Using Laughter & Laughter Clubs

Last year, I went along to a laughter club in Bristol, UK. I was nervous and quite excited, but really didn't know what to expect. Joe Hoare was the facilitator, and over the course of about 2 hours, the group went through a bunch of exercises including some basic body awareness and relaxation techniques, mixed with a good deal of facial warm up and smiling exercises. As we kept going, and pulling funny faces at each other, our laughter began to rise, and soon enough the 10 adults were reduced to gaffawing heaps of aching stomach muscules with tears running down our faces....it was, actually very very funny and very very releasing!

So I was looking forward to attending a Laughter Facilatation Course, run by The Laughter Network, in London at the end of September. Again, some familiar faces, and familiar exercises grounding us in tools to enable people to laugh. Actually I was suprised to watch myself getting very serious over the course of the weekend..."I've come here to learn about the serious job of laughing"...which was an interesting response!!

Anyway, now about two weeks since, and I have been putting some of those techniques into training sessions that Musicatwork have been running, with a group of Life Coaches firstly, and with a major building society here in Wales, whom I'm delivering team building training for.

It's been amazing...the stress release, and the feelings of relaxation after the laughter is powerful. But what touches me the most is when participants say that this was the first time they have laughed in ages, months for some of them. Such a simple thing, such a direct connection with that part of us that is light, playful and willing to let go of ego/what we look like/what others may think of us, and just be.

The opportunity to laugh as a way of life is to create joy, calmness, fun and sore belly muscles! Research has shown that as kids we laugh about 300 times per day, and as adults we laugh about 10-15 times a day. Laughter is your opportunity and was mine, to begin to laugh at life, at ourselves and re-connect with the lightness that is essentially human being.

As Dr Kataria, the founder of Laughter Clubs says, "fake it, fake it til you make it!"