Here is a summary of the various ways how laughter impacts stress. Stress is a well-known slow killer, is rampant in our society, and is very expensive on all levels. Its mechanisms are complex. It impacts everybody differently, but its end-result is easy to observe and explain. It creates havoc in the human body, leads to [...]
Here is the video of a laughter presentation Prof. Paul Bennett and myself gave last year at a national Dialysis conference in Washington DC. Exercise and Dialysis: What Can Busy Nephrology Nurses Do? This session reviews barriers to exercise in the kidney disease patient population and provides strategies for nurses to encourage and incorporate intradialytic [...]
From Sahmyook University in South Korea: Therapeutic Benefits of Laughter in Mental Health: A Theoretical Review. Conclusion: laughter therapy is effective and scientifically supported as a single or adjuvant therapy for mental health issues. See https://goo.gl/k24zKv
The following list was compiled by Don L. F. Nilsen, English Department, Arizona State University Tempe, AZ (possibly using http://www.BioMedSearch.com). You will find more (and more recent) research articles on laughter categorized by area(s) of benefits in the LOU laughter research center. Adelswärd, Viveka, and Britt-Marie Öberg. "The Function of Laughter and Joking in Negotiating [...]
If your job involves emotional labour, you may find that you regularly need to suppress your real emotions and express emotions that you don’t really feel, in order to convey the ‘correct’ emotions for your role. This article reviews when this is OK and when it's not, and how Laughter Wellness interventions can help.
A Japanese research study showed that laughter therapy is an efficient low-cost medical treatment that cuts health costs. Geneticist Kazuo Murakami considers that laughter is a stimulant, which can trigger energy inside a person's DNA potentially helping cure disease. "Laughing therapy has no side-effect, meaning it is an epoch-making treatment for clinical medicine," he said. "If [...]
Deep breathing is essential to our survival and to our good health. We can live 4-6 weeks without food, 4-6 days without water, but will die without oxygen for more than 4-6 minutes. All forms of breathing are not born equal There are three types of breathing: Clavicular breathing — A breath that comes [...]
There is nothing funny about mental or cognitive impairment diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or variations of the above such as Lewy Body Dementia. There is no known cure to-date, treatments are expensive, and the associated symptoms change your daily life forever. Laughter is not a cure but it has much to offer on multiple [...]
This article was written by Connie Costa after the implementation phase of a laughter yoga class for people living with Parkinson’s and their carers. The laughter session was arranged for the Parkinson’s Support Group so that group members would be offered an uplifting and enjoyable experience. The key messages of the session were about [...]
This article was written by Connie Costa during the research and planning phase of a laughter yoga class for people living with Parkinson’s and their carers. She was interested in understanding what Parkinson’s is, the symptoms experienced by people living with this condition and how a therapeutic approach to laughter, such as laughter yoga, [...]
