From Laughter Leader to Laughter Strategist

One day in reading through a magazine I saw an advert for training to become a Certified Laughter Yoga Leader offered by Laughter for Africa. Quite frankly, I had never heard of laughter as anything other than something done in response to a funny situation. I also could not recall the last hearty laugh I had had. I do know that it was something my partner and I spoke of as being lacking in our lives but the situations for laughter did not seem to arise. Could I laugh for no reason? I started acting in amateur theatre when I began working and so I thought that forced laughter would be do-able.

It took nine months from first enquiring about the training till I was sitting in a Virgin Active Gym undergoing the training. With a certificate in hand after the second day, with many years in corporate management and all the confidence of standing in front of people I was still very uncertain what I would or could do with this training. Dr. Madan Kataria, the founder of Laughter Yoga, advocates Laughter Clubs. These are gatherings of people on a regular basis - daily in the Far East - for the purpose of laughter. Unless the venue being used charges for rental, laughter club attendance is free. So I started my first laughter club. More than 20 people came to investigate this new club but only half a dozen returned to the Saturday afternoon gathering with any sort of regularity. The year-end period saw people staying away altogether and no one returned in the new year.

A spell of working with the International Laughter Institute (now in a new guise) taught me a lot more about laughter, how to provide a service to paying clients, the essentials of training laughter and I gained invaluable experience in delivering laughter workshops and training in diverse environments. In the meanwhile I studied the basics of running an own business.

Adding from years of studying self-help books and success in my corporate career I see a strategic value to adding an active de-stressing life skill to everyone's basket of tools in reaching their greatest potential.