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again for joining us, today's webinar Helpful Laughter in Difficult Times, is hosted by the Massachusetts Library System and presented by Bill Mongelli from MCI in Norfolk. I met Bill several years ago and he was part of our project set Cohort and I've seen him present on this topic and others at local conferences. And I just really want to thank him for lending his time today and agreeing to present really very quickly on this very timely topic. So, thank you, Bill. I will hand it over to you. Thank you, April. Hey, everybody. Good morning, almost, Good afternoon. Bill Mongelli is my name, and I am MCA, good old MCA Norfolk for the criminally insane. And I've been there a long time and probably a life for now. I've been 33 years as far as I know. I still have a job.I haven't been there since March 13th, so, I don't know for sure, but I think I'm still employed and I thought I'd start off by trying to explain how I got to this moment.And why am I? I have a fairly extensive comedian biography collection.I've read most of them, not all of them.I'm a librarian. We don't read all of our books that we collect. Some of them should on the shelves. And that led all of that led the studies on humor and laughter in the early 2000s for about four and a half years. I had a radio show actually on WO and 12:40 a.m. and Woonsocket called Billy Vinals House of Laugh. So, I took my record collection, CD collection, and 45 collection, and we used to play stuff like a, like a for you, old timer's, Dr Demento type show and that was,and about five years ago, I came up with this idea for the enlistee, a grant called humorous there to soothe me laughter as therapy in the correctional environment, which was changed to skill building techniques for stress reduction because they objected to several words in the title. So, when you work for the D.O.C., you do what they tell you to do. And so, I've given these programs five or six times to the inmates at Norfolk and we do a lot more involved. The program, it's eight two-hour sessions. What I'm going to teach it today is two one-hour sessions. And I think, that, that, that'll work nicely for everybody.Now.I notice.Let me see. I can get this, too. There we go. For some reason, the Arrow key wasn't working. So, we got to go through this.I'm not going to read it to you except on the first screen, I didn't create any of the images you're about to see. They are indeed the creative work of others. But the feds say I can use these images for educational purposes.So, I'm going to educate you.Get it?Then, what is the effective way? Well, we all know the answer, it's laughter. So, the question is, can we manage everyday stressors? And science says yes, because, well, science, one way is a technique called stress reducing laughter. There are scientific and anecdotal evidence that proves that at work, although, although more anecdotal than scientific evidence exists to support the effectiveness of laughter as a stress coping mechanism for you old timers, you can remember Norman Cousins' book, " Anatomy of an Illness as perceived by the patient". That's an example of anecdotal and not scientific evidence. Excuse me.I have had to take a drink. Thank you. It's water. It's just water. So, laughter is a stress reducer and it is a fun and effective way to deal with both negative and positive stressors. I bet you didn't know there were positive stressors while there is going to talk about that and a little bit.So, this is the what, how and why of this webinar. The what is learning to maintain a positive outlook.So, your attitude, the how is by using laughter, deep breathing. That's where the yoga part of the laughter yoga. That's where we're to talk about later. That's where that comes in. And, something that the laughter yoga people called childlike playfulness. And, we'll identify, will define that in a little bit. And why do we do this in order to think clearly in times of distress? So, the applicability is the second of the two sessions is going to be a laughter yoga session. So, it's like thirty- five minutes of belly laughs supplemented with deep breathing in between the laughter yoga exercises and the exercises allow them only last about three or four minutes. These exercises and they allow the mind and body to relax. And when the mind and body relax, you can think clearer.And that's a key, especially were or where I teach this thing.So, what we don't know and what we do know. Like, for example, this claim here is funny because it's not true. I found many absurd claims for laughter for stress reduction while searching for a graphic depicting the benefits of laughter. I was looking for something based on science, but you find a lot of this stuff. So, as a presenter of this kind of material, I just admonish you to be careful about beneficial claims for laughter. And we'll get into that. I have another slide for you that you can use as a handout. It gets more deeply into the claims and what's true and what isn't. I laughed at this claim for about 40 days and 40 nights. I think my family timed me and it did make me feel better. So, I think this laughter stuff really works. I like this guy. I love this graphic actually, because if it's organization into the physical, the mental and the social benefits of laughter. Now, some of these claims that I'm going to show you like this one. There have been supported by reproducible science. Many of these claims come up frequently, too frequently on laughter sites. Laughter. Yoga sites, sites of two people who give these presentations at conferences and corporate offices and that kind of thing. But they have yet to be proven. I don't