Dr. Kataria’s Laughter Yoga Diary

It is with great pleasure that we take this opportunity to wish you a happy festive season and a joyous new year.

Love and laughter from Madan & Madhuri and also Bill and Raj at Laughter Yoga International.

Please note our office will be offline until 3 January 2007

There are a few more spaces open for our Kerala Teacher Training & Spiritual Retreat in beautiful Kerala in sought India next month.

We have people coming from all over the world, including Bill Gee from Malaysia — if you have time and would like to become a certified laughter yoga teacher and enjoy this powerful retreat please contact Raj at our office soon to book your space.

Love and laughter - Madan

After so many enquiries from Mexico and parts south I have decided to schedule our very first teacher training course in English and Spanish to be held in Cancun, Mexico 7-11 May 2007.

The 5-day course will be held in Spanish and English at a venue to be announced. We are looking for help in translation into Spanish of promotional articles and also for people who can provide local advice and assistance.

We hope to attract a full house from all over South and Central America so we can begin to spread the laughter. Please contact Bill Gee at lyspamfilter@gmail.com who speaks a little Espanol and Portugues.

Booking details at www.laughteryoga.org/2007-mexico.php.

We know that a few of you have been having problems logging in and seeing the stories in my diary.

To help you Bill Gee has made a new page that sets out to help you resolve the problems and make it easier to log in and understand our premium zone system. He answers questions like how to tell when you’re logged in, how to find the old premium zone content like the laughter bank and more…
Visit the new problems page by clicking the Problems? link under the yellow shop icon at the top of each page. If that page doesn’t fix your problems it includes a link you can email for help.

We have launched a brand new section of the premium zone exclusively for certified laughter yoga leaders and teachers who are registered with us.

The PROZONE is a space where laughter professionals can keep right up to date and learn from each other’s knowledge and experience. We hope to publish at least FIVE videos of new laughter yoga exercises (and old ones done in new ways), together with tips, tricks and techniques to make you a better LY pro.

If you are a CLYT or CLYL registered with us please have a look at the new section at http://www.laughteryoga.org/prozone. If you are qualified but not registered please contact Bill Gee at lyspamfilter@gmail.com with details of your teacher and when you trained.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from an article that was sent to me by Anemoni:
Laughter is contagious, and U.K. scientists say they’ve identified how your brain is “infected” by mirth.

“It seems that it’s absolutely true that ‘laugh, and the whole world laughs with you’,” Dr. Sophie Scott, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, said in a prepared statement.
Read more…

Chen Ta-cheng established Taiwan’s first laughter club in Luchu of Taoyuan County. Every Sunday, he leads members of the club in letting out enormous laughs. Over the period, he has also been invited to demonstrate laughter yoga by the Taiwan Lions Club, the Taiwan Junior Chamber of Commerce, various community organizations, as well as a number of enterprises and companies.

Read more…

On December 8 2006 I visited Vishweshwaraiah laughter club where I met Mrs Rathna and her 30 year old mentally retarded daughter Vandana.

They have attended laughter club daily for the past year and Mrs Rathna couldn’t wait to tell me about the remarkable progress that Vandana has made during that period. Read more…

I have visited more than a thousand laughter clubs and studios around the world. At the Vishweshwaraiah laughter club in Bangalore I found something quite unique.
I met five married couples who laugh together. Normally I meet either the husband or the wife doing laughter yoga, but very rarely couples who laugh together. To find five couples laughing together in one laughter club sets a record.
I asked them to laugh with me they did a special laughter exercise putting their hands on each other’s shoulders. They all enjoyed it. For me the message is clear: People who laugh together stay together.

One of the couples bring their son and daughter along too - happy family!

Now you can see some of the best laughter yoga videos on our new Youtube channel.

You can view anytime and even chant and laugh along. It’s easy to add them to your own websites or send the link to friends. You can subscribe to the channel get notification of new videos as we post them.
If you have more videos please send me the details as comments to this post and we’ll arrange to add them to the Laughter Yoga Channel.

Love the laughter yoga at www.youtube.com/laughteryoga. [LINK NOW WORKING  B->]

I Just received this notice from our friends at CNN.

Laughter yoga is featured on 9 & 10 December — try to watch it if you can - Madan. Read more…

After ten years I discover a new technique for using Dr Madan KatariaLaughter yoga to cope with high-stress events & situations.

I want to share with you an experience I had on 26th of November 2006.

Since developing laughter yoga in 1995 I have dreamed of doing my own research to produce quantifiable research of the benefits of laughter yoga in the workplace. Most medical and scientific research on laughter has used humor-induced laughter. I wanted to research using laughter yoga only to measure the difference in benefits if any between mental and body induced laughter.
Read more…

Laughter yoga is enjoying increased media attention at the moment.

Good Morning America is featuring laughter yoga this coming Monday between 7 & 9am on ABC.

NPR (National Public Radio) will feature laughter yoga next Friday in “All Things Considered” .

Discovery Channel are filming a feature at grabbagiraffe laughter club in New York city on Monday, Dec. 11th at 7:30pm. Attendance RSVP Francine 212.243.2365.
Read more…