• News
• Mindfulness
  • Living the Dream-Mindfulness
  • Mindfulness Quotes
  • Mindfulness in Chinese
  • Mindfulness in Japanese
  • The Way to End Suffering
  • The Four Immeasurables
• Workshops
  • Facilitator
  • Mindfulness Meditation Facilitator
  • Discovering your true self workshop
  • Happiness@Work workshop
  • Laughter is the best medicine workshop
  • Mindful Communication workshop
  • Mindful Leadership workshop
  • Mindful Management workshop
  • Mindfulness Meditation Course
  • Mindfulness workshop
  • Mindfulness@Work workshop
  • Positive Thinking workshop
  • Anger Management workshop
  • Conflict Management workshop
• Contact

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Everyone has a tremendous potential to laugh but this seems to reduce as we get older.  Children laugh 300-400 times a day - not because they have a good sense of humour but because it is the nature of a child to be joyful.  By the time we become adults, we laugh just 15 times a day (not even that on a bad day). Becoming wealthier is not the answer either.  In the 1950s people used to laugh an average of 18 minutes a day but now it is just 6 minutes a day - despite the enormous rise in living standards. There’s an epidemic of seriousness! Not every society is the same. As we get older (and it appears, richer) our laughter gets lost among increasing piles of FUNGI (Fear, Unhappiness, Neuroticisms, Greed and worst of all Inibition) as well as self-control, responsibility and insecurity. Now FUNGI usually live under DUNG (Disgust, Unhappiness, Neutoricisim, Greed).  We need to remove all the DUNG, extract ourselves from the FUNGI and get to the fun in order to laugh more. That’s why Laughter is the Best Medicine workshop and sessions work so well - they help you overcome your inhibitions, relax, have some fun and become playful again.  And like a muscle - the more you flex it the more you laugh.  This in turn activates your sense of humour.  As far as your body goes it can’t tell the difference between whether you’re laughing for real or pretending.  The funny thing is (oops a pun) after a while it all comes more naturally and you start finding you are laughing spontaneously more and more often.  That has certainly been our experience here at our Laughter is the Best Medicine sessions – and that of our many happy - sorry we mean laughing- clients.

For the Individual

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Humans were designed to laugh. Laughing is nature's stress-buster. It is our own personal stress release valve we can utilize whenever we need it!  It lifts our spirits with a happy feeling that makes us feel good and improves our behaviour towards others.
Just a few generations ago happy, healthy humans spent 20 minutes a day or more in laughter. At present, the adult daily laugh time is down to 5 minutes or less in many countries.  This is one of the worst aspects of modern life.

Laugh yourself healthy

We all know that laughing make us feel good. A regular 30 minute laughing session can have a profound impact on our health and overall sense of well-being.  Laughter is gentle exercise. It fills your lungs and body with oxygen, deep-clears your breathing passages and exercises your lungs. This is really important for people who don't get regular aerobic exercise.

When we laugh our bodies release a cocktail of hormones and chemicals that have startling positive effects on our system. Stress is reduced, blood pressure drops, depression is lifted, your immune system is boosted and you feel great.  Western science is just starting to discover the great and healing effects of laughing.

For the Organisation

Every organization wants to be full of winning teams - and much of the work of Human Relations, and leadership and management is to help create those conditions.  They can include things like inclusion, shared decision-making, distributed leadership, a good physical environment, a safe place to work, security - and respect for all people, despite their level and role.  One thing that all of these methods try to achieve is to create a conducive environment for workmates - one where happiness will keep team members satisfied with their various roles in the organizations and hence become, or stay, more productive.  And how do we know when people are happy - they laugh.  In light of this, why not just cut to the chase and make your employees happy by making them laugh?

Some of the reasons why Laughter is the best medicine workshop may come in handy are:

Communication

When management is keen to create a light atmosphere, it encourages team members to speak openly about how they feel about the company and its policies. This feedback is imperative for any organization that realizes that happy workers equal greater productivity. A manager who good-humoured, and openly lasts - even one that makes fun of him-or herself breaks down the barrier that is ubiquitous in many employer-employee relationships.  People who laugh are good to be around and come across as one of the team.

Reduced Stress

Life is certainly more hectic now than it was a few decades ago.  As adults, we laugh far less than we did as children (about 80% less), and as a community we laugh far less than we used to. Strain interferes with a person’s ability to focus on their work which leads to a significant reduction in productivity. By injecting laughter into your people’s daily routine, the effects of tension are greatly mitigated making it possible for a team’s operations to go on with little or no interruption.

Enhanced Creativity

Think of a situation where formalities are the norm; where tension thrives amongst employees and where unbreachable barriers exist between management and the rest of the workforce. It is much harder to get novel ideas from workers as they may be too intimidated and think that their ideas will be automatically rejected. Contrast this to a situation where employees are encouraged (with the aid of humor) to air their views without fear of reprisal. It shouldn’t be surprising that those in the last scenario will suggest even the wildest of ideas which ultimately may be the solution to a common problem due to their out-of-the-box thinking. However, even if their ideas are not adopted the light atmosphere keeps them from taking it personally. Laughter is the best medicine workshop before a creativity workshop – does wonders to help build innovation.

In fact, Edward DeBona, the father of lateral thinking, says that humour and creativity are very close together.  Laughter is what happens when you get lots of humour.
  

About the Program

Laughter is the Best Medicine workshop is a one day workshop, designed for to help individuals, companies and organizations to transform their performance, increase profitability and become leaders and experts in their fields. It has been scientifically proven that laughter can have a profound effect on individual and corporate performance.  
Just as physical training delivers quantifiable performance improvements, neuro-scientific research shows that laughter can deliver dramatically enhanced  a person’s health, lifestyle and work  capabilities.
Who should attend?

• Individuals who want greater creative focus and clarity
• Individuals who need to overcome stereotypical thinking and have a better understanding of complex situations in personal, family and work life.
• Individuals who are experiencing high levels of emotions and stress
• Individuals who seeks happiness and want to enjoy their personal, family and work life more.

Content

In this workshop, participants will gain the skills and knowledge on:

• Understand the three ways to happiness
• Pleasure
• Engagement or flow
• Meaning

• Humour
• Humour makes you live longer
• Clown Doctors

• Humour and jokes sessions

• Laughter
• The Science of Laughter
• The health benefits of humour and laughter
• Laughter as medical therapy
• Why laughter is the best medicine for aches and pain?
• On the Brain-Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute, U.S.A.
• Stress Relief from Laughter- Mayo Clinic, U.S.A.

• Laughter and jokes sessions
• Mindfulness and Laughter
• Laughter cartoons
• Laughter exercises
• Mindful Laughter Meditation
• Laughter Yoga

• Laughter and jokes session

Objectives

At the end of the workshop, Laughter is the Best Medicine workshop enhances a person’s ability to experience:

• Happiness
• Greater well being
• Clearer thinking
• More effective communication
• More creativity and innovative skills
• Improved ability to address conflicts in life
• More awareness of emotions and personal stress and how to prevent it
• Increased stability during periods of change
• The ability to respond rather than react by breaking habitual patterns of behavior
• Fewer somatic illnesses

Our work shows that the application of laughter can dramatically enhance an individual success. Results include greater efficiency, effectiveness, innovation and a higher likelihood of survival in an individual personal, family and work life.

• Reduced burnout and health costs
• Increased effectiveness through clarity about one’s desired future
• Greater innovation in solving problems and developing possibilities
• Greater efficiency through human creativity and innovation
• Taking appropriate personal risk as a natural function of the changing environment
• Overall greater satisfaction in life.