know why they still make these claims, but they do. Some of these, especially the social benefit claims for laughter as so a stress reduction are just common sense and a couple of just plain goofy.So, under physical benefits you see improves cardiovascular health. All of these claims are temporary. They do work, but they're temporary only. So, after your yoga, your laughter yoga session or any kind of laughter session that you have, you will have an improvement. You will see an improvement in cardiovascular health. Improve respiration, yes, because you're laughing your tails off and you're also moving and you're also doing the deep breathing. So, of course, it has been shown. To have a temporary if the pressure lowers it, pain reducer. The jury's still out. And by the way, if you hear me make a claim like there isn't scientific evidence or there is scientific evidence. And you know the contrary. Let me know about it. I'll give you my contact page at the end of this. I don't know everything about this. I'm still learning. I've only been doing this for five or six years. Obviously, I don't know everything about this. So, if you know particularly about a study or a journal article, I want to hear about it. Enhances the immune function, you see this everywhere on everybody's site. In fact, we have a video to show you. And if it runs, you're going to hear the creator of Laughter Yoga himself make this very claim. And as far as I can tell in my research, there is no scientific evidence to prove this. None.But it would be nice to look at and they're still trying to tie it in.Decreases stress hormones again. Yes, on a temporary basis. And laughter reduces muscular tension. We all know that that's common sense. Helps you think rationally. That's really the whole point of why I'm giving you this presentation. And that's the whole point of laughter yoga. It's like laughter doesn't solve anyone's problems, but it does clear the mind and it does relax the body so that you have to can think more clearly. Improves disposition. Obviously, if you're laughing and smiling, you have a better attitude. That's obvious, too. That's obvious to mental tension, lower anxiety. Again, a very temporary or temporal effect increases energy levels. I guess it depends on the person. Now enhances creativity. There have been studies on this and they believe that it's true and they believe it, especially in the workplace, that if you have a laughter break, a breathing break, a breathing and laughter break, that your training goes better, your workday goes better. And so that's they've been able to show that. And all these social benefits, I'm just going to run through them like this.They're pretty obvious. And I just talked about the AIDS and productivity thing and I couldn't think of what to put for the last one.So, I thought, well, yeah, yeah, you should be laughing through this.Ok. Section one, before we get into the meat and meat and potatoes section of what's going to happen in session one, in session two: I thought we would discuss possible target audiences for a presentation like this. And this is what I came up with. And this is just from my limited imagination. So, you can come up with your own ideas. This is supposed to represent public libraries. And as a prison's librarian, I was dismayed when I was advised by other public librarians that most public library programs are like one session or at the very most, too, because that I'm setting awful we use of teaching for weeks and weeks. So, I took that advice as gospel and developed as two session programs so that it can be offered in public libraries. That's a high school. It says right on it. High school students are distressed, as everyone knows, and could benefit from this type of stress reducing technique that we're about to talk about. And or you could offer it as professional development for the teachers and staff. And another possibility is that your library could partner with the school for just the programming space to offer this kind of program to the community at large, the larger community.Just that. Boring, Pardon?This is a PowerPoint slide, take it from a presentation created for dementia patients, obviously. And so that's another way. Stress reducing laughter helps people. So, perhaps you can partner with a hospital or an assisted living community. And I'm not sure about this one. This might be off the wall, this is meant to represent special libraries, obviously, and here I'm thinking of reaching out to patrons with physical and mental disabilities of some kind. I'm not sure if that's possible or how that would play out, but it's just another opportunity. Staff development or Professional Development Day, and I know that we can't think of a library staff that couldn't benefit from a session of boisterous belly laughter and nice deep breaths. So, here's another opportunity, a big opportunity. Oh, course. I know I've already said public libraries, but I wanted to give a shout out to our trial court colleagues. We all have friends there and goodness knows they need relaxation from the important and hectic work that they do. So, you could bring this program to those guys or one of the trial court librarians could teach it to their group.Young adults, teens, new adults, whatever the current nomenclature, teens know how to laugh and they laugh a lot, but they need to be shown how belly laughter can relax the body and mind. So that rash?No thought occasionally may take place. So, there's another opportunity.And this is professional development again, and probably professional development may be the most pragmatic use of a program like this. We all know library staff are under increasing