Learning to Laugh: It's Possible and Could Even Boost Motivation: These Managers Attended a Laughter Yoga Workshop
9 December 2014
Read by 4106 persons
SUCCEED DIFFERENTLY - They toss around balloons like hot potatoes, act like clowns, and laugh heartily. Of their manager roles, only their suits remain. Authority and seriousness have evaporated. For an hour, these adults rediscovered their inner child. We're at a laughter yoga workshop organized by CSP Formation during the Annual Managers' Meeting, a week where participants attend professional development courses.
Twenty of us, a slight majority of men, sit in a circle. In the middle, it's hard to miss the organizer, Alex Febo. He proudly sports a glittery orange hat. "Each of you, in turn, introduce yourselves only with your name, but associate it with a gesture, your gesture," he tells a slightly embarrassed, slightly impatient audience. Some give a shy wave; others are extravagant from the start, jumping, clapping, or spinning.
Laughter is Good for Your Health
Laughter yoga arrived in France in 2002, thanks to Corinne Cosseron, author of *Putting Laughter Back into Your Life: Laughter Yoga, a How-To Guide*, who founded the International Laughter School. Inspired by yoga and sophrology, this practice aims to rediscover or reconnect with one's joy of life, to release negative emotions, and to regain confidence. According to Corinne Cosseron, the discipline "finds its foundations in the work of positive psychology and neuroscience."
Doctors believe that for good health, one should laugh 10 to 15 minutes a day. In reality, we only laugh 5 to 6 minutes a day, and less and less with age. While children might laugh 300 times a day, a young person under 25 laughs about 7 times. Over 65, only 15% of us say we laugh more than ten times a day.
For Alex Febo, a consultant in personal development and communication, it's crucial to rediscover the child within each of us. "We don't laugh because we're happy; we're happy because we laugh," he repeats several times, quoting Doctor Madan Kataria, the inventor of the method in Bombay, India. So we leave our shyness and pride aside. Not easy, especially when you consider that laughter is the absolute synonym of spontaneity. Even more so here, where humor is set aside. Laughter comes first and foremost from the body. From the start, the tone is set. Between each exercise, we all have to clap our hands shouting big "ho ho ha ha ha".
We begin with varying degrees of confidence, walking around the room. Depending on the exercise, we have to look surprised, sad, pretend to be on the phone, or have empty pockets; choose someone to follow or avoid. Obviously, with many people in a small room, collisions are inevitable. The awkwardness tends to disappear as contact increases. The goal? To relieve stress, relax the atmosphere, and provoke laughter.
From Forced Laughter to Genuine Fits of Laughter
All these exercises are supposed to gently lead us to the famous "laughter meditation," the culmination of the discipline, where we're supposed to go from one fit of laughter to another. Lying on the floor next to each other after running around the room "as if the school bell has just rung," nothing happens at first. But one laugh is enough for everything to unfold. For about ten minutes, everyone laughs heartily; some can't stop. Then comes calm and serenity.
"In fits of laughter, the limbic brain takes over from the neocortex, which is our conscious and logical brain. In general, laughter, like sport, releases endorphins, our natural morphine. It also relaxes our diaphragm: by lowering, this muscle leaves more room for the lungs, allowing us to better oxygenate our body," explained Corinne Cosseron in *Psychologies*.
"Whether provoked or genuine, laughter has the same benefits," Alex Febo later explained. It's true that, despite some initial hesitations, we feel strangely light, emptied.
These managers will perhaps try to pass on this well-being to their teams. Alex Febo doesn't forget that he's addressing leaders. So after the meditation, he proposes a short brainstorming session where each person writes their ideas on a Post-it note about incorporating laughter into the workplace: putting smileys in emails, putting up humorous posters in key places (toilets, for example), organizing karaoke outings, setting a day of the week when people don't wear ties but a funny accessory... Ideas abound.
Laughter Yoga
"Laughter is not an end in itself for these managers, but it helps strengthen the bonds between team members. It stimulates motivation and confidence by cultivating playful fun and creativity by lifting inhibitions. The question they must ask themselves, Alex Febo emphasizes, is: How, as a manager, do I care for my teams? In my way of being, how do I make them smile?" Too stressed and overwhelmed, leaders don't take the time to come up for air. But if they don't take care of themselves, he explains, if they never know how to laugh at themselves, their team will not allow themselves anything either. In an email to the participants the next day, he reminds them that a leader's essential quality can lie in good humor: "they are the ones we follow because we want to follow them."
