Personal Development
1. Do you want to 'Spice Up Your Laugh Life'? Come to Cortijo Romero from the 9-16th August (www.cortijo-romero.co.uk) and enjoy a fun-filled holiday in southern spain with a group room set next to the swimming pool.
'Thanks for the great course. I've been looking through the photos you kindly sent and having a chuckle over many of them. They bring back good memories. So thanks....Someone today said I was looking peaceful after this holiday. So it is having its effect.' Ruth
2. Do you fancy a laughter workout? To learn more about Positive Psychology? To have a good vigorous stressbusting session? Visit the Bristol Laughter Club site and book yourself a place on the next one.
'I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed last night! It had been a while since I'd been able to get there and I really had missed it!' Adele
3. Do you want to bcome a trained Laughter Facilitator and learn how to incorporate this material and teach others too? The UK’s Laughter Facilitation Training is now well established, and the next one, the fourth, is 19/20th April 2008 in London.
If you want to know more or book your place, click the Laughter Facilitation Skills button on the menu on the left-hand side.
'I’m really glad I came on this course, meeting people who believed in and enthused about what they were teaching and others who were friendly and willing to learn. Thank you for the experience and starting something I see as being a big part of my life from now on, both for clients and personally '
Paul
What is laughter yoga?
A short explanation
Laughter yoga is the term used to describe the laughter club exercises originally devised by Dr Madan Kataria.These exercises incorporate yoga postures, yogic breathing and the practice of laughing.
They are designed to stimulate the laughter reflex to access the wide range of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual benefits that ‘mirthful’ laughter generates. This ?mirthful? laughter can be either real or fake and the intention of laughter yoga is to create a state of mind where real, genuine, uninhibited laughter is more easily accessed.
Laughter yoga looks to take laughter deeply into day-to-day life and there are follow-on practices which help this. Laughter yoga is one aspect of the Laughter Facilitation Training which I set up in the UK in 2006.
Laughter yoga is at the heart of the monthly Bristol laughter workouts ( www.bristollaughterclub.com ). These workouts are the UK’s longest running uninterrupted monthly laughter sessions, having started in 2003.
I trained in Laughter Yoga with Dr Kataria in 2002 and 2003. 
What was the Laugh-a-thon?
Laughter was all the rage this spring. First there was the 1st National Sponsored Laugh-a-thon in London, then there was the Cheltenham Science Festival.
At the Laugh-a-thon, hosted by Mind Body Spirit Festivals, 50 people gathered to practice their ‘sustained chuckle’, and we were delighted to be joined by Matthew Jay Lewis from Hollyoaks. He and his mum came and were enthusiastic players. We started with a lighthearted yet vigorous laughter workout where we used Laughter Yoga techniques with others devised in the Bristol Laughter Club and the Laughter Network. We became progressively less British - you know, cut off, unexpressive, stiff upper lip, and more, well, European - expressive, spontaneous, even verging on the flamboyant. Fortunately everyone was able to retreat to their Britishness every so often so they could regroup and remind themselves of their roots! We stimulated our laughter reflex, remembered what it felt like, practiced it lots, and finally settled down to two good long sustained chuckles which lasted almost an hour.
This event was also a fundraiser, and we raised almost £3000 for the British Heart Foundation, were filmed by BBC London news and were broadcast to a few million viewers that evening. Not bad for a first!
This momentum carried over to the Cheltenham Science Festival where the theme had been picked up by Professor Kathy Sykes who wanted it on her ‘stress’ panel. The audience here numbered well over 100, listened closely to Angela Patmore’s effective debunking of the stress industry, including her dramatic flourish when she unrolled this list of 300+ conflicting definitions of stress!
From then we moved on to the Positive Psychology aspect of laughter and the Norman Cousins healing power of laughter story, and the audience decided they were up for a go. They had taken onboard that first, it was good for them; second, that they enjoyed it!; and third, they probably didn't do it enough. So almost, not entirely Kathy assured me with a chuckle, the audience took part in a classic Ted Heath chuckle, shoulders bouncing up and down vigorously, and because they were so game, we decided to ramp it up a bit.
So, here was this 100+ audience, average age 65+, sitting with their shoulders bobbing up and down chortling away, and then they turned and shared this chuckle with people either side. Oh! lala! This was the heart of merrie ing-ur-land, and yet they loved it. So did Kathy who won plaudits for this panel and apparently it was referred to glowingly all week.
Do you want a laugh-a-thon? Raise your profile? Do some fund-raising? Ring me on 07812 159943, or
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