distress. So, here's a way to help them deal with stresses of our service professional librarianship that is constantly redefining itself to stay relevant in our connected world, which is one of the things that's making us stressed out.In April, one of these days, I swear I will lead a laughter yoga session for your MLS staff. She's been at me for like the last year and a half.Just haven't made it because, I'm basically lazy, Aha. Indoor family activities, we have a pestilence sweeping over this land. So, a practical use of this material is. Have fun with what I'm going to show you at home. And here's an interesting thing, too. The laughter yoga proponent proponents teach us that you can use stress reducing laughter with a group or you can do it by yourself. And they have, they give you, they give you a workbook when you take their training certified laughter, yoga leader training.And about a third of it shows you how to do all of these different laughter yoga exercises that people have come up with the world over. And they also show you how to do it on your own. And the claim is either way it works. I know it works in groups because as I say, I've given the program many times.Conferences and at least the past 10 years, most of us have attended conferences where laughter yoga was offered and what I call the horrible, terrible wee hours of the morning, like 6:30, 7:00 a.m. when ordinary decent people should be sleeping. So you can offer to give a laughter a stress reduction session for them, or you can give a laughter yoga session, iIf you've got C L Y L certification. I'm going to show you how to get that certification before this webinar is up.And of course, my favorite prisons.Prisoners really need a laugh and something very, very I'm very grateful for as they take the laughter yoga exercises like ducks to water. I thought I would get a lot of pushback and I haven't. They're in-class responses to these laughter Yoga exercises are like extraordinary. So, I'm very grateful to them. And start as I know as far as I know and the only D.O.C. library and current currently giving this program.So, perhaps you can partner with one of the D.O.C. librarians in your area, if not at Norfolk. I kind of got that covered. If you feel like coming into the prison.And please come into the prison because we need you.So, here is how to present year to session workshop that I'm unimaginatively calling de-stress with the laughter. You're probably much better at PR than I am. Hopefully. So, here's your session one theory, as I say, we scrunch down our 16-hour program to something more manageable for this presentation. So, the first thing you have to talk about is what is stress? Because that's what you're using your laughter for, to reduce the stress in people. So, they need to know what it is, what kinds there are. There is good stress. A lot of people are surprised to discover that we have to talk about something called countervailing humor types. And we'll get into that in a moment. And it's two of them. And then benefits of laughter, stress management, as you would expect, there's recession one. That's your that's your thumbnail sketch and your session tools is the application of the theory just how to give a laughter yoga session. And there's more there's more ways than laughter yoga to get your participants to laugh. Good, hard belly laughter. And I'll give you some suggestions for alternatives laughter yoga at the end of the webinar.Here's the overview of your session one. You'll have a handout. Does stress kill us? You'll have your definitions. You'll be giving me they can give that out to the definition. I should identify that or label it as a handout. And then the General Adaptations Syndrome, which was developed by a clever young man named Hans Seley. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing his name. Then you have another handout. Uncontroversially humor types. Did you have a little in-class exercise? And we're gonna try that during this webinar of the five slides to show you.And then you have a one sheet exercise in class exercise.And this is how you would end your session, one personal, humor style. And the, the recognizing the exercise for recognizing countervailing humor types, just helps your participants identify their predominant humor style. And it sees are destructive humor or constructive humor.And that's important.And as they hand out how to nurture your sense of humor, I actually have the slide that's coming up and we'll go over that.So, here's your session one. Stress.The point of a program like this is to teach all your participants a fun method of stress management. But the first thing you've got to do, and I've said it before, is instruct on what stress actually is. So, here's Hans again. Hans was a pioneering Hungarian Canadian endocrinologist, it says here. And he conducted work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to stressors. And Hans is considered to be the first person to demonstrate the existence of biological stress, which blew my mind because I was thinking all of my life, I've heard people say I'm stressed out today or I got to do something to relieve the stress. But apparently that wasn't always in the forefront of the of modern life. We didn't always think that way. We didn't know that biological organisms had to deal with stress and kill Hans Selye's work. So, he says it's not stress that kills us. It's the way we respond to it. It's our attitude. And that's why a program like this is important for people.So, you've got your good and bad stress, eustress is the good stress, that's when you're looking forward to something like you're going to a wedding or you're going to attend a webinar that