Even if sometimes criticized, laughter yoga is increasingly practiced in France. In any case, these managers seem delighted with their experience. Joy, relaxation, letting go, pleasure, and relaxation are some of the words used to describe what they have just experienced.
Marine Le Breton.
Huffingtonpost.fr
Published December 2, 2014.
Posted online December 9, 2014.
Twenty of us, a slight majority of men, sit in a circle. In the middle, it's hard to miss the organizer, Alex Febo. He proudly sports a glittery orange hat. "Each of you, in turn, introduce yourselves only with your name, but associate it with a gesture, your gesture," he tells a slightly embarrassed, slightly impatient audience. Some give a shy wave; others are extravagant from the start, jumping, clapping, or spinning.
Laughter is Good for Your Health
Laughter yoga arrived in France in 2002, thanks to Corinne Cosseron, author of *Putting Laughter Back into Your Life: Laughter Yoga, a How-To Guide*, who founded the International Laughter School. Inspired by yoga and sophrology, this practice aims to rediscover or reconnect with one's joy of life, to release negative emotions, and to regain confidence. According to Corinne Cosseron, the discipline "finds its foundations in the work of positive psychology and neuroscience."
Doctors believe that for good health, one should laugh 10 to 15 minutes a day. In reality, we only laugh 5 to 6 minutes a day, and less and less with age. While children might laugh 300 times a day, a young person under 25 laughs about 7 times. Over 65, only 15% of us say we laugh more than ten times a day.
For Alex Febo, a consultant in personal development and communication, it's crucial to rediscover the child within each of us. "We don't laugh because we're happy; we're happy because we laugh," he repeats several times, quoting Doctor Madan Kataria, the inventor of the method in Bombay, India. So we leave our shyness and pride aside. Not easy, especially when you consider that laughter is the absolute synonym of spontaneity. Even more so here, where humor is set aside. Laughter comes first and foremost from the body. From the start, the tone is set. Between each exercise, we all have to clap our hands shouting big "ho ho ha ha ha".
We begin with varying degrees of confidence, walking around the room. Depending on the exercise, we have to look surprised, sad, pretend to be on the phone, or have empty pockets; choose someone to follow or avoid. Obviously, with many people in a small room, collisions are inevitable. The awkwardness tends to disappear as contact increases. The goal? To relieve stress, relax the atmosphere, and provoke laughter.
From Forced Laughter to Genuine Fits of Laughter
All these exercises are supposed to gently lead us to the famous "laughter meditation," the culmination of the discipline, where we're supposed to go from one fit of laughter to another. Lying on the floor next to each other after running around the room "as if the school bell has just rung," nothing happens at first. But one laugh is enough for everything to unfold. For about ten minutes, everyone laughs heartily; some can't stop. Then comes calm and serenity.
"In fits of laughter, the limbic brain takes over from the neocortex, which is our conscious and logical brain. In general, laughter, like sport, releases endorphins, our natural morphine. It also relaxes our diaphragm: by lowering, this muscle leaves more room for the lungs, allowing us to better oxygenate our body," explained Corinne Cosseron in *Psychologies*.
"Whether provoked or genuine, laughter has the same benefits," Alex Febo later explained. It's true that, despite some initial hesitations, we feel strangely light, emptied.
These managers will perhaps try to pass on this well-being to their teams. Alex Febo doesn't forget that he's addressing leaders. So after the meditation, he proposes a short brainstorming session where each person writes their ideas on a Post-it note about incorporating laughter into the workplace: putting smileys in emails, putting up humorous posters in key places (toilets, for example), organizing karaoke outings, setting a day of the week when people don't wear ties but a funny accessory... Ideas abound.
Laughter Yoga
"Laughter is not an end in itself for these managers, but it helps strengthen the bonds between team members. It stimulates motivation and confidence by cultivating playful fun and creativity by lifting inhibitions. The question they must ask themselves, Alex Febo emphasizes, is: How, as a manager, do I care for my teams? In my way of being, how do I make them smile?" Too stressed and overwhelmed, leaders don't take the time to come up for air. But if they don't take care of themselves, he explains, if they never know how to laugh at themselves, their team will not allow themselves anything either. In an email to the participants the next day, he reminds them that a leader's essential quality can lie in good humor: "they are the ones we follow because we want to follow them."
Even if sometimes criticized, laughter yoga is increasingly practiced in France. In any case, these managers seem delighted with their experience. Joy, relaxation, letting go, pleasure, and relaxation are some of the words used to describe what they have just experienced.
Marine Le Breton.
Huffingtonpost.fr
Published December 2, 2014.
Posted online December 9, 2014.
