of their friends and pushes her in front of Sally, saying to her, “Take a whack,” and to their friend, “This is your chance to do something for your fellow man.” Suddenly they all burst into laughter – except the nearly whacked woman who is still a bit discombobulated. You can view the clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EjNa8Ukg_0.

The “Steel Magnolias” clip is a perfect example of using humor as an act of love to help a friend, but several of the clips were purely for fun. It is amazing how creative directors have been in finding ways to add humor to tragedy. Here are three examples. (Many more from these shows and others are available on YouTube):

• Death at a Funeral – Trailer, British version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCY4hh1wJg
• Death at a Funeral – Trailer, American version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5jjbQuv2h4
• Mary Tyler Moore Show – Chuckles the clown funeral scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmBK5GslDaQ

As for Allen, he has a wealth of free information about the effective and creative use of humor on his website: http://www.allenklein.com/particles.htm.

• When and how have you used humor to help you through a tough time?

Many of the presenters at the AATH (Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor) conference earlier in April were researchers who are among those doing interesting work to verify what all of us know instinctively: humor relieves stress, diffuses anger, lifts our mood, helps us cope, enhances friendships, and is virtually impossible to live without.

One of the most intriguing researchers for me is Gurinder Bains, M.D., a Ph.D. student in rehabilitation sciences at Loma Linda University where he works with the highly respected Lee Berk, DrPh, MPH. This article, https://myllu.llu.edu/oncampus/story/?id=4759, describes Dr. Bains’ research on how humor improves memory in the elderly, a topic he spoke on at last year’s conference when I co-presented with him. Watch his name for additional breakthroughs.

In the meantime, the work of Dr. Berk, who is a preventive care specialist holding multiple positions at Loma Linda and elsewhere, is partly summarized in this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt0QrmATtfk.

In an interview, Dr. Berk noted the medical benefits that are increasingly found to come through our mirth. He said, "For the most part, when you go and get medical treatment, a clinician is not necessarily going to tell you to take two aspirins and watch Laurel and Hardy, but the reality is that's where we are, and it's more real than ever. There's a real science to this. And it's as real as taking a drug." 

His research shows that laughter boosts the body's immune system, decreases stress hormones that can lead to disease, and can lower blood pressure, while giving an aerobic lift to the heart. "My goodness, if you bottled it all up in a pill, you'd need FDA approval," he says. (http://www.averagemiracles.org/www.averagemiracles.org/LaughterPioneers.html)

Do you know of other research on the scientifically proven benefits of laughter, mirth and humor? Please share them!

As you may have noticed, I am using my blog space this month to highlight some of the outstanding speakers at the AATH conference I attended earlier in April. AATH stands for the Association of Applied and Therapeutic Humor, and attendees intent on applying humor come from a broad range of occupations in research, healthcare, education, business, and more.

Jim Winter’s role in the improvisational theatre troupe Wavelength is to teach the use of humor in education. (See http://www.wavelength.biz/) One exercise he taught our group is “What are you doing?” It’s a commonly used charade-like improv game that’s played like this:

Choose a partner. Person A will start the action by miming an action such as swimming. Person B asks, “What are you doing?” Person A answers something completely unrelated, such as, “I am tying my shoes.” Person B then pretends to tie her shoes. Person A asks, “What are you doing?” Person B then says something completely unrelated such as, “I am frying an egg.” Person A must then pretend to fry an egg, and the game continues.

Improv moves quickly, so you might see if you can do a total of 8 or more actions in 2 minutes. Alternatively, you can do this with more spectators by standing in a circle and moving around the group, with each person doing one action. But as an energizer, it works better with partners. It can work with any age group, intergenerationally, and seated, too.

What’s the point? Please tell me your ideas, but here are a few possibilities:

• An exercise break to get slow brains back in gear
• A dual edged creative thinking tool: 1) How will I effectively demonstrate the action? 2) What will I ask the other person to do?
• An illustration of how – unless one practices or plans in advance – multi-tasking by doing one thing and saying another slows one’s thinking.
• Live your values. When you say one thing and do another, it doesn’t feel quite right.

Sometimes our logical left brain is overruled by our eager to please right brain. Here’s an idea for suppressing it.

Have you ever been asked to do something by someone you care about (or want to impress) and not known how to say “no”? You may be overextended in a thousand directions, and every cell in your body is saying, “No, no, no, DON’T TAKE THIS ON!” and still you find yourself unable to utter anything but, “Sure, I’d love to.”

At the recent AATH (Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor) conference I attended, Kathleen Passanisi filled in for an ill physician whose topic, ironically, was “Happy People Don’t Get Sick.” Kathleen is an award-winning speaker who combines hilarious insights with a heartwarming, common sense message about reducing stress.

Here is one of my favorite takeaways from her hour of useful ideas and stress-relieving laughter: When you are asked to do something you don’t want to add to your overflowing plate of responsibilities, preserve your health and sanity with two affirmations, a non-committal decline, and a gentle ending. Here’s an example:

Wow, what an honor to be asked. (Affirmation 1) I’m grateful you think I have the skills to do this. (Affirmation 2) But I am unable to help. (Non-committal decline) Thank you for asking.

If possible, at that point, hang up, walk away, or at the very least change the subject. Do not add specifics. If you say, “unable to help at this time,” the person is likely to look for a time when you might. If you say, “I am overcommitted because of such-and-such,” the person will look for ways to help you change your priorities or get an assistant on such-and-such.

The same format works with slight variations when you are asked to attend an event you find unappealing. If you don’t give specific excuses, no one will know that you just want to spend the evening at home.

Learn more about delightful Kathleen Passanisi at http://www.kathleenpassanisi.com.

Do you have other ideas for saying no with grace? Share them!