you want that you're interested in or if you're a kid, you're looking forward. It's Christmas Eve and you're looking forward to presents under the tree tomorrow. That kind of thing.There's the bad stress. Every one of us knows that one. I think that's. This is the one that we think of when we think of stress. But there's four of them. Hypo stress is low levels of distress that could lead to despondency, depression, that kind of thing.Hyper stress is fascinating. Hyper stress is a high level of either distress or eustress. And the problem with hyper stress is that our bodies can't differentiate high levels of the good stress or the bad stress. It responds the same way. So, even, even good stress can cause us a problem if we're not managing it. So, that's why it's important to manage stress and why it's important to learn that laughter actually helps in this management. Managing a good stress in our lives. So, here's Hans's general adaptation syndrome. There are three stages. You probably have seen these before, but when we give the stress part of our presentation to the inmates, they haven't seen this before, as a rule, So, I give this to them as a handout so, you can use this as a handout for your, your participants as well. Stage one is alarm. And we're dealing with that cat there and that mouse there. The mouse will call Jerry the cat, we'll call Tom. And that just shows you how old I am.So, Jerry is trying to get away from Tom. Tom is hungry. Jerry wants to stay alive. Stage two is identified as resistance. So, there's Tom chasing Jerry. Jerry is flight or fight or flight right now. So, he's in distress and the cat is probably too, because the cat wants to eat, stay alive. And there's your Stage 3 exhaustion. Jerry made it. Yay! So, the mouse didn't get eaten. But this is interesting because this is the stage was stress related illnesses develop. It's interesting that you get through a bad time, a stressful time, a distressful event. And once you're out, the other in your immune system lets down. And so you have to be aware of that. It's like it's not just enough that you get through the thing. You also have to manage. Now, the stage three exhaustion and laughter can help with that. We're going to get into now the countervailing humor types. There's a definition there courtesy of Merriam Webster, the voice of authority. They still market themselves as, which just tickles my funny bone. So, you've got a label, your predominant sense of humor, because that's important for determining if what you find funny or what you're participants in your program find funny if it demonstrates a helpful balance of the two dominant humor styles. And here are the two dominant humor styles. And it's really a balancing act. Once you discover your predominant humorous style, then you can determine if your style needs to be balanced by its countervailing opposite. I knew before I began this program that my predominant humor style is destructive. Still is. But once I learned that, then I could say, Hey, I got to bring in some more examples of constructive humor into my daily life.And I've been able to do that. Thank goodness.Recognizing countervailing humor types at Norfolk, inmates complete a seventy-nine-slide exercise on differentiating between destructive and constructive humor. So, they have several sheets in front of them and we show that we show them a slide and there to determine they do a checkmark either in that constructive slides, ah side or the destructive side.And then we have the end of the seventy ninth slides. Then we discuss what we've what we found out. Justice. Just to get them into the habit of understanding one from the other. So, what's coming is a sampling of five slides that we actually use in that larger exercise. I was we were going to see if we could get a show of hands, but I think there's a lot of people. So, I don't think we're going to do that. I think what it went to do is just show you the slides and I'm going to ask you to determine if what you're seeing is constructive or destructive. And I'll give you my take on it.You've probably seen these before, but if not. I hope you enjoy them.Now, this is absurdist humor and my take on it is that is constructive, even though the psychiatrist is thinking mean thoughts about his patient. The joke works only because it's a play on words. If the patient wasn't literally a fruitcake, then the humor could be considered destructive.That's my opinion now.Absurdist humor again. I hope you're not feeding [inaudible] coffee to your cat. If you are, I don't want to hear about that. But this is constructive, too. This is obviously absurdist. You wouldn't do that to a cat. And this cat's obviously not reacting because he's had coffee, so, it's not hurting anybody.How about this one?So, obviously absurdist humor.It could probably go either way. If you insist on identifying with a zebra like I do, then it's destructive. But I am HO; this is quintessential guy humor.This is The Three Stooges, that Coyote and the Road Runner. This is The Onion. This is . All that good stuff.How about this one? This is a perfect example of constructive humor, as it does no harm to either giver or receiver, it's humor for its own sake.And I hope you haven't seen this next one. If you have help, at least brings a smile to your face.So, even though they're discussing murder, this is constructive. This is absurdist, the movie blurb refers to famous fictional characters in a famous fantasy setting.If you've seen the movie and if you haven't, what have you been doing with your life? But if you've seen the movie, everyone gets the joke. It's having The Wizard of Oz presented in a new creepy but funny perspective.So, personal human style, that's actually this. But I will go back to this. We tried this as an in-class exercise in the first six session. We always give it as like homework and we give it four consecutive weeks. But I see you don't have that time. What you're going to do is going to instruct your participants to pay strict attention to what makes them laugh and the kind of humor that they create. You see at the talk that we give them their definitions, they don't have to refer to another handout. And we've got the source of sources of humor on the left- hand side, auditory, visual, behavioral, as you can see under auditory for overheard that this has been designed we designed this for inmates. But obviously you can adapt it to your own participants, or you can come up with a different exercise altogether. But this this works very well for us. We just have them do a chicken scratch tally for each one of these for like a week. And then they come back and they share their findings and some guys even do it. A little written reflection on what they've discovered about the cells, about their but their humor. And that helps you in. Obviously, you won't have time to do that.Ok. The suggestions at left, these primarily are passive in nature. Although, some of these are obviously require some level of action. And these are primarily active, so, I'll run it back a little bit. Recognize, the humorous and absurd is just an attitude that laughter can help with. You can collect humor. You can read funny authors. I've got tons of them; you can read bloggers. And obviously, all of this stuff, I think we all do. I put the onion in there, said, because I love the onion. If you don't know what it is, look it up. Seek the company. Positive, funny personalities. That's a big that's a big deal. That's a big part of team. Getting the right perspective on life, you can use humor even at work. Even in our system, you can tell stories on yourself.A lot of people don't like to do that. Create humor. I put write a limerick because for some reason my mind is wired to do that. I've written about four or five dozen of them and they keep coming out. I don't know why.Practice childlike playfulness. Just don't be afraid as it says up above to appear foolish. Be silly. We seem to lose that as adults. I don't know why, but we do. And then smile, even if you have to fake it and laugh even if you have to fake it.The laughter yoga types insist and I have yet to find any scientific support for this. None. But they insist that the body cannot tell the difference between fake laughter and genuine laughter.That the body. It's the same chemical dose of dopamine that if you're faking it as opposed to if you're actually genuinely belly laughing.That has yet to be proven.As I said, there are other ways you can balance your sense of humor and nurture your sense of humor.And we'll get to that by the end of this webinar.This session, now we're out of session one. Session two is just how to give a laughter yoga class.And here's an overview you'll be giving this handout of who's doctor, Madan Kataria hand out what is laughter yoga, a pre-session assessment of how they're feeling. Show them a video and how a laughter yoga session is conducted.That can make a mock components of a laugther yoga session. That would also be a handout that you would give your participants. Then, you have the participation itself.I was going to say, of course, we can't do that now. I understand that there's somebody that's going to do this to Facebook, which is a brilliant idea. I never would have thought of that. And.Because I'm used to the face to face stuff. Then you have a poster session assessment.Woops. Then say about that. Oh, where you find laughter yoga exercises, you can go on YouTube. You can go on the Laughter Yoga International site. I have the URL for that at the end of the presentation where you can buy a laughter yoga video or you can attend free laughter yoga sessions or attend more than one free laughter yoga session. Also, the Laughter Yoga movement encourages you to invent your own laughter yoga exercises; that's how a lot of these exercises in the workbook that they give you when you take them.The laughter yoga training. That's how they came into being, just people all over the world created,these exercises.This is Dr. Madan Kataria, creator of Laughter Yoga. I like to believe that he's balancing his checkbook right here. In this slide, this quote from him sums up the goal of any laugh, the stress of weight endeavor. To wit, I have a problem.The problem distresses me. I don't see the solution yet. What's the best way to manage my distress so I can think clearly? And that's the whole point.And yes, alas, even laughter yoga proponents have their own elevator speech. But this helps you learn the basic facts of the movement. The laughter yoga movement and of laughter yoga session. In fact, it's part of your training as a certified laughter yoga leader.So, it teaches you we learn who, when, what, how. T another how? and where and how much?So, they are free. Now learning how to be a certified laughter yoga leader or leader is not free, but attendance at these.Laughter yoga sessions is.Here's your assessment, this is right off the Laughter Yoga Web site. Laughter Yoga International. So this is a form that they created. This handout gives participants an idea of the temporary power of sustained belly laughter. So, before the session begins, you have your participants fill out this side, the before side. Then they can write down any general comments like, I don't want to do this or I can't believe that I'm here doing this. I can't believe you're making us do this. That kind of stuff. Sometimes I get, hey, I can't wait to do this. Some people are actually happy to do it.Aha. This is a YouTube URL to a 3-minute snippet from a BBC special On the Human Face hosted by Monty Python nut case John Cleese. And in this video, there's a real good example of how laughter yoga sessions are held. Now, we tried this and it doesn't work on my end. So, April, can you roll tape, please?Yes. This is April. This is a little bit of an experiment. So, let's see, I have to start.Oh, please bear with me if it doesn't work. It should work. I am just- like I said, heavily befuddled today.Because it's a nice sunny day, you won't be outside.Maybe, haha, I promise I could do this. And now I'm Mike Bailey. Do you want to try it? Well, we can't hear if you try it.Bill Oh, wait. No, that's not it. This worked before.This is all part of the humor. Everyone is making your - It's not right. You see it. It's making a fool of yourself.Ok. What about people from the nest? I found it. I found it. Here we go. Enjoy the video.Bingo. Thank you.So, we're back at work. You know, I know. It worked a little. Some people had a little trouble, but the link is with the handouts. Thanks for everyone reburying with us.And, go, go right ahead.Oh, that's a shame. OK. Well, for those of you got to see it, you've got to see a couple of laughter yoga exercises.You got to see John Cleese laughing. He was right in the face.So, here we find the nuts and bolts of your successful laughter yoga session. Note that sessions are not that long.We do about 35, 40 minutes. And this is because you can experience sustained belly laughter to a point and then it becomes physically painful. And also, some people, they've discovered this through this technique. Some people become irritable after a sustained session of sustained belly left or so you don't. These things you don't want you can do without. During the session, only the leaders permitted to speak. You have some warmup breaths again. That's the yoga part of laughter yoga laughter exercises. I'm giving an example as the cell phone exercise. You pair up with somebody in your group and the ideas is to take is to keep constant eye contact. Eye contact makes laughter yoga. What it is, eye contact is very intimate. So, you keep it with your partner at all times. The cell phone. I don't have a video for that, but I'll describe it. The cell phone exercises. If I started out and you're my partner, I'm pretend I'm looking at you. We're smiling. I pretend to be holding a cell phone to my ear and I pretend to hear the funniest thing I've ever heard.And I break out into boisterous laughter, hahahaha!. And you're my partner. You're my partner. You do the same thing. Then I hand you over for the pretend phone. You take it, put it to your ear and pretend to do the same thing. We both break out into laughter while keeping maintaining eye contact. You hand the phone back to me. I do the same thing again. And then we move on and we partner with another person in the group. Eye contact is key to making this the fake laughter, real laughter. And then we do relaxing breaths and stretches between exercises, probably about two minutes. And then we go on to the next exercise. And at the end of your presentation, you have to have a cool down. Like I say, like I already told you that laughter makes some folks irritable. When I took the training, we laid with a dozen on mats with our like in a circle, with our heads facing one another. And we were told if you if you can be quiet, just be still and relax your body.Concentrate on relaxing your muscles. If you feel like laughing, there's residual laughter in your system. Let it out. And we did that for like five or six minutes.So, that's good that you build that into your presentation.Here are some folks in the very throes of a laughter yoga exercise. And here they're demonstrating what the laughter yoga people called childlike playfulness.Ordinarily, adults don't act like this, but we should. And I'm not sure. But I think this exercise was inspired by Shakespeare's Othello. I don't know. Now, afterword youhave your post assessment. It's the same handout, so, participants complete the right- hand side and usually as you would expect, because all of these benefits are temporary. Usually you have some lower to mid scores over here before and usually afterwards. You've got mid to high scores for all of these.And I get I get some positive comments down here. I'm glad I took this. I didn't want I dreaded this class, but now I'm happy that I did it. Some people have said, when can we do another one? We only do one in our eight weeks. We do it in the penultimate class. And so the contrast is usually drastic. It's usually a demonstrable. So. Becoming a certified laughter yoga leader. It's 16 hours. When I attended it was as Saturday and Sunday.And you can locate certified laughter training near you by visiting a site called Laughter Yoga University, which I have. You are ill for which I have coming up on the slide. And it's not cheap. But you get the training, you get to create laughter yoga exercises. In fact, that's one of the homework exercises they give to create three of your own exercises on Saturday night. And you have to come back on Sunday and actually you get the workbook, which is about one hundred and seventy-five pages. You get some DVD to take with you and you get a lot of handouts.So, it's it's money well-spent.And the caveat here is us for you public librarians. The public library is not always the best places for a Lafta yoga or any kind of laughter session. And I know this because as part of our training, we had to attend the trainers one of their sessions and they held it at the WoolPoll Public Library. And the first thing that they told us before the session began was this is gonna be their last session at the library, because some patrons for the for the last three or four sessions had been complaining to the director that the laughter was disruptive. And so, sadly, with the greatest reluctance they had to go to the two of them is to tell them, I'm sorry, but you can't give this here anymore. But they do give it in other places and people I'm talking about are at war based in Walpole, Massachusetts. I'm compelled to say that laughter yoga is only one way of inducing belly laughter. With your session, participants might try a brainstorm just by myself.And I came up with Play, a notably funny film. I don't know. But you know, if you can get away with.The copyright stuff, but if you can play something like Airplane, the movie Airplane, it was found to contain the most jokes per minute, 2.3 to be precise of any comedy you can do. What I've tried to give a multi slide PowerPoint presentation like about 150, 175 slides containing a mix of boasters, destructive humor and constructive humor and make people laugh that way.Or you can listen to a comedy CD, together, maybe listen to a stream, a comedy podcast, I don't know what capability public libraries have these days, but if you can do that, that's another opportunity.This bibliography. This would be something that you would give to your participants. Obviously, we relied on dozens of sources. So, here's a smattering of the research. And on this slide is this book here. Laughter. An investigation by Robert providing I think you say it pronounce his name. This is the single best scientific text that I found. Why human beings laugh and how. Laughter has been shown to have stressed reducing benefits.If you have a scientific bent of mind or turn of mine, this is the book for you.And I'd like to also call your attention to the documentary called Laughology by Albert Nuremberg. It's probably the most informative, and hilarious documentary on why it's important to play with humor in our daily lives. So, look for that.Here's another handout that you can give them. I've used all of these sites not just in preparation for this moment, but in preparation for the 16-hour session, the program, the course that we do at Norfolk.And they have conferences, as you can see. Bottom left, 20 20 conference was canceled. And it's something to do about a flu. But at least now, you know, if you didn't before that. Laughter conferences like this exist and they're far enough away. This was in Colorado. They're far enough away to trick into believing that you're gathering in an exotic land.And would it be funny if this were true?I don't think so either.However, it does remind you that is as presenter of laughter for stress reduction, you must be very careful not to misrepresent the benefits of laughter. I've said it before. I'm saying it again. And the way you do that is by keeping up with the current research, read the journal articles, see what's going on in the health communities regarding this.So, now it's question time with less than five minutes to go. Does anyone have a question?There there's at least one question. I do want to thank you again, Bill, because this was great. This was fantastic. And I do hope that a lot of people at least had some laughs and learned some new things. I know I did. One question I think is your would be on your thoughts. I don't know if you've thought about this before, but if it's how do media like Howie Car or Fox News fit into the destructive humor definition and does it impact its viewers or how does it impact the viewers?What do you think? That's interesting. It is interesting. It's ah. What I want to say, I'm hesitant to say that's a little political and I don't want to think like a program like this, we're trying to stay away from that.The only way I know to answer that is if you are of a Fox News or Howie Car bent, it doesn't really, it doesn't really bother you because you that that's your mindset. That's what you believe. If you're national public radio type, that's not going to bother you either. Whatever bad news they bring to you, you're going to assimilate into your worldview, if that's an answer. I don't know from that one. I only want questions that I can't answer. So, I can just say, I don't know. We can move on.Well, I think you kind of also goes back to that balance, right? If people are interested in learning their own humorous style.Yes. They may like want to balance that out a little bit. Yeah. And I also wanted to mention so that the Facebook live event that we referred to, that it's happening next Thursday. Fascinating. And I put the link in the chat box. So, it's open to anyone. If people want to check it out and see what it might be like to do that, virtually every time I'm requesting for you. Yeah, it's gonna be cool. And that's by Jessica Phillips at the Ducks very library. Who I know. Oh, thank you, Jessica. In person. And in person. Laughter.Yoga, I'm so another question was, do you know how long term the proven benefits of better for better thinking and enhance creativity? Do?Nobody knows that yet. No one knows that they're studying it. That's why I say to keep up on it and keep reading the journal articles, especially in the health professions. Nobody knows. They only know the temporary benefits.Yeah. Yeah. And someone did have this is just a little suggestion I thought was good for that slide where you go through the benefits, maybe even like an Asterix for the ones that have been scientifically proven like that could be in. Yeah. And I also want to let people know that in West Bridgewater there they have Lee, Weekly who have their yoga