LAUGHTER INFORMATION/FACTS

Laughter and therapy are not generally paired in the minds of clinicians nor the minds of the public. Therapy is a serious business and is viewed and approached with a proper amount of real gravity. After all, people enter therapy for serious reasons, often at critical times in their lives. How then can laughter be a vital part of the therapy process when so often the subject matter is so serious ? If you take time to read this information and real research, I feel that you will be soon booking to come on one of my laughter workshops, not to be at all confused with one to one therapy, which is indeed a serious business. Laughter, a birthright of human beings, is actually misunderstood and undervalued as a healing and cathartic process. Heavily identified with humour, laughter is generally deemed appropriate only for lighter more frivilous concerns and things that are indeed funny. LAUGHTER is a physical process which releases emotional pain, then other more serious triggers like stress, anxiety, and tension will make sense. According to psychologist William James 'We don't laugh because we're happy. We're happy because we laugh' If we put laughter into the pain framework, all kinds of laughter in all kinds of pain situations begins to make sense.

Cathcartic psychotherapy emphasizes and utilises laughter as one of the major cathcartic processes for healing emotional pain. It is specific to the release of light anger, light fear and boredom. When people laugh, if uncomplicated by medications which may interfere with the physical catharsis, they are releasing painful feeling which is gone for all time. The exact amount of pain is immeasureable but the body will keep discharging pain cathartically until there is no longer a need. The only thwarting influences are the controls imposed in childhood. Human beings are taught the value of control from an early age. The loss of control cathartically through laughter, crying or anger makes us uncomfortable to say the least. What we don't realise is that when we lose control of our feelings cathartically, we actually gain control of our lives in flexible,intelligent, creative and caring ways (Goodheart,1994 p.36)

Other pages:

This is the text-only version of this page. Click here to see this page with graphics.
Edit this page | Manage website
Make Your Own Website: 2-Minute-Website.com