sessions on Facebook Live Tuesdays at 11:00. So awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Ellen. Let's see, the cancel culture has a deadening effect on humor. Who, who can overcome that or how can we overcome that? What culture, cancels culture? I believe this means of when. Yeah. I'll ask the questioner if they want to clarify.But when you know, sort of. Oh, I don't I don't like that kind of humor. So, we're just not going to. I kind of actually did that to Bill. We don't we're not approving of this kind of humor. So, we're just not going to show it or we're not, you know, we're gonna catch me program or whatever. Yeah.We weren't keeping it gentle today, but it was. I don't know.That makes me funny. But yeah, it will be hard. What you have to coax people to me that's like a shell.And so, you have to coax people out of that. And the only way that you do that is by having them invest. And that's up to them. I'm thinking particularly in terms of laughter yoga, it's like you either there to benefit from it or you're not. So, and if you're showing like the constructive, destructive humor slides, you have to invest. You probably have to emphasize that if that's something that some in the cultures, if it's embedded now, then you have to emphasize that at the beginning of your session, it's like, you know, invest, get into this. You're here obviously for a reason. So, you only get out of it what you put into it. So, yeah, if that's, if that's something that, that's, that's a problem, it's a real problem, then it's up to you as the instructor, I suppose, or the presenter to try to counter that ahead of time. Does that make any sense?Mm hmm. Yes. Thank you. I am gonna repeat.Just from West Bridgewater again, the Westbridge are out of public library. They have their laughter yoga on Facebook live Tuesdays at 11:00. Someone asks for that to be repeated. There are a couple more questions, but I just might be conscious of people's time because it is 12:01 and that usually signals lunch. So, would you leave?You may exit out of the webinar. And if Bill, you don't mind sticking around for a minute, we could maybe one or two more questions. Okay, great. So, and yes, the perfect, the perfect. The final slide.Someone had a question if you are married to someone with the opposite comedy style, is there any hope during this pandemic time? I know you're married. Does your spouse share your style? Do you ever have advocates about that.She shares your style. Go. Forget it. I work in a prison and I we're going to prison for a reason because it's comfortable there. It's very strange. Funny things happen that would horrify the normal, sane human being. And we, we joke about things that should never, ever, ever be joked about. We do it as a coping mechanism, but we still do it. And no, my, my spouse does not do that. She's the exact and utter opposite. And so, I hear a lot of things like, you know, you probably shouldn't be doing that. We shouldn't, we shouldn't be laughing about that. And she's right. But I do anyway, because it's just my nature now. It shouldn't be causing a rift between you. I think the questioner says, is there any hope? I think what would be fun is for the two of you to sit down and collect some images from the Internet or go just go through and just do like a Google image search on certain things. Now what makes the partner laugh. Find out what makes you laugh and discuss why these things are. Why it is that these things tickle your funny bone. You might get some insight into each other's psychology. Ah, there's, I didn't use the slide, but what I wanted to. But there's a slide right now that's laying me out. It's a husband and wife depicted in this slide. And she's sitting down. He's standing up next to the television. And he she says to him, you never listen to me. You only hear what you want to hear. And his answer is, sure, I'll have a beer. I think I have that one. That's sort of funny. It's terrifically funny to me. Probably because it's a microcosm of my home life. But that's funny. So, I think the best hope would be the answer to the question is the hope would be sit down together, make the time and go through some of this stuff, go just search for images.And if he laughs, it's something and you don't or the partner laughs is something, you understand it. Ask them, why does this make you laugh? And the same thing for you. Find something that makes you laugh. It doesn't make the partner laugh and explain why.So, it's a chance to share that, a chance to grow closer. So, yes, there is, I think, a great idea. You know, there is.I do want to do one more. I hope Paula still with us, because this was a really great question.You know, of any online courses that can be used to become a certified laughter yoga instructor, do you know you can do it online?I don't. They seem all of the laughter yoga websites seem to direct you toa live person they want you to go to somewhere. So, it's. I hate to say this, but it's a money-making thing. It just is. And I think that I don't, I don't know if you could get the same benefit virtually. aha, aha. And I guess I'm saying that because I went and had the and had the face to face training. I think the face to face training.It could be possible, though. It sounds like, you know, people can do programs that involve laughter and humor, you just don't call it laughter yoga I think on that note, we will wrap up because I just might be conscious of everyone's time.And I want to thank you again, Bill, and thank everyone for joining us today and have a great laughter filled weekend. Laughter filled. Thanks, everybody. Bye, bye